Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de: An anime with Sega characters, sort of.

Well this is the weirdest thing I have seen in some time. There is going to be an anime airing from next month in Japan called Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de that, according to MyAnimeList is:

Segua Kingdom has been losing the war against Ninterdo Empire but the tables are turned by the appearance of a boy called Gear. All the characters are parodies of Nintendo or Sega games such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda etc.

and they included an image:

 Not terribly obvious from that artwork but the guy with the blue hair is a parody of Sonic. Not clear enough? This image from the already existing manga probably will..

More info (what info there is so far) after the jump.

This of course is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. There has also been the PS3 series of games called Hyperdimension Neptunia, which somehow managed to get released here, that was about a bunch of loli girls presenting different consoles and game companies, including at some point one based on the Mega Drive and one based on a "what if" of a later Sega console called the Neptune. It was an interesting-ish concept, spoiled by not only being uncomfortably pandering to the loli fetish but also by the fact that the games were pretty average RPGs over all.

This however is representing something all the more specific: the Sega Vs Nintendo console wars, in particular the early 90s as far as I can tell. All the characters are based on those from Sega and Nintendo's games from the time. After doing some rummaging on Japanese sites about the manga I found some character profiles.

Can you guess who they all are? In the top row is Gear (based on Sonic), Opa-ru (Opa Opa from Fantasy zone), Neru (nei from Phantasy Star II), Thiru (I'm guessing Tails based on the name and description), not sure on this one yet, and the last from one of the other character bio pages is what I think might be a parody of Arle from Puyo Puyo, the the translation suggests that character is a boy so they gender swapped her for whatever reason. Ok. The Nintendo page has Mario, Luigi, Samus, Link, Kirby and there are also Sqaure, namco and other game developers characters in there.

This is very, very strange. The characters are so loosely based on what they are parodying that they must be able to get away with it, yet you can't help but wonder what Sega and Nintendo think of this getting an anime soon. I mean look at that very slightly different Sega 'S' logo in the above image. For all we know this anime might be complete rubbish, but I guess we will find out in due time with trailers and the very close-upon-us airing and I assume fansubbing. Either way it is er...interesting, to say the least.

Source: Sonic Retro forums.

Update: Found pretty much the whole manga comic of it here. From what I can gather (spoilers ahead):
(just using the names of who they are based on to keep track of who is who).

• Nei is Sonic's sister, Tails maybe his brother.
• Their parents and other people from their small sea side village were killed when they were kids by Nintendo.
• Sonic can't swim in this either.
• Tails DIES. Again to Nintendo solders. Sonic goes berserk and beats them to a bloody pulp.
• Mario is seen looming like a bad guy with a lizard pet (maybe Yoshi?).
• Sonic teams up with the Opa Opa lady, who is an archer.
• There is the odd cheesecake ecchi, but at least it's not loli hahaha.