Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The 4 Crazy and Cute School Girls -- Lucky Star

I am watching a new anime series named "Lucky Star" lately. It is aired on the Astro Animax (channel 715) at 7:30pm on every Monday to Friday after the anime series "Bleach S2" finished showing on 7/6/2011.

"Lucky Star" is an adaption from the same name four-panel comic strip manga by Kagami Yoshimizu. Like many four-panel comic strips, it has no ongoing plot, and typically focuses on the daily lives of the characters. This anime series consists of 24 episodes and 1 episode of OVA. The story of "Lucky Star" is about the lifes of the 4 high-school girls with different characters happening in their school-life or daily life. Sometimes, the way of their conversation is very funny.

Title          : Lucky Star
Genre       : Comedy, Parody, School-life, Slapstick, Slice of life, Seinen
Episodes  : 24 + 1 OVA
Story        :
Lucky Star's story mainly portrays the lives of four Japanese girls attending a Japanese high school. The setting is mainly based on the city of Kasukabe in Saitama Prefecture.The main character is Konata Izumi, an athletic and somewhat intelligent (however lazy), but also mischievous girl who, despite these attributes, is not in a sports club and has to resort to all-nighter cramming for tests. She would rather read manga and play video games than do her homework.
The serialization began with the four main characters in their first year of high school: Konata Izumi, Kagami Hiiragi, Tsukasa Hiiragi, and Miyuki Takara. As the story progresses, they move on to their second and third years. However, the anime starts the story with them beginning their second year, and the other high school girls that are seen in the opening are only introduced halfway through the series. The storyline usually includes numerous references to popular past and present manga, anime and tokusatsu series.

Characters Description :


Konata Izumi (泉 こなた Izumi Konata)


Voiced by: Ryō Hirohashi (drama CD), Aya Hirano (anime), Wendee Lee (English)
The very representation of an otaku, Konata (or sometimes called 'Kona-chan') is the childish, nonchalant, but good-natured leader of the Lucky Star companions. Usually a lazy girl who is 'occupied' with video or online games, manga, anime, or all of the above, Konata is actually capable of intelligence and athleticism, but does not join any school clubs because of her otaku interests. Konata works at a cosplay café with underclassman Patricia Martin. Due to her hobbies she often deals with Kagami heckling her for not working hard enough on her studies. She lives with her widowed father (also an otaku who often buys adult games for himself and Konata), as well as her younger cousin Yutaka Kobayakawa, who goes to her school. She has a comedic friendship with Kagami, Tsukasa, and Miyuki, although at widely varying degrees.

Kagami Hiiragi (柊 かがみ Hiiragi Kagami)
Voiced by: Ami Koshimizu (drama CD), Emiri Kato (anime), Kari Wahlgren (English)
Kagami is Tsukasa's older fraternal twin sister and is occasionally referred to as "Kagamin". In school, her grades are excellent because she studies very hard. She was even the class president in her first year. She is in a different class than Konata and Tsukasa, but she frequently comes to their class during lunch time to eat with them. Kagami was separated into a different classroom in her second and third year.[Kagami is a stereotypical tsukkomi character, however, she is prone to becoming shy and emotional at times, making her appear as a tsundere character as well. Much like Konata, Kagami likes video games, but plays a different genre than Konata; Kagami likes to play shooter games. She loves to read light novels, but she feels lonely because no one around her shares this interest.


Tsukasa Hiiragi (柊 つかさ Hiiragi Tsukasa)
Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (drama CD), Kaori Fukuhara (anime), Michelle Ruff (English)
Tsukasa is the younger fraternal twin sister of Kagami and lives in a six-member family household with her parents. She is in the same class as Konata. While she is not good at studying or sports, she excels in cooking. She is portrayed as the loving, friendly, good-natured but clumsy person. She is often portrayed as an airhead who is unreliable and is always compared to her twin sister, who generally does better than her in most areas. It is often implied that Tsukasa is unable to follow the gist of complex conversations. Tsukasa will often ask her older sister for help on her homework, though it usually does not make much of a difference. She is also known for having her hair in the same style as Akari Kamigishi from To Heart, something hinted at frequently in the series.

Miyuki Takara (高良 みゆき Takara Miyuki)
Voiced by: Erina Nakayama (drama CD), Aya Endo (anime), Karen Strassman (English)
Miyuki is a young lady from a wealthy family who is beautiful, smart, and well-mannered. She always uses extremely polite Japanese, even when talking with her closest friends. She was the class president for her grade level in her first year, at the same time that she became good friends with Kagami. Now Miyuki is in the same class as Konata and Tsukasa, and is nicknamed "Yuki-chan" by Tsukasa. Miyuki's classmates often rely on her for help with their studies, and she is often shown giving impromptu but highly-detailed, encyclopedic definitions or explanations on diverse and obscure matters.She is described as a stereotypically friendly meganekko, or glasses-wearing girl. She is scared of contacts, and of putting them in her eyes, thus why she wears glasses. Her vision is less than 20/200, though it had been good until elementary school, when she began reading books in the dark after her mother dozed off while reading to her in bed. She likes to read books, but does not read light novels. Miyuki loves to sleep, and she always goes to bed fairly early. She hates visits to the dentist, but frequently has to go to fix a loose crown or because of tooth decay. On the rare occasion that she plays video games, her personality changes. Due to her embodying such a large number of moe archetypes—as Konata said it—Miyuki is the frequent-victim of Konata's playful bouts of verbal teasing. She is generally seen less than the other three main characters.

 
The 4 above are the main characters of the anime series. There are more characters are inthe anime series which you could find out. When I am watching such series, I think it is very hilarious. Sometimes their conversation can make you burst into laughter, especially the main character, Izume's talk. For me, I think all the 4 girls are very cute but I like Kagami the most. Don't ask me why, I just like her! Haha! :P



Near the end of every episode, there is an additional segment called Lucky Channel co-hosted by Akira Kogami and her assistant Minoru Shiraishi. The humor of this segment takes on a decidedly darker, mean-spirited, more cynical and mature tone than the main show, disguised as an infomercial that skims over characters who appear in the anime, but mainly deals with the progressively abusive and violent work-relationship between Akira and Minoru. Akira is a typical 'cute excitable girl' character while going through her script, but instantly changes to a bored, perpetually annoyed character the moment her segment is officially done. The anime also features small cameos of voice actors besides Shiraishi that also have worked with Kyoto Animation which include Yuko Goto, Minori Chihara, Tomokazu Sugita, Daisuke Ono, and Aya Hirano, all of whom voice themselves.

The opening theme song of the "Lucky Star" is called "Take It! Sailor Uniform" by Aya Hirano, Emiri Katō, Kaori Fukuhara, and Aya Endo who are the 4 main characters. Unlike most anime, Lucky Star does not have one consistent ending theme, instead using a new one in each episode; most of them are of theme songs from other anime and from tokusatsu television shows. Each ending theme in episodes one through twelve is performed as a karaoke by one of the principal characters. From episode thirteen onwards, each ending theme is performed by Minoru Shiraishi, singing and acting in live action (the exception to this being episode sixteen, which shows a music video excerpt of "The Cape of Age Thirty" by Hiromi Konno).

OK, let us take a peek of the scenes of "Lucky Star" of the cute and crazy girls.













Well, if you are interested to catch this anime series and would like to join all these 4 crazy and funny girls, pleas click into the links below.
Lucky Star Anime Series
Lucky Star OVA

Enjoy watching!!! ^.^

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