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"Love it or hate it." If there is any anime where this saying is valid, it is Lucky Star. I've never seen anyone who said: "Lucky Star was ok but nothing special."

As for the story - it is non existent. The characters in Lucky Star go to school, meet up in their free time and talk about random things. A friend of mine called Lucky Star "a show of utterly randomness" - and well .... that sentence just describes it.

The character design is cute but a bit simple. Anyways the art is good and it really fits the show so there is nothing to complain.

With "Motteke! Sailor Fuku" Lucky Star has a catchy opening song with a dance in the opening video which I think tries to copy the success of Hare Hare Yukai - the ending of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. As for the BGM there is not much to say. It's nothing special but fits the atmosphere of the anime but nothing you really keep in mind. As for the ending songs KyoAni did something rather unusual for an anime. Every episode has it's own ending song. The first 12 ending songs are songs the 4 main characters sing in a karaoke bar - and it really sounds like high school students who are not good at singing trying to do their best. Especially Konata's (voiced boy Hirano Aya) songs are quite unique but not everyone likes them. As for the other 12 endings, 11 are sung by Shiraishi Minoru and also really unique in their own way, the last one was sung by Hiromi Konno, the VA of Akira and just regarding the singing.
As for the voice acting itself, the seiyuus did a great job. Especially Hirano Aya did a great job at voicing Konata and you can see her great talent when she imidiately switches her voice from the Konata voice to her Haruhi voice (the one you hear in the other animes she voiced) and back again. As for the other characters KyoAni took a good mix of well known seiyuus and some less known. Especially Shiraishi Minoru (who voiced himself) and Sasaki Nozomi who voiced Patricia Martin did good jobs.

When a series doesn't really have a story it needs something other to be successfull. In Lucky Star's case it are imho the characters. Lucky Star has quite a couple of important characters. There are Konata - an overall hardcore female otaku, Kagami who is supposed to be her tsundere counterpart, Tsukasa who is Kagami's a bit air-headed twin sister and Miyuki the rich and smart girl who combines a number of "moe-aspects" such as being a dojikko meganekko who is afraid of dentists.
The last few minutes of each episode are filled with the "Lucky Channel" where Kogami Akira (a loli idol) and above mentioned Shiraishi Minoru who is a newbie-voice actor have some kind of talk show.
In the later episodes of Lucky Star there are some more characters introduced with Konata's cousin Yutaka at the centre.

I really enjoyed watching Lucky Star but it took some time to get through to it. Especially the very first episode is hard to watch when you don't know what to expect and the girls talk 8 minutes about how to eat a choco cornet and wether the thin or the fat end is the head of it and why they think it is. After a few episodes KyoAni changed the director of Lucky Star and it's more easy to watch. Lucky Star is full of references to other anime and especially to the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - they even overdid it somehow with the Haruhi references - even every character of the SOS Brigade had a little cameo in Lucky Star but on the other hand it's quite obvious why they did it since Haruhi and Lucky Star are both from Kyoto Animation and the main character is voiced by the same seiyuu. Nonetheless watching Lucky Star is much fun, especially when you know a couple of the animes which are parodied.

Overall Lucky Star is a great slice-of-life commedy anime for experienced watchers since it's a bit difficult to follow an anime with a negliable plot (girls going to school - not more not less) and lots of references to other anime, video games, shampoo advertises and japanese TV shows. I highly recommend to watch a couple of animes before starting with Lucky Star, otherwise you don't understand more than half of the gags told in Lucky Star. Experienced watchers should have much fun with all those references and the way the gags are told. As said in the beginning "Love it or hate it" there is nothing between those two options. read more

Imagine a flat share with a female vampire, a female werewolf, a loli witch, a female cyborg and an invisible girl who all long for good looking boys and you have Renkin San-kyuu Magical? Pokaan (I'll use "Magical Pokaan" for the rest of the review).

Story: As usual for slice-of-life comedy series there isn't that much of a continuing story. To be precise every episode consists of two short completed stories which have nothing to do with the other episodes, which makes this series good for non-continuing watching. Magical Pokaan is good for inserting a random episode in your anime watching just when you need a break of the anime you are currently watching.

Art: The character designs are good and the animation itself is nice and clearly. there is nothing to complain about it.

Sound: The opening song Senketsu no Chikai by Yousei Teikoku is quite catchy even though it is somehow misleading to what Magical Pokaan actually is (as well as the opening video itself is misleading). The ending songs are variations of the same song fitting the individual characters. These ending songs are much more fitting the style of the story since they are your usual standard jpop anime song.
The seiyuu cast is good including Hirano Aya as the vampire Pachira, they did a good job at voicing the characters.

