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Hi Score Girl Manga Gets Special 1-Shot in October

The October issue of Square Enix's Big Gangan magazine revealed last Friday that Rensuke Oshikiri will publish a one-shot special chapter for his Hi Score Girl manga in the magazine's next issue on October 24. Though Oshikiri currently serializes his Hi Score Girl DASH spinoff manga in the magazine, the manga will not appear in the next issue due to the new one-shot chapter, and will return on November 25.

Oshikiri launched the Hi Score Girl DASH spinoff in Big Gangan last December. The manga focuses on the character Koharu Hidaka, who is a middle school teacher close to 30 years old in 2007. [Warning: The story summary below contain a spoilers for the original manga. Highlight text to read the spoiler.]
[Having been single her entire life, Hidaka is wavering between choosing between her career or seeking marriage. The manga's tagline reads, "It's okay ... Even Chun-Li is still in her 30s."]

The "'90s arcade romantic comedy" story of the original Hi Score Girl manga begins in 1991, during the heyday of the 2D fighting game boom. Sixth-grader Haruo spends practically his entire day at an arcade in the seedy part of town, oblivious to the world around him. However, one day at his usual arcade, he encounters Akira, his female classmate with good grades and money. She may look out of place at the arcade, but she is actually a top-class gamer. Akira completely outmatches Haruo in one Street Fighter II round after another, and their relationship develops from this unlikely encounter.

Oshikiri launched the manga in Square Enix's Monthly Big Gangan in 2010, and ended it in September 2018. Square Enix published the manga's 10th and final volume on March 25. The manga halted serialization in August 2014 following SNK Playmore's (now SNK) criminal complaint against Square Enix in August 2014, which asserted that the Hi Score Girl manga featured over 100 instances of characters from The King of Fighters, Samurai Spirits (Samurai Shodown), and other fighting games owned by SNK. Square Enix filed a counterclaim against SNK Playmore in October 2014. The two companies settled their claims over the manga in August 2015, and SNK Playmore dropped its criminal charges against Square Enix. The manga resumed in Monthly Big Gangan in July 2016. Square Enix also issued a voluntary recall on all of the manga's five print volumes in 2014, but re-released the first five volumes in 2016 under the title Hi Score Girl CONTINUE.

The first season of the manga's television anime adaptation premiered on television in Japan in July 2018. Netflix began streaming the show outside of Japan in December 2018. The original video anime (OVA) episodes shipped on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in Japan in March 2019 along with a new eight-page manga by Oshikiri. The new episodes also began streaming on Netflix on the same day. The nine-episode second season premiered in Japan last October. The series began streaming on Netflix on April 9.

Source: Big Gangan October issue