AWTY 173 - Cute Girls. (Lucky Star)

I had no idea those were your pajamas. Oh, yeah, they're my jammies. I think they're adorable. Why, they don't even look like pajamas. You think so?

Yes.

Do you think it's okay if I wear them all day? I think you could even go outside in them. I wonder.

Hello, and welcome to our week there yet in exploration and education in anime. I'm your anime idiot, patrick dugan.

I am an anime expert, D hollander.

And I'm brenda mccullough, your anime. Oh, what's that? We got a breaking news bulletin, but.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, everyone for joining me today for this press conference.

Oh, boy.

It's very important that you are all here, and I really appreciate to be surrounded by my community in this great moment of achievement. I would like to read my prepared statement.

Oh, wow. Let me get out my notepad. Hold on.

Russell, Russell, Russell.

Murmur, murmur.

My dearest anime idiots.

That's okay.

Thank you for your support after all of these years. I would like to announce that as of this past Tuesday at approximately 08:00 a.m., I became completely caught up with the dub of Ranking of Kings.

That's the crowd going wild.

It's wallow. We do. We get paid.

Wow.

Completely written down.

Statement.

Hold for applause.

We plan this out.

This, I will say, the most up to date on an anime I have ever been. After years of having an anime podcast, a monumental achievement for me, a day I'm sure the listeners never thought would.

Happen, we lost hope at this point.

It's 173 episodes, but we got there. Yeah, we did.

It like a dragon ball. I was just charging up for the first 172 episodes. Now I finally have the strength to watch a complete anime series. You're up to date up on the dub?

Yeah, which is like four episodes behind the sub.

That's better than I did. I was really enjoying it, but Paul and I watched until episode like five or six, and we just haven't gotten back to it. But we really love it. So that's pretty DUGAN'S past us.

Pretty promising about the rest of that show then. If DUGAN'S able to stick with it. Yes.

I channeled my bogie perseverance and just kept powering through. I never gave up. I'll say I lost faith. No spoiling.

Caught up.

My faith was shaken several times.

It keeps you on your toes. There's always a twist somewhere in that show to no one's surprised. I've also kept up with a show we previously watched based on d's recommendation. I kept watching Future Diary, and boy, howdy is it just the opposite end of the spectrum of breaking.

It so bad.

It is the trashiest of trash. It is good.

I finished that, like, the week after we watched it for the podcast that shows my taste. I did not keep watching Ranking of Kings, but I could finish Future diarrhea a week.

It's very telling them it sucks.

Don't watch it?

Do you watch it's? Like, you got to keep watching this shit. It's awful. I was like, I'll get to it someday. I'm not emotionally strong enough right now. I wish I never was emotionally strong enough. Good God.

I love the justification of, oh, my God. You have to keep watching this. So when you get to the end, we can come to the conclusion that no one should watch that.

I respect everyone's opinion. Everyone's entitled to have their own idea and subjective choice on what media is and what they enjoy. If you come up to me and say, I enjoy Future diaries, genuinely, I will punch you in your reproductive organs. I will not tolerate that opinion in front in my space. It's just bad. But it stars a line bad. It's like comedically bad.

I just watched a three part, six hour series of a guy on YouTube recapping all of Pretty Little liars, so I can take about anything at this point.

You're immortal now. Nothing can harm me. Oh, boy. If this intro is about nothing, here's a reason.

Yeah. What do we have going on this week?

This week we're watching Lucky Star, which is a slice of life. The first slice of life anime I watched in, like, 7th grade. So here we go, baby.

Let's see how this holds up.

Yeah, it sounded like last week that this is kind of like a definitive title in the genre of cute Girls Do Nothing shows, I would say so, yeah. This is something that I have, like, heard of just through the title alone. But Brendan, is this something that you watched or were familiar with?

I think of similar boat with you. I'm familiar with it enough just because of the reputation. Not reputation that makes it sound sinister. But yeah, just like it's pretty I don't know if it's pretty well known because it's good or if it's because it's the first thing that tried to do this, or it's just the first one that caught on, or I don't know why, but it is pretty well known. And yeah, I've heard it's just like these four girls, like, kind of hanging out. Honestly, my most context for this is the out of Touch Thursday Twitter account where it just plays a clip of the opening, but with the song out of Touch by was it Holland oats. So that's my context, which isn't good.

Yeah. Which I sent to our discord last week and said, this might as well be from the show because it doesn't matter.

So many expectations.

I mean, if you want to be head empty, this is it.

I was just going to say I'm ready to go smooth brain, but I may have an actual thing to contribute to this.

