High Score Girl. For others, what is a typical love story by manga or an anime is, to me, a journey with a some of genius elements that embraces years. I wanted to write a quality sequel to the piece that became a standard for me, which, in addition to continuing the story of our heroes, presents a great breeding ground for the video games of the era, just like the original. I'll give you a look behind the development. Let's see, how is HSG 1999. made. I divide three segments, just like a seasonal anime. So, let's get started! But before that, two of my friends say a message to you.

Mangekyo022

That was the end of High Score Girl 1999! Well done, Ragnafan1992!

Me and Ragnafan1992 love videogames. Back then in 2018, after I learned that J.C.Staff makes an anime adaptation about a romantic comedy manga which revolving around videogames, I knew that we must watch it. As I hoped, we enjoyed it. Then J.C.Staff came up with the „brilliant idea", to adapt a certain arc into a 3 episodes long ova, both me and Ragnafan1992 tough it was a bad idea. Thank God it was still enjoyable. Then the second and final season came in 2019, which started poorly, but in the second half, the anime shined again. In the end, it has become one of the most loveable and cutest romantic anime we have ever seen.

Once the anime finished, we learned that the mangaka created a spin-off sequel „High Score Girl Dash", where my favourite female character, Hidaka became the main character. Unfortunately, the mangaka made a mistake somewhere, because the videogames disappeared until the showdown between Hidaka and „Miss Retard Psycho", then they disappeared again. Then mangadex has been shot down and nobody know what is going on in Dash (not even on reddit). Both of us hated that spin-off! So much that it has became a taboo for us!

Not long after the first 3-4 chapters of High Score Girl Cash – sorry, „Dash" -, Ragnafan1992 came up with the idea to create a „fan fiction sequel" named „High Score Girl 1999". I encouraged him, that if he can do it till the end, then bring it on. Ragnafan1992 asked the help of me and xx18Rolandxx for many times.

At the beginning, I advised him to decide the storyline backward from the ending and coming up with different story arcs. Also, we decided the most important arcs, twists and events before started to working on them. Once we finished them, Ragna1992 started it, which has came to an end. The story was originally written Hungarian, but then he came up with the idea to translate it to English, so foreigner readers might enjoy it too.

Back to the story: my favourite characters of High Score Girl 19992 are Yaguchi, Oono, Hidaka, Daniel and Jago, while my least favorite was – surprise – Lilith. The only times I enjoyed Lilith's character was the funny conversations between her and Jago. My favourite story arc was final videogame tournament arc, where I wrote the King Of Fighthers segment and came up with the idea how should Oono and Yaguchi play together in the Garou Mark Of The Wolves segment. I really liked the rivalry between Hidaka and Raptor and the many JoJo's Bizarre Adventure references.

There were some times when we were thinking about certain twists more than the rest. Like Raptor's fate, what kind of games should be involved when, how long should the entire story. So yeah, even knowing the most important events and twists already made things hard, especialy if we came up a new idea.

Overall, I congratulate to Ragnafan1992 for his High Score Girl 1999 work and I am happy that I could be part of it too. I hope you all enjoyed his work as well!

Thank you again!

Xx18Rolandxx

Greetings to everyone, I'm xx18Rolandxx and I will now present to you a little review that will be about nothing more than our recently beloved work of our beloved Ragna colleague, High Score Girl 1999.

Before I present my opinion to you, I would like to talk a little bit about the manga and anime on which the writing is based. High Score Girl was originally a manga running from 2010 to 2018 and was featured on the pages of Big Gangan magazine and was created by the same Oshikiri Rensuke who also produced the surprisingly good horror manga Misu Misou. In the year when the manga ended, the anime adaptation made by the JC Staff studio was announced and in 2019 the sequel came, which ending did not impress our colleague so much that he decided, he also start to write his own story from the series, similar as Star Knight Deku (and by the way, the sequel of the manga called Dash! has also become an object of disgust.).

I only saw and liked the first season of the anime, despite the fact that I'm always was been critical of romantic works in all my life and have always had reservations about such works. Sure, you can say that I'm a boy and mostly girl's can enjoy such works better ,but there's animes like Ore Monogatari!, Wotaku Ni or Tonikaku Kawaii from this fall season which all showed me how to do well these animes.

