Your Our of Touch, Why is no one talking about Lucky Star?
Warning, this is a long discussion about a 19 year old Manga, it’s current possible relevance in 2023. As well as the thoughts on how shippers from back in the year 2000 could possibly influence an upcoming manga.
I assume many of you by now are familiar with the Out of touch Thursday meme, for the few of you who are confused by what I mean exactly, it is this.
The song, is Out of Touch by Hall & Oates, released October 4th 1984, the animation however is from the opening of anime called Lucky Star. The song playing in that opening being “Motteke Sailor Fuku“ with what I can seem to find being tied to multiple artists, most likely the song was created specifically for the anime.
And it’s Lucky Star I wanted to talk about more than anything, because I’ve had thoughts running through my head that I simply, could not get out and needed to talk about them somewhere, so you all shall be my victims. But some context for the generations of people who people who were born long after this anime reached it’s peak.
Luck Star was a Slice of Life, Comedy manga written and illustrated by Kagami Yoshimizu. The manga focused on four High School girls, Konata Izumi (Blue Hair) a short pervy Otaku girl who likes teasing people, especially her friend Kagami. Said Kagami Hiiragi, (Purple hair twin tails) a I’m not a tsundere intellectual girl, who is prone to anger and violence. Tsukasa Hiiragi, (purple hair with bow) Kagami’s younger twin sister, who is naive, sweet and just an overall ball of sunshine and finally the well endowed Miyuki Takara (Pink hair), who is the incredibly smart girl who makes poor and dumb decisions.
With a larger cast built up of friends, relatives and other characters, who all do day to day life in comedic ways or funny observations. In 2007 the manga would be adapted to an anime that would last for 24 episodes and two OVAs.
And it along with the Anime adaptation of Azumanga Diaoh would basically become the meme farm for many anime and Manga enjoyers on the internet
But more important than the memes were the ships, or in this case THE ship. Like the case with most all girl anime shows there were lesbian ships, but none to the extent of Konata and Kagami. Like if you were in the lesbian anime scene when you were young, this ship was everywhere.
Official Anime promotional Art, Merchandise, Fan-fiction, Doujinshi, offical art by the Mangaka and much more, heck this ship was so well known about by the creators that this happened in one of the OVAs.
But now I imagine most everyone is probably wondering, what is the point? Why bring up an old manga and anime just to talk about a super old ship from the early 2000′s with characters that despite being 18 years of age are drawn like they are still 15 or so.
Well, Luck Star the anime ended before the Manga did. Finishing roughly around Volume 4-5 with certain details omitted either for time or cost cutting methods, ended the series with a meta fourth wall breaking episode. While the manga continued with 3-4 more volumes, ending at Volume eight. And the series creator would go on a hiatus.
An Eight year Hiatus, because, Lucky Star, is back, Volumes 9 and 10 have very recently released...(In Japan), but more interestingly than that, was what was announced in 2022, in the third volume of Mitaina! magazine.
There is going to be a Lucky Star Spin off series, Called Konata 31. From the details that have been released Konata 31 is going to be a series that takes place 15 years after the events of the main Lucky Star series, following a now 31 year old Konata.
We have no information on who any of the supporting cast is for this series, we don’t know if any of the original cast outside of Konata will even return or if they all fell out of some time after High School. And, sadly, anything I say from this point on is going to be nothing more than mere speculation, but it’s curious to focus on the age of 31. Why?
Well, that’s the age of the people who started reading Lucky Star are probably now, when I started Lucky Star, I was the same age as the girls, I was roughly in my teens and early adult hood and now I’m beginning my 30′s. yes not all the fans will be the same age, but most of them will be. Most of these fan will either be experiencing their 30′s or have experienced their 30′s and can look back.
And what are people living with in their 30′s, what do people tend to focus on, where can these possible new stories take us? Job security, Home Security, making an identity for ourselves, physically and mentally and, for many of us (Sorry Ace/Aero crowd) Romance.
A large part of Lucky Star fans growing up were Konata and Kagami shippers, they supported the idea of a gay relationship between these character, before openly gay relationships between characters were as common as they are now. We didn’t have shows like Witch from Mercury, Yuru Yuri, Steven Universe, owl House, RWBY and many more where characters could have open gay relationship.
It was all theorizing, subtext and taking whatever people could give us, even if it was mostly there to make us buy merchandise.
Now am I saying that with 100% certainty, that Konata 31 is going to have a story where Kagami and Konata finally tie the knot and all 13-18 year old hearts become validated. No, it’s quite possible, like many slice of life comedies they doesn’t even focus on the romantic side of the characters and instead focus more on their day to day lives instead.
But, there is all that history. I don’t know what I’m saying really, I made this post mostly to get thoughts out of my head and here I am getting thoughts out of my head. But what I will say is I will defiantly be picking up the first volume of Konata 31 when it becomes available.
OMG!! I cannot say how MUCH I am in love with Lucky Star by the HQG1C Project!! She's everything I love about ponies! 💖 I tried to get her symbol in the picture, but her glorious mane kept getting in the way!
#project hail mary
#lana del rey
#f1
#intersex