I was going to say I've been pretty goddamn smooth brain with Future Diary because it requires no cognitive abilities whatsoever to watch that garbage.

This is a different genre of head empty.

I think this will be head empty, but I won't be mad at the end of it.

Yeah, hopefully.

Only time will tell. Well, let's fill those heads real quick. We're watching episodes 112 and 16.

Yeah.

Hopping around.

No thought. Not a single thought.

Do you hear that?

I've ever been had.

Nothing.

Don't your ears don't deceive you? It's nothing.

It's absolutely, truly nothing.

Can we put in the seinfeld baseline?

No, we'll get claimed for that.

Paul and I have been watching seinfeld, and after watching a lot of seinfeld and then watching this, the similarities are striking. Crazy, honestly.

Hey, listeners, we got you. It's a twist. We're actually talking about three episodes of seinfeld. My choice was the contest episode because that's one where they all have to not jerk over.

Classic.

It's a classic one, seinfeld. It really is. Just like, hey, what if we made small talk but for 25 minutes?

Hell yeah.

That's the shift.

Makes really compelling podcast discuss that. So this is going to be a short, condensed version of what happened in the show because we we cannot just rehash their company.

Well, hey, why does audit scripts down.

Podcast by itself if we do that?

But what if hold on.

I wrote down all of the food items and how you can eat them. We are going to definitively find out the best ways to do that.

I wrote down too much of that conversation. So here we go.

Let's do this.

Lucky Star Episode One The opening is truly iconic. Classic 2007. We get a cute little dance and shit.

It's a lot more jarring than out of touch, I'll tell you that. It kind of hits harden.

So we start with some girls running in pe. One girl, kanata, is faster than the rest. Her friend Sukasa asks why she doesn't do sports. She says that she doesn't want to do sports because then she'd miss her anime. So that's konata. That's her whole deal.

That's it.

Later at lunch, konata asks Sukasa how she'd eat a chocolate cornette and which end is the head. As she's eating it, chocolate is coming out of the bottom. She keeps stopping to lick it. Their smart friend miyuki comes up and she suggests taking the tip off and dipping it in the chocolate. They go on to discuss how they eat cream puffs, strawberry shortcake popsicles, soft serve ice cream, curry and rice, how they like their eggs. They talk about chicken skewers and they go into heavy detail. And I could I've seen this episode I don't know how many times.

This sequence is six minutes. I checked after because I was like, surely they aren't still talking about this, right? No, it's six minutes of the 22 minutes. This is almost a third of the episode.

Like, what's so great about this compared to, like, azumanga dio is that this isn't, like, funny.

There's no bit, it's just happening.

Yeah, the bit is they get to the end. And then they're like, oh, we were talking about this other food dead up.

We got distracted talking about something else while we started talking about something else.

Exactly.

Very natural. Very real. Yeah, very not interested.

If you were missing that social interaction of being in an office with people you barely can tolerate. Here's your fill.

Exactly. I do think it's funny when Sukasa is talking about how she puts mayonnaise on everything and she was talking about, like, oh, I call it a relative bowl because it's got chicken and eggs. And then they put mayonnaise on it and it's like, that sounds that's fucked up. That's gross, honey.

She's like, the chicken is the mom is the parent, the egg is the baby. And then the mayonnaise has egg in it. So it's like, the relative I'm like, that's fucked. That's a fucked old way to look at it.

She even puts mayonnaise on natto, which is a fermented soybean dish that a lot of people don't like. So that sounds gross. Anyway, they also talk about beef tongue with green onions.

We could spend six I think we have spent six minutes talking about the sequence.

Moving on, sukasa and konata are joined by Sukasa's twin sister, kagami. And they're walking home discussing some men kidnapping women. konata blames erotic games, and kagami yells at her. What the there you go.

The segway here just christ.

They're looking at some test results. miyuki gets good grades. konata asks her if she has any flaws, and she's like, oh, I'm clumsy. And konata is like, no, you're just moe. And it's like, oh, this show is pretty meta when it comes to konata knowing, like, anime tropes and also cosplaying other characters, which we'll get to, but it's pretty silly. I think it's silly. It's an anime for the anime lover. So they ask her why she doesn't wear contacts. She says she's afraid of putting anything in her eyes. I find that relatable.

Yeah. Got a lazy eye. That contact shoots back into my brain.

Later, kagami stays home from school because she's sick. And then konata says she's stupid so she doesn't have to get worried about getting sick. Which sounds very funny. It must be some kind of thing, like a rumor in Japan or something, because I've never heard that, that if you're stupid, you can't get the cold.

