Really loved how this episode fleshed out the original 4koma MariMite parody - though, of course, I would have been even more chuffed if Konata had been surrounded with lilies instead of roses. And it was so well executed by Aya Hirano. While it did not have quite the same impact as hearing her real voice followed by ‘Dameshou Hamada-san’ I was still plenty impressed by how well she imitated Miki Itou’s performance as Sachiko.
This was just priceless. One of the themes in the manga is Kagami’s loneliness - which is compounded by her difficulty in making new friends. Misao (long black hair, fang) who was in the same middle school as her constantly tries to get closer to her but Kagami is often hostile to her. There’s two parallel strips centred on Kagami’s constant diet-battle, Misao pinches Kagami’s waist, Kagami freaks out, slaps her and Misao runs crying to Ayano. In the following strip, Konata does exactly the same thing and Misao expects the same to be meted out to Konata, instead Kagami just blushes, looks sidesways and verbally threatens to deck Konata who responds with ‘Barbaric!’, Misao runs crying to Ayano. It seems that, of the whole cast, Konata is the only one whom Kagami allows any kind of regular physical contact, even though it does un-nerve her from time to time as this episode repeatedly shows.
LOL at how parallels were drawn between the cicada and Konata. That’s really making the best use of the anime medium. Oh and one of the scary things about Lucky*Star is how many times I feel myself identifying with the foibles of the cast: I was sooo terrible at high school math and used to copy ALL of my homework from a friend from another class. So as not to arouse too much suspicion, I left some of the working solutions unfinished or added ‘careless’ mistakes. orz
Sooo funny how Kagami was delighted at Konata saying that she’s noticed the fruits of her dieting. She really should know better.
More Kagami being tsun tsun towards Konata directing a sarcastic comment in her direction and for being late. :3
Disastrous cooking-types are NOT moé despite what Konata thinks.
I’m actually with Tsukasa on having difficulty with new fangled mobile phones. orz
Love the different ringtones which say a lot about the personalities of the various girls. And LOL at Souichiro - the cruel fate of having a loli daughter.
Stripey sometimes asks me to lower my volume around the general public too. But in our glorious democratic people’s island paradise, all you usually have to do is smile back at the people staring and they will run away. Mwahahahaa!
Konata just handles Kagami so well… Ignoring her demands to have her email answered and then guilting her into taking the manga challenge.
Proving Konata right. Another magnificient fleshing out of a 4koma and linking it to the MariMite parody at the start.
…to the love hotel. I wish. LOL
Is Kagami actually disappointed that Konata was after her purchase points rather than only her company? ;)
The Strawberry Panic reference was good. Also liked Konata’s misery at not having cable. In this vein, one 4koma I’d love to see animated is the one where she screams about how she hates sports (because they mess up her anime schedule).
It’s not too hard to understand Kagami’s sense of loneliness, considering that she hangs out with:
- Miyuki: is nice to everyone anyway
- Tsukasa: is her sister
- Konata: is kinda weird
So when you think about it, Konata is the only one who actively goes out of the way to be Kagami’s friend. Kagami is stuck in the relationship!
Speaking of Konata, I liked the cicada scene too, especially how Konata not only drooled on herself but also drew a squiggly line from her book onto her desk.
I think it’s the first time we’re shown the mysterious father of Konata, and what a sight it was. So far we knew that he manipulated Konata into studying by promising her a PS2 (not PS3). Also, he knows how to tie sash. Little wonder that he wears… uhm, something. Anyone noticed the nose? He (and so Konata) must be from a samurai family. In the same time I’m not enough of a fan to remember his name, unlike Zyl.
Gradually, LS has won many detractors over. I’ve not read the 4koma at all but I really like the show more and more each week. Note that I liked ep 1 too.
Several things show that LS has changed a lot of people’s minds, after the initial bad reaction to it: the huge number of posts on 2channel (second place for this season, well above Gurren Laggen, well below Nanoha StrikerS), the large number of posts on AnimeSuki (closing in fast on Death Note, which had a six-month head start), and the OP reaching #3 on the charts when it was released this week. It did better than the SHnY ED, which only reached #5, and better than the KOTOKO OP for Hayate, which was released the same day.
