This episode starts off with the girls preparing for the air show being held at their base tomorrow, and Ltc. Togo and the girls try to come up with a name for their team. The best they can come up with so far is “the girls who fly in the sky”, sounds pretty lame to me. On the day of the airshow, military bigwigs try to upstage the sonic divers’ debut by debuting their new fighter plane giving very little notice to Ltc Togo. Right before the sonic divers flight demonstration Ltc Togo finds all the girls in a bad mood; Karen because her brother’s a no show, Otoha because the new fighter pilot made fun of her sonic diver and called her a brat, Eika because her father a general and didn’t bother to show up at the demo. Just as their about to begin their demo a landslide occurs in the mountains and the air show must be put on hold for a while. Karen and Otoha want to go and help, but Eika says to wait for their demonstration, eventually they talk Eika into wanting to go and help in the rescue mission. The team misses it’s chance at the air show but they get great television coverage conducting rescue operations, and the news media starts calling the team “the sky girls”. At the very end of the episode Togo and Hizuki view the destruction inflicted on the European base by the worms, and then Hizuki shows Togo a view of the team’s new command ship. Below are some screen shots from episode 7.
Well episode 7 is finished and I honestly don’t know what was the point of the whole thing was, this was a filler episode no ifs ands or buts. The only new things this episode added to the plot was that finally Hizuki shows Togo that the worms are back, we also see that Togo and the new fighter pilot knew each other from a long time ago, and that Eika’s father is a general in the military. We also got to watch the girls all show some insecurities, Eika wanting her father to show up, Otoha getting mad because Capt Hisaki called her a brat, and Karen pining for her brother (get over it Karen your on a military base there are plenty of guys who will at least show up to see you). No Fan service, no fighting, and no plot progression, so there really was no point to this episode. Oh, and it gets worse the next episode preview shows the girls going on a onsen (hot spring) trip. What the hell is this when every anime featuring teen-aged school girls has to have a beach or onsen related episode, Useless (unless that episode is loaded with fan service).
Lucky Star 21 starts with the girls returning to school after the summer break. The girls spend time discussing how with all the summer classes and studying they hardly had any time to have fun, then Konata tells the other girls that she spent between 330 to 420 dollars at comiket (hell that’s a lot of money, I usually don’t spend that much at a convention and I have a much better paying job then she does). Later the show switches to Konata’s house where cousin Yui comes over for a visit to check on her sister Yu-chan. Later Tsukasa has to deal with her issues of getting up early enough to do her studying because she can’t muster enough energy to study into the night. Then we spend some time watching Hiyori coming up with ideas for her manga but always forgets to write them down so she always forgets them later. Then the high school senior class goes on a school trip to Kyoto and Japan’s old capital of Nara (Nara was the capital of Japan from 710-784, it has a lot of famous shrines and other cultural attractions, and Nara is also famous for its tame deer population). Then after the bus ride to their hotel in Kyoto Kagami finds a note in her bag saying a boy would like to talk to her at 9pm outside the hotel, and she thinks that a boy wants to confess to her. She spends the better part of the day in a dreamy mood, but at the meeting it turns out the guy just wanted a doll she bought. Then we switch to Lucky Channel where Minoru returns from his trip and Akira rejects the water he brought back and he finds out he’s been replaced, so then he goes on a berserker rampage. Below are some screen shots from the episode.
Below is a picture of a lost in thought Kagami thinking about meeting the guy whom wrote her the note.
Below are pictures of Minoru’s rage.
Well, as Lucky Star continues towards it’s conclusion I feel that the show is starting to take a more melancholy mood as its pace increases. The girls spend more time than ever studying, and less time having fun. I felt really sorry for Kagami this episode, she seemed to be in a really dreamy mood as she wondered how the meeting with the boy from the note would go. Then she received a let down when she found out all he wanted was a doll she bought instead of a confession of love. I think that Konata figured what happened and felt sorry for Kagami. Well what did I expect, so far none for the girls have had a boyfriend yet and a boyfriend would probably screw up the chemistry of the show, oh-well better luck next time Kagami.
The first couple of minutes of this episode covers Konata’s theory of how to pick out the valuable and rare figures and collector cards out of a stack of unopened boxes and card packs. Then Konata asks Kagami why male otaku always desire a female otaku for a girlfriend, but she never hears female otaku ask for an male otaku as a boyfriend. Then Kagami pays a visit to Konata’s house and then Kagami asks Konata some questions about characters in dating sim games. The girls then spend time basically talking about random things like, dentists, sweets, losing the will to study, and summer classes. Then the girls spend a lot of time together test prepping, and they decide to go see some fireworks in Miyuki’s neighborhood. It turns out that Yu-chan’s gang and Konata’s gang end up going to the fireworks together and they have a very good time at the festival. Well that’s all for episode 20. Below are some screen shots from the episode.
Damn, I wish our girls dressed like this for our summer fairs.
One thing I must admit to is that I’m a Kagami fan, and I think she has killer set of legs for an anime girl.
Well episode 20 is done and only 4 more remain in the series, Sigh! This episode was all about anime, sim game, and other otaku references. The girls are on summer break and have to spend more time than ever on exam preparation, and only a couple of months remain until they have to take their high school exit exams, and their college entrance exams ( Cultural Note: remember that the high school exit exams and college entrance exams are considered to be harder than actually attending college, this period is called exam hell or juken jigoku in Japanese. If you don’t score high enough you can attend junior college or become a ronin like in the Love Hina and Crayon Shin Chan. If you don’t go to college as a girl you can try and get a job as a office lady while waiting to get married. If you choose not to go to college and can’t get a decent job you can become a parasite single or in Japanese parasaito shinguru.) So in Japanese society the period leading up to Juken Jigoku is considered to be one of the most important periods in a young persons life. Well as Lucky Star comes to a close I find myself a little down, Lucky Star is a great way to relax for 30 minutes after a hard days work.