I think it's like if your brain is overactive. So people who are very anxious or think too much get the cold. But I think it's tied to stress lowering your immune system you get. So I think that's kind of like the folklore of it.

That makes sense. And then later in the day, kanata laments Sukasa not denying it when she calls herself stupid. After school, konata visits Kogamy. kogami is classic Tsunari. She's all flattered that konata came to visit, but she was really just there to copy her homework. So she yells at her to leave. And then we see. In contrast, miyuki comes to visit on another day, and she brings her student council notes and fruit. And then, let's see. Sukasa comes in while miuki is visiting, and she's all sleepy and embarrassed to see that miyuki is there. They discuss the weather and her pajamas. This is nothing. And they just own it.

Have you ever wanted to be trapped in an elevator with someone for an hour and a half? That's the show.

We are so much so the character listening in on this is like, all right, just say a joke.

Say a joke with the punchline. Get to the point.

The pilot episode, we're out of things to say. Come on.

They're establishing it. They're like, this is it.

Lowering your expectations immediately for the next 25 episodes?

Too many episodes, we get a segment of all of them leaving the nurse's office. And, like cogamy is concerned about her weight. Sukasa is embarrassed about the undies she wore. kanata is still short. kogami goes to their class to eat lunch, and kanata asks her if she has any other friends. And she's like, you're the one who should work on your social skills. And she's like, I have plenty of friends online. Yeah, that's just her thing. Anime and gaming.

Anime and gaming?

Yeah. Kalgami asks how Sukasa and konata met. konata claims that she saved Sukasa from being kidnapped by a foreigner, when in reality, it was just a guy asking for directions. And then konata goes on to ask kagami the food questions from earlier in the show. It all comes back full circle. Cogamy asks konata if she has any other friends in real life. She says they used to, but haven't talked in a while. And that's pretty much it. We get this weird segment at the end called Lucky Channel. It's nothing. There's just, like, two posts that say stupid stuff. I think akira is a pretty funny character because she's like a peppy idol. And then they get a letter about how much money she makes, and she immediately drops character and is like, My life fucking sucks, and my leach of.

Parents draining my checks.

Yep. Yeah. And then, like, the credit sequence is we hear the four girls doing karaoke, and that's it.

You don't see it.

You don't see it. You just hear them having conversations and singing. And that's episode one of locky Star.

What do you see? It's just the door to the karaoke room with the credits scrolling over it. When they were animating the show, they said, what do we do for the credit sequence? And the truth?

We ran out of money at time.

We'll find something all right, real quick, because God knows we'll have time to kill. It seems like a common trope in anime to go and visit someone when they're sick, like in school. I get the idea of bringing them their homework, but it seems like they just come and visit and chill with the sick person, which I feel like you shouldn't do when someone's sick because then you get sick and just continue to spread it and it always baffles me.

Yeah, that's true. Good point.

Yeah, like you mentioned bringing homework, like, oh, I'll bring you soup, like she brings fruit and like, I'll get better soon. But then it's not like, hey, just dropping this off, goodbye. It's like, hey, invite me in. Let me be in the same room as you. Let me spend time with you. I don't want to see anyone. Oh, yes, please, my best friend, see me at my boogeryst.

Yeah, I understand. Of like, I'm sick at home alone all day and bored. And it's like, sure, some people need that social battery, but also, you're sick and I don't want to be cool. Also, this show is very jarring, once again, especially in contrast to Future Diary, because they say they're in 11th grade in this and they look like actual toddlers versus in Future Diary, where they look like fully grown adults and they're 14 and it's real jarring.

I forgot about that. They're in middle school in future diary.

So especially Konaza being like, oh, I'm in 11th grade. It's like, you are just so pocket sized. You were just the babiest. It's surprising. Okay, we're going to skip ahead like a dozen episodes and go to episode twelve here.

I made sure that nothing happens. Nothing happens.

Did you read all the stories? And you're like, oh, there's a hint of a plot. Can't have that here.

No, I just went to episode twelve and was like, if it makes sense, then it's fine.

So episode twelve starts off with kanada asking comes to miyuki and asks her if she wants to go to a New Year's festival with her. She's like, oh, well, yeah, I did that last year with some friends and stuff. Sorry I can't go. I got some family stuff to do, so I'm going to have to turn it down. kagami comes in, so I'm like, don't worry. It's just don't worry about turning her down. It's just konata trying to rope you into getting boop. hoop. hoop. Sorry. I'm stumbling of our boards and creating some sort of development, which is more than the show ever did. kagami comes in and says, like, don't worry about turning her down. konatz is trying to get you to come with her to a, quote, festival to help her out. It's actually just a con. It's just a convention.

