The cast of Lucky☆Star can be intimidating if you're not already vaguely familiar with them. With four main cast members and various side characters appearing throughout the show, it can be hard to keep track of who is who. If you want to be able to tell your Hiiragi twins apart or know which otaku is which, you'll want to read this guide.
Main Cast:
Kagami Hiiragi
VA: Emiri Katou (Japanese) and Kari Wahlgren (English)
There are a lot of memorable characters within the series Lucky☆Star. There's the lead otaku Izumi Konata, there's the foreign exchange student Patty Martin, there's even a teenage girl who dreams of becoming a professional mangaka (creator of manga) and will go to great lengths to protect her drawing arm. Out of all of the characters within this series though, no one stands out more than the classic tsundere (a popular contraction meaning a character who is harsh, brash and/or violent at first and soft and loving later) character - Kagami Hiiragi.
The older of the Hiiragi twins, Kagami is a textbook tsundere and is more than willing to play straight man to the wild antics of her friends. When Konata starts talking about otaku topics, it's always Kagami who stops her in her tracks to ask what the hell she is babbling on about. When she is shown posts on "2 channel" (a famous forum on the internet), she wonders out loud if they are even speaking Japanese. At times, Kagami can be a fire breathing monster of a girl but as mentioned above, she also has her soft "dere dere" side.
One particularly fantastic instance of this comes late in the series when her class goes on a school trip and she receives a letter asking her to meet someone secretly that night. All day she frets and wonders if this could be someone wanting to make a love confession to her (something that she secretly wishes for). The hours pass and her mind becomes more and more consumed by this idea that finally, a boy is going to say that he likes her. Of course it doesn't go the way that she plans in her mind, but for those few minutes of screen time, Kagami really shows that she has a soft side to her that is vastly underappreciated.
A star student, Kagami Hiiragi is a hodgepodge of hot and cold emotions that will run the gamete of happy to sad to passionate. While she works (or cosplays as Konata likes to call it) as a shrine maiden, her family actually encourages her to explore all sorts of different cultures and religions while growing up, which has led to her being a well rounded individual with a variety of tastes and interests.
She has her faults though, there's certainly no question about that. Easily embarrassed (she reacts quite poorly when she finds out that the others were told that she joined the liberal arts program at school so that she could be with her friends), she also has a bad habit of losing track of time and staying up all night to read a book rather than sleep for school the next day although she is nowhere near as bad about this as her younger twin sister.
Kagami could easily be the star of her own series with the others taking a backseat to her. Feisty but fun, cold and warm at the same time, Kagami is a force to be reckoned with and Lucky Star wouldn't be the same without her in the least. So the next time you pick up this series, don't forget about the classic tsundere that ties all the characters together.
Tsukasa Hiiragi
VA: Kaori Fukuhara (Japanese) and Michelle Ruff (English)
Now we come to the younger of the twin sisters, Tsukasa. Tsukasa is a quiet and reserved girl who is portrayed as kind of an airheaded klutz who will accidentally leave her cell phone in her pocket when she puts it in the laundry, completely forget to do her homework assignments, and be unable to follow complex conversations. Luckily for her though, this personality works for her and, in general, Tsukasa is seen as a kind and warm girl who cares about her friends.
Tsukasa is small in frame and doesn't excel athletically or in the classroom for that matter, but she is able to cook up an amazing meal which is probably her only real strong point. An incredibly heavy sleeper, Tsukasa is the one who finds it the hardest to wake up at any given set time, often times waking up just in time to go to school or, during the summer, not until late in the morning long after everyone else has already awoken.
Unlike her other friends, she doesn't have as much interest in anime or video games which sometimes makes her a bit of an outsider within her own circle of friends. She enjoys reading some manga series however which is something that her and Konata bond over from time to time, even if they don't always see eye to eye on the finer plot points of whatever it is they happen to be reading. A great example of this comes in a segment where Tsukasa is lent a volume of manga by Konata and when she returns it, discovers that they had completely different reactions to the same story.
