Tag Archives: Lucky Star

The Essentials

Name: Lucky Star
Genre: Comedy
Episodes: 24
Released: April 8, 2007 – September 16, 2007
Based On: Lucky Star 4koma by Kagami Yoshimizu
Director: Yutaka Yamamoto (1-4) and Yasuhiro Takemoto (5-24)
Produced By: Kyoto Animation
US Distribution By: Bandai Entertainment

Major Japanese Cast

Konata: Aya Hirano
Kagami: Emiri Katou
Tsukasa: Kaori Fukuhara
Miyuki: Aya Endo
Akira: Hiromi Konno
Minoru Shiraishi: Minoru Shiraishi

Major English Cast

Konata: Wendee Lee
Kagami: Kari Wahlgren
Tsukasa: Michelle Ruff
Miyuki: Karen Strassman
Akira: Stephanie Sheh
Minoru Shiraishi: Sam Regal

Scores

Animation: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Story: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Music: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 7/10 (x 2 = 16 pts)
English Dubs: N/A
Gut Score: 8/10 (x 5 = 40 pts)

Total: 163/200 (81.5%)

Review

Lucky Star is story of four girls – Konata, Kagami, Tsukasa, and Miyuki – as they make their way through high school life. The four girls all enjoy their friendship, even though all of them each exhibit their own weird quirks.

Konata is athletic, yet isn’t in the sports club and generally doesn’t like sports.  However, she does enjoy watching anime and playing online video games above all else, and is an overall a hardcore otaku.

Kagami and Tsukasa are twins, though they don’t have that much in common. Kagami is hard working and is near the top of her class in grades. However, this, on top of her overall stiffness as compared to the other characters makes her easy prey for Konata’s jabs. Tsukasa doesn’t do as well academically and is more of an airhead and laid back than her sister.

Finally, Miyuki is at the top of the class, yet is an airhead as well. However, Konata sees many of Miyuki’s traits as being major turn ons for guys, at least based on her observations from watching anime and playing dating sim games.

Lucky Star is almost entirely based around comedy, revolving around showing the life the four girls lead instead of having a central plot line. This, on top of the fact that the humor and gags used may not be for everyone makes Lucky Star potentially a very hit-or-miss series for some people.

Lucky Star does seem to make a habit of not necessarily using the same joke twice, or at least not in the same exact way, which keeps an element of freshness to the show. Also, each episode wraps up with the “Lucky Channel” which features star idol Akira and her newbie sidekick Minoru which adds it’s own humorous element to the show.

Lucky Star’s animation style may need a little getting used to as it is animated in more of comic strip style rather than a more “traditional” anime style. However, despite this the show still seems to be pretty well animated. The music also fits well with the show, if not being a bit repetitious at times. I haven’t watched the whole show dubbed yet, but what I have watch seems to indicate that the dubbing has been done compentently.

Overall, I think there is a pretty good chance that people will find Lucky Star a humorous and worthy series

First Watched: May – September 2007
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Yes