The Salty Anime Challenge Day 16: Least Favorite OP or ED

This one will probably earn me some enemies, but here we go.

You know what I randomly remembered while I was making this entry? ‘Oh yeah, I hate Lucky Star.’

This is also a great example of me forgetting something that is more deserving of a ‘least favorite’ spot because I’ll randomly remember something more deserving after I’ve posted it.

I made a rough draft list many many years ago about ideas for a ‘Top Ten Worst Anime Themes’ so I thought I’d dig it up for this, and lo and behold Lucky Star’s OP was on there.

But let’s get to that later. What I was mentioning before was the ‘A Popular and/or Hyped Anime that You Didn’t Care For’ category. I chose Kill La Kill for that while completely forgetting about Lucky Star.

I hate Lucky Star. And even I find it ridiculous how much I hate it because I have never watched more than two episodes.

Here’s the deal – I watched the first episode three times, each about one to two years apart. I repeatedly tried to like this show because I kept feeling like I was missing something.

I can’t emphasize enough how massive this show was when it first came out. It was friggin’ everywhere. People ate it up. It was being referenced everywhere, people were constantly making parodies and AMVs about it, talking about it in every anime-related forum thread. When I finally gave it a chance….I didn’t get it.

It was a horrifically boring half hour of inane dribble. Constantly talking about various ways to eat different foods and shooting the shit about stuff so boring that, despite watching it three times, I’d be hardpressed to remember it. It was so…..mind-numbingly…..boring.

I’m no stranger to SOL shows – I know there’s a good chunk of random conversations, but there’s no joke. It was just…..’lol this conversation is funny because…quirky?’ How do you eat ice cream? I don’t care. How do you eat popsicles? I don’t care. How do eat choco-coronets? I. Don’t. Care! When do you eat the strawberry on a strawberry shortca-SHUT UP.

From what I’ve read, it doesn’t get anymore interesting in the ‘passing conversation’ department either. They just talk about stuff in the most boring, brain-rottingly way possible.

“I like anime and talk about it.” That’s great, I do too. Are you going to say anything substantial or funny about it or is your shtick that you love anime?….Thought so.

“I like MMOs and talk about them.” That’s great, I do too. Are you going to say anything substantial or funny about it or is your shtick that you love MMOs?….Thought so.

I couldn’t even get a lock on if it was worth it to keep going. Some people said it sucks for the first half of the series, then gets better – and just as many people said it was the opposite. I think after the last time I watched the first episode, I decided to choose a random later episode to peek at just to see if it does get better. Admittedly, there are more actual attempts at jokes and comedy….but so much of it is just referential humor. It’s the Family Guy or Big Bang Theory of anime…only add about 500% more inane boring drivel.

But no, it’s not that. As I was writing this, I thought more of referential comedy anime that are popular in the west and I came to the realization that, in my opinion, a lot of people don’t find these jokes particularly funny – they make them feel special because they understand the jokes.

Yo dawg, I heard you liked references, so I referenced a scene that references references in response to a reference and then captioned it in meme-style because memes are like references but worse.

“I’m such a geek that I totally got what they were referencing. If you don’t find the joke funny, it’s because you didn’t get the reference.”

That last line is something I saw pop up in so many positive reviews of Lucky Star. It’s like it’s saying any negative review of the show is invalid because ‘Well, if you don’t like it, it’s just because you don’t get the references. You’re not a big enough anime geek to truly get the genius of Lucky Star.”

I get the references, I don’t get the ‘jokes’. They’re references for the sake of references. Take a look at the TV Tropes page for Lucky Star’s references.

A good chunk of the references aren’t even obscure things geeks would pride themselves on knowing. If I can hipster for a minute, a majority of the references are very mainstream shows. Sgt. Frog, Fate/Stay Night, Full Metal Panic!, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Yugioh and even popular stuff in the west like Street Fighter, Saw and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Most people who even just dabble in the world of anime would at least be aware of these things enough to get the references.

Or is that the point? This stuff is so well-known that many people would get the references in the west too, but anime still not being really ‘mainstream’ at the time, they think they’re geeky because they understand it?

Maybe that’s a cynical view. Maybe I really don’t understand whatever I’m supposed to understand. Maybe I’m just a bad anime geek. I don’t know.

Just recently I was rewatching some episodes of Teen Titans and they had a more obscure anime reference – in Stranded, Beast Boy, in an attempt to reassemble Cyborg, turns him into Giant Robo and then he dresses up as Daisaku and they fly away. And that reference actually had a point because it was a part of a montage of jokes as Beast Boy screws up his assembly.

Then we have the art, which is simultaneously ugly and so overly cute I can feel myself getting diabetes. The characters are all 16-18 years old…..Bull. Shit.

They look like they’re ten, max. The super ultra kawaii desu art makes them look insanely young, and I gotta say, that makes it a little creepy to me. It, in no way, helps that the colors are overly bright pastels with an OP that practically makes you go blind.

Did someone just make a great segue? I think I just did.

The OP is very famous because it was one of the most parodied and overplayed things about the show. Not to mention I fault this OP for the endless string of OP’s with all the characters doing some stupid dance to their theme song. I know some shows did it before them, but I fault them for popularizing it.

Lucky Star’s OP is like Alvin and the Chipmunks learned Japanese, took a lot of meth, suffered brain damage and sang a song written by a three year old. I feel like my teeth are being put into a blender whenever I hear it.

Not only that, but they’re evil enough to have some sections, like the one at .46, where they intentionally do that insanely annoying skipping effect to the audio. At the very least the song is an earworm, but it’s an earworm with razor sharp teeth and acid saliva.

Runner-up: Colorful (The Series) was going to win this before I was reminded of Lucky Star. I’d link to that OP too, but we have a benevolent God and I can’t find just the OP online. You’ve been spared.

Objectively, Colorful’s song is worse mostly because it’s an incoherent mess of noise. It’s like a drunk woman scream-talking a Japanese rap song at a karaoke bar and then jamming an ice pick into your eardrum. However, subjectively, I hate Lucky Star’s more on every level.

Advertisement