July 10, 2012

Lucky Star, by Kagami Yoshimizu

Lucky Star is another 4koma--4-panel comic strip--slice-of-life series revolving around the lives of a group of contemporary Japanese high school girls. (When Japan hits on a theme that sells, it stays the course.) It's also one of those series that plays heavily to its moe aspects, though not to the level of Strike Witches (as that would be impossible). Lucky Star's approach to moe is more meta, partly because it contains characters--otaku, a doujinshi artist--who recognize their own types and those around them, and who discuss them in a pretty fourth-wall bending manner.

(If that last sentence was incomprehensible to you, just wait until I get to Genshiken. All will [hopefully] be clearer then!)

If I were ranking manga on a scale of approachability, I'd definitely put Lucky Star in the upper echelons. It's based very heavily in certain subsets of Japanese culture, and has a definite current events feel to it. If you're just getting into this whole "backwards Japanese comic books" thing, you may want to level up some more before looking into it. (In the meantime, if you want to give the 4koma format or slice-of-life genre a try, I highly recommend Azumanga Daioh, Sunshine Sketch, or Yotsuba&! respectively! We've got the first and the last of these available here at the Mooresville Public Library.)

Lucky Star has been running since 2004, and has 9 volumes so far, 8 of which are available in English. There's also a 24 episode anime from 2007 that was licensed for English by Madmen Entertainment (the people who dubbed Noir and El Cazador de la Bruja! Their praises, let me sing them), as well as an OVA from 2008 that, so far as I know, has not been dubbed in English.

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