Forum - View topicREVIEW: Lucky Star Blu-Ray
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Hellsoldier
 Posts: 761 Location: Porto,Portugal,Europe,Earth,Sol |
|
||
|
First, I'd like to praise the calm and pondered conversation between Actar and pluvia33. I actually enjoyed reading. And it's a good contrast to a lot of what I've seen in here.
Well, to be frank, I haven't watched Lucky Star, and I have respect for the reviewers on ANN, and follow Nick Creamer in particular.I strongly dissagre with several reviews, but some of my favorite anime I found it because of his reviews. People are different and so are their tastes. Now, I wonder if I'd actually like Lucky Star. Unlike many here, I really like Doki Doki School Hours, love Azumanga Daioh and absolutely adore Nichijou. I haven't watch Haruhi (yet), but I think I'm well-versed in the Otaku world. So, I wonder... |
|||
|
|||
BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
|
||
Lucky Star is similar to Azumanga Daioh in that, if at any point during the first fifteen minutes you feel the urge to scream "shut up!" to any of the characters, then the show simply isn't your thing. A lot of the show's appeal hinges on the feeling that you're just sitting around, hanging out with the main cast, and that can be seriously undercut if you find any of them irritating. It can't hurt to give it a try and see what you think. |
|||
|
|||
Ji-L87
 Posts: 30 Location: SE, STHLM area |
|
||
|
The upscaling and jaggies are painfully obvious, but in this case I will take what I can get as I totally missed out on the original DVD release. If anything, these craptastic amaray cases makes me way more annoyed, as it had started to fall apart on it's way to me, with a few of the discs loose inside and small plastic pieces. But I digress...
It would seem that that most of what I wanted to say have already been brought up and formulated better. My personal take on it would perhaps be that Lucky Star feels like one of the few anime of this type I truly can relate to. I had just gotten into anime just some odd two or three years before Haruhi came along and blew every one's door off and turned into this giant thing. I remember being swept away along with seemingly everyone else. I am not sure I have ever felt as "into" anime as during this time. I started reading blogs. I started to learn the names of some studios and actors. I jumped at the opportunity to learn a bit of Japanese. In short, it just felt like I was able to really get deep into this hobby and it seemed like exciting times for everyone. For a short period of time I also took a ride on the whole "moe" bandwagon, further cementing my feeling of totally being into this anime thing. I was in high school when Haruhi appeared on the scene and just entering university as Lucky Star came along. Things like cramming before a test and spending what little money I had on anime and games were very much my reality at that time. I don't think that Lucky Star was ever supposed to be this roller coaster of jokes and laughs, but there are certainly moments where I was cracking up a bit. But most of the time, it's just a pleasant place to be. I don't really mind the "slow", if you will, pacing of the first episodes so much. I think they do a decent job of leading you into the world and mindset without being obnoxious until it then starts to ever so softly accelerate into a slightly more brisk pace. On another note, I was and still am very fond the audiovisual aspects of Lucky Star, so even a slow or drawn-out sequence is still enjoyable for me. It's a far cry from the detailed tapestry and exciting animation that Haruhi was brimming with, but there's little to no off-key drawings, the voice work is spectacularly fitting (and they do have quite a bit of fun with it), the music is on point and the water color backgrounds marries very well with the more simplified drawing style. It also so happens to be a drawing style I quite still like and I would like to make the case that it has aged better than many cute girl shows from around it's time. I would even be willing to go so far as to say that it looks good, even today. Maybe especially compared to a lot of todays offerings, as far as drawing style and visual consistency goes. With all that said, I can accept not everyone liking it as much as I did. But it was and remains an important anime to me which I am stoked to finally be able to actually own. 
Sincere apologies for this wall of text m(_ _)m |
|||
|
|||
Joe Carpenter
 Posts: 503 |
|
||
|
Wow, this review was way harsher than I was expecting, Lucky Star is by no means a great show but it's a charming, amusing little series.
I think of it as a "hang out" series, it's not a gut busting comedy but I like these cute characters and I like spending time with them. |
|||
|
|||
Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
|
||
I think that any show can benefit from a Blu-ray release if only so that the video can be progressive - either by getting it from a master that wasn't interlaced in the first place or by deinterlacing it with professional tools that are going to do the best job at removing all of the nasty lines and artifacting that comes with interlacing (whereas different players will result in differing levels of quality when deinterlacing). Actually upscaling seems kind of pointless though, since the player should do that just fine - but everyone expects 1080 on Blu-ray, so that's what they do whether it makes sense or not. 
Unfortunately, they didn't deinterlace the video for Lucky Star when they put it on Blu-ray, which makes it kind of pointless. You do get a better audio codec out of the deal, but depending on what they used to generate the audio, the sound itself may not be any better than what was on the DVDs. So, while Funimation could have released a Blu-ray that had higher quality than the DVDS (even if it was just by removing the interlacing properly), they didn't. So, sadly, if you already own the DVDs, there probably isn't any point in buying the Blu-rays. If you don't already own them, then you'll at least get both the DVDs and the Blu-rays with Funimation's release and can decide which works better for you - though I doubt that it makes much difference given that they left the interlacing in on the Blu-rays. I haven't actually looked at their DVDs though, and it's been a long time since I watched Bandai's DVDs, so I don't know how well they ultimately compare - just that they clearly dropped the ball with the interlacing. Still, Funimation's Blu-ray treatment of Lucky Star is a disappointment. IMHO, no Blu-ray should ever have interlacing. Not only is it horrible for video quality, but no HD displays are going to be interlaced, since they aren't CRTs, so it makes no sense to be creating interlaced video for HD displays. |
|||
|
|||
|
Joachim005
Posts: 5 |
|
||
|
The "Lucky Star" gang used to feel like real friends to me as a teen, when pretty much everyone I knew didn't care one bit about Anime and would only get confused when I referenced something. It had a bunch of jokes that required you to be familiar with most Anime series running at the time and even referenced these weird Anime series most people outside of Japan had never heard about. Konata especially stuck with me, who I still consider my number one favorite Anime character to this day. I relate to her on so many levels, being the only person interested in Anime in my (small) group of friends at middle/high school and being a hardcore Otaku. Not to mention that Haruhi and Keroro Gunsou was (and is still!) some of my favorite shows, and they referenced them probably way too many times, which made the entire Anime feel like a crossover between my favorite shows.
I can see why some people would say this show is dated when 70% of the jokes consists of references to old Anime, but it's still rather popular among newcomers to the medium. The chemistry between the characters is really good, and pretty much all of them is memorable in some way or another. If it wasn't obvious, I strongly disagree with the D |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group