Character: As mentioned earlier the characters are all kind of supernatural girls living together in a flat share. The characters of this series are making it as enjoyable as it is since they are all very likable and funny in their unique ways.

Enjoyment: I really enjoyed watching this show. Magical Pokaan is a good anime to watch when you just want something entertaining where you don't have to think that much about it. It's good for an anime evening with friends or just for randomly watching an episode. You don't miss anything when you let Magical Pokaan rest for some weeks and continue watching it afterwards.

Overall: Magical Pokaan is fun to watch. As allready mentioned in the enjoyment part it is nice for randomly watching it. If you want to watch a comedy series which is very easy to watch and has no deep plot, Magical Pokaan is the right anime for you. read more

An anime about a kendo club in school. When I first saw the name and read a synopsis of Bamboo Blade I wasn't too sure about it. I was no really fan of sports anime and I thought it was just another one of those which were shown here in TV. A friend of mine asked me to watch the first episode together with him and I'm quite glad that I did it. I really enjoyed this warm and heartfilling anime.

Story: To be true there isn't that much story in this kind of anime. The girls go to school, practice kendo and participate in kendo tournaments. So far there is nothing special about it. The way that rather stereotypical story is told is ok though. The fact that the story is negligible doesn't make this anime bad. Imho anime like Bamboo Blade don't really need a good story to be entertaining.

Art: The animation of Bamboo Blade is good just as expected from an anime from 2007. The character design is cute and fitting, the backgrounds are drawn well , the kendo matches are fast paced and quickly over. Nothing like other sports anime where running scenes for example are way too long and you can see the earth curvature while the characters are running over the sports field.

Sound: Imho the strongest part in Bamboo Blade was the OST. With "Bamboo Beat" and "Star Rise" Bamboo Blade has rather usual opening songs/ending songs vocaled by the female seiyuu crew which actually did a good job in voicing the characters, imho they all fit. But the best thing about the OST is the BGM. The BGM of Bamboo Blade is full of fast paced drums which fit the atmosphere of the kendo matches. On the other hand there are also slow paced songs without drums which fit the more laidback atmosphere when the girls are not doing kendo.

Character: The characters in Bamboo Blade are all very likable. They are not as flat as in other sports series because they all have other unique character traits besides loving kendo and you actually get to see it even though the anime shows about 70-80% of the time the girls in kendo practice or kendo matches.

Enjoyment: I really enjoyed Bamboo Blade because of it's atmosphere which was calm and nice in the non-fighting scenes and fast and quick in the battle scenes. The comedy part of this series is also quite good. The girls are all moe. It's a good anime to watch when you want to watch something where you don't have to think too much about what actually is happening and you want to lay back and relax.

Overall: Bamboo Blade was an quite refreshing anime, easy to watch and simply just nice. I highly recommend Bamboo Blade for people who like sports anime, school life anime and comedy anime ... Other people should also give it a try.

One last personal thing: I am sorry for my poor grammar and vocabularies but English is not my native language and so I had some troubles writing a longer text in this language. read more

First I have to say: Before watching this anime you should have played the game. Without knowing the game you don't get most of the jokes in the anime.

Story: Well ... this anime is like a special for the game. There isn't actually that much of a story that is told. The whole anime seems to be a little homage to all those monsters and strange creatures in the game which isn't really a bad thing.

Art: The Chrono Trigger anime is now 12 years old so the quality of the animation is not really up to date. Nonetheless I rated the Art rather high because of the great character design of Akira Toriyama which I really like.

Sound: No real Opening song is the first sing I have to say. The BGM sounds a lot like the original BGM of the game. It is ok. but old fashioned midi sound.

Character: Even though the main characters don't really appear in the anime I rated the characters of this anime rather high because of the high recognition value of the characters if you have played the game. The characters are those lovely drawn monsters/creatures in the game and you can see the love of the designers for the game.

Enjoyment: I really really enjoyed this anime because of the earlier mentioned high recognition value of the characters and the setting itself. It is a fine hommage to the anime and I really laughed out loud because of Johnny and the berserking Gonzales robot. Also as I mentioned earlier you can see the love of the game in this anime for example in the drinking contest or the race which were minigames at the beginning of the game.

Overall: I highly recommend this anime if you liked the game. If you didn't play it you shouldn't watch the anime because you don't get the jokes. If you can lay your fingers on this rather old anime you should watch it. If not.... well it was a good anime but not the greatest anime ever produced. read more