Lucky☆Star

Lucky☆Star

Lucky☆Star anime cover art featuring Konata, Kagami, Tsukasa, and Miyuki
Lucky☆Star Cover Art

Overview

Lucky☆Star is my most recently dropped anime. Out of the 24 episodes I dropped it partway through episode 8 because I just couldn’t bring myself to care about anything that was happening in it.

It’s a slice of life comedy about four girls in school (apparently they’re all 17 and in high school although you wouldn’t guess that from their looks). If you’ve ever seen the anime Yuru Yuri, Lucky☆Star is basically the same thing, but much, much worse.

While watching Yuru Yuri, I was thoroughly entertained, but Lucky☆Star is so boring I couldn’t deal with it any more.

For example, there are many points at which a character says something (that isn’t funny), then there’s a pause for a few seconds, and then another character responds with something equally as not funny or changes the subject entirely. It’s slow and they don’t know how to properly set up jokes.

I think part of the issue is that the manga is a 4-panel and so it really would work better as an anime short than a full length series. Every minute or so, the topic of discussion changes to something I equally don’t care about. If it was just a three-minute episode, I wouldn’t mind as much.

Also, at the end of each episode is a segment called Lucky Channel, which doesn’t really have much to do with the rest of the series and even has different characters. This could have been what they put the credits over, but it’s not. There’s a full credit run afterwards.

Characters

Konata Izumi is the best of the four main characters, and appears to be the fan favorite, but even she tends to be a predictable character. We know she’s going to mention food, say something to annoy Kagami, and mention games or anime. This alone wouldn’t be bad, but nothing she says is really ever relevant.

Kagami Hiiragi is the tsundere character which you can tell because of her twin tails, something that’s pointed out by Konata. She’s tends to be, or at least is seen as, aggressive which contrasts with the personality of her sister. She typically argues with Konata.

Tsukasa Hiiragi is the twin sister of Kagami and tends to be quiet and polite. That sentence basically sums up her entire existence so there isn’t much more to say about her.

Miyuki Takara is by far the worst character. Sure, Tsukasa is basically a talking piece of background, but Miyuki is even more boring. Literally every time Miyuki opens her mouth I was immediately bored and started looking at my phone for entertainment instead.

Her entire character is there so the other girls, usually Konata, can ask her some question nobody cares about, and then she monologues a response as if she were a dictionary. She’s kind of like the characterization of a “fact of the week,” but if the fact was general knowledge or something so obscure nobody cares.

Konata Izumi from the anime Lucky☆Star
Konata Izumi

Conclusion

Lucky☆Star is a 3/10 and finishing the series wasn’t worth my time. Maybe one day I’ll put it on in the background while I’m doing other things so I can say I “watched” the whole thing, but it’ll basically just be background noise.

While I don’t like this anime, there is one thing it has going for it, and that’s references. I can’t say I’ve noticed any other anime referencing Lucky☆Star, although I’m sure Yuru Yuri has, but what I mean is that this series includes a lot of references to others.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya appears to be the most referenced anime in this series, but in the few episodes I watched I also noticed a Cromartie High School reference, and an Initial D reference (which was the best one). If references to other series is better than your series’ original content, that should tell you something.

The OP for Lucky☆Star is available here.

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