Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Lucky Star - Anime Review (I'm not in an hiatus anymore!)

After 2/3 months of being in an hiatus I finally came back? What was the cause? Pure boredom and Sony Vegas fucking up my work. And now I present you a new review I just uploaded on Youtube and Hummingbird. The Lucky Star Review! I hope you enjoy it and I'll be looking forward to have some requests!

Click Here for the video version!

And now for those who love to read:


Lucky Star - Anime Review

Intro:

As you might or might not know, there's a certain studio called Kyoto Animation. A studio that has produced a bunch of anime. And that studio is now considered one of the best animation studios, along with the likes of Shaft, Ufotable and to a lesser extent, Ghibli, and debatebly Gainax. This studio has produced a number of popular series like Free, Haruhi Suzumiya, K-On, and of course, what I like to call the Triforce of "Feels". But, theres a particular one I didn't mention, and that's because it is the anime I'm going to review today. Good morning, Good Afternoon or Good Night, depending on the time you watch this, I'm Frozen Wolf and welcome to Frozen Zone reviews, today I'll be reviewing my second favorite slice-of-life/comedy anime, Lucky Star. Let's begin, shall we?

The Story:

Lucky Star, being a Slice-of-Life/Comedy anime, shares some of its characteristics with shows like The Daily Lives of High School Boys. What I mean by that is that, it doesn't have a focused story, it's just an anime about the day to day lives of these lovable girls. And since it's an episodic anime you can probably watch a random episode and you won't be losing that much, although you might not want to do that since you would be skipping some " character development" and some really funny scenes. Is this anime original? For me... I don't know how to answer, granted there are a lot of anime in this particular genre, but Lucky Star is better than most of them. And although this genre tends to be a little too repetitive, it doesn't affect Lucky Star, since every single episode presents us to some cool situations and engaging conversations (have in mind that I'm saying this for this particular genre). Being a 25 - episodes anime you can probably breeze through this anime, especially if you're like a certain friend of mine that might end up doing some reviews for this channel that marathons 25 - episodes animes in 2 days almost non-stop. Now, this anime ,being of such a genre, doesn't focus as much in the plot as it does in the characters...

The Characters:

Allow me now, to talk about the characters. To avoid "spoilers" or people bitching in the comments section I'm only going to talk about the 4 main characters.

- Konata Izumi, a 17 years old girl that is too small for her age, she's also an otaku and a gamer;
- Miyuki Takara, she is the stereotypical girl that is moe, wears glasses and is really clumsy;
- Kagami Hiiragi, the Tsundere of the group, and honestly my favorite character in the show (but only by a slim, really tiny fragment of personality);
- And finally we have Tsukasa Hiiragi, Kagami's twin sister and the klutz of the group.

The side characters deserve mention, since they make the show even more funny than it already was... major props to Konata's dad and Kagami's classmates.
Saying that the characters go through a great ammount of development would be a lie, and that's because they don't develop, YOU get to know them better as the series progresses.
Now, other than the personality and characteristics of said characters there's another thing that makes those characters be who they are...

The Visuals:

If I could describe the character design in 1 word, it would be: Nosebleed. This is KyotoAni in action, their characters are all so adorable that whenever you watch any of KyotoAni's character designs you'll either be puking rainbows or you'll level up your diabetes' stats.
The animation, is pretty standard throughout the whole anime and they are pretty consistent as well, BUT, sometimes Konata visits a certain store... and the REALLY EPIC ANIMATION kicks in! Those scenes are fucking great in terms of animation and comedy.
But I gotta say, Lucky Star's visual style differs a bit from other works of the same studio. But it's pretty good for what the anime is.
There's only one thing that can make an anime with good characters, nice scenarios, and good looks be even better and that is...

The Sound:

The soundtrack... this is a tough thing for me to say, since there's not a single track that comes to mind, so it's not that rememberable. Not counting the show's opening: Motteke Sailor Fukku, which is an awesome song to boot whenever I feel like it, and the Redalice remix...gosh...it's so good. So yeah, this is no Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya or Clannad. But it's still enjoyable, don't get me wrong.
About the voice acting, here's the thing, the japanese dub is pretty good but I have a problem with it, because there are a lot of references, usually the screen get's full of notes, so I have to pause the episode to read what's written, which took me away from the whole experience, BUT fortunately, the english dub is awesome! Shoutout to Wendee Lee for the awesome work with Haruhi Suzumiya and Konata Izumi, she nails both characters.

Section Finale:

I personally love this show as well as its spiritual successor: The Daily Lives Of High School Boys. I love these types of shows, because they're really close to reality, at least in my case. After watching this show, you could probably watch some of the animes I mentioned at the beginning of this video, and for those who don't know, the Triforce of "Feels" consists of Clannad, Kanon 2006 and Air. I can guarantee you won't be disappointed.
The score, from now on, will be based on the following categories: Story, Characters, Visuals, Sound and personal Enjoyment, and no I'm not ripping off GRArkada's rating system, I'm using the Hummingbird rating system. So based on those categories I give Lucky Star 8/10. Lucky Star is an anime I highly recommend if you're a fan of the genre. If, on the other hand, you prefer anime with immersive stories, this anime won't fit your needs.