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LUCKY_STAR

                                                    September 17, 2011
                                                    May        3, 2019

I've been listening to some "podcast" epidodes
recorded a few years back by some Asian-American
teenage girls named Nami and Nyoko... they used the
title "Anime Rants and Raves" or "anmie2r", and I
gather they only recorded three of them.

This is distinctly authentic teenage girl dialog
("Oh, shut *uuup*!"), and there are a number of
funny bits, such as where Nami pronounces that she
likes Older Men, which one suspects may have been
intended to mess with the heads of the aging male
otaku's in the audience.

One of the things I picked up on from listening to          MELANCOLY
these two was the relatively recent series "Lucky
Star", which in a weird way was a follow-up to "The     For example, the same
Melancoly of Haruhi Suzimiya", though where Haruhi      voice actress: Aya
was about aliens, espers, and time-travelers,           Hirano.  More to the
"Lucky Star" is resoundingly mundane.  N & N            point, the same
described it as a story where nothing really            self-consciousness
happens; people just talk a lot about different         awareness: the stories
random subjects.  That immediately grabbed my           are set in distinctly
attention, and I finally got around to buying a set     post-moe, post-otaku
of the disks at the last J-pop festival, and            worlds.  With "Lucky
indeed, this is very much like a "My Dinner with        Star" otaku culture is
Andre" except it centers on a group of teenage          the main subject of
japanese girls, and yet it's somehow perversely         discussion.
fascinating, and almost consistently funny (a few
episodes do drag a bit).

The theme song at the beginning is really
remarkable, something like a Tom-Tom Club song,
but far more unhinged.  I had to see it a dozen
times before I began to piece together what
it's about from the english subtitles: it's
essentially a group of young girls making fun
of the fact that men think they're hot:

  "But I've got the last laugh, because I've got
  the sailor suit, that's my conclusion."
                                                               LUCKY_MIRROR
It makes the case that this is okay provided
you don't follow through and do anything about
it: "Tasty thoughts, and that's enough!"

With the underage you need to follow a policy of
"Catch and Release".


                                            Korin at alt.gothic
                                            recommends Azumanga Daioh:

                                            "And this is why I watch Azumanga
                                            Daioh. I don't need to pay
                                            attention to the story arc, I can
                                            put on a random episode, and enjoy
                                            the cutesy schoolgirl antics and
                                            cats with beartraps for mouths."


                                                 There's always one more
                                                 thing out there.




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