I recently had a chance to review Funimation’s Good Luck Girl Anime.
Originally entitled, Binbō-gami ga! (This God of Poverty), is a comedy about 16-year-old Ichiko Sakura, who happens to have incredibly good luck or as they say in the Anime, too much happiness energy.
This good luck has obviously been good to Ichiko, she’s wealth, does good in school, liked and admired by all the boys in her class, very athletic and well-endowed when it comes to her physical appearance.
However, all this good luck has made Ichiko a spoiled brat, not to mention it’s shifting the balance of the normal good luck from others around her. In other words, she tends to absorb others people luck, without even knowing it.
In order to restore balance in the good luck, Momiji, the God of Poverty (misfortune) comes to Ichiko and is determined to drain her extra happiness energy (good luck) and spread it out among others.
Of course draining Ichiko’s energy would subsequently give her bad luck or sadness for a short time. This is something the Ichiko, just can’t stand for, so of course, all hilarity ensues as these two battle it out.
The show is pretty over the top with its constant parodies and all out wacky battles between the two girls.
The series is rooted in Japanese mythology and a host of other rather non-standard gods are called on by Momiji to assist her with taking the luck of Ichiko.
Some of the more humorous gods include Ibuiki the bathroom (poop) God and Momo a masochistic dog god.
Although the show is all comedy, there is some heart behind it. As Momiji tries to balance out Ichiko’s good luck, the bad luck that Ichiko receives often has her meeting up with other characters whose poor luck or situation often has an impact on Ichiko. This impact often leads her to give away her good luck willingly, as opposed to having it drained.
Overtime Momiji discovers there’s a reason to Ichiko’s spoiled brat-like behavior. While Ichiko realizes that by sharing good luck ( in other words doing good things for others) is often more rewarding than being shellfish.
While the overall theme and humor aren’t bad the one thing I could have had less of was the nudity. The running joke throughout the series is how big Ichiko’s boobs are. As part of fan service, it seems, that we often see her semi-naked running around battling it out, or getting groped by a host of odd characters. It seems such a shame that a cute story would include this kind of sexist plot line, but you know what they say, sex sells.
In the end, if you can overlook the boobie issues, the of the show isn’t that bad, and even kind of has the moral, that if you do “share luck with others, you’ll revive even more back”.
