Lucky Star ED Collection Debuts at #4

Here we go again. Cash registers are ringing all over Akihabara as the Lucky Star らき☆すた karaoke box ED collection album went on sale Tuesday and has debuted in the daily Oricon album charts at #4, second-highest of this week's new album releases, after Arashi's new CD. First, the OP becomes the fastest-selling anime song of all time, now this. Will the madness never end?



Here is the Oricon chart. And here is a piece in Akiba Blog showing Konata's face plastered over everything, and great stacks of the CD ready for sale.

The magazines are getting the idea, too, with features on Hirano Aya and/or the entire Lucky Star main cast popping up in all the seiyuu magazines. The idea? That Hirano Aya = big sales. I swear I had no thought that this was going to happen when I started to take an interest in her and her work around nine months ago.



The ED album has the shortened TV versions and longer full versions of all the EDs, which are old anime songs sung by the cast of Lucky Star as if their characters are together for an afternoon in a karaoke box. There are some straight versions, but most of the songs are played for laughs -- and there are a lot of laughs, particularly from the totally over-the-top interpretations of Hirano Aya, in character as Konata, mumbling and shouting her way through several songs. You can check out some of the songs on YouTube. Cha-la Head Cha-la, Monkey Magic, Sore ga Ai Deshou, Valentine Kiss, Chijou no Hoshi, and Sailor Fuku to Kikanjuu are some of the biggest hits. Here is a link to amazon.com for US pre-order. Here is a link to amazon.co.jp for full details.




And here are the seiyuus who have wreaked this havoc: (l-r) Fukuhara Kaori (Tsukasa), Hirano Aya (Konata), Katou Emiri (Kagami), and Endou Aya (Miyuki).

Aaya announced recently that her next single will be coming out in October. She has not had a real hit single of her own, as distinct from an anime tie-in, so this will be a pivotal release in her singing career.

UPDATE: On its second day out, the CD is at #10, so perhaps the first day was just a blip of otaku pre-orders.