Comicte is a real convention.

It is. I think we've seen it a few times. We've seen it in the weebly Office Worker Love Show.

Oh, yeah.

And a few others, I think. But yeah, she says, like, oh, don't worry about turning it down. It's not a real festival. It's a common convention, anime convention. And she tried to do this to me last year. It's like ah beans. She caught onto the ruse. Next scene, something completely different. kagami is at home making New Year's cards, and she's calling on people to send them out. She calls konata saying, like, hey, I was curious if you guys were accepting New Year's cards, because I know you took off a few days from school because you're in morning. She goes morning. Like, yeah, you you skip school for and kanata's like, yeah, morning. Right. Super sad. Someone died.

Classic. My grandma died.

Excuse me, 13 times. Got a lot of grandmas. And cami calls her out like, I can't believe you did that. You just use that to skip school and say, what do you you mean, can't believe? Of course I did that. I skipped school for an mmo. I stayed up till four in the morning playing City Heroes. There was an online wedding I had to attend. I was like, one of the groups for I won't get into it. I was 14.

Iconic.

And so she hangs up the phone. She's like, Canada's. Like, I'd love to stay and talk with you on the phone, but my whole family is cleaning the house, and I got to get back to like, okay, cool. I'll let you go. And it hangs up Canada's. Like, I was trying to pretend like I didn't want to, so that way she would try and keep me on so I didn't have to clean the house. And her dad pops all like, all right, done with the phone. Get back to work. New scene, entirely different. We see the sisters, Sukasa and kagami on the train with kanata. They're going to the con. They got roped into it anyway. And they're like, all right, Sukasa, we know you're frail. You get overwhelmed by stuff, so be careful. You're going to see a lot of nerds. It's a lot of nerds. Sure enough, they're on the train, and it's pretty empty. And then each stop, it gets fuller and fuller, and you see them panicking a little more because people are in, like, costumes or carrying big props, and just a lot of people crammed in there. And you're listening to an anime podcast. You've been to anime conventions. You know, this took me back. Yeah, it really did. Part of it was like, wistful nostalgia, because I haven't left my apartment in almost a month. And a lot of it was, boy, how do I don't miss that fucking place.

Remember how you were just guaranteed to get sick after every con?

Different times, and everybody jokes about it?

Like it was funny when people didn't die anyway. And when they get there, they're outside waiting in line to get inside. kanata turns around and goes, all right, here's your assignment. Here's your shopping list. Go to these booths. Buy me this stuff. Get ready. I got you a map. I outlined it with the red stuff. Usually sells out first in the morning. Green ones are usually good all day. They got plenty of stock. Don't worry about it. Take the red path, follow it around to be the quickest routes. If you get lost, you're going to be pushed up against the wall. You're going to be manhandled by the crowd. It's going to be a bad time. If you're lost, just go to the nurse station and wait for me there. And it's just like, very overwhelming. There's a lot of info at them real fast and kick off me. Why can't you be this passionate or smart about anything in life besides this? And we see them get inside. She also gives them just like a bottle of tea and cash. Like, wallets with cash already in it. Like, yeah, stay hydrated. I keep going. Cash is faster than credit cards and fumbling with your wallet. So go, go, go. We got to be efficient.

I like that. Even though konata is not like the best friend as we've seen, she's like, I'm not expecting you guys to pay for my stuff. Here is some money. And also I care about you guys, so here's a nice beverage to keep you peppy.

I could see the argument of being she's not caring for them. She's caring about them to get more of her stuff. It is nice to see like, she's not like, hey, if you buy me all this shit, I'll get you back. wink. Like, someday. Yeah. At least she has cash to give them, which is more than I've ever given my friends. It's mostly me explaining to my dad what anime is and why everyone was in costumes. I dragged my dad to a lot of conventions. And then we see Sukasa. Surprise, surprise. Gets easily overwhelmed and swept up by crowds and ends up in the west hall. And she asked someone for direction, like, oh, where's this booth? He's like, oh, you want to go upstairs? Go through here, wait in the line to get in here, show them your pass, get here. And it'll be about 4 hours before you can get back to the East Hall. She's like, what? And she just dies inside and say, Well, I'm done. I can't do this. And then we see kiyami walking around and looking for different stuff. And she finds one magazine for kanata that's a little saucy. And as she's walking by booth, she sees two muscular, shirtless guys draped over each other with a bunch of chains wrapped around it. It's yowie cons riddled with yowie. And she's looking through that a bit and the vendor is like, oh, you could take it if you want. It's like this much money? No, it's too much for me. It's overwhelming in the office. That's how my dad bought a copy of a post apocalyptic Charlie Brown comic book. It is bad.

