Lucky Star (Manga) Review

Title: Lucky Star
Genre: Comedy, Slice of Life
Publisher: Kadokawen Shoten (JP), Viz Media (US)
Artist/Writer: Kagami Yoshimizu
Serialized in: Comptiq
Original Release Date: August 19, 2014

Review copy provided by the publisher

Lucky Star wasn’t exactly popular when I started getting into anime and manga in 2007, but everyone could recognize its overly high-pitched song and dance routine from the anime and there were parodies of it everywhere. But, like a lot of the more niche, otaku comedies, there’s very little in the story that lends itself to longevity. That’s not a knock against LS; there are very few comics like it that really stick around for years and years. Even Genshiken, which was also hugely well-known at the same time and also still running, has faded away; it’s no wonder that an even more oddball title like this one has been largely forgotten.
There’s another reason that LS hasn’t been as well remembered, and it’s because the series isn’t really about anything at all. Sure it’s slice of life comedy with a nerdy bent, but even that gives the story too much credit, and it lacks the otaku references like Genshiken to provide skit material. If it wasn’t for the occasional, truly nerdy jokes I would speculate that the comic was just nerd-bait and pandering because there’s really so little to the story. It focuses on four high school girls, Konata, Miyuki and twins Kagami, and Tsukasa, and that’s just about it. The characters have a habit of saying anything that comes to mind and they certainly fulfill a few different moe stereotypes that Konata, the otaku of the group, especially loves to riff on, but even as a group of friends the girls doesn’t feel very connected to each other. The story doesn’t have any other draws besides this very basic “girls do silly things” idea either; there aren’t any running gags or reoccurring themes to connect the story together for more than a few pages at most, most of the time even adjoining strips feel wildly different.

 I am a fan of other four-panel comics like Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-kun and Geijutsuka Art Design Class and those comics feel much more cohesive. There are fewer skits per chapter and each idea plays out over multiple, four-panel sequences and flows really nicely. LS is too frantic by comparison. If this was, say, a serialized, daily newspaper comic then that lack of even basic continuity between strips would make sense but, as far as I can tell, it was published in monthly chapter form. There are simply so many different things going on in each chapter and it’s exhausting. That tone means that the comic doesn’t work very well as a slice of life story either. Most four panel comics are slice of life stories to some degree or another but again, even a story like Aria — as “pure” of a slice of life story as you can get — has more ideas connecting the characters and the adventures together!
 When I think about it that way, there are a lot of other manga out there, both comedies and slice of life stories, that I would recommend before I recommend Lucky Star. It’s awkward in a very unintentional way and just doesn’t have any stand out qualities no matter how you look at it.