Lucky Star Vol. 3 Review

            In the next four episodes of this series, tests are looming for the girls and study habits are hard to find among Konata and Tsukasa. Meanwhile, Tsukasa learns how to text much to the annoyance of her sister. In the next series of events, Tsukasa and Kagami are spending the night at Konata’s house showing a new side to her family for everyone to see.

In the second half of the volume, it’s time to celebrate the holidays with a Christmas and New Year’s episode. The Christmas episode is very low key though with visits from Cousin Yui while New Year’s brings Comiket and visits to the shrine and New Year’s allowances.

            Meanwhile in the Lucky Channel segments, Akira’s abuses of Minoru are getting much more blatant but Minoru is standing up for himself with a speech about reclaiming the word ‘Tsundere’ and Akira gets her first appearance in the series.

Good and the Bad

            Throughout the series, the characters in this series have remained in fairly static roles with no real deviance. While this volume of episodes doesn’t change that, these roles will become highlighted in great detail. Konata’s development as an otaku is absolutely ridiculous to watch and I’m using that as a compliment. The sequence revolving around a night in Konata’s house is also one of the most revealing of the series thus far. The family life that is presented here is again something that will have audience laughing out loud but in an almost uncomfortable way. Yuki continues to get dialogue that lets her get away with so much. The complete innocence of her statements when she talks about running away from the dentist almost makes it sound not insane.

            Heavily present in these episodes though are a wealth of cultural jokes that once again stand to lose a large section of the audience. From episode nine to twelve jokes will include topics such as blood type personality, sushi personality test, cake buffet, using the sama honorific and much more. What’s fortunate is that if you get the jokes to begin with, these sequences are absolutely hilarious. If you are constantly pausing afterwards to read the liner notes in order to find out why a particular scene was funny, it can become tedious.

Music

            As with previous volumes, the music on this volume really faded into the background. While occasionally a simple theme would play such as during Konata’s anime rants, it’s rare for anything in the background here to stand out. There is one sequence in episode eleven however that did stand out as a very nice piece. During Kuroi’s slow, depressing walk down the hallway a very nice piano theme plays. It’s rare for this series to allow anyone to really feel bad for a character but the audience can’t help but feel for Kuroi here.

Dub vs. Sub

            Once again, Alex Von David does a very decent job with the ADR script and translation. For the most part, the dialogue always came across well. Most of the jokes were translated over well though one in particular seemed very out of place. In the first half of the volume, there is a line translated as ‘Damn you Kona-chan!’ To hear Tsukasa curse really felt weird as the character is really presented as someone who wouldn’t curse.

Extras

            In the next two adventures of Minoru Shiraishi, the crew visits Hokkaido to film more ending sequences. In this case though, Shiraishi will be filming with two of the voice actresses and singing songs that he wrote himself. Many of which have never been heard by the crew before. The sequences are fun and entertaining to watch at least once.  

Overall

            Lucky Star continues to earn its reputation for stellar comedy. The silly in jokes that only a small handful of audience members give this series a good replay value as you’re always going to find something new that you either didn’t notice before or didn’t get before. While casual anime fans will be lost in the tall grass with this series, otaku have their new comedy.