Managed to knock out two Lucky Star episodes yesterday (well, today, as I haven't slept yet...) That's a good pace for a normal show; for Lucky Star it's almost taxing. Not necessarily a super-complicated script - they don't run up over each other all that often, really - but chatty, as chatty as they come.

Spending that much time with the first episode, I can see how it turned some people away from the show. The food conversation went on, and on, and on, and while it was mildly amusing, it wasn't anything particularly special - just a bunch of jokes, and only the ghost of Konata's half-old-man personality. And no Kagami! The show's driven off the interaction of Kagami with the rest of the cast - in a very real way, she's the show's Kyon, in that it's her job to puncture Konata's otaku point of view, or Tsukasa's fluffy pink world, or to invoke the Miyukipedia. Konata can play this role to a certain extent, as she has an endless supply of cynicism where other people are concerned - but Konata and Miyuki and Tsukasa sitting at a table just isn't that interesting. The show needs Kagami to function.

I'm leaving "moe" alone in the subtitles, as they make a point of explaining the phenomenon (somewhat) in later episodes. This seems to coincide with something that was said at a past convention panel, but I'm not really sure, and honestly I haven't been given a whole lot of instructions in how to proceed. Not that I'm terribly worried or anything, but that's one of the problems with contracting - you don't really have a connection with the client who's ultimately producing the work. But if we're both going to come to the same conclusions about the best way to proceed, what the hell, right?

I can also spot the parts of the episode where KyoAni decided to save some money. They're a little bit more subtle about it than in Haruhi - and it's not like the rest of the show is tremendously detailed, gorgeous artwork, aside from a few unusual sequences. But even so, there's still a couple of sequences where the frame doesn't change for a minute (plus the first batch of endings, which are almost all stills, though the concept of the karaoke box ED was brilliant!)

The only part I don't really enjoy is the Lucky Channel segment. Akira was mildly amusing the first couple of times, but now she just grates. Yes, yes, it's a cute loli that acts like a chain-smoking bitch when she's not "on camera", except when she acts like one while the camera's rolling. I'm over it. It's just not funny the next time you go through the show. Even when Konata or Kagami or Tsukasa have a stale joke, it's generally at least endearing. But Akira's not endearing, not in the least. Yes, yes, I know I'm supposed to be rooting for Shiraishi, but I got a bellyfull of him in the second batch of ED songs, all of which lie before me (though at least they won't be overlapping like mad, as the karaoke ones are, so probably by then I'll rather appreciate them more!)

Not a bad way to make a living, overall. Now to do it again tomorrow and knock out the whole volume! (Or I could take it easy and still make the deadline... but no, still got Nanoha to work on afterwards, might as well go full throttle...)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 03:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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