One of my reservations is to keep a romantic anime from going into a soap opera or drama. Now HSG 1999 unfortunately falls into the category of soap opera as it has everything that a Brazilian or Mexican soap opera has to offer such as a couple separated by social strata, an evil parent, a kind parent, intrigue, shit stritting and etc. ,but HSG 1999 can still stop on the level where the whole thing is no longer painfully awkward. The only reason for this is that, as in the case of SKD, our colleague Ragna blended his own creations with the base work, and this only intensifies when the negative characters and main antagonist appear in the story, but it's not a negligible fact that the play's between the characters are so well written, I'm thinking mainly of the battle between Daniel and Morrison where both of them know that if they make a mistake only once it can have serious consequences. Things like that make me think this work is a lot of fun on one side. On the other side, there are the games.

Well, those who have known me for a long time may know that I was never a big gamer. I could also say it's at all but I'd rather say, that I'm stuck at the level of Super Mario and Street Fighter. So this is the point where the work will be enjoyable mainly for those who are raised in this era, in the era of Arcade games, who have played or still play a lot of games like this. At the same time, the nostalgia factor that flows from these parts well.....i don't really know, it has a kind of mood and charm that reminds the reader of his childhood but still doesn't go into pointless nostalgia riding like other works that want to sell themselves based on nostalgia alone for the fans. It is simply a good feeling to read the parts where the characters play with each other and in this case the gameplay of a classic game is presented, so even those who are not familiar with these games can enjoy them. It seems that our colleague is very involved in this topic and also loves these games and this love comes from the description of each gameplay mainly because like battle scenes, gameplay is also hard to write because you have to see them.

So in other word's, the story is a worn out romantic cliché but the playful side part is able to forget this with the reader and after a while he won't even notice it. However, the romantic part can break down even if there are no good characters in a work. And already, HSG 1999 is full of good, exciting and interesting character's. Unlike the soap opera's, the roles have changed here, so the boy is poor while the girl is rich but the love thread between Yaguchi and Oono is very well written. The chemistry between two of them works well as we are talking about two people who have been brought together by their passion for games. Yaguchi is already a lovable character in himself as he does everything in the work to be with the love of his life even if it means he have harassing or torturing himself. On the other hand, Oono merely communicates with his gestures and actions practically until the end of the work, but Ragna wrote the character so well that the love she feels for Yaguchi flows from her every move, but his other feelings, such as anger or surprise was also come to pass but when she speak in the end, that was cathartic but but forget that for a minute.

Other important character's are the family members and friends of the two main characters. Actually, they play their part, both Makoto, Hidaka and Namie are well written character's. Who I would rather talk about are the original characters. First of all, though, there's Daniel who is a very interesting character that can also be considered an opposite Seto Kaiba. Grown up in a rich house but a really miserable condition, however, he didn't become a shithead character who looked down on everyone, but a sharp witted and very helpful character who did everything to ensure he or the charachters could achieve their goal's and he's ready to risk everything, or if the his plans seem not so certain at first. And then let's say a few words about the foster father, Morrisons. A real bastard figure, a sample of the bad parent, and each of his movements was written in such a way that everyone could hate it from the gut, but at the same time, through the end, he underwent a great character development and if even with great difficulty, changed his attitude towards things. And that's why the end of the character is sad and tragic. Then there is Team Yomi, the negative minion character's , who would only highlight one of them: Raptor. A truly hateful, pathetic sore looser character that our colleague took care of that we already him when he first appeared and this will remain in the story until the tournament closes. However, both Morrison and Raptor are dwarfed by the real villain: Lillith Ooono or Cruella deVil V2.

Lillith is one of the most hated female characters in the world. An ice hearted, cold, calculating, evil and damaging woman who doesn't love anyone or anything but money and power, and thinks she's smarter than anyone, but as she slowly reveals herself and gets her worthy punishment is the filthy satisfying yet the best part is, when her daughter Akira talks with her. It was the point for her where everything in her life collapsed like a card castle and sank lower and lower and finally ended up in an Asylum. I think the story got really exciting from the moment when this woman appeared. Or there's Jago, who i think is smoothly the funniest character in the story. His speeches cannot be endured without laughter. I loved the character so much that i hope to get a spin-off story sometime.

So that would be my opinion of HSG 1999, an entertaining romantic story that i really enjoyed even though i often didn't understand anything from the many game reference's but it was so good to read this story. It was a lot of fun. So that would be my opinion and a lot of success for our colleague Ragna :) (especially if you changed your mind about Jago's spin-off story idea :D )

1. Season (Round 1-11.)

It started 2019 at the end of December, just watching the last episode. That's when the news just came in that High Score Girl Dash is coming up as spinoff of Hidaka. This already gave me plenty of fuel to start the sequel, which is operating with a time jump in the first step. That's how the title was written in 1999. From the beginning, I had to bring in a new character, who will be Akira Oono's designated husband, and he will initiate the chain of events. This is how rich banker Morrisons Fortesque's stepson, Sir Daniel Michael Fortesque, was created, referring to the protagonist of the cult classic game, Medievil. His story is simple. A video game lover, who despises the snobby layer, saying they're soulless moneybags. Meanwhile, of course, I had to drive Yaguchi Haruo and Hidaka Koharu. At first, I had no idea how the dream couple would meet. My first plans were, that Yaguchi would get to America, but that would have been impossible, because then the video games would have been overshadowed and the family drama would have gone on forever. So that leaves the Daniels coming from America to Japan. These chapters were quite short in retrospect.

