Lucky Star (Generic Discussion thread)

[ZeusIrae]

Originally Posted by Kaioshin_Sama

I think I saw more talk to do with the bunny suit and Yuki's glasses, than anything dealing with the revelations of Haruhi's character or the metaphysics.

You're a little unfair here.Plenty of people were intrested by the story(including me),some discussions were really strange.Actually I never understood why the dance was so popular,I guess it's useless to search an explanation.Right now,I am in love with the OP.For the rest,wait and see.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Kaioshin_Sama

It kind of saddens me that what looks like a fairly interesting and amusing comedy is going to be overshadowed by the opening. It's like how I felt with Haruhi that people were missing the really, truly great parts and focusing on the stuff that could be used as fodder for 2Chan style pics, and that was making the anime's case for them. I think I saw more talk to do with the bunny suit and Yuki's glasses, than anything dealing with the revelations of Haruhi's character or the metaphysics.

That being said this is definitely not meant to be a serious show, but I'm saying that I see a lot more funny things in the screenshots of the anime alone, than I saw in the entire goofy opening, as bizarre as it was. I hope it doesn't overshadow the rest of the series and that song and dance doesn't beat out parody and comedy in yet another series. So yeah, I find that with Kyoto Animation there's always this one thing that gets everybody going about an episode or series and that carries the whole thing, while other good stuff gets ignored. It's like I said in the one post, why bother with everything else when you only need those key ingredients? In fact as far as I can tell its the same with a lot of other companies too. Basically the most meme like thing is what gets everybody the most riled up (Pizza in Code Geass, Dancing in Lucky Star, Bunny Suit in Haruhi, Uguuu in Kanon etc.). Though if anyones curious I'm kind of looking forward to the Street Fighter thing when the sub comes out, though I'm sure there's other stuff. Maybe Vexx know's the answer to this paragraph's puzzlement.

Well.... there were people who went to see LOTR because of the action, some because of the character drama, and..... large contingent of Legolas fangirl droolers for whom the rest of the movies faded away (and who now help to make Pirates of the Caribbean successful following 'Legolas').

I'm glad they spend the money to help make what I like to watch successful... but I try not to spend a lot of time trying to get them interested in the other aspects because it usually fails on so many levels.

For me, the real win in LuckyStar is what I'll call the subtle existential humor that runs through the core of the show. Its not slapstick, its not bawdy -- so many may miss it in amidst the ruckus.

[QBnoYouko]

This OP will have more parodies than Galaxy Angelune, I guaranteed that.

I quite enjoyed the first episode. All the seiyuu did a great job on their part (go Aaya!). After seeing an animated adaptation of the chapters I read I just had to plant a grin on my face.

So.. is that really the ED theme or what? That was nuts lol.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by QBnoYouko

This OP will have more parodies than Galaxy Angelune, I guaranteed that.

I quite enjoyed the first episode. All the seiyuu did a great job on their part (go Aaya!). After seeing an animated adaptation of the chapters I read I just had to plant a grin on my face.

So.. is that really the ED theme or what? That was nuts lol.

I didn't really notice any individual voice so I'm basically at a loss as to where she fit in. It seemed a bit like the Japanese version of a redneck square dance. I was a bit groggy but I got something equivelant to the this in Japanese, "Oh take your pardner by the hand, step and step and swing your hand, swing ya pardner round and in and out and do-se-do" *fiddle solo as the girls dance and groove there way through Japan* "Dance a dance and do it good, do it like Jane Underwood, smile and smile and make em smack, take your knees a givem a slap" *Fiddle solo and each girl show their face*, "We're getting near the end of the song, wish it could last all day long, YEAH!". I just imagine a southern twang througout all of this for some reason even though it was just a really high pitched jumble of voices.

[dahl_moon]

Hm... this is rather like Hidamari Sketch, but without Akiyuki Shinbo and his video art. A slice of life anime watching people doing nothing in particular. And one of my favorite genres, BTW

Pretty heavy on the cultural side, which I think is a minus for Animesuki. I got like maybe half of them; one of the advantages for coming from a similar culture (Korean. The other advantage is Kanji ). I need subtitles for the rest.

Also, Hirano Aya is just awesome in this episode. She is really a gem.

