If ever there was a need to reiterate it: successful comedy hinges on the delivery. Seitokai Yakuindomo somehow doesn't understand this and after cramming joke after staid joke into an episode, it still comes across as bland and uninspired. All the constituent parts are there: the all-girls school recently turned co-ed, the straight-man protagonist, the overcompensating short girl; but none of them gel together. The first three episodes never break that threshold that turns a smirk into a laugh into a guffaw. Instead, predictability and tedium set in and what could have been a sterling comedy, pregnant with possibilities, falls flat and doesn't find the spark to differentiate it.
pixelated shots of sex toys and genitalia during the opening demonstrate the tawdriness the jokes aim for
Takatoshi joined Ousai Academy because it was close to his house. It is no ordinary school however, up until recently it was an all-girls school meaning the ratio of females to males is high and though Takatoshi didn't join to build a harem, other male students certainly have. On his first day he is accosted by the student council president, Shino, and forced to join the council as vice president and representative for the male student body. As well as the filthy mind of the president, he is joined by the ultra-rich Aria and the genius trapped in a child's body, Suzu in his daily duties involving an inordinate amount of paperwork as well as loafing around the council room during breaks.
That is the smell of familiarity; tried-and-tested, often copied but rarely bettered, it's the smell of all-girl school comedy. Treading in the territory of giants such as Azumanga Daioh and recently Lucky Star, Minami-ke has had the bar set very highly for it. Whether you enjoy the slice-of-life monotony or the genuine, sometimes slapstick humour, the series has a lot going for it. However its real test will certainly be whether it can maintain such a standard throughout its run.
the boisterous and unfortunately less than intelligent Kana whose antics oscillate between charming and tiresome
Attempting to mix-up the formula somewhat, Minami-ke not only introduces a select number of male characters (currently only one) but breaks up the ordinary three sister group dynamic into home and school life, the latter of which is split across three different age ranges and subsequently three different schools. This is a superb move as it highlights one of the primary sources of humour for the series: age difference. In the first three episodes alone there are numerous times when Chiaki, the youngest, innocently asks about a topic ("weird activities" being the most prolific) while Kana, the hyperactive middle child, blithely continues rambling and Haruka, the eldest, is left to blush and to try and change the topic. It's not a great change from the otaku-tinged chattering of Lucky Star or the off-the-wall dialogues in Azumanga but it works by at once being age-specific while highlighting that there isn't any fundamental difference in what the different groups talk about.
It's hard to describe Lucky Star without using words such as "meta" or "proto", or comparing it to similar all-female high-school comedies such as Azumanga Daioh or School Rumble or perhaps drifting into expletives about the circular Suzumiya Haruhi references by Kyoto Animation. The concept to take away from Lucky Star is that it is relevant to compare it to all of these things, and brutally unfair.
some of the late-to-the-party characters seem ignored compared to the tried and tested Kagami x Konata tiffs
Lucky Star shines because it manages to not so much parody but lampoon modern otaku and anime by, paradoxically, being a fan pandering anime itself. The first episode was divisive in that many wrote off the long soliloquies as boring or blatantly obvious as to their purpose, this weaned off the Haruhi refugees like a brick wall. In retrospect the meandering script changed little in delivery or tone from the last episode to the first episode, unlike the aesthetics which, while universally well animated, showed how much the animators settled in to drawing the characters. The first episode did brilliantly in laying down the foundation of the rest of the series, characters were expanded upon and new ones introduced, but the humour and pacing remained.
