Lucky Star

Lucky Star
らき☆すた

I’m always in the mood for this light-hearted anime. Lucky Star is a 2007 anime consisting of 24 30-minute episodes. It can be classified as “comedy” and “slice of life.”

If you can get past the sometimes-annoying OP, you’re in for a real gem of otaku culture. Some people have decried it as “they’re just trying to sell this anime with moe!” but … it’s really freaking funny. The humor does not need the cute-schoolgirlness to stand on its own.

Tsukasa, Kagami, Miyuki, and Konata are high school girls. About midway through the new freshmen Tamara, Patty, Minami, and Yutaka, are thrown into the fray. That’s the premise of the show. No, really. That’s kinda it.

The animation is gorgeous, which you may find it strange to say, since at first glance it’s so simple-looking. Despite the clean-cut simplicity, all the animation is very fluid and believable. There’s also a LOT of shading that’s not glaringly obvious unless you’re paying attention to it (a good thing; shading can be difficult to animate and can end up looking choppy). The backgrounds are also very well done, and the transition from “normal” to “SD” isn’t overdone.

The first time I watched it, I was at a loss. Was there a point of opening it with a discussion on how the girls eat certain things? To the difference of the flu vs a cold? To Kagami being sick? And Miyuki being afraid of contacts?
About midway it hit me: No, not really. And that’s the point: there’s nothing as humorous as everyday life. It’s slice-of-life to the extreme, in that it really is just about everyday life. No additives. So how is it so funny? It just is! The seemingly inane discussions are very familiar. Soon, instead of trying to figure out the point of things I was laughing along and thinking, “oh yeah, my friends and I talked about this kind of stuff all the time.”

This anime is especially a shout-out to the girl-geek-otakudom.
Konata… is the stereotypical Japanese otaku. She plays ero and bishoujo games (underage) as well as MMORPGs, reads manga, tapes anime and buys merchandise to a point of OCD, cosplays, but can’t draw. Konata ignores her grades in favor of gaming.
There’s lots of girl talk with an obvious geek/otaku flare, which makes it a lot of fun. I think guys can get into it, too, because it’s not overly feminine interests. As stated before, it’s everyday-life gab. They hardly talk about clothes, shoes, or makeup at all outside of “Cosplay?!” The girls are very likeable, though they are all very different. Probably because they seem so realistic, as if they were those girls in your high school English class.

Oh, if you haven’t watched the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya yet, you may miss a lot of references. Because of the geek flare, there are  a LOT of references to different anime, but Haruhi has the most (they can get away with it since it’s the same co). References to anime like Initial D, Gundam, etc, as well as obscure singers and old TV commercials run rampant. Things like that always feel a little like geek gold when you know what they’re from.

Obviously, I like this anime and recommend it. You may find it a little dull the first time through. But strangely, there’s usually a second time … If you’re going with a fansub, I strongly suggest [a.f.k] … I mean … go with Bandai’s release, since Lucky Star is licensed by Kadokawa in the US.

(But seriously, afk not only translates for meaning but also the situation so that it reads very realistically. For example, urusai is translated as “zip it”, “shut it”, “shut up”, and “you’re annoying” depending on context. Though this doesn’t always work for some anime, Lucky Star takes it really well and afk knows when and how to use it.)

Tags: anime, Comedy, geek anime, Lucky Star, reviews, Slice of Life