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