Lucky Star

Summary: >

So there are these girls attending school and... um yeah.

Thoughts: >

I knew beforehand Lucky Star was a comedy. In the first episode a lengthy discussion on how to eat a pastry almost sent me into a coma. Where had I seen this sort of thing before? In Azumanga Daioh. Lucky Star tries to replicate the same formula, which was innovative for its time; but whether that works or not... well I'm not so sure.

Lucky Star has a problem with entertainment value (assuming that's what it was trying to do). There are good parts, but most of it struck me as bland. The silly comedy is hit and miss... and miss, and miss, but I got a few laughs. Many jokes are repetitious with variations, so if you didn't laugh the first time, you'll probably find them even less amusing a few more times. Lucky Star makes heavy use of cultural and anime related references, some of which may be hard to catch even for anime veterans.

At the end of each episode, there are end segments called "Lucky Channel", where cute Akira and her amateur side kick discuss Lucky Star related topics. After about 30 seconds, Akira drops her cute facade and lapses inter her true jaded personality. While it's the same thing every episode, I found these segments to be the most amusing.

Designs are simplistically "cute", and there is little animation. Being mostly dialog based, that's not a big deal. Much of Lucky Star's "humor" revolves around cultural references, so I expected the dub to fail big time. The voice acting impressed me, and I found it amazing they could get references into the dialog without becoming a disaster. Some language puns of course don't carry across, but the dub is quite good otherwise.

Some parts of Lucky Star are funny, while others are not. Quite often I found the show agonizingly boring, and it became hard to watch. If you haven't seen it, definitely give Azumanga Diaoh a shot first. Depending on your opinion of that series, perhaps give Lucky Star a shot but don't expect much.

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