[Mirrinus]

I haven't seen it yet, but I find myself easily amused by 4-komas (I adored Azumanga Daioh), and I actually enjoyed what I've seen of the scanslations so far. Anyway, I read pretty much all the blogs on it so far, and I don't see what the big deal is about people behaving negatively. First off, is anyone actually surprised by Lolikit's vitriol? Kaioshin_sama would declare Haruhi Suzumiya to be the greatest anime of all time before Lolikit could ever come to actually praise something like Lucky☆Star. He's easily one of the most unreasonable bloggers I know, so I can't say I'm surprised (especially since my taste in anime seems to differ strongly anyway). Hinano was more mild, but admits that she was caught up in all the hype. Why people expect fantasticly detailed animation and a captivating story from a 4-koma is seriously beyond me...I don't expect anything like that when reading Calvin and Hobbes or Garfield. And quite frankly, I'm sure many people who aren't native Japanese speakers would have a hard time judging a dialogue-based series by watching just the first episode RAW.

The main criticisms I'm seeing of Lucky☆Star:

1) Its animation is sub-par.

Duh. It's a 4-koma. Were you surprised?

2) It's about nothing.

I'm going to refrain from re-typing the previous answer. Don't expect a Mark Twain story here.

3) It's not funny.

Out of all of these, this is really the only legitimate criticism I can think of for a 4-koma adaptation. 4-komas are always hit or miss. People have different senses of humor? SHOCKING!

4) Kyoto Animation should be doing Haruhi instead.

I'm going to take the time to be in agreement with the anti-Haruhiists and laugh at this statement.

5) They're copying Hare Hare Yukai.

*GASP* An anime that parodies video games and other anime is parodying Haruhi's Hare Hare Yukai? IMPOSSIBLE!

6) It's really moe.

This is something that Kyoto Animation actually does very consistantly. Were you surprised? If you can't stand moe, I wonder why you're even following Kyoto Animation's productions.

I'm actually pretty amused by just how many people have no clue what a 4-koma is.

[W-General]

I think the criticisms are uncalled for.

For (4), they just don't have the materials to work with. The first season they were lucky enough to have "Melancholy" to work with. Now? The closest thing to "Melancholy" is "Disappearance" and I don't think "Disappearance" is suitable to be the main plot of second season (except for Nagato fans).

I dunno about the newest one "Bunretsu" - but I assume it's not far from the "collection of short stories" like most other novels. I think they're just giving it time for there to be something substantial to work on.

Originally Posted by Mirrinus

I haven't seen it yet, but I find myself easily amused by 4-komas (I adored Azumanga Daioh), and I actually enjoyed what I've seen of the scanslations so far. Anyway, I read pretty much all the blogs on it so far, and I don't see what the big deal is about people behaving negatively. First off, is anyone actually surprised by Lolikit's vitriol? Kaioshin_sama would declare Haruhi Suzumiya to be the greatest anime of all time before Lolikit could ever come to actually praise something like Lucky☆Star. He's easily one of the most unreasonable bloggers I know, so I can't say I'm surprised (especially since my taste in anime seems to differ strongly anyway). Hinano was more mild, but admits that she was caught up in all the hype. Why people expect fantasticly detailed animation and a captivating story from a 4-koma is seriously beyond me...I don't expect anything like that when reading Calvin and Hobbes or Garfield. And quite frankly, I'm sure many people who aren't native Japanese speakers would have a hard time judging a dialogue-based series by watching just the first episode RAW.

The main criticisms I'm seeing of Lucky☆Star:

1) Its animation is sub-par.

Duh. It's a 4-koma. Were you surprised?

2) It's about nothing.

I'm going to refrain from re-typing the previous answer. Don't expect a Mark Twain story here.

3) It's not funny.

Out of all of these, this is really the only legitimate criticism I can think of for a 4-koma adaptation. 4-komas are always hit or miss. People have different senses of humor? SHOCKING!

4) Kyoto Animation should be doing Haruhi instead.

I'm going to take the time to be in agreement with the anti-Haruhiists and laugh at this statement.

5) They're copying Hare Hare Yukai.

*GASP* An anime that parodies video games and other anime is parodying Haruhi's Hare Hare Yukai? IMPOSSIBLE!

6) It's really moe.

This is something that Kyoto Animation actually does very consistantly. Were you surprised? If you can't stand moe, I wonder why you're even following Kyoto Animation's productions.