Konata Izumi
VA: Aya Hirano (Japanese) and Wendee Lee (English)
The lead otaku of the group, Konata's first introduction in the series has her explaining to Tsukasa that the reason why she doesn't join any sports teams despite being athletically gifted is because she would miss all of her prime time anime series which should give you a pretty good idea of what her personality is like and where her interests are focused.
Horribly addicted to anime, manga and video games to the detriment of all other things in her life, Konata is an otaku through and through. Raised alone by her father (her mother passed away when she was young), she has found solace in her hobbies to the point of becoming a legendary figure within the circles of Comiket. It's even said that whatever books she picks up at the twice a year festival are guaranteed to become successful which is why authors go through so much effort to catch her eye when they see her walking around.
Konata is the main character of the series and thus appears in almost every one of the main segments of the anime (though she will occasionally take a back seat in order to give the other characters a chance to shine) so if you don't like her, you might as well write off the entire series since she's going to be in your face pretty much from start to finish.
Konata is the type of character though that while fun to watch in an anime series probably would be pretty annoying to have as a friend in real life. She constantly makes references to anime, manga and games (much to the confusion and annoyance of her friends) and is strongly influenced by whatever it is she happens to be watching at the time.
She's not completely without discipline or drive, however, as eventually she figures out that in order to keep up with her hobbies, she'll need a part time job so she finds one... in a Haruhi Suzumiya themed cosplay cafe.
Miyuki Takara
VA: Aya Endou (Japanese) and Karen Strassman (English)
If Tsukasa is the airheaded klutz of the group, Miyuki is the grand master of klutzy moe. The token genius of the group, Miyuki will constantly get good grades because she works hard and enjoys reading and learning about new topics. However on the other side of that coin, she'll also turn the lights off in a crowded room as she is leaving out of habit or have to reheat the same cup of liquid in the microwave over and over again because she is so engrossed in what she is doing that she'll continually forget that she put it in there in the first place.
In addition to being the token genius, Miyuki is also the token glasses wearing character so those of you with a spectacle fetish now know exactly where to look. If you want to be exact, her eyesight is somewhere around 20/200. The reason for this, as explained in the anime, is that when she was young, her mother would read to her at bedtime but fall asleep halfway through the story leaving Miyuki to finish the story by herself in the dark, which strained her eyes quite badly.
If one were to point out her two major and glaring flaws, it would be that she has an intense fear of contact lenses and the dentist, the latter of which will often cause her to run out of the office in the middle of an examination. She constantly tries to get over this fear and goes back time and time again but the results are pretty much the same every single time she goes.
Overall though, Miyuki could be seen as one of the more 'perfect' characters in the series. She is socially well adjusted, very well mannered, and gets along well with pretty much everyone that she comes across which is a stark difference from some of the others in the series.
Supporting Cast:
Minami Iwasaki
VA: Minori Chihara (Japanese) and Michelle Ruff (English)
When we first meet Minami, it's shortly after Konata's cousin Yutaka gets accepted to the same high school. At first Yutaka believes Minami to be a scary, gruff type but learns quickly that she is really anything but.
Quiet and soft spoken, she projects a 'perfect' image to those who don't know her very well or didn't grow up with her. In truth she's actually rather insecure about herself. She's very tall and slender for her age plus she has small breasts and gets very easily embarrassed when teased, which makes her an easy target for people like Konata and Miyuki's mother who absolutely adore teasing her about various things that contradict her 'perfect' persona.
Yutaka Kobayashi
VA: Shizuka Hasegawa (Japanese) and Hynden Walch (English)
Sickly in nature, Yutaka doesn't join the series until episode 14 at which point she moves in with her cousin Konata's family in order to help her commute to high school. Very small for her age, Yutaka dreams of being tall like her best friend Minami, who often dreams of having a chest size that is similar to Yutaka.
Unfortunately moving into Konata's home is like moving to a new country for Yutaka, who knows nothing about things like erotic games and the like. When another new friend, Hiyori, invites her to visit Otome Road with her, the image she gets in her head is quite different from the reality of what she finds when she gets there.
