Well, Dimension High School was certainly unique, that you have to admit. I have never before seen a show that was one half live-action and one half 3D CGI. The problem here however is that there are two kinds of unique ideas: The kind that nobody has tried before because they didn't think of it and the kind that nobody has tried because everybody already knew how godawful of an idea it was. And DHS more than certainly belongs in the latter category.

But let's take it from the top. DHS, in its essence, is a show about four guys and their teacher getting approached by a floating, talking rock and convinced to agree to be teleported into a CGI-version of the classroom they were in previously to solve riddles posed to them by what is referred to as sphinxes - but only consists of the head and front legs of said mythical creatures - in order to prevent those sphinxes from getting from the 2D to the 3D world and wiping out humanity. Every time they lose, the sphinxes absorb the soul of one of them, making them lose whatever they held dearest in the actual world as well as get one step closer to entering the third dimension. And if anything I just said makes sense to you, then I'm afraid I have bad news for you and your mental state.

Here is how the overwhelming majority of the episodes play out: Most of the first half is a (mostly godawful) live-action skit of the cast doing whatever it is people in their thirties probably think schoolkids these days do when they're in school. During this time they then learn something (either randomly throughout the scenes or because the teacher mentioned earlier, well, teaches it to them), after which the talking rock appears and contrives another reason to teleport everybody present. The second half then consists of the currently active sphinx (of which there are four in total throughout the entire show) giving them their first riddle, which they invariably lose, making one of them get their soul eaten. The sphinx then poses forth a second riddle, which they invariably win (often by applying whatever it was they learned in half one), after which we return to the live-action world and get to learn what it was the one person who got soul-vacuumed lost. Repeat that process ad nauseam and you've got yourself a cour!

Ridiculous repetition is not the only massive issue Dimension High School suffers from however, no sir! It also serves as a beyond perfect showcase of how very fking different anime and live-action are when it comes to what can and cannot work in a script. That is not to say that DHS's dialogue would've been good in a fully animated setting, god no, but the fact that all of the lines present are being spoken by what you can immediately perceive as a real person makes an already excruciatingly painful script even more unbearable and difficult to listen to. And it would appear that I am not the only person who found the dialogue to be a nightmare, because the actors deliver most of their lines almost as if they were forced to read them or have their puppies be shot. I can not remember a stretch of time longer than maybe 3 minutes going by without me noticing a line of dialogue that was brought across just as poorly as it was written. The most painfully obvious examples of this were the times when

Spoiler, click to view

Ryuusei had lost what was most precious to him, his dignity, immediately turning him from a stereotypical 'smart no-nonsense' character into a goofy wanker, constantly spouting ”funny” lines 24/7

*Wow, I can't believe I just had to spoiler something in a review of Dimension High School.*

Anyway, what else is there to say about this anime? It's a terrible idea executed incredibly poorly. There is basically nothing redeeming about this entire thing. The most 'fun' I had throughout these 12 episodes was taking a few screencaps of lines that were unintentionally funny and that was it. There's nothing else to say here. If it hadn't been for Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka, this right here would've been the worst anime of a dreadful season.

And to anybody planning to ask why I not only forced myself to watch this anime in its entirety, but also review it, I shall leave you with no doubt my favourite line from the entire anime that perfectly encapsulates why. Enjoy.