I’ve liked the show from the start, but I, too, like it better with every passing week. In this case, familiarity breeds enjoyment. And I love Hirano Aya’s extreme vocalizations as Konata. Sucking up her drool after the desk-sleep was amazing.
Kagami really seems to be Issues Galore. I may be over-analyzing things, but I suspect that on top of just plain having a somewhat difficult personality (eg. a misanthropic perfectionist with quite a temper and a sharp tongue) she also suffers from a complicated inferiority complex. One gets the impression she’s comfortable with neither the way she actually *is* nor showing her real character and interests to most people, and instead tries to maintain a sort of idealized facade of the level-headed, calm and “normal good girl” she patently isn’t - and this masquerade seems to be rather stressful for her, not in the least because she isn’t very good at it.
The obsession with weight may well come from this problem too.
Being quite clever and rather ruthlessly perfectionistic she probably also realizes her issue, at least on a subconscious level - and is that much more angry with herself for not being able to deal with the matter in a sensible manner and accept herself as she is, which only compounds the self-dissatisfication problem…
This could be part of what draws her to Konata. While her family and Miyuki seem comfortable enough dealing with both the “mask” and the “truth”, Konata seems to much prefer the latter and is willing to expend some effort (and deal with Kagami’s reflexive defense mechanisms) getting under the facade which she’s also quite good at. In other words she largely ignores what Kagami pretends to want to be (ie. the “mask”) and instead seeks out what she deep down really wants to be (ie. the real, difficult personality) - and apparently rather likes what she finds.
Which is is likely rather important for Kagami, who somewhat schizophrenically both builds walls around herself and yearns for someone to climb over them so to speak.
For her part Konata, who seems to be more or less at ease with herself, probably finds Kagami’s complicated character intriguing if difficult to comprehend, and may well be trying (in her own way) to coax her troubled friend out of her fortress of introverted anger.
Timotei…..
Sorry just felt like saying that :)
Watchman impresses me. I will just echo what he wrote.
Cheers.
So Konata’s ringtone was Hare Hare Yukai, and Tsukasa’s ringtone was Pachelbel’s Canon in D. I don’t think I heard any of the other girls’ ringtones, but I half expect one of them to be the FMP Fumoffu theme, or maybe Air on G…
Kabitzin, based on the manga, it seems that Misao also tries hard and repeatedly to be friends with Kagami but she’s a difficult customer - the contrast shows Konata as someone who really knows how to handle Kagami. ;)
Pete, hopefully we’ll see more of Izumi-chi-chi. He is a significant supporting character in the manga - esp as a comedy duo with Konata and for receiving punishment from Miyuki’s mom for finding her daughter ‘moe’. LOL
tj_han, I’m just glad that more people are enjoying the show on its own merits instead of using it as a kind of proxy target to attack KyoAni and fans of previous KyoAni works.
hashihime, I think LS will also stand up well to rewatching. I went back to rewatch the first episode and there are so many nuances to the characters embedded in it that I completely missed first time round but have come to appreciate after getting to know them better with series progression.
Watchman, I really enjoyed your exposition. Many thanks! How do you (and everyone else) think the tensions that you’ve described in her character work with her dere dere (as distinct from good girl persona) which we saw with her goldfish and initial reaction to Konata’s sick visit? I think that she does want to be more like Tsukasa but feels a certain obligation to be Big Sis of the pair even though they are both the babies of the (all daughter) family.
KSamurai, …Timotei… TI-MO-TEIIII~~~ Gah, that jingle is still fresh in my mind after all these years. orz
DKellis, and Kagami’s phone was on silent mode… or as one of my (female) friends insists on calling it… vibrator mode. :3
This was one of the best episodes yet, glad to see it keeps improving. Konata definitely is the star of the show…though I don’t know if I should be concerned or not, used to think a lot like she does when I was in high school. I turned out ok somehow, so I guess it doesn’t matter!
Judging by the way Kagami seems to often flatly panic when even Konata gets “too close” I’m guessing she feels Misao’s well-meaning approaches to be vaguely invasive. One gets the impression she doesn’t actually really know how to deal with people outside family closer than at “businesslike” distances (she’s the class rep after all isn’t she ?), and becomes confused and frightened when someone tries.
