Winter 2019 First Impressions – Dimension High School

One day, on his way to high school, student Junpei picks up an unusual looking rock. Thinking nothing of it, he heads to class. While in the middle of a session, the rock comes to life and transports him and four others to an animated world. To make matters more interesting, the group is introduced to a giant sphinx who is determined to take over the world. Now, to protect their world from invasion, the group must work together as anime characters and real-world humans. – ANN

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 12

Source: Original

Episode Summary: Junpei finds a strange rock one day as he’s heading to his physics tutoring session. The teacher’s lesson about the Doppler effect is about as boring as it gets, until the rock that’s stashed in Junpei’s desk begins to take on a life of its own. It is, in fact, no ordinary rock, but a life form searching for some heroes who can help save the world from certain destruction. Junpei and his classmates, along with their professor, seem like they can take up the challenge.

The students are drawn into another dimension where they appear in the form of anime characters. The novelty of their situation wears off quickly when a giant, threatening Sphinx arrives and starts demanding the answers to riddles. It all seems like fun and games until they get a question wrong; the Sphinx then eats their teacher’s spirit. Luckily, their lesson on the Doppler effect turns out to be more useful than they anticipated, because it turns out to be the key to solving the next puzzle. With their teacher back in hand the group returns to the real world, but only until the Sphinx’s next deadly challenge.

Impressions: I didn’t have high hopes for this goofy foray into edu-tainment; the premise alone seemed pretty questionable and the blend of live-action and animated segments seemed like it might be gimmicky at best. I’m always willing to be proven wrong, though, and while I’d thought about skipping this series since I could tell beforehand it would be sort of atypical (and live-action is mostly outside the purview of this website), I decided that it might be worth a look for fun anyway.

What I can say for certain after one episode is that it’s possibly the goofiest thing I’ve watched in recent memory. It presents itself as vaguely educational, devoting a minute or two during its opening classroom scene to briefly explaining the Doppler effect – the way in which sound waves emanating from a moving source are shorter or longer (and the sound higher or lower pitched) depending on the location of an observer relative to that source (see, I remember some things I learned in school). It’s a relatively simple concept that I think most viewers will be familiar with, though the series frames this learning session as being performed for the characters who are all there because of their failing grades (aside from the one who’s just a teacher’s pet and hangs on the instructor’s every word). I was relatively on board at this point; while anime-style over-acting looks and feels especially goofy in live-action, I felt like the show’s heart was in the right place.

The episode takes a sharp turn soon after that; Junpei’s rock starts hovering throughout the classroom and talking about the destruction of the world (the words emanating from a face that appears to have been drawn on with Sharpie marker), and then the students and teacher are transported into a 3DCG anime version of their classroom to undergo mental torture at the hand of a power-hungry Sphinx. It’s reminiscent of some personal fantasies I used to have as a kid, mostly due to my frequent viewing of the TV series Captain N (because who wouldn’t want to travel into their favorite video games?) but without the benefit of any kind of iconic source material to prop it up and provide a decent framework.

The 3D animation is particularly janky, although in an unexpected twist the show is self-aware enough to comment on it directly via its dumbfounded characters. The amount of graphical clipping is about on par with a bad PlayStation 2 video game and the characters make a big show out of exploiting that aspect of their alternate reality by reaching inside one-another’s polygons and watching their hands “disappear.” Never mind the very serious destruction going on outside their classroom window or the fact that they’re all composed of polygons rather than flesh and blood.

The remainder of the episode is an ill-fitting blend of puzzle-solving and half-hearted verbal gags reminiscent of celebrity banter on Japanese variety shows. I wrongly assumed that the male actors playing the parts of the students were celebrity voice-actors, thus making their back-and-forth conversational style into sort of a “bonus” for their fans. As I learned through some further research, the actors are all relatively new and untested talents, so that theory went out the window.

The “big” puzzle that forms the climax of the episode (which, naturally, uses the Doppler effect as a clue to the correct answer) requires some knowledge of the Japanese language, as it relates to the order of the characters in the Japanese alphabet and word translations between Japanese and English. Speaking as someone with some Japanese language experience I think the puzzle was actually sort of clever (even though I didn’t figure out the answer), but I doubt many viewers will have the background to be able to enjoy it as much. I also don’t have a good feeling for the Japanese age group that would have enough of a handle on the English words to be able to translate them into Japanese, figure out the puzzle, and yet still be able to tolerate the goofiness that this episode projects.

That really seems to be the ultimate problem with this anime, at least as far as translating it into English is concerned – I’m not sure who the audience is. I doubt the local seiyuu fanatics are likely to get excited over a bunch of no-name newcomers, most kids who’d reap the most benefit from the educational aspects are unlikely to understand enough of the language nuances for that to be a possibility, and fans like me who have the minimum required language background are probably all too old to be impressed by the weak narrative and kooky character antics. It’s like an anime without a home, which is kind of a sad thought. Sometimes bizarre risks just don’t end up paying off.

Pros: There are some moments of humor. The puzzles are sort of interesting.

Cons: The show doesn’t seem likely to have much of an audience. The CG animation is very poor. There’s a lot of anime-style over-acting that isn’t a good look in live-action entertainment.

Grade: D+

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俺たちの次元を超えた戦いはこれからだ！
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超次元革命アニメ
『Dimensionハイスクール』
　　　　　　　　✨PV解禁✨

物理の補習中、2次元世界に飛ばされてしまった男子高校生たち。果たして人類絶命の危機を救うことは出来るのか―⁉

2019年1月10日（木）22:00～TOKYO MXにて放送開始！ #Dスク pic.twitter.com/Awh1n6PyLP

— 『Dimensionハイスクール』公式 (@dimension_hs) December 12, 2018