Pounds are a magical place.

It's like pokemon you're going to walk out with.

Yeah, it's like pokemon. If you lock eyes with someone, you're locked in for the sales pitch. You got to can't make eye contact. And we see some vendors see ko NATO walking around. They're like it's her. Isn't there a rumor that if she reads something or buys something, it gets automatically super popular and you sell out instantly? Let's hope she looks at our stand and makes a good impression with her comic. Like oh, boy, oh, boy. And she comes over and they're like, hey, why don't you check this out? And she's like, all right, cool. Yeah, could do some work.

Bye, guys.

And we see them are just dejected and defeated. And then we see they see them regroup for lunch, and they're like, yeah, sorry we didn't get all the stuff on your list. He's like, yeah, I didn't expect you to. You're newbies first timers. It's a lot. We can just spend it the rest of the time chilling. And they're like, God, it's so much at this con. Like, there's so many people, and it's so chaotic. kanata's reminiscing. Like, if you think this is bad, you should have seen it twelve years ago. How old were you? What happened twelve years ago? Oh, I was two, and my dad took me to a convention.

She was five.

Five every year. What? It was.

Any better?

Dare you belittle her?

I'm sorry. She's just so little.

Yeah. If you showed me this character design and said, she's five now, I'd be like, yeah, okay.

Sounds good.

I've seen sweetness and lightning. This tracks. But kanata even talks about, like, back in the old con, it would be so condensed and so poorly ventilated. Everyone would be so rubbed up against each other, everyone's sweating. The sweat would get so hot, it would actually evaporate and create sweat clouds. And that's not a huge exaggerate. Like, it sucks. You're just so crammed in there, and everyone's just sweaty and touching. It's awful. And then while walking around, they see a nerd yelling at a stand vendor be like, Why? They made you're out of your limited edition, and I deserve this. You cannot to point out, like, yeah, some of those nerves are getting more and more entitled every year, and it sucks for the veterans who have common decency for other people.

And we see sorry, what year did this come out again?

2007.

Okay. Yeah. And that's where we reach the peak of entitle nerds.

Anyway. And we see one vendor at a booth who looks very gundam gy, very over the top, shown in protagonist, huge hair. He's even animated in a different style than everyone else. And he's yelling and screaming, saying, this one guy is coming to a stand asking for a limited edition. He doesn't have it, but he's a respectable vendor, and he's got to respect the customer and do his best to serve the customer well. And he paused him off to his coworker. His coworker's like, oh, we don't have that guy, but what if we have this other card to sell you. And they just go into this big, dramatic, jojo esque screaming sequence of just yelling of how the he deserves bettertery because he's their customer. And then they're talking about two other characters from I think they're from different shows. And it's just like, we don't have the thing you want. What about this other thing? And of course, the customer says, no, why would I want those other two things I want? The thing I want?

One is keon from hari suzanne. I don't know the other one, but I assume it's a real character.

Looks pretty gun to me. He's in, like, some sort of suit, like some sort of jumpsuit or something. And while they're arguing with that, the company president shows up and punches them both. And then he starts yelling at them, being like, hey, stop pawning our trash onto this customer. Just give him what he wants. And konata says, like, oh, yeah, that booth over there. It's always very dramatic. And that's it. We're done. That's all that had to do. None of the main characters were involved.

New quick, cut away.

Little tidbit, new scene. We're at the actual New Year's festival. Everyone's had a shrine on New Year's Eve, I think. And we see the sisters are there. They're shrine, so they're in the outfit and they're exhausted because they had to go to the con earlier. And they see konata. We're surprised you're out here. We thought you'd be tired. She's like, I'm used to it. I live in Breed Cons, which means she's very sickly all the time, as we've established. And then Sukasa asks what her sister was praying for earlier. She saw our sister praying very desperately. And kagami says, like, oh, I was praying that I would be in the same class as everybody. And Sukasa is like, oh, then I'll pray for you too. I'll try and help you out. konata says, like, no, you can't be in the same class as us. We have to be separated because it's easier to copy your homework when you're not in the same class outside of school. And then she asks kagami where her name came from, if it came from, like, kagami mochi. And kagami is like, oh, yeah, a little bit of that. But then mostly is named after a mirror because gods were believed to live in a mirror world. And the mirrors, she goes into the history of her name. I kind of checked that real fast here. And then while she's talking, konata just kind of, like, derails immediately until, like, I bet everyone's here to just scout out the shrine maidens. Like my dad. We find out here Konata's dad is a pervert.

