::Note:: The ‘no anime is dropped forever’ posts will have to be put on hold for now. With the new season coming up I won’t have time to actually watch these dropped anime
Lucky Star holds a rather odd place in my heart. At this current time of writing it is my least favourite anime of all time, based off a single episode and a bunch of youtube clips I’ve seen of later scenes. A commenter pointed out that my dislike for it bordered on irrationality and I would totally agree. When it comes to something you hate, your hatred causes you to find more reasons to hate it until you get to the point where you are no longer able to identify the real reason you disliked the anime so strongly in the first place. However with these ‘no anime is dropped forever’ posts I have to come to terms with why this sits right down on the bottom of my list.
No anime is dropped forever: Lucky Star
Why I dropped it: Consider your standard conversation you might have amongst friends. You discuss what has happened, what will happen and what might happen. The past, the definite future and the possible future. The most pressing discussions are what happened in the immediate future, followed by those that happened in the immediate past. What happened yesterday and what’s going to happen today. If these two subject areas do not conjure up anything, you have entered the realm of the searching for subjects to discuss. What has happened in the past is a rather simple discussion of deeds me, you or friends have done in the past. But more important is the discussion of what could possibly happen in the future. These are the most important parts of discussion because this is where all discussion topics are born. Something that might happen turns into something that will happen turns into something that just happened and on towards something that happened in the past.
However there is a dreaded stage which you can find a group of people trapped in: Discussing the present. What clothes you are wearing, what food you are eating, your speech patterns, the surroundings. These are the discussions you get when you are surrounded by a bunch of wimps. People too boring or too nervous to actually do anything that warrants discussion in the first place. Finding yourself in this environment is the single most frustratingly boring experience imaginable. You can make two decisions here. You can either actually do something to liven up the atmosphere or leave. When stuck in conversations like these I get the urge to do, and have done in the past, some pretty crazy things to break the monotony.
Watching Lucky Star was like this experience concentrated into cartoon format. Watching Lucky Star was like replaying the most head-wreckingly boring moments in my life. Watching Lucky Star was so scarily true-to-life that it hurt. It stank of boredom to the highest degree. Nothing was ever going to happen in this world. Nothing had happened in the past and nothing was going to happen in the future. These girls were going to spend the rest of the series discussing the present.
Rebirth Chances: Very high. The fascination one has with their least favourite series is strong. Then there’s the fact that I did only watch one episode (plus a bunch of youtube clips, enough to probably count for another episode). I could be entirely wrong and that the tone of the series actually changes entirely. But from what I saw, this was what I experienced, and I’m afraid of experiencing that feeling again.
15 Comments
I’m not sure how I sat through it all…
But the best part of Lucky Star was Shiraishi Minoru.
One word: MOE.
While I didn’t notice or feel that it changed things much, the original director for Lucky Star (who went on to do Kannagi) was dismissed/replaced after the first six or so episodes. He actually made a joke about it in Kannagi where he’s part of the title character’s fan club and thanks her for finally “making me a full fledged director.”
As far as things happening, I’d say that there’s as many things that the characters plan for and participate in as in shows like Azumanga Daioh. Trip to the beach, going to Comiket, holidays, etc. Between the two series the only real difference to me is the large amount of otaku humor and references in Lucky Star, whereas Azumanga was more everyday humor and occasionally very weird tangent kind of humor (like the whole thing with Chiyo’s father). When I’m talking about one or the other with friends I group the two of them as the exact same sort of show, just with different focuses for their humor. I know you liked Azumanga Daioh, so what did you see different in the past/present/future natures of conversations in that show?
“When it comes to something you hate, your hatred causes you to find more reasons to hate it until you get to the point where you are no longer able to identify the real reason you disliked the anime so strongly in the first place.” — Lol, so sad cause it’s so true
The way you described it sounds like the definition of slice-of-life comedy in general. So as EO said, makes me wonder why you liked Azumanga, but not the more recent ones of this genre much
If it wasn’t for the Street Fighter gag in the first episode, I doubt I’d have bothered to watch another episode. That’s how the first few episodes played out for me: one or two jokes made me think “there might he something here worthwhile.”
Then the Lucky Channel bits got better. Then the actual episodes started veering in a different direction than the earlier ones. Then they started having amusing live action skits during the end credits. By the end of the series I found that I pretty much LIKED the damn thing.
