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[Reelya]

You don't watch K-On for the music, it's a cute girls x things show, with a "music" theme.

Good to know, I'll keep that in mind.
Not really a fan of the 'cute girls and X' genre. I think Non-non biyori is the only one I've ever seen, and I didn't get through it.
Unless Nichijou counts. I don't think Nichijou counts.

I think the two real old-style classics of the genre personally are Azumanga Daioh and Hidamari Sketch. Hidamari Sketch because it's Shaft's take on the genre complete with some pretty surreal art styles.

https://myanimelist.net/anime/1852/Hidamari_Sketch/reviews

Haha, gotta love dumb+smug people. Someone slammed Hidamari Sketch for "trying too hard" to be like Lucky Star ... sure, fine. Except for the fact that Hidamari Sketch aired the season prior to Lucky Star. People should really check facts before running their mouth with theories about who's ripping off whom. The Lucky Star manga did serialize slightly before Hidamari Sketch, but only by 7 weeks. So there's literally zero chance it was trying to jump on any Lucky Star hype train. To even get serialized you need to show the publishers that you have a pile of material that they can use right away, and are able to produce more of it on schedule. That takes months of work and negotiations. Also, the material isn't even that similar, within the meta-genre of school slice of life.

So yeah, nope nope and nope. Before attacking X as a rip off of Y, go and double-check the publication dates, kids, so you don't look like that idiot.

[itisnotlogical]

I have fond memories of Lucky Star, but I honestly haven't tried to watch it again since the first time. When I watched it, I was still so fascinated with the idea of anime that literally anything impressed me.

From what I do remember of the series' content, it... might not hold up if I were to watch it today.

[Reelya]

A lot of Lucky Star's humor is based on references to other series, I believe Hidamari Sketch overall stands up better because it's not pop-culture reference humor. That's sort of the thing that makes any claim of Hidamari Sketch as some Lucky Star clone ridiculous even if the dates supported it. Lucky Star is all pop culture references, whereas there are none of that type of joke in Hidamari Sketch.

And when I say Hidamari Sketch stands up better than Lucky Star, well it's not as highly talked about in the Western fandom (probably because it doesn't do the pop culture / Haruhi Suzumiya reference thing), but the anime kept going for about 5 separate seasons worth of material from 2007-2013, whereas Lucky Star was never picked up again after the first run. Basically, with 4 full seasons and specials+OVA adding to another season's-worth of material, Hidamari Sketch is in fact the most successful of any show in this genre, hands-down.

[Karnewarrior]

Lucky Star is also supported by Konata being Waifu-of-the-century to every Otaku Hikkikomori who hates girls that don't get his weeby references.

So basically everyone on the internet.

[Reelya]

Apparently internet meme fame doesn't equate to actually making enough money to fund a sequel. Who knew?

Imagine if all those supposed Lucky Star fans had saved up to buy a copy. Y'know, they could have had Lucky Star season 2.

[Flying Dice]

But it's so much easier to yar har har it. :^)

[Karnewarrior]

Apparently internet meme fame doesn't equate to actually making enough money to fund a sequel. Who knew?

Imagine if all those supposed Lucky Star fans had saved up to buy a copy. Y'know, they could have had Lucky Star season 2.

Season 2 might have been overkill anyway. SoL shows can only be interesting for so long; K-On! is an anomaly, and I still dropped it during Season 2.

Well, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei was pretty good all the way through, but that's because SZS had some other fucked up shit going on, unlike Lucky Star. Like Kafuka.

[Reelya]

K-On isn't really an anomaly. I think it's about on par with a large number of such shows.

[Max™]

I think the only one of that type I've seen is Rolling Girls.

Oh, is Yotsubato a show yet? I'd watch the hell out of that.

I feel like Grimgar should be a related genre: Slice of a Fantasy Life?

[Reelya]

I wouldn't really call Grimgar SoL because it's used in the anime-sphere to mean a more specific type of story.