He is gross and says gross things. But I feel like he could be worse. We've seen worse.

Could be worse is not a compliment. No, I'm not saying, yeah, just that fun.

Like, haha. It's a trope. He's a pervert. That's all we need to. Say, but that's a fun character choice for many shows. Okay, but not the dad of this guy who's going to be hanging around so many underage girls.

Yeah, we see Kanata talking to the sisters, and they're like, oh, hi, Kanata. Hi, Canada's. Dad. He's like, oh, hi. I didn't write it down because I didn't like to think about it. But he says something about, like, oh, there's so many schoolgirls here. It's like, yeah, that's real bad. Especially for her main character's father.

Put him in jail.

Gross. So the next day, we see konata at home. She's wishing her dad Happy New Year's. They're watching TV together, and she's very doting on her dad. I'll go, do you need this? Oh, I got a snack. Oh, here's a drink. Hey, you want to play the game together? Hey. And just kind of bugging him a lot, and eventually he's like, all right, here's your New Year's allowance. She's like, Why do you think I'm after? Let's see you buy that. And just darts off. So clearly, that's what she was going after. And we see. She calls kagami and says she plans on going to a game store later to spend her New Year's allowance. Got to spend it right away. kami says, like, oh, why don't you just buy the stuff online? I like, going to the store and being lost in there and just stumbling across new stuff randomly. It's fun. And she hangs up. And then kanata's dad, kanata asks, like, hey, dad, why do they call these allowance bags this name? I didn't write the name down. I can't get the character's names right. I'm not getting this name now. And he goes, oh, it's because the name of it in Japanese means, like, small, and, like, itty bitty, so it's meant for just your loose change. But now it's what we give newer's allowance in these little packets now. It's like okay, cool. And immediately picks up the phone that calls muki and says, hey, muki, why do they call these bags what they call them? And their dad's going on. His dad's like, I'm right here. Why are you fact checking right in front of me? Do you not trust me? It's like, yeah, now we don't.

My friend is the smartest person I know. She knows everything.

He cannot go upstairs and go on her computer to talk to her gamer friends online and wish them a happy New Year's. And I think one of her teachers is online, and she's like, that's why her teacher so sad and alone. This wasn't translated for me, so I don't really know what happens.

They literally just say Happy New Year to each other, and then she's like, oh, it's so sad she's online that she doesn't have a life. And I guess that's the joke, because that's what karatz is doing.

Yeah, she's also there. And then we get the lucky channel again. At the end of the episode, the idol is sick and mad that her assistant is putting more energy than her, and that's it.

Yay.

Okay, so apparently it took like twelve episodes, but we got an episode that kind of has a through line. So luckily episode 16, get rid of that format, get it out of episode one, just randomly stringing shit together. So I will say, Brendan, I have to give you credit. I was like, I'm not going to learn any of these characters names because Brendan is not going to either have the hair.

I do it out of spite. I memorize it to make you look worse. Perfect.

So I have none of the characters here, just hair colors.

But two of them have purple hair.

We have purple short, purple long.

Yeah, the sisters one was purple hair. One always had a bow to differentiate.

So I just called her Bow Fair.

Okay, so we start out blue hair. What was her name?

Kanata.

Cool.

I was like, I remember the K, but already it's gone.

I'm not the worst one now.

Oh, no, no one's good here.

It's all bad here.

Wait, I just had an epiphany. Is being caught up on shows the thing that prevents us from names?

You already have too much stuff in your brain.

Oh, no.

Can't contain the names.

Okay. Blue haired girl gets a new phone.

Cool.

Yeah, that's it.

Then she makes a joke like, yeah, I got a sick new ringtone, but I don't answer it because then I don't get to rock out to the song. But then it goes to voicemail. This is literally a zits comic strip I remember from high school. Throughout this recap, I'm like, yes, all of these are like comic strip level jokes. Just in this moment, I made the connection. No, this is literally one I remember from when I was reading comic strips, which was not after like, 10th grade. So there we are. So then we got all the girls in the classroom. This conversation goes a bunch of different places, so I will do my best to just condense it. Essentially, they're talking about how they're raised and how they act based on siblings and stuff. So they start out saying like, oh, you were just mad at us, but when you answered your phone, you immediately became chipper. How can you change your mood on a dime like that? Then Smart pink Hair Girl is like, oh yeah, I have that with my mom. Like, she answered the phone once and yelled at someone and immediately was chip.