The main backbone of the original story was the video games, so I not only wanted to keep it, but also to raise it on the quality bar, even it's harder to words, than a drawing. Nostalgia took my side, because my computer loaded with retro games and emulators and my favourite fighting game, Tekken 3 was not a difficult task to make a tournament. I just played it over and over again with my friend mangekyo022 and we put together the stroyboard. However, I have devised another character, which is the opposite of everything Yaguchi stands for. A real son of a bitch known only as raptor. Back to the story, everything clear like water. The tournament ended with Yaguchi's victory, the couple met again and Daniel told then the final task. Get the right money through tournaments. I normal way, that's the end of the first season. BUT, here is a little fun fact. When I writing and publishing the Hungarian version, a reader drew my attention to a rather harsh thing around Round 10. I used to believe that once the first season of HSG had been completely translated, at least they'd done the whole anime. The situation is, that the OVA trilogy has been canceled, the translation team didn't even start in the second season, so a misguided reader doesn't even know what happened in the original. So there was nothing to do, I asked my colleague Mangekyo 022 to do an extra chapter in which we tell the original story. To my surprise, he did it in two days, and he was able to follow it all the way from Yaguchi's point of view. We were hoping that more readers would join us.

2. Season. (Round 12.-Round 24.)

This was the point where I found it appropriate to present the parents, along with the main antagonist of the story will be presented. For a oneshot, the mangaka showed Akira and Makoto's mother, but that's it. As far as I'm concerned, I needed more to get the plot going. At first, I wanted to make all the parents look like soulless filth, and then Mangekyo came up with the idea: What if only one family member was evil while the other one took on the victim of the system? It seemed like a great idea to me, but unfortunately, Round 12. just didn't want to go, so Mangekyo took over the parents presentation. What I received made one eye cry and the other laugh. The character of Lillith Oono was well enough, as was the presentation of Narumi Oono and Eleonore Fortesque. What blew the fuse was a ton of slapstick comedies that you'd expect from a Looney Tunes, but I wasn't planning on putting in my story at all. So, I left the hungarian version. I changed something else. Kevin Willet, aka Jago, was initially described as a rather dry character, but changed one thing to a better character. Namely, that he constantly openly states that Lillith is a black widow in bed, so executes a male after mating, or in a milder case, the man's pelvic bone broke. As time went by, and the parents were in the picture, the threads were intertwined. Also, I have some answers for the reader. One example is, why didn't Akira Oono anything in the original?

As for the video game part, this is where I let go of my imagination. First of all, the Nintendo World Championship, which a person skilled in games loosely notices is fake, since there was no one there from Nintendo (It need to be hosting a tournament for one of these.). Of course, at first I thought it was a joke that Yaguchi's mother, Namie, could play, but eventually I kept the idea. Then came the Street Fighter Alpha 3 Championship, which I wanted to screw up with Raptor and his company. Of course, I had other stupid things come up, which ended up in a very good way. The anchorwoman, Ramizuke Mika, or Felicia and Rolento's broken-up brother-sister relationship came out of it. This game is a great way to play with Mangi against each other, so it was easy to work out the script, and I didn't even suffer writing it. Of course, in the end, I had no intention of burying Raptor and his gang and they were still in the final chapter of the second period. But, around Round 20. enough chapter of the HGD Dash was published, namely 6. So, one day, I started and oh man... it was a pure disappointment. How can I start, how bad it was? Oh, I got it! Even the first chapter wasn't started, and we got a marriage. Oh, not Akira and Yaguchi... Onizuka Chihiro and some guy marriage. Don't get me wrong, because I think it's a bad idea because a woman is so ugly that she wouldn't even win the ugliness race, saying the pros can't apply. The real problem is, Onizuka is a comic relief character in the original, with zero personalty and character development. And this is just a beginning. The new characters are totally unsympathetic, sometimes more annoying. On the other side, Hidaka character's was killed. In the cover, she look like a badass woman, but after six chapters, she look like a combination of a crybaby and a human train wreck. No wonder, because every chapter is equal for a punch to Hidaka's face or womb. The last nail in this coffin (which altogether kill the atmosphere.), is the video game segment. Or should I say... lack of video games. Around chapter 4, it was a presentation of a PSP. Okay, but that is nothing and everybody think after the original, that 2007 was shit in games. Bullshit! In this year, Bioshock was published, just like Portal, Assasin's Creed, The Witcher, God of War 2, Tekken 5 Dark Ressurection and a list goes on. I personally believe that High Score Girl without video game, it's just a boring and a thousand times-watched romantic story, or just say it: Girl. This tour of hell resulted in a single step. It's all off canon on my ff, so I completely ignore it when I write the story. I've come up with a plan, that Hidaka and Daniel love each other, which cause a little organising, but totally worth it. And what about the rest of Dash? I never read, but Mangekyo did, and what he tell me, is not good in any way. So, back in track.