She came to know Konata through Tsukasa didn’t she ? I would hazard a guess that’s part of it; the initial “connection” happening through an intermediary so to speak probably allowed for a gradual and controlled enough association that the panic reflex didn’t kick in. A sort of mutual “getting know the other” thing. Misao in contrast, by what has been mentioned here, seems to be trying to “connect” directly to Kagami in a proactive manner, which probably freaks out the latter because it registers as a sort of uninvited intrusion - too forward, as it were.
In other words Kagami seems to be socially timid and uncertain enough at the emotional level that she needs to be the one to initiate the relationship, and panics, lashes out, and retreats behind her barriers if someone else tries to approach her “without permission” so to speak.
Dang, I hope Misao turns up soon in the anime. It’d be interesting to know what she’s like and why she persistently keeps trying to “connect” to Kagami despite the rejections. I wonder if she’s the empathic type who’s caught on to Kagami’s difficult combination of active isolation and need for company and the stress this is causing her, and wants to help ? Sort of too kind a person to be able to leave Kagami alone with her problems, and too observant to be fooled by the off-putting defense reflex.
As for Kagami’s “dere dere” side, she seems to have a strong protective streak which usually manifests around her, uh, rather less awe-inspiring twin sister (I actually suspect part of why her standards for herself are too high is an attempt to sort of overcompensate for Tsukasa’s certain shortcomings - sort of trying to be competent and reliable enough for them both). And of course she may also just feel a need to care for small, cute things - most people and animals have that to a greater or lesser degree. Linked to looking after offspring at the core I understand.
Of course most everyone, even if they have Kagami-level issues, appreciates displays of kindness to themselves when undergoing calamity. In the “Konata sick visit” case there would also be the factor that she seems to be about the only person Kagami can really “relate” to, and thus rather important for her.
Bringing that up also sort of makes me wonder about Konata. It occasionally seems like she’s unable to turn off her “comedian” streak and for example openly admit to being worried about Kagami; that seems to be the only way she knows for interacting with people. Kagami seems to understand this at an intuitive level, but that doesn’t mean she always entirely appreciates the somewhat peculiar and awkward forms Konata’s concern manifests in… -_-;
Side note: is it just me, or does Akira-sama seem to be getting progressively more cracked ? ^_^
Akira-sama’s definitely about to lose it, this is the first time she hasn’t even bothered to do ‘ohai-rakiii!’ at the start…
Tsukasa is such a dead ringer for Kamigishi Akari it’s funny…I keep hoping they’ll find a way for Tsukasa to say “Hiroyuki-chan?” at least once. Although maybe it’s just that they have the same hairstyle and I’m watching the R1 To Heart DVDs…
Ashram, hopefully the show will continue to build up well enough so that the supporting cast meshes in well. As the OP shows, it’s quite a big cast and it even seems to joke about how Yutaka and Minami virtually take over the manga by Vol.4 and push the main four characters into the background. ^_-;;
Watchman, over-compensating for Tsukasa sounds just right. I do like how Kagami and Konata can relate to each other in their respectively odd ways - much to tease out of that!
My impression is that Misao knew (admired?) Kagami from middle school but Kagami can’t remember her. Also Kagami seems to think that Misao is dumb (which she is) and is quite openly scornful of her.
WRT to Akira-sama, Stripey and I often compare her to Corona, the idol in Kannazuki who got sexually assaulted by her manager etc. -_-;; It’s actually starting to become more disturbing than funny - I agree with Kabitzin that Akira’s bipolar thing is not so funny anymore.
suguru, given that LS has already drawn a direct comparison to ToHeart with Konata’s costume present, we just might see Tsukasa make the direct reference you are hoping for! :)
The Misao-Kagami affair is starting to remind me of the long-running drama between Sakaki and the cats in AzuDaioh… but yeah, Kagami doesn’t seem like she would have much time for people she thinks stupid. That she likely cannot understand such people at all and thus cannot comprehend why one would try to be friends with her (leading to the bewilderement-panic-rejection chain) hardly helps.
Would I be too far off if I guessed her classmates generally treat her with a mixture of dread and awe and normally only ever approach her for “official” business ?
I figure one thing that connects Konata and Kagami is a mutual experience of feeling alienated from their peers, nevermind now the different reasons. It doesn’t hurt that they seem to be about the only ones who can “keep up” with each other - and Kagami seems to “get” Konata’s more otaku ramblings rather better than Tsukasa and Miyuki do, although that might also be due to the fact she just hears more of them when the pair hangs out in manga shops and such.
