In an early beach episode of Lucky Star, I saw a picture of Kuroi-sensei downing a glass:

It reminded me immediately about something else, seen at Penny Arcade:

I also told a story during the panel about the Oblivion comic we did a few days ago. See I wanted Gabe to pass out on the couch because he was so bored. I had this vision of his head just flopping back but I could not fucking draw it. I literally spent four hours trying to make it look right and I just couldn’t do it. So I remembered that I had recently been added to a mailing list by that son of a bitch Scott Kurtz (AKA Steve Kuntz) and it might be just what I needed. See Scott is a real comic book artist so he has all these comic book friends that just happen to be super famous and insanely talented. For some reason (maybe as a joke) Scott added me to this little email group and I decided I’d use it for my own selfish needs.

I sent my concept to all these guys along with what I had and I begged for help. I got some awesome advice and Mike Wieringo actually sent me this little sketch of Gabe.

His sketch was so fucking perfect and he must have just knocked it out in a couple minutes. I would have banged my head against my desk all day if it hadn’t been for his drawing. The title of that strip should have been “this comic brought to you by Mike Wieringo.”

Sadly, Mike Wieringo has passed away recently.

So, simple things about anime often are not very simple, and this is just one example. I think that I am noticing quite a few such things in Lucky Star. It is as if they pretend to be poorly animated (especially in the beginning), but cannot help themselves and the awesome comes out.