So I likee it in the end, but it involved suffering through some bad episodes at the beginning. Bases on that I have a hard time telling anyone to try it out. Most people aren’t masochistic like me.
I think the best way to look at this show is the brief moments of awesomeness and sentiment that come forth. The rest of it you’ll just kind of glaze over, but when the show hits an emotional or comedic peak, it becomes memorable in that regard.
@ExecutiveOtaku @Aorii
The best way I can sum it up is this: Azumanga characters enjoy life, Lucky Star characters are going through the motions. If an Azumanga character was stuck in a LS convo, they’d yell ‘this is boring, lets do shit’.
Again, this is a rather uneducated judgement because of how little I’ve seen. Plus there’s the fact that at the point in my life when I watched Lucky Star, I was desperately trying to get away from those types of conversations. Those Lucky Star girls will grow up to be a bunch of alcoholics when they realise how dull their life is.
@Landon @zzeroparticle
These moments of apparent awesomeness are exactly the things I’ve seen on Youtube clips when people refer to funny Lucky Star scenes and they remind me exactly of what I talked about in the post. Also, referencing isn’t funny. It just highlights the fact that they do nothing with their lives and can only talk about stuff outside their lives
If you’re thinking the series might hit its stride at some point, it doesn’t. There’s no stride to hit. What you got in the first episode is what you’re getting from start to finish. The dialogue never gets any better. The characters remain one-dimensional throughout. More characters naturally make the show less boring, but the dialogue itself doesn’t improve the slightest bit. Instead of watching the original 4 girls being boring the whole time, you get to see an occasional scene of 2–6 other girls being boring.
People don’t like this show because it’s interesting. They like it because they like seeing “cute” girls doing “cute” things. It doesn’t matter to them if it’s boring. If you don’t think the girls are cute, Lucky Star is a waste of time.
For some reason, I really liked Lucky Star, and I mostly hate all things moe. I mean, K-On is arguably my least favorite anime ever made (I was actually thinking about this today when I was driving home from classes). I believe the only reason I liked Lucky Star was because of the characters, which I found actually interesting (except the one with short purple hair, and a few others). K-On, on the other hand was shit on top of shit, and then repeated.
All of the points you made are completely true, Lucky Star is about nothing, and is generally stupid, which makes it more baffling as to why I like it.…..the dude who sings in the credits is the man though.
@ExecutiveOtaku: It was actually after four episodes.
I stopped on Lucky Star after episode 7. I actually liked that episode, but I got distracted by other, shinier anime. The rest of the series to that point did have that incredibly boring feel to it. I enjoyed the Lucky Channel segments, but 2 minutes out of a 20 minute episode doesn’t really justify watching the other 18.
I liked Lucky Star for one reason. The twins, and how much it was like my sister and I, who are twins.
Otherwise, I don’t think I’d like it.
Lucky Star is the kind of show where you either like the genre or not. It’s not a show that has “something for everyone.” It’s a very Japanese show, highlighting the fact that Japanese people watch shows to relax and feel intimate with the daily lives of cute characters in simple adventures. If you think such a thing is boring, then it’s not the show for you. If you like this kind of entertainment and character interactions, then it is. I don’t think there’s anything deeper to it besides that.
@Baka-Raptor
When a shows main appeal is cuteness, that’s pretty much guaranteed that I’ll drop it quickly. Mind you I don’t think that’s the problem here with Lucky Star but eh~
@Glo
Baffling isn’t it. Sometimes I’ll wonder what on earth I saw in show when I’m describing it to someone. What was it about Chobits anyway that made me fall in love with that show so much?
@Rakuen
Yeah it was 4 episodes. I know that myself because of the comparison people were drawing with the episode 4 collapse of Gurren Lagann.
@Yumeka
But there were no adventures! That’s my point!!!!
@ Scamp
Ok, maybe “adventures” wasn’t the right word…more like daily activities, conversations, interactions, thoughts, events, etc,. Just day-to-day stuff in a cute, amusing, and/or humorous way pretty much sums up Lucky Star.
I’d actually say that day-to-day cuteness and humor ISN’T what sums up Lucky Star, and that a closer look at it will reveal a show that I feel is strong mainly for the way it is so unabashedly otaku-oriented to the extent that it tries to actually effect a change on otaku culture.
It’s a show whose effectiveness kind of diminishes over time, as we get further and further away from the period in which it was created, but it’s just such a fascinating look at where otaku “are” or “were.”
And I think it’s funny. Not all the time, but often.