Ayano Minegishi
VA: Mai Aizawa (Japanese) and Peggy O'Neal (English)
Every year Kagami hopes that she will be put into the same class as her close friends, but every year she gets sent to another class where invariably she will have two other close friends waiting for her, the first of which is Ayano Minegishi.
Very feminine in nature, Ayano is a sweet girl with a loving disposition (though there are rumors that she actually has a very bad temper). She enjoys making sweets and, according to Hiyori's notes, is the only Lucky Star high school character to be in a relationship with a guy.
Sadly, she doesn't play much of a role in the anime even after she is introduced by name in the second half.
Patricia Martin
VA: Nozomi Sasaki (Japanese) and Patricia Ja Lee (English)
An American exchange student from the United States, Patricia learned all of her Japanese from reading manga and watching anime giving her speech a very odd slant. She often makes generalizations about Japan based on her otaku knowledge and says that she enjoys Japanese music, but if you ask her to name some artists, all she'll give you is a long list of "anisongs" (songs from anime).
Despite being an exchange student, it is known that Patricia lives alone in her apartment and so in order to make ends mee,t she works in the same cosplay cafe as Konata (her character is Mikuru Asahina). She attends the same high school as the other characters and upon entering becomes friends with Minami, Hiyori and Yutaka.
Misao Kusakabe
VA: Kaoru Mizuhara (Japanese) and Lara Jill Miller (English)
The second of Kagami's "other" close friends, Misao often complains of her status as a background character in the anime. She has a point as her personality gives the impression that she could actually be a fantastic main character if a series were created all for her.
She is another one of the characters who is athletically gifted (a member of the track and field club at school) and loves video games though she is terrible at playing them. Her biggest fault however would be that she is extremely jealous, particularly of Konata and her group of friends constantly "stealing" Kagami away from her. It even goes so far that she calls Konata 'Chibikko' as an insulting nickname.
Kagami tends to compare Misao to Konata though and while the comparison could be seen as a little strained, it's certainly there if you look hard enough at their personalities as presented throughout the anime.
Hiyori Tamura
VA: Kaori Shimizu (Japanese) and Philece Sampler (English)
Remember way back at the beginning of this guide when I mentioned a girl who wanted to be a manga artist so bad that she would go to great lengths to protect her drawing hand? Meet Hiyori.
A classmate of Minami and Yutaka, Hiyori is a doujin artist who is always searching for her next big plot idea or a lucky break, both of which are usually foiled by her rotten luck. You can often find her fantasizing about her friends in romantic situations and sketching them only to become embarrassed later (especially after Yutaka looks through her drawings one day and discovers a character that looks remarkably similar to her).
She is a very friendly girl but, as mentioned earlier, has rotten luck in many aspects of her life. If she gets a great idea for a plot, she invariably forgets to write it down, if she meets an animal, it will most likely be hostile to her, etc, etc.
Lucky Channel Hosts:
Akira Kogami
VA: Hiromi Konno (Japanese) and Stephanie Sheh (English)
At the end of every episode there is a short segment known as Lucky Channel hosted by two characters. The first of which is the split personality Akira Kogami who is a veteran voice actor despite her young age and appearance. On the surface she seems very energetic and animated, always happy to be doing her job. However once her co-host gets under her nerves, she changes dramatically into a foul mouthed, raw voiced, jaded and bitter woman who isn't afraid to hide exactly what she means and is really thinking. Do not get on the bad side of this girl!
Minoru Shiraishi
VA: Minoru Shiraishi (Japanese) and Sam Riegel (English)
The young and inexperienced co-host who stands off to the side, Minoru often serves as Akira's whipping boy. He starts as a very timid individual who wants to make his break in show business, but can't help saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, frequently setting off Akira and getting himself into a lot of trouble. Those with eagle eyes will notice that he also makes occasional cameo appearances within the actual anime series as a classmate to the girls.
