Lucky Star

Slice of life is, and probably always will be, my favorite genre of anime. It's cute, comfy, nostalgic, often funny, and its sheer love for the mundanity always gives me some much needed perspective. It hits on my love for fun character interactions, since the best slice of life offer casts so great and close-knit that you could watch them do anything. And the animation is often way more expressive than it ever needed to be, especially if it's made by Kyoto Animation. Why am I saying all this now? Well, it's because I finally watched one of the defining slice of life shows, Lucky Star, and even with its reputation, I was still surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Lucky Star is basically anime Seinfeld. It's a show about a group of girls going to school and talking about stuff. For a Seinfeldian conversation to work, you need to nail two things: The writing and the chemistry between the characters. The latter is nailed right from the start. Konata, Kagami, Tsukasa, and Miyuki make for a fantastic cast. They have charismatic and well-defined personalities, are fun to watch regardless of how they're paired, and carry the show's many conversations incredibly well. Konata is obviously the highlight, a lovable nerd who's also an absolute gremlin, but the whole quartet is great. Kagami's straight man snark is a blast, Tsukasa is an absolute treasure, and Miyuki may be one of the most adorable characters ever created in an anime. But even the side characters are pretty stellar, like Konata's silly police cousin Yui, the Moe destructions Yutaka and Minami who also happen to have a super heart-warming friendship, and the Yuri fanatic Hiyori.

In terms of the writing, though, Lucky Star does have a bit of growing pains. Most people know that the first few episodes of Lucky Star had a completely different director than the rest of the show, so conversations tend to ramble and the show is less frequently funny. It's still not bad though, these early episodes do introduce the cast pretty effectively and there are some funny or relatable moments that caught me off guard (Miyuki hitting the light switch when leaving a restaurant). In Episode 5, KyoAni swapped directors and the show became a lot more manic in its pacing while still keeping all of that relatable commentary. Episodes also start to have actually have a connective theme or setting rather than just feeling like an aimless string of disconnected skits, which leads to loads of great brick jokes that get set up in one episode and paid off episodes later. 

Of course, I can't talk about Lucky Star without talking about the anime of it all. Konata being a massive Otaku means this show references the anime culture of the early 2000s, when it was made. I've seen complaints that this makes Lucky Star dated and, I mean, I see it. Personally, I hold a lot of nostalgia for the 2000s in general so that doesn't bug me too much, but seeing the cast use flip phones and play their PS2s and DSs is definitely surreal. However, while the anime referenced is often old, I think the ideas at play still hold up pretty well. Lucky Star skewers the anime industry and pokes fun at many of its most notable tropes, tropes that are still used to this day. I can only imagine that if Lucky Star was made today, it'd absolutely demolish the current isekai trend. It also helps that Konata is really the only true nerd of the main cast, so there's also just inherent comedy in her friends having to humor her ramblings.

In terms of presentation, Lucky Star looks great. I mean, it's a Kyoto Animation show, what did you expect? It's fluid, expressive, and every once in a while (though not nearly as often as Nichijou), they throw in an absolutely wild of sakuga just for the sake of it. Voice acting-wise, Lucky Star is phenomenal. As I've repeatedly stated, the cast has fantastic chemistry and bounces off each other very well. You can tell KyoAni knows this because a whole bunch of the EDs are just Konata singing karaoke with the other girls, getting progressively louder culminating in that iconic Cha La Head Cha La bit. The dub is also great, I actually might even prefer it since it really just feels like a bunch of teenage girls casually chatting. I also have to give props to Stephanie Sheh who plays Akira Kogami, the mood-swinging idol who closes off each episode. She switches between Akira's cutesy facade and her more jaded and cruel persona so well, elevating the Lucky Channel segments with how much she hams it up.

Highlights:

Energetic Despite Not Being Myself: Athletic festival episodes are almost always a blast, and this was no exception. Tsukasa was probably the MVP here, between her hysterical hurdle stumble, her learning a recorder, and her very bad luck at the lunch line.

Let's Go To The Festival: For a show so focused on Otaku culture, I was desperately hoping for an episode where the cast actually goes to a festival and it was great, with the highlight being the hilarious punchline of Akira announcing she'll show up in this episode only to just be a poster that gets knocked over.

Base Of The Sun: This is one of few Lucky Star episodes to drop the comedy and throw in a slightly more dramatic sketch. Kagami's argument and subsequent reconciliation with her sister is surprisingly really heartfelt and made for one of the most memorable moments of the anime.

