Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

I didn’t blog any of the episodes, but I watched the whole season of Lucky Star. As an amalgamation of a slice of life comedy, an infomercial for The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, and a quiz of otaku culture, Lucky Star was a lot of things to a lot of people. Overall, I found the series to be very entertaining, and consistently so, but I’m not sure how well the series will age.

The characters are (for the most part) not all that deep, and the introduction of various younger characters midway through the season prematurely ended any chance to really get to know any characters really well. A few of the characters are really under-utilized, with the most notable example being Miyuki. I’m not sure that the cast needed to be so large, but the new characters did inject new life into the series, because many of the jokes are reused over and over (especially when Konata and Kagami tease each other).

With that said, the characters are pretty appealing, and very likeable. My favorite was definitely Kagami, with Konata a close second, but I also really liked Tsukasa, Patty, Nanako (Kuroi-sensei), and Miyuki’s mom, Yukari. A lot of the jokes reference “I do that too!” moments, and the humor is well done. However, there are also a shocking number of references to other anime series, especially those that KyoAni also animated. The incredible amount of Haruhi references are sometimes funny (like when Konata cosplays as Haruhi, or when Konata is bribed by Patty for a handshake session with Hirano Aya), and at other times blunt and pointless (like the Haruhi soda commercial). While this sort of humor contributes greatly to the current popularity of Lucky Star, I think it may make the series’ humor difficult to understand and disjointed for future viewers. I base this prediction on the crispy cracker I just broke in half and used for fortune telling.

Not everything about Lucky Star is funny, however. In fact, the first episode got off to a bad start, and I think the food discussion scene was badly placed. Also, I found the general otaku jokes to be much funnier than the vast majority of references to specific anime/manga series. However, the biggest weakness I saw in Lucky Star was Lucky Channel; every time that little cat mewed, I would get a nervous pang and check the progress bar to see whether or not it was signaling the start of Lucky Channel. I thought the parts where Akira threw the ashtray at Shiraishi and how Akira and Shiraishi hated each other in the last episode were ok, but overall I consistently found Lucky Channel to be an unfunny pandering to those who love Shiraishi. And love him they must, because the introduction of the Shiraishi ED sequences really put his role in the series at an all-time high. Generally, I found these Shiraishi ED songs to pretty much be teh sux, and I grew to really abhor Shiraishi by the end of Lucky Star. Yet, with all the online love that Shiraishi’s scenes got, I felt like Mugatu yelling about the piano key necktie.

Concerning the other aspects of Lucky Star, the production values were consistently very good, even with the simplistic character designs. The voice work was absolutely outstanding (especially Konata, although Patty’s VA was very good as well), with the exception of that random guy lady who played all the unnamed side characters (WTF…). The background music was ok, though not very memorable, and the OP was very very good. Naturally it spawned a whole dance sequence, but the OP really was very catchy. I liked the karaoke ED songs, but I hated the Shiraishi ED songs.

Overall, I really liked Lucky Star. I eagerly watched every episode as soon as I got it, and I always felt entertained and satisfied when I was done. There were a few rough patches, but I think Lucky Star succeeded in spite of some recycled jokes and an over-abundance of references to other anime series. If I could rate Lucky Channel and Shiraishi’s ED as a separate entity, I’d give that entity a 1/5, though.

Kabitzin’s Rating: 4.5/5