Lucky Star: You’re Fine, Just Don’t Emulate Haruhi

There has been a surprising disparity of love and hate for the first two episodes of Lucky Star within in the blogging community, the “drama” of which I am certain will be a topic in my panel at Fanime next month. After watching the first couple myself, I have to say that I fall in the middle of the pack. For me, the anime so far hasn’t been laugh out loud funny nor has it been so lacking in humor that it was painful to watch. I’ll still watch it for the comedy and framing but, barring anything super spectacular, it won’t be residing in my favorites and I won’t be blogging it on a regular basis.

First, some detractions. The opening sequence has more action than the rest of the episode to follow which I consider to be false advertising of sorts. Also the song is too fast for my tastes and the lyrics are half-Engrish with phrases like “Darling Darling please!” and “let’s get cherry pie” so I’ll be skipping it from now on and saving myself 90 seconds per viewing. The pace of the series is slow enough so thankfully, there’s no Osaka-type to drag it down further.

The basic descriptions for the main students are Konata, the lazy otaku who seems too short for high school; Kagami, the normal girl who hates when Konata copies her homework; Tsukasa, the clumsy-in-a-cute-way sister of Kagami; and Miyuki, the meganekko smart girl who gets nervous about going to the dentist. No expectation for there to be much deep plot since this is basically a seinen sitcom.

Now, on to the good parts. Lucky Channel is without a doubt the best part of the show, with struggling actress Akira using her “straight man” co-host as a victim for her loathing before reverting back into her cute personality for signing off. The conversations that occur within the two acts of the actual show do involve social questions (like many 4-koma series) such as how one eats a chocolate cornet and I did like how Konata asked that same question throughout an episode in looking for an ultimate answer.

The comparison of what Kagami & Tsukasa did, and later what Konata & Tsukasa did, during Golden Week was framed in a nice way and the arrangement of scenes has been generally good, likely based on how it looks in the manga. Finally, the voice actors sound good for the respective characters and I also like the characters’ personalities. Many people have been asking why Aya Hirano was cast as Konata and honestly I think she does a good job in providing a slightly muddled voice to the slacker. I didn’t really notice until 10 minutes in that it was her. Besides, where else can you hear bad karaoke from her?

One little informational comment for those who have watched it: remember when Konata was complaining about different seiyuus for drama CD and anime? Well, much if not all the anime seiyuu are different from the drama CD (according to Wikipedia), which I haven’t heard but would like to in order to discern any noticable variations between the two casts.

Inevitably, Lucky Star is being compared to Haruhi since Hirano (EDIT: the seiyuu HiRAno, not the blogger HiNAno…) and KyoAni are involved and is expected to look visually stunning considering the studio’s previous work. I personally think they should make the series stand out on its own merits and not rely on the still-dancing fervent fanbase that developed a year ago. Unfortunately, there are a number of elements that borrow from MoSH that are featured in that now-since-imitated-in-real-life opening, including the three visual elements seen below:

1. The multi-colored star swipe followed by…

2. a vertically-oriented logo…

3. and a starry night sky.

It’s sad that, like the phenomenon from a year ago this month, there will be video recreations of the OP surfacing over the next couple months. We’ve already seen one of a Chinese guy in his bedroom who posted his performance on YouTube, so who knows how many more poor souls will do the same. (See bluemist’s updated list of parodies already made.) Although I will have to give mad props to the first group of people to compile a live-action version with all four leads coordinated.

Slightly related to that, the owners of the SOS-Dan fansite snagged raki-suta.com on April 8th and have an image board and wiki up and running. Just thought you’d like to know…

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