It’s still a good series, but it’s beginning to feel like more of the same.

Maybe that’s the issue with slice-of-life/school days stories, in that since there’s not a lot of plot or exposition, it’s mostly a lot of the same gags used before, in subtly different ways. You can Konata being a video game geek or an anime geek, at school or at home, but it’s still the same thing.

Maybe I’m just spoiled though, from all the series I’ve been watching/blogging that feature extensive character/plot development, such as Kanon, Shuffle!, pretty much every eroge anime in existence, and, uh, Haruhi.

Still, it seems that, despite all my complaining, if the next episode of Lucky Star featured a solid 24 minutes of nothing but Tsukasa knocking over hurdles, I’d probably watch it and love it anyway. Tsukasa seems to be my halo character for Lucky Star; much like Yuki from Haruhi or Mai from Kanon, the second they pop up on screen I get this big smile and fanboy like there’s no tommorow.

lol, fanboys, gtfo noob.

Anyway, so, episode 8! The athletic meet is the big star of the episode, making up the main block before the first eyecatch. We’ve also got some more Hiiragi sister dynamics, Konata going Lucky Channel on Kagami, and, uh, Lucky Channel itself. Hit the jump for a boatload of screenshots (79 of them!) and, y’know, text.
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What is there to say? I’m hooked.

The anime parodies seem to have reached a stable amount – as opposed to earlier where they threw in Kanon, Shuffle, Haruhi, and god knows what else that flew over my head, now there’s one or two big ones and a bunch of side references.

As has probably been said millions of times over, the Initial D parody was absolute gold. It’d be interesting to see Lucky Star in a bunch of different animation angles – the serious and highly CG style here fits I.D. well and doesn’t look too bad for Yui either.

All we’re really missing is Tsukasa and Kagami getting tossed around in the back like ragdolls, preferably in normal animation fashion (to depict the wild difference between the two worlds at this moment).

The little things are what make the parody great – the references to the 5 hairpin curves of Akina, the yellow FD, the cup of water in the cupholder, and yes, Yui using the gutter technique during a turn. Someone’s been practicing.

And yes, the speedometer. 40 miles an hour at most, 40 kilometers per hour at least. The blinding speed of it all! 500 bonus points for Yui the awesome meganekko/gamer/doriftoer.

Oh, and in random Initial D related news, there’s word of a Wangan Midnight anime coming up later this year. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out – WM doesn’t have particularly interesting nor good looking character designs (except for maybe the hilarious ricer Gatchan) but I enjoyed the arcade game much and still look forward to the racing scenes – which hopefully will look as good as this one.

More Lucky Star and less racing after the jump.
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It finally happened.

The characters in Lucky Star are finally becoming appealing at a deeper level than “Look, I said Miyuki’s moe, so she is. Plus, glasses!”.

OK, that’s a bit of a lie. Deeper level != Lucky Star.

But I can finally see where the Tsukasa fanpeoples are coming from.

Hit the jump for Tsukasa, Tsukasa with fan, random MMO talk, Tsukasa and Hawaii Blue, blushing Miyuki, depleted uranium Tsukasa, dirty Konata, Tsukasa, and RAKI CHANNELU~

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Lucky Star continues on with bonus super otaku reference power! The fourth episode contains plenty of hints to past KyoAni works, such as the Kanon screenshot pictured above and the Haruhi armband Konata gives Kagami for the twins’ birthdays. All we’re missing is some peach juice (or, alternatively, gao gao stegosauruses) and Konata screaming ‘fumoffu!’

Speaking of cospresents, Konata also gets Tsukasa a To Heart uniform with a price tag that would rival that of Miyuki’s jewelry gifts. At 118 yen to 1 dollar that’s $268. Cha-ching! Tsukasa is said around the net to resemble a character from the original To Heart, which I can’t confirm, but that uniform definitely is that from To Heart 2 (costume recycling? XD)

And for one final reference, we get Flat Chested Alliance member Konata FTW! ^^ Having become a Mayumi fanboy out of the blue I wholehearted approve of these Shuffle! references (I wonder why though, KyoAni didn’t do that series…is it that big in Japan?).

Surprised however, that when Konata brought up her qualifications for the meido cafe that she centered on the bust size rather than her height. I mean, the loli factors got to count for something in that line of business. Not that I would know. Of course.

This episode, and maybe this series as a whole, is rather hit and miss, still. A lot of the jokes in this series are rather pedestrian, which is what makes them 1) awesome and 2) crap. The ‘Konata cries wolf’ on being late sequence which opens the episode is dull, but the ‘Konata is a procrastinator’ later on was gold.

Maybe it’s just how much a given sequence can relate to you, as I spend a lot of time saying “Hey, that’s happened to me…” when watching Lucky Star.

Speaking of, how the hell do you read in bed sitting like that? I find that incredibly uncomfortable, although I suppose that’s a plus if you need to stay awake all night (and morning) reading a great book. XD

I also wonder how Konata and Kagami became friends at time as Konata is very unsubtle when pointing out the decidedly “not-moe” characteristics of Kagami. Sometimes I wonder if she does this on purpose to play off Kagami’s tsundere qualities, which I imagine Konata knows quite well.

As shown by her rampant comparisons of Miyuki to the ojou type who can’t do anything (probably because they have two cute twin maids with red/pink hair, one of which is plotting to kill their entire family). I’ve got to try labeling everyone according to dating sims in real life someday. It’d be amusing.

Speaking of Miyuki, have some shiny/blushy squeeeeeeee~ screenshots of her. Yay, Miyuki! Mm, too bad Lucky Star characters that don’t have blue hair don’t have a lot of character to fanboy off of yet.

Also, I should probably mention that after posting the above screenshots above that I went back to the episode to make sure Miyuki actually has eyes. She does.

Here’s one of the two scenes in Lucky Star that has serious-style animation as opposed to 4-koma style. My main curiosity in this scene is the poster in the background – there have been plenty of references in posters so far, wondering if anyone could figure out this one.

And here’s a picture for all the American parents out there, with a warning to never ever hand Konata Grand Theft Auto. What if she grew up on FPSs instead of eroges? That’s a thought for you. (also, a great blank stare by Konata there)

Tsukasa continues to spend 99% of the episodes in overly-naive mode, in both the conversation about breathing through nose and mouth and the one about Comiket, and Comiket yogurt, apparently. XD

The episode ends with a final scene foreshadowing the revealing of Konata as a trap. To be continued~

And now for RAKI CHANNELLLLLLUUUUUUU!

When I first started watching Lucky Star I really didn’t have a damn clue what the hell Lucky Channel was in relation to everything else, but I think that was my main problem with the series in general. Trying to understand it, that is. When you just take LC as a short 2-minute skit apart from all the (already disjointed) real Lucky Star segments, it becomes 500% more awesome. Yay bipolar Akira!

The news that Lucky Star’s got a new director for 5 onwards has shot it back up the ‘watch [and subsequent flame, again]‘ list of many people, if the Anime Blogger Antenna is anything to go by. We’ll see how things change (or don’t) for this series.

-CCY