Pandora's Box: The culmination of all of the Lucky Channel segments, as Minoru finally snaps at Akira for everything she's put him through, and it's absolutely glorious. On top of that, you get a very fun trip to Kyoto where Tsukasa gets harassed by deers, the group argues over how to say cheese in India, Minoru chases after a bus, Kagami almost gets a love letter, and... the cast goes to visit Kyoto Animation itself? That's all new levels of meta. 

The Yonder Here: I spent a lot of the season feeling bad for Konata. Her mom's dead, her dad's a skeezy lolicon, and she's only grown up to become an otaku because that's all she knew. However, in what is arguably the climax of the anime, The Yonder Here reveals that, no, Konata's doing okay. The scene where Kanata's ghost visits the family to see how they're doing is easily the most heartfelt part of the series, and we learn that despite being the creepiest character on the show, Kanata's father still loves his family more than anything else in the world.

To Be Decided: I was kinda expecting Lucky Star to end with the graduation, but to have it end with the cast performing the title sequence fits the show's more low-key vibe perfectly. It brings the series full circle, not unlike the Seinfeld finale but way less awful. It even finally lets Akira make a proper appearance in the show!

Overall, Lucky Star is great, an absolute classic. As a defining entry in the slice of life genre, it has everything I love from these types of series, from the likable cast, to the funny relatable humor, to the rare but impactful emotional gut punches. While it gets off to a shaky start and doesn't quite reach the heights of my favorites, I did very much enjoy my time with Lucky Star.

4/5 Stars

Fleabag (Seasons 1 & 2)

So I watched the new Indiana Jones movie recently, it was a solid time, but I especially liked Phoebe Waller Bridge's performance and it inspired me to finally give her show Fleabag a go. Like with the other British comedies I've seen, I'll be clumping both seasons together in a single review since they're so short.

Fleabag is about the titular character struggling to deal with, well, everything. Her best friend committed suicide (eventually revealed to be her fault) straining her relationship with her sister, her mother died and her new godmother is the absolute worst, and she's a sex freak with very bad luck with relationships. It's not as unrelentingly bleak as it sounds though, Fleabag is after all a black comedy and the titular character's snarky and quirky personality helps her stay likable throughout her very bumpy journey to becoming a better person. Let's start with the positives. Phoebe Waller Bridge is great, all of her performances are super charismatic and energetic, her fourth wall breaks make for some of the strongest comedy in the show, and her shit-eating grin is always absolutely hysterical. Drama wise, I found Fleabag to be super compelling especially when it comes to Fleabag's relationship with her sister Claire. They feel realistic as siblings, constantly butting heads but with a hidden respect for each other that slowly becomes more visible as the season progresses. Olivia Coleman and Brett Gelman were also both great as the Godmother and Martin, both hamming it up as some really despicable antagonists.

However, I did also have quite a few gripes with Fleabag. For starters, it gets off to a pretty slow start. The first three episodes feel more like a disconnected series of sketches rather than full stories, and it's not until the silent resort episode (Episode 4) where it feels like the series really settles into its groove. Despite that, though, I actually still think I liked Season 1 more than Season 2? Season 1 had more of a grit to it, its humor was more unhinged and the drama was more family-centric. The majority of the episodes were about Fleabag and Claire's strained relationship and the two essentially being forced together. The Hot Priest is nice and all, and he has good chemistry with PWB, but he and his romance with Fleabag was still kinda boring to me, and felt like it stole screentime from the other vastly more interesting characters. I also thought this season was vastly less funny and biting compared to the first season. I don't know, maybe it was just more engaging to see Fleabag unleashed on the world like in Season 1.

Highlights:

Episode 1.04: As I said above, this is where the show really got good for me. Fleabag and Claire being sent to a silent resort together is comedic gold since it forces them to at least try to get along and it forces Fleabag to stop running her mouth for a bit. The ending was also fantastic between Fleabag's heart to heart with the Bank Manager and her surprisingly sweet scene with Claire immediately cutting to Claire having left early.

Episode 2.06: Despite my gripes with Season 2, this was a good ending. Everything got wrapped up pretty much perfectly. Claire reveals her miscarriage and finally breaks up with Martin in one of the best scenes in the series, the sculpture subplot is finally resolved, and Fleabag gets the point where she can straight-up leave the audience behind.