I'm actually pretty amused by just how many people have no clue what a 4-koma is.

[Mirrinus]

Yeah, I have a hard time faulting Kyoto Animation for this, aside from the obviously different animation style (then again, who expected Haruhi-level animation from a 4-koma?). Think back to their advertising campaign (if you can call it that). What'd they tell us? That there'll be cute girls playing video games and going "Uuuuuuuuuuuu." Practically everything else was conjured up by the fans, fans who aren't even sure what the end product would be like, at that. It's one thing to hype a series that's complete; it's another to hype one that hasn't started airing and whose source material is still fairly obscure. I'm sure that a person who doesn't spend all their time reading anime blogs and posting on anime forums would have next to no expectations from this show, and would likely have a better impression of the first episode. Quite frankly, I think this is one of those circumstances where condemning the fans might actually be justified in my eyes. ^_^

Oh, and yeah, the OP is addictive. >_<

[Kyuusai]

I haven't seen it yet (just the OP), but it was clear from the original marketing and source material that this was going to be different territory for Kyoani.

In a lot of the blogs I'm reading, many of the people complaining didn't "get" Azumanga Daioh or Haruhi. Whether they liked it or not, the ones who said that "nothing happened" in Azumanga or that Haruhi was just a collection of cliched characters with energetic animation. That's like saying Blazing Saddles didn't succeed as a Western. Since there were so many people who didn't really understand Azumanga and Haruhi (even out of the people that enjoyed them), it doesn't surprise me that there are a lot of people who don't like Lucky Star.

I've only read a handful of pages of the original, and they weren't immediately as captivating as some other 4koma I've enjoyed, but they weren't bad. It wasn't enough to say I particularly liked or disliked the material, but it WAS enough to see the sort of humor it was.

I have no problem with people saying they don't like it. It does bother me when people complain about it when they don't understand it, though. Yes, it's a collection of moe elements and culture references. It's not trying to exploit the moe trend, the moe is the JOKE. And if people really complain about it being boring... Did you not care for Seinfeld? It, also, was a show about nothing.

It really doesn't bother me that Kyoani is doing this instead of something else. It's not for every one, no, but it's something enjoyable while most of their time is spent on Clannad. They could do NOTHING between Kanon and Clannad, or they could delay Clannad while they do something more impressive instead. I think they made the right choice.

[WanderingKnight]

Well, after recovering from a chocolate-caused stomachache I could finally come back home and watch the frigging episode. And guess what, slice of life being my favorite genre... how could I not like this? Thousands of references to everyday situations and jokes that don't come to mind immediately in real life, but which are always lying there, hidden, waiting to be discovered, are brought up in a fashion that remembers Azumanga Daioh, the one and only comedy I've enjoyed like no other. Even when most of the jokes are aimed at the Japanese populace, they still reached to me. Of course, there were still lots of things I didn't get (for which I'll have to wait for the subs), but most of the jokes I got from reading the 4-koma, to which the episode stayed amusingly faithful.

And something I have to get out of my breast: IS THAT HIRANO AYA!? OMG, now she REALLY earned the praised she's been getting. Not only she delivers a sample of her enormous vocal range, but she fits so well to the character--just as I imagined.

I'll agree, this show is not for everybody, just as AzuDai wasn't for everybody, but it has the added condiment of disappointed, reckless KyoAni fans who expect only Haruhi rehashes from the studio. And I'm happy KyoAni has done this, so they can finally take a laugh at those fans.

[Mentar]

Just one little question:

Hand on the heart, and be really honest!

If everything else would have stayed exactly the same, but this show had been done by "WhateverAnimation" instead of KyoAni, would you be here now?

[Mirrinus]

Hey, slice-of-life school comedy is my absolute favorite genre, so of course I'd still check it out even if it wasn't Kyoto Animation. Actually, I bet if it wasn't Kyoto Animation doing it, then there would be a LOT fewer people complaining about it.

Then again, I'm kinda glad in a way that a lot of people are dismissing this show. That just means people won't be running around complaining about how overrated it is, and I can enjoy it in peace.

Watching the RAW right now, I want to see if it can amuse me even when I don't understand all the dialogue (I took Japanese for a while in school, but foreign language has always been my worst subject lol).

[WanderingKnight]

Just one little question:

Hand on the heart, and be really honest!

