I’m not usually the kind of person who decides to take a look at a show based on how completely awful it looks. However, there is a limit in which you reach beyond awful into the completely absurd. Where you can only sit and think to yourself ‘Who in the hell greenlit this idea?’ for me, that is Dimension High School. This strange animation and live action hybrid, let’s see if it’s any good sha’ll we?
The story starts, with a rock. A very very fake looking rock, like, why not just like use a real rock? Well, this rock is important to the story and the apparent destruction of humanity. A student passes it by at first noting that it is in fact, not a meteorite and then he just turns back and picks up the rock because he decides “Hey, actually that’s a nice rock.” NO, it’s NOT a nice rock. It looks like a bumpy ball of concrete!
If in the rest of this review I say nothing kind about this show, let it be known now that the opening is really catchy. I honestly really dig the music.
To sum up the events of this episode, we join 4 students and their teacher as they are doing a tutoring session and learning about the Doppler effect. When the concrete ball comes out of one of the students desk, the student, Shiroyama is obviously freaked out and eventually everyone else notices and starts freaking out a bit too. After the nerdy glasses student, Midorigaoka tosses the rock out the window it comes flying back feeling offended and introduces itself as Spudio the 22nd.
It has come to find the chosen heroes and enlist their help in defeating the demon lord and saving humanity.
Shiroyama thinks this is a cruel prank and immediately throws Spudio out the window again. It comes back pissed the hell off and tells them that it is just going to force them to help, it tried being nice. So with that, the boys are brought to the 2-D world and turn into anime characters.
Of course naturally, most of them think it’s a dream and are wondering why the others are in their dreams. The funniest one is Midorigaoka, he sees Shiroyama in his dream and immediately jumps to the idea that he is subconsciously crushing on him.
I’m not sure what i’m worried about more, the fact that he immediately jumped to that conclusion or the fact that Shiroyama’s response to this was “but we’ve known each other forever.” as Midorigaoka denied the idea that he was crushing on a guy.
The badly animated concrete with a face known as Spudio the 22nd tells them that it is their fate as the four chosen heroes to save the world from the demon king and…wait a second, why are there five? The four students and their teacher! He messed up, he messed up badly. Not only that, he used up too much power getting them there and now he can’t get them back. He does know a way to return them to the 3-D world though and that is where the Sphinx comes in.
It just slides through the wall and is like, “Hey, I hope you like solving questions. If you want to go home, solve my questions. If you don’t, pay the price.” so he gives them a question to solve in a minute. They fail and so he rips a part of the professor out of him.
Then moves on to question 2. Using critical thinking and remembering the lesson earlier in the episode on the Doppler effect, Shiroyama solves the riddle and answers the question. Teleporting all of them back to the 3-D world.
However, the professor looks fine but they hear from Spudio that he has lost the most important thing to him as a result of losing a part of himself to the Sphinx. What was the thing most important to him? All the money he made on a cell phone game that he played between classes. He absolutely LOSES it with anger and my god it’s so funny. He is SO upset about this whole cellphone game thing and from the preview it looks like he won’t be cooling down about it any time soon.
This first episode was a trip. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this show going in, after watching it…I feel like it’s a complete abomination with an absurd plot, crappy cg and is making an odd attempt at being educational. I love it! It lampshades itself just enough to get by, the jokes are funny and the actors are entertaining. I think I ship Shiroyama and Midorigaoka just from the first episode. Also, the Sphinx is voiced by Junichi Sawabe and I can’t help but wonder to myself how a high profile voice actor like him got caught up in this mess.
I can’t…honestly believe i’m writing this, but I really want to cover this show. So yeah, i’m in. Let’s see if these boys can save the earth through the power of extra studying and crappy CG!
Possibility of watching: Guaranteed
Possibility of covering: Guaranteed
Speaking of CG anime, there’s another one produced by Netflix called revisions, that just premiered recently.
Personally I think the CG for revisions is much better than this one, but then again Dimension High is a trippier series.
That one has a more serious and well-planned scifi story, although the MC’s attitude at the start may take some getting used to.