Blah, blah, blah.

Way too convoluted. But they get into like pink Haired Girl is kind of the adult because her mom is kind of more like a big sister than an actual mother. So she ends up having to take care of her. Sometimes they get into like the selfishness of only children and how the purple haired sisters were like, fighting over food at the dinner table and like you can't get a word in because you got to eat before you say something or else your food's going to get stolen. They talk about forgetfulness of, like, microwaving a cup of tea, truly, just truly instances of, oh, yeah, I remember when I did something vaguely related to the thing you just said, but again, for like six minutes.

So it just keeps going.

So blue hair girl mentions. Oh, yeah, I work at a cosplay cafe. You should all visit me sometime. So they do. So they are going to go visit, but of course to pay admission. Blue Hair girls like, okay, cool. On the way there, stop at the Mongosaur and get my new series for me and just bring it to me at work. Cool, great. bye. And leaves, like, no specific directions. So when they go in there, they're like, we don't know what we're looking for. We can't find anything. Eventually they have to ask someone for what it is. And of course it's a dirty manga, so it's all pixelated.

It's actually not. The joke here is that she asked for the laloche manga and it's Code Guillass. But they keep censoring it, I guess probably because the studio doesn't own that one.

That's what I was thinking.

So again, it's like an anime joke for anime folks.

I was so confused because the last episode we're like, yeah, we're going to show that they're reading yowie and stuff. But then this one's pixelated. Okay, it was copyright censorship, rather like Ludity censorship.

Lalucia the rebellion. Also known as Code kia. We'll get there one day. We'll fucking get there.

So again, she gave them, like a hand drawn map. That sucks. So they're like, all right, we got to find it. They get there and she greets them in her full made cosplay costume and brings them into just this rinky dink back room with games and girls being waitresses. Very bare bones. You can tell the quality of this place immediately. So they overhear someone at a different table trying to order, and then the waitress is like, yeah, we're out of that. Yeah, we can't do that. No, that'll take too long. They're like, hey, this place sucks, right? They should be nice to you here. That's like the gimmick. Yeah, but then Blue Hair Girl comes over and starts helping them out, and she's also being mean to them. I'm like, is this like a dom cafe thing?

They're cosplaying characters from haruhi suzumiya. So Konasa is cosplaying hari Suzamia, so she's acting like haruhi and being a jerk. And it's also funny because wendy Lee plays both of them in the English dubs. So ha ha.

Yeah. I was like, oh, the voice.

And the other girl is Cosplaying yuki, the, like, alien robot, very monotone. And it is the girl that plays her in the dub. It's all insider jokes I thought maybe.

He'D pick up on. But sorry, I got to assume I.

Remember any anime after we stopped watching, but no, I feel like this is fair if we just sat someone in Japan down and was like, hey, here's an episode of Animals. I feel like we get the similar stuff. So totally fair.

I caught on with the voice actors. I was more confused by lucky start, actually having so much Susan mia stuff in it. Is it the same author or same.

I guess it came out around or after harihi suzumiya. So, like, hari suzumiya was at, like, its popularity peak.

Okay.

So having, you know, a character in a show that loves anime, she would love hari Suzamilla.

Yeah. I was confused because, like we said with Little lucia, the rebellionaire cogs they censored that and we're guessing because they didn't have the rights. So I was wondering how they had the right to that.

Yeah, it's probably the same company or whatever.

Yeah, same parent company or something.

Yeah, they probably have some rights, but not to all of it. But yeah, we'll keep going. They do a little idle dance. All the guys go crazy. Kind of just like, all right.

Can you hear?

The quality of the music is from, like, a shitty speaker. So, yeah, they introduce another waitress who's an exchange student going to be at their school. Don't worry, we'll never hear from her again.

Patricia Martin it's the only thing on the bingo card is transfer student. That's the only thing in this high school anime on our predominantly high school anime bingo card.

Incredible. So, yeah, we're back at school. There's another health screening. We get introduced to some new characters that I assume are introduced in the previous 15, but they're just classmates. But we see a short girl. Ask blue Hair Girl like, hey, you're short, too, but taller than me. how'd you get less short? When can I expect it? She's like, don't.

Why are you asking me? I'm still short.

Yeah, then at this point, we just go from, like, punchline to punch line. So it just jumps around a bunch. So blue Hair Girl goes to the manga shop and we see the two vendors from the con episode that are working in the store. And they're like, There she is, our best customer. Don't approach her yet. We have a special sale. Once she gets involved with something, that's when we can talk to her. We can't scare her, play it cool, be smooth.

