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DVD Review


DVD cover

Good Luck Girl (Binbogami Ga!)
The Complete Series

 

Starring (voice): Kana Hanazawa, Yumi Uchiyama, Haruka Tomatsu, Hiro Shimono, Kouki Uchiyama and Yoshihisa Kawahara
Distributor: Manga Entertainment
RRP: £25.99
MANG3171
Certificate: 15
Release Date: 16 March 2015


When the Gods of Poverty look down upon the world they see the well stacked Ichiko Sakura, a 16-year-old high school student, who is so over endowed with Fortune Energy, which explains her extraordinary luck, unfortunately this puts the world out of balance. The Gods send Momiji to earth to deal with Ichiko...

Good Luck Girl (2013. 13 eps) is a comedy anime show, based on the Yoshiaki Sukeno manga.

The premise of the show is somewhat silly, but then this is supposed to be a comedy. Throughout the arc the girls spar, each trying to get one over on the other, but you know where this is going from the first episode and through puppies, being turned into a kid and various other tricks the girls actually start to grow to like and respect each other.

Like many other romantic comedies, Momiji moves into Ichiko’s class, which allows the show to bring in that other trope, the high school. Cue, boyfriends and female rivalry. The show goes for the lowest denominator, with episodes consisting of spoofs, prat falls and the over the top antics of both the main and the ancillary cast. They pile them on thick and fast, so if you don’t like one gag, don’t worry the next is only moments away.

Jokes aside the show's main thrust is to show Ichiko that happiness does not come from money, a large breast and getting everything you may need, but from friends and loved ones. On the surface it’s a good message until you remember that Jean-Paul Sartre stated that hell was other people, so I’ll stick to my dreams of being rich and lazy. The show does explore the one area where Ichiko is lacking, a family. The nearest thing to that would be her butler, but Ichiko’s being something like a luck vampire has drained all the luck out of the poor fellow and he has a heart attack. In order to save him she sends him away.

There have been many shows like this, it is not the worst or the best but kind of hangs out somewhere in the middle.

Audio is either the original 2.0 Japanese, with optional subtitles or the English 5.1 dub. For extras you have a full length commentary for episode four and twelve. You also get three textless opening sequences which covers the show's songs and the US trailer. On the nicer side episode thirteen has a video commentary where you can see the dub artists and director talking about the show with the episode letterboxed in the lower right hand corner.

The animation is ok, it’s brightly coloured, but the picture is a little soft and the quality of the animation isn’t the greatest I’ve seen. On the plus side the show is genuinely funny.

7

Charles Packer

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