If everything else would have stayed exactly the same, but this show had been done by "WhateverAnimation" instead of KyoAni, would you be here now?

Of course. What do you think, I only watch anime made by KyoAni? I'm actually following about 7 series this season.

That's a pretty stupid question if you think about it. Even if your intention was to dismiss the KyoAni fandom.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Mentar

Just one little question:

Hand on the heart, and be really honest!

If everything else would have stayed exactly the same, but this show had been done by "WhateverAnimation" instead of KyoAni, would you be here now?

I need my Azumanga Daio-like fix, be it by Madhouse (unlikely tho), or J.C Staff (more likely), or Bones.
And those are the three studios I rank very high.

[Mentar]

Oi, take a chill pill, people.

If you'd be here anyway, feverishly discussing this kind of show raw, and are sure that you'd be here anyway, more power to you ... be my guest. No problem. Enjoy it by all means.

I for myself would say: "No, I wouldn't be here." And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Too many shows of this style and kind have come and gone more or less unnoticed. If after translation, LS somehow makes it close to Azumanga level, great. So far, (not only) my impression doesn't point in this direction.

[WanderingKnight]

Something I forgot to say: I sympathize with whoever is gonna TL/TS this anime. Thousands of lines everywhere, with the added difficulty of 4koma-styled punchlines--I'm not gonna be surprised to see the subbers taking a long while to release the episodes.

[ZeusIrae]

Originally Posted by Mentar

Just one little question:

Hand on the heart, and be really honest!

If everything else would have stayed exactly the same, but this show had been done by "WhateverAnimation" instead of KyoAni, would you be here now?

No,I am sure plenty of people wouldn't be here,including me.But that's how a brand works.You don't know the product but you trust the brand.

[Newprimus]

Oh dear, I can see the OP dance craze coming from a light year away.

[Kaoru Chujo]

I was wondering about that switch of the first ep from a midnight broadcast to an 8 pm broadcast. That seems like a pretty big deal to me, going from late night to prime time. Does anyone -- such as maybe kj1980 -- know if it was that big a deal, or is it fairly normal? What would have been behind it? The station (Chiba TV) seeing the viral hype going and not having a big show in that time-slot anyway? An advertiser or the producers paying for it? I do see that the next episode goes back to the midnight time-slot. I'm guessing that Chiba is close enough to Tokyo for Chiba TV to be one of the stations almost everyone in Tokyo gets.

And does anyone have an idea why it says "Saitama Police" on the side of that police car in the OP. Is it just that it has to say something, or is there some joke involved? I'm supposing it's from the comic.

>>Mentar: I was there for Hidamari Sketch, discussing the first ep raw. I can't remember if I was there before the first ep aired. It was probably Hirano Aya who got me here for this one that early. Of course, I'm here for too many shows, so maybe it's not unusual, lol.

[Kyuusai]

I'm not sure who I'm wanting to see subs from, really.

It's true, a.f.k.'s Strato did an amazing job with Haruhi subs, but the majority of the cultural humor didn't need the subtitles to be conveyed (the "moe" explanation in episode 1 being the major exception). Part of why I enjoyed their subtitling, though, is that it was a good balance between mimicing the flow of the Japanese text, which would have been awkward to read, and adjusting it to sound totally natural in English, which would have lost the humor. In subtitling Kanon, however, he moved closer toward the "natural sounding English" side, and, honestly, it seemed hollow to me.

That's not to criticize Strato! He did an amazing job at what he was setting out to do, but that's not why I watch fansubs. I watch fansubs because I want to see as much of the original context preserved as possible. Translations that try to scrub or gloss over the cultural context are at absolute best tremendously distracting, assuming you can catch the original meaning by ear. At worst, they make a scene completely devoid of enjoyment or even any sense.

Sometimes a translation just can't be right. Now here's a series where those sorts of untranslatable Japanese culture references pop up everywhere, and are half the point of the series. Maybe I'll be able to catch all those things by ear, but I wouldn't look forward to trying to keep the two translations going in my head (and if I had a perfect grasp of Japanese to catch everything, I'd be watching the raw). Sometimes I think it's entirely appropriate to just leave some of the Japanese terms in there.

If Strato decides to go his usual route, I'll definitely keep up with his work so I can observe his choices and learn, with the purpose of improving my own interpretation skill. Assuming he does, though, I might want to follow another subbing group for my regular viewing.