Like, comic book vendors are all the time.

So she picks up manga, and as soon as they run in to be like, hey, did you hear about her deal? Hey, can we help you with anything? She gets a phone call, picks it up, and it's like, oh, you're outside?

Cool.

I'll meet you there. And leaves the store.

Oh, fuck.

She was just killing time before meeting a friend. She wasn't buying anything. Then it's golden week. They're all prepping for exams and having vacation time. So bohaired girl. They're studying for exams. They're helping another character who isn't motivated. That's about it. There's some situational jokes, but that's a summary of what happened. She helps someone who wants to study. Who doesn't want to study. Cool.

Yeah, that's the situation.

Yeah. Then where we see blue hair girl. They're watching, like, medical dramas at home with her dad. And they're like, all this stuff is so real. All these things could actually happen to us. mashin olivia dead. Her dad's like, I don't want to think about that again. Moving on, new scene. This next note I just wrote homework goose. But then we get another Lucky Channel segment. And they're doing karaoke because they're over budget, they can't do an actual concert. So the pop idol just gets drunker as they do karaoke. That's the episode.

That's the episode.

The last lucky channel. It goes for a while.

He skipped through it. This is it. If this is the whole thing, I will say another funny thing that made me laugh at the very end was the male Lucky Channel host. He must have the same voice actor for this character in Hardhee Suzamiya. They must have come out around the same time or something. But he goes in one of the episodes, he just does a stupid adlib where he just goes, f four full four, got my bag. And he did that in this. And I was like, what the fuck? And it sent me. So I think at this point, discussion. Lucky Star, 15 years after it came out, is an anime for anime fans. It's an anime for anime lovers.

And that's why I'm on the outside.

Not for Duke. They must have recorded this. Like, I'm not even going to say around this. I'm going to say, like, a day apart, like, from one studio and then walked out and then went to record the other show.

Yeah, probably.

Legally obligated. Are we there yet?

Yeah.

Oh, wow. Check that off for a yes. You said yes.

I'm in too deep. Yeah, truly, this is like comic strip level humor, which, when you stretch it out for an hour, is not excellent. Obviously, I'm not enough of an insider to get the deeper meta stuff. So, yeah, it just did not work.

For me because at the time, the references were relevant, and now it's like, oh, the references are for people who know it. Yeah. Old weebs. I had fun because it's nostalgic for me.

I could definitely see this, like, growing up and watching this and, like, latching onto it a, because especially if you've watched Anikasuzumia, you're like, oh, shit, it's the other show. And just that one little thing can carry so much because back in the days when this was airing, we didn't have options. You took what you got. I'm watching this because there's no other choice, and you just latch on and binge watch it for the entire series. So I can definitely see why people watch it and enjoy it and get nostalgic fondness for it, but yeah, watching it with kern eyes. No, I'm good.

I mean, the good news is that you've seen it all. It doesn't I don't think any other episode would be any different from these ones.

Perfect. Then I will never watch it again.

You don't have to. That's the joy.

That's it. My favorite part of the genre of, like, cute girls doing things, like laid back camp and further than place, further than the universe is cute girls doing things. This is girls just nothing. They're doing nothing.

It's nothing.

Cute girls, period.

That's it. This is the appeal of it.

It must be like, when it came out, people must have been like, oh, man, this is it.

Yeah, with, like, nietzsche cho and Azumanga dio. There's zaniness, there's punchlines, there's something, and I can latch onto those a bit more.

Azumanga dio came out before this, I think, like, years before. So it was truly like, wow, these girls are really doing nothing. Incredible.

Yeah. It was a nice palate cleanser, though, because at least for me, this intermingled with future tires. Oh, boy.

If there's a show you the listener would like us to watch, you can send your recommendations to us. Our email is arwibariat@gmail.com, or you can reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram at arwibariat on both. You can find I almost plug my stuff that I haven't done in a while.

You can find me on Instagram at honey. Period d or on Twitter at honey d eight and honey d art and honey is spelled H-U-N-N-I-E. You can listen.

To an old video game podcast I had called abts Brendan no. abts.

Here we go.

I made you too smooth, brained.

It latched in.

You can find me on Twitter. Mr. Patrick turgen.

No, that's not even true anymore. Thank you to camille ruley for our artwork. Thank you to Louisong for a theme song stories. You can find all of louie's music@louisongcamp.com. Thank you. And we hope you'll join us next week as we learn to live with anime. If I didn't do all that in one chunk, I would never be able to.

What's the deal with cat girls? No.