SoL is basically vignettes, slices of time in people's lives. Basically if an overarching storyline is not the central point, it's SoL. It's about how characters interact normally, in daily life. They also tend to have seasonal events episodes such as a new-years-shrine visit for winter, festivals in summer etc etc. Similar to how a sitcom will have a "Christmas" episode.

Grimgar is a drama series, because the focus is plot progression and plot points. Sure, it's got stuff about "how characters interact" but it's about their response to events and other characters and how they change. That's not SoL.

[Max™]

Yeah, but there's no real goal beyond "huh, how do we eat and sleep" and then it's lots of stuff with them just kinda doing normal things, except there's goblins and shit running around too.

[Reelya]

Lack of a clear goal for the characters isn't necessarily the same thing as saying plotless. That's what's different. Grimgar has a plot progression, with specific events. SoL almost entirely lack that.

But let me clarify exactly what I mean here: I mean that SoL series have an extremely weak "arrow of time". For instance, K-On only really has events that matter right at the start and right at the end, so they set it up, and wind it down, but the episodes in the middle could be viewed in randomized order, and you'd barely notice. The only caveat is when such series decide to add a new character to the mix, but most of them introduce the full cast in at most 4-5 episodes then stabilize things completely for the rest of the series. There might be the occasional running gag, e.g. a scene in one episode might reference a scene in another, but most scenes could be randomized without any story problems arising.

Grimgar is different, because it has a "direction of time" arrow. Even when they're having idle chats, eating or relaxing, there is dialogue informed by what happened before. Basically if you would be genuinely worried about "spoilers" if someone watched the episodes completely out of order it's not really a slice of life series, as there's already a perfectly good term for that: drama. If "spoilers" would be a big problem if the show is watched "out of order" then it's not really SoL.

But SoL can be used, in the same sense that comedy can be used. e.g. Star Wars has comedy, but it's no "A comedy". Sure, Grimgar could use "slice of life". But I don't think it qualifies. It has emotional moments, but they reveal things about the character's past, and they build on each other. They're not the same type of standalone episodic events that Slice of Life is normally referring to.

[Max™]

Eh, you are probably more accurate about what slice of life means, it's just what I'd call Grimgar. Worrying about where to get food or defeat a mook monster is so commonly skipped that it doesn't quite feel like the same sort of story genre as the two shows I can think of being the closest premise-wise: Re:Zero and Konosuba. Those are both "genre savvy modern dude dropped in a fantasy world" while Grimgar is "confused modern people dropped in a fantasy world" but it's a lot more newbish-feeling than the other two, both of which have some sort of overarching plot besides "let's save up and be sensible so we can survive" yanno?

[Reelya]

I'd still say that's adequately described as drama.

The problem saying "yeah anything where people react normally is slice of life" is that virtually everything could be described as slice of life. e.g. in Lord of the Rings, Frodo and the Hobbits often talk about mundane things. Lord of the Rings = Slice of Life! The same with "Harry Potter" plenty of that is just classroom chatter. Slice of Life! Basically any modern-setting TV show could be called Slice of Life by this definition, rendering the term meaningless. And even action series have scenes where people eat, lie in bed, talk do all sorts of regular "person-type stuff" when they're not being all heroic. Do we call that slice of life, too?

The real problem is that everything could be construed to be a slice of someone's life. James Bond movies are slices of James Bond's life. A good litmus tests is this: is someone who likes typical slice of life shows also likely to get into the thing you're offering them?

For example if someone likes sitcoms and school life shows (typical slice of life stuff) are they likely to find Grimgar to be a suitable show when asking for another Slice of Life show? Dungeons and Dragons with more realism (e.g. they have to clean their armor, sharpen swords etc) doesn't make it the same as a slice of life show. The thing is that's not how the term originated and is used. That's just drama. We already have a word for that. There's no reason to expand slice of life to be that, because drama is a word. And if we do that, slice of life and drama end up meaning the same thing, thus being redundant.

[apiks]

I started watching Kuzu no Honkai after binging Seiren. I'm absolutely stunned a how good Kuzu is.

If the quality keeps as it is, it's going to my top anime.