And here's Chikuron, because it's also an interesting story. In the beginning, I was planning a very strong rival for Oono, and later it came up to me why Lillith hadn't cheated on her husband, not on one occasion. Then it would have been possible to have Makoto and Akira's half-brother. As far as Raptor is concerned, he's never acted like a fluffy bunny before, but when he came after that, he crossed a line.

3. Season. (Round 25-36.)

That was the point where everything started to slip on my part in terms of writing. Luckily, for the final video game tournament, we put in every game and played enough with it. However, the problem started with me being a total noob in King of Fighters, which it showed me was that Mangekyo kept beating me. Fortunately, he took over this part in writing, as did most of Garou Mark of The Wolves parts. So, what I have left is the last few chapters that basically contained the endgame and the closure.

As usual,I had it all planned out. Lillith's downfall was inspired by the endgame of Death Note. This means that its foundation consists of the ultimate evil revealing itself at the wrong time. Of course, I had to decide Raptor's fate. Originally, the official ending here was that when he burned down the Yaguchi's home, he died here. Mangekyo said it was too rough and I gave him the truth in it. So it turned out to be on the right track in the end. The heir to Interbank, on the other hand, had the same idea in both our minds. Jago should be chosen. Fortunately, I found nothing wrong with Lillith and Morrisons fate, and neither did Mangekyo. But, there was a fucking big problem, that accompanied me all the way to the final. The gameplay scenes just didn't want to come together. And when i got it, the slightest problem was the correction. Originally, I had to adjust the drama and the plot twists. However, due to the limited time frame, the majority of them in the story were assembled to round 31. I remember the marriage clearly that I Googled it, but then I came to the conclusion that it's easier to think myself and wrote it. And the 4th wall break, that when I was in it and answered to Morrisons is the best ending for me.

English translation sequence.

Around posting Round 36, I joined two Discord server for HSG fans and started to translate. For the first time, I was in total panic. I've never translated a single work, and here I am, on my own because no one was available to help. However, my friend xx18Rolandxx has recommended a page that can help me with your translation. Google Translator can't be trusted in the first place, because it can even mess up complex words. But the angol-magyar-szotar.hu is very awesome. It can translate complete sentences almost perfectly. But, some downside come with it. First, it can't translate sentence, which contain 201 or more words. Second, it's not perfect for the video games titles and move sets alike. To top of that, some annoy thing to this is sometimes, Hidaka names becomes his bridge. But, compare Google translation and this, it's obvious what am I use.

What's a difference between the Hungarian and English version? First of all, I left out the Yaguchi's Journal chapter because it's just an abbreviated version of the original High Score Girl story. Second, Daniel 4th wall breaks two times. The next thing is most of the pervert joke skipped. Not from Jago's mouth, much more like referring an old anime, called Mina Akechau (or something like that.). I add Daniel and Hidaka love is much more detail. Other that that points, nothing changed. Okay, the word jokes, but that's understandable. I have not yet said one thing, and that is the speed of translation, which I am surprised myself about. I started in 2020 December and finished 2021 May. Plus, this contains a month hiatus.

So, yeah, I closed all the loose ends, and after posting round 36, I feel a little emptiness. I enjoyed writing a sequel as a fan of the series, and now that it's happened, I'm going to miss Yaguchi, Akira Oono, Hidaka Koharu and Sir Daniel Michael Fortesque... but I make a little gaiden chapters, called Extra Levels. That contains mini stories, which is not important my main story, but adds the lore much deeper. Unfortunately, there are two things I can't do that could make this story so much better. The first thing is, I can't add any drawings. I'm pretty lousy at drawing, so I left a lot of it to your imagination. The other thing is, I don't speak Spanish, so I can't translate it that language. well, from what I've seen, most of the high score girl fans are Spanish.

Well, that's for the behind the scenes chapter. If you have any questions about my work, you can ask.

The End!