Aaron , some of criticisms are valid but I feel you are being overly harsh on a lot of the characters and analysing the show far too much. Yes there are shows which can be analysed in such detail , but Lucky Star is more a light hearted anime with no real objective other than to provide us with a comical version of Japanese High school life. I found it was much better to actually sit and enjoy the show, than examine the faults and sucking all fun (IMO) from it. You seem to play ‘devil’s advocate’ as it, were concentrating on the small pocket of perceived problems – I believe that the constant comical and yes fan service outweigh the downsides of this production.

Overall I would say this show scores a good 8.5/10

-1 for Haruhi ( as there were too many refs)
-0.5 as the ending could have been a little longer ( like 3 min to show everyone’s reactions and to show the characters’ later lives)

Ups of this show IMO

-Constantly had comical moments throughout ( I didn’t really think they got old)
-Some heart warming episodes later on , thrown in with the humour ( Kagami and her sister , Konata’s mum etc).
-Excellent variety of characters
-Referances to other animes ( FMP for eg.) but not on such a large scale ( cept. Haruhi) which were well placed and unpredictable.
-Random nature of the show and pointless dialogue which despite it being pointless continued to hold my interest.
-The Shirashi Minoru endings which were hilarious and developed briallantly.

While I’m definitely one of the former, I can appreciate that not everyone loves that kind of humor.

And I do agree that KyoAni is better suited to more action oriented shows, although I thought they did a fine job with this one.

Anyway, nice to see someone who doesn’t get caught up in the hype, but also doesn’t feel like they need to diss the show just because it’s ridiculously popular. :P

The mangaka’s drawing style is also a lot cooler, and matured. :) XLG is scanlating it.

The focus on moe-ness, instead of subverting them really threw the series off, instead of the direction that I expected — serious character development.

I had expected that one yuri/yaoi-drawing fangirl to grow a little more sensitive to the dignity of her subjects, and especially her friends… but she kept having repetitive moral dilemma that never got anywhere.

I had wished someone in Miyuki’s class would recognize her for her brilliant idea, and build upon it, but instead they just went for the generic idea. Sure, it happens all the time, but the characters acted as if it was the right choice… as is Miyuki’s idea wouldn’t be able to go anywhere… in a festival celebrating and teaching about culture?

Yutaka was pretty good… that one girl focused too much on her breasts, to the point where she had a worse self-concept than Shinji, but Miyuki’s mother’s unintentional harassment of her was pretty funny… but none of those good, sincerely funny/cute parts had anything to do with her smaller-than-average breasts. Look at Haruno Sakura; she’s gorgeous. She is too, but no one comments on her actual beauty except Yutaka, but she’s too “small” for anyone to listen to.

Too much focus on Patty; almost-cliché have-to-include foreigner, with no depth. She even proudly and blatantly, and smugly, admits to not knowing anything more about Japanese culture more than the animé industry, about which she barely knows in itself. (she avoids seriously good series, and goes straight for the fan-fav series)

There wasn’t anything spectacular about the closing dance, even without considering the fact that it was completely fanservice. It didn’t have anything special animation-wise, with the only thing going for it is “consistent style”, which any and all shounen movies achieve. Doesn’t mean they’re good, thing.

People who said that these last few episodes were “extremely well-balanced” would probably prefer chicken broth over the soup… since it is “balanced”, but balance isn’t very hard to achieve, given absolutely no substance. Which the ending episodes didn’t have.

Sorry to rant on your website, but I needed to get this out sometime. Thanks again for actually having a constructive criticism on what was only completely, and aggressively hated, or passively adored.