Overall, I have pretty mixed feelings on Fleabag, the show. Fleabag the character is fantastic and played to perfection by PWB, and her dynamics with her family members is both fun to watch and dramatically compelling. However, Season 2's heavy focus on romance really started to lose me, and the comedy didn't always land for me.

3/5 Stars 

The Bear (Season 2)

Well, now that I'm done with Precure, we're back to our regularly scheduled programming. It's time for The Bear.

As unintuitive as it sounds, I feel that writing a good first season of your show isn't the hard part. Season 1s are usually when a show's premise is at its most pure, and I'm usually willing to look past some growing pains if the premise is inherently interesting. It's when you have to write a second season, expand on that initial premise, and prove your show has legs that's the hard part for me. I've seen plenty of shows that I dropped or nearly dropped because its second season refused to expand and grow. That's why Season 1 tends to either be the best season or one of the worst, typically dependent on how its followed up on. With that being said, Season 2 of The Bear is an example of what a second season can and should be.

Season 2 of The Bear follows up from where the first season left off. Carmy closes The Beef and he and the rest of the cast try to open up a new restaurant called The Bear to get a fresh start. I was kind of expecting the new restaurant to open right away but nope, almost all of Season 2 is focused on the cast putting together The Bear by a tight deadline, with episode starting with a Majora's Mask-esque timecard showing how many weeks they have left. It's actually quite an interesting change of pace because it means we get far less of those chaotic cooking sequences that defined the first season and far more character drama. Season 2 does a good job of pushing the characters even further with plenty of really strong subplots like Marcus going to Copenhagen to learn with the surprise highlight Will Poulter, Tina and Ebra's differing experiences in culinary school, and Carmy's sister Natalie taking a larger role as project manager while also (unsuccessfully) trying to hide her pregnancy. Outside of two episodes in particular, I found this to be a far more light-hearted season than the first, with the pointed banter between the cast being more comedic than dramatic, but I think it works great in this context. With how focused Season 1 was, I think we needed a breather like this to really explore all of its characters and ideas.

But what I love most about The Bear's second season is how much more it's willing to experiment and take advantage of its status as a TV show. Season 1 was good, but it did feel like the type of "six-hour movies" I'm so disillusioned with nowadays, mostly being build up for that one admittedly amazing climax. Season 2 also builds up to a pretty big ending, but a large chunk of it is composed of these more focused episodes centered around a single character. These range from flashbacks to characters going on trips to bottle episodes, and they're great. There are so many more memorable episodes here! This is also a slightly longer season, both in terms of episode length and episode count, and its all the better for it. Season 2 of The Bear simply feels more free, free to tell whatever kinds of stories it wanted. However, not every story works for me because my one big issue is that Carmy is kinda boring this time, spending much of the season in a relationship with the really dull Claire. While it's definitely a good thing that the rest of the cast was strong enough to carry the series, it's a real shame that Jeremy Allen White didn't get as much to do considering how much he carried last season.

Highlights:

Fishes: While this season was pretty light on the tense cooking, it did still have one of the most uncomfortable family dinners I've ever seen in a TV show. Fishes feels like it explains everything, and not through any textual explanations, but just by watching the family interact. Fishes is filled with notable guest stars acting their hearts out as the tension within the house slowly reaches a boiling point, culminating in the actual dinner that left me on the edge of my seat. This is exactly the type of episode I wanted to see because it's entirely a flashback disconnected from the main plot, but it's also the best episode of the show to date and The Bear would be a lesser series if it didn't exist. Also, poor, poor Natalie.

Forks: I hated Richie in season one, but this was some good character development. I expected him to suffer at his staging job, but he ended up charming the rest of the chefs there and ends up genuinely happy... at least until he has to go back to The Bear at the end. We also get Richie belting out Taylor Swift which was absolutely hysterical.

The Bear: I criticized this season for not having Carmy do much and I stand by that, but this finale also confirms that this was entirely intentional. Season 2 is about everyone developing and growing... except for Carmy. He gets a girlfriend, sure, but he has not changed, and when he gets himself stuck in a fridge all episode, it's the rest of the cast that has to carry the restaurant. Compared to the low-key denouement of last season, this is a far more explosive finale, between Carmy screwing everything up and an full-on cliffhanger with Marcus.

Overall, Season 2 of The Bear is exactly what a second season should be. It's not directionless, or a copy of the first, instead it gives itself room to breathe, experiment, and explore the characters in some truly unique ways. Not everything it tries fully works, but it's that willingness to take some shots in the dark and not rest on its laurels that led to some of its greatest moments.

4/5 Stars