[conjecture mode]
You know the more I look at the scenes where Konata invades Kagami’s physical comfort zone the more I start wondering about certain aspects of Kagami’s reactions. She seems awfully torn, as if she both wanted and didn’t want the contact, as well as downright confused and flustered. Now this *might* just be that, in spite of her raging misanthropy, she too needs physical human contact (outside family who are presumably OK) from time to time, and can put up with Konata for a moment because she seems to trust her emotionally to a certain degree - but that’d be no fun. I’m wondering if it could be that she’s actually getting “hot ‘n bothered” as they say - that is, thrilled and aroused - and is having serious trouble coping with such emotions which can hardly be anything but completely uncharted territory for her (plus perfectly normal bewilderement, embarassement and panic of course), nevermind now in the context.
[/conjecture mode]
…or the settings on my Yuri Goggles are too high and I’m talking out of my derriere. -_-;
But meh that. Kagami X Konata 4tw.
You people have no idea how much fun I get reading all the Kagami x Konata conjectures and wishing that they’re true. Do keep them coming. XD
Something for Zyl though I have no doubt you’ve seen it already. An interesting picture on the box, don’t you think?
Watchman, agree with your conjecture - Kagami does, on occasion, look genuinely torn. However, even at full-power, my yuri goggles don’t seem to be able to pick up any romantic feelings from Konata’s side - my reading is that Konata feels an affinity with Kagami because of the latter’s interest in light novels and also because Kagamin has the tsundere traits of a anime/game chara.
Claies, do join in with the conjectures! ;)
Shinzantetsu, thanks! :D Tsukasa would be a great bridesmaid too!
A valid point - but then again Konata probably wouldn’t recognize romantic sentiment coming her way if it bit her in the nose. Nevermind now something as obfuscated as what Kagami may have cooking.
I can only wonder at how she would react if she figured it out one day. Not in a very conventional fashion probably, given that her understanding of these things seems to mainly come from an extensive H-game collection…
…
…actually, I figure she’d mainly go “MOEEE” and be delighted at such a game-like developement, entirely missing the emotional aspects. And proceed to bug the Hell out of Kagami, as she seems to quite enjoy pushing her buttons…
No, I don’t think she’s a terribly mature person. -_-;
It’s not like Konata was necessarily unresponsive to whatever Kagami might have for her though. It seems really more like the whole idea of “romance” had yet to even register to her on a personal level, and as the two of them are currently just (in effect) best friends (since even if Kagami does have something developing she isn’t aware of it)…
I’m reminded about that one scene where Konata and the Hiiragi twins sit at some café and start talking about if there are boys after Miyuki and Tsukasa - it’s sort of telling how they all seem to assume by default that it’s pointless to even bring Konata and Kagami up in the context (outside Konata’s “scary onee-san” jab anyway).
Leaving that conjecture aside, methinks there’s a bit more than partially shared hobby interests and Konata’s fascination with Kagami’s bipolar personality keeping them together. they have a clear intuitive mutual understanding and seem to genuinely enjoy each others’ presence. I think the bookstore scenes are fairly illustrative in this regard; the pair seems quite content to just stand there reading, even if it now tends to get sooner or later interrupted by Konata’s winding dissertations on something very otaku which Kagami seems willing enough to listen to, nevermind now the inevitable (and usually sarcastic) commentary. But then for those two trading verbal barbs seems to play rather the same role as grooming each others’ fur does to the more social types of monkeys anyway.
It’s also somewhat interesting how it tends to be specifically Kagami, and her alone, to whom Konata rambles about the more HC otaku stuff (like the “get three of everything” thing, and in Ep 8 her letter getting published in some ‘zine) and seems genuinely down if Kagami doesn’t “get” it. This peculiar habit seems to suggest it really is important for her to have Kagami see the full extent of her somewhat eccentric interests, and if not necessarily quite understand then at least accept it. It is also in just such situations that Kagami hastily patches up the results of their wavelenghts failing to fully connect - usually rather transparently, but I’d say the important part for Konata is that she realizes the faux pas and makes the honest effort.
does anyone knows where the end karaoke song came from?
@crimson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Star_%28manga%29#Theme_songs
Check there regularly. :)