Daijoubu

Owen (aka Sat-chan) has recently written a defense of Lucky Star against those who bash it as unfunny (although, being declared “unfunny” is not necessarily a bar to success: note the Unfunny Internet Meme Comics). Owen freely displays his distinctive style of searing disdain and contempt as he proceeds to tear apart a post from Anime Almanac. Put simply, Owen thinks that viewers’ false expectations have led them astray: LS-haters come to the series expecting it to be especially LOL funny, exactly like the seemingly similar Azumanga Daioh, or like a Second Coming of Haruhi, and they are therefore inevitably disappointed. Owen has a point that a closed-minded viewer can indeed experience irritation with a series that does not meet their preconceived notions. Taking up a related aspect of this theme, I’d like to point out the all important fact that one needs time, as well as an open mind, to get to know these characters, just like people you meet in real life.

A while back, I addressed the issue of humor in Lucky Star and explained how it involves the need for familiarity with the characters and the development of expectations of how they will behave in different situations. This is actually a very realistic approach to human interpersonal relations and is actually handled better in Lucky Star than in Azumanga Daioh! Consider it this way: it’s your first day at a new school and at lunch you decide to sit with some people who look friendly and might not be mean to a new kid. Before you get very far in talking with them, they start having this inane conversation about Choco Coronets. “Who are these strange girls,” you think, as you head home. But the next day you are back in school with them and meeting some of their friends. You learn that two of them are shrine maidens, that one is an otaku and that one is very brainy and scared of eye drops. As the days go by, you get to know them and their individual quirks even better. Soon, you develop a great affection for them and even eagerly anticipate hanging out with them. To outsiders, they might appear frivolous and unfunny, but to you they are familiar companions whose antics make the long school days pass by that much faster.

The scenario I’ve sketched out above may be familiar to many of you. Humans are complicated beings capable of amazing things, but often their day-to-day behaviors fit into fairly simple patterns that can come to be easily anticipated. A show like Lucky Star replicates this approach, plunging the viewer, like a new kid in school, into this group of friends. You may not fully appreciate them at first, but gradually you learn their ways and can find them more satisfyingly amusing than a bunch of quick LOL gags could ever be. Therein lies the greatest strength of Lucky Star. Like many another anime series in different genres, Lucky Star takes time for a viewer to get into its groove. And how, in some ways, is it more realistic than Azumanga Daioh? For one thing, despite its often zany moments, it does not depart from reality quite as much and is often less heavy-handed in its use of its characters. But it has been a while since I watched Azumanga Daioh and I did enjoy that series on its own terms for its uniquely surreal qualities.

This is pretty surreal though, in an otaku-fantasy sort of way…

Much of what Owen addresses, though, is a particular problem of non-Japanese fans. Japanese otaku would already have been familiar with the characters of Lucky Star from reading the 4-Koma manga in Comptiq magazine. This would remove all of the obstacles of false preconceptions. Even a magazine featuring Konata with Haruhi on the cover would not cause problems, because fans would know the nature of Lucky Star in advance and realize that it simply would not be like Haruhi. On the other hand, Azumanga Daioh also began as a comic strip in the same format as Lucky Star (a point Owen does not mention when he breaks down the subtext of the statement: “Lucky Star is like Azumanga Daioh. Therefore, it fails, as it isn’t as funny“). If we assume that Azumanga Daioh was a successful adaptation of a manga format that emphasizes a quick succession of LOL punchlines and which is therefore especially difficult to transform into an anime, it is not entirely unreasonable to expect another adaptation to follow a similar route. This is of course assuming that the source material is intended to produce a consistent LOL reaction or that Azumanga was, in fact, artistically as good an adaptation as could have been, which is by no means certain.