Anime: K-On!!

What do you get when you mix: Moe, Music, Slice of Life, Comedy and A little Drama. You get K-ON!!, the masterpiece made by the great Kakifly. This review will cover Seasons 1 and 2 and the Music from the series.

Story: 9/10. The story is pretty normal, four girls start a band in their first year of high school and it shows their life as they go through high school playing music or just having fun. The story is very basic which have been used before in other Anime's but “K-ON!!” is one of the ones that actually do it right and pull it off perfectly. Season 1 focuses more on the music side of the coin while Season 2 focuses more of the Slice of Life genre.

Art: -/- I don’t rate for art because it is not a deciding factor on how I watch Anime.

Sound: 100/10. This is where “K-ON!” excels beyond any other Anime that I have seen. The series start out with Cageyake! GIRLS, it is a very weird opening but grows on you and you end up singing along to it in the end. Then there is Don't Say “Lazy” the first ending theme, which is a techno rock song which is very amazing. I really liked how the made the openings. The first is always sung by Yui and the Ending is always sung by Mio. I know at first its hard to get used to Yui singing but it grows on you.

Next is GO! GO! MANIAC, really fast song, it is my least favorite of the three opening but it still is really good. Listen!! is the second opening, which is really done well and is on par with Don't Say Lazy's greatness. I love the keybored in and the vocals. Mio proves once again, she is the bomb.

Then here come the last two OP/ED's of “K-ON!!”...Utauyo! MIRACLE and No, Thank You. Probably the greatest op/ed combo ever. Utauyo is still my favorite oping in the entire series because its so much fun to sing along too and just epic. This is where Yui shines like Takuto Tsunashi's Galaxy. No, Thank You is the greatest ending theme ever period bar none. It is perfect, I cant find anything bad to say about it.

As for insert songs we have:
Fuwa Fuwa Time (I love playing this song in my car with the windows down on full blast lol its awesome, Mio does the best job on this song.)
My Love is a Stapler (very catchy and fun)
Calligraphy Pen ~Ballpoint Pen~ (Mio does the best on this song so listen to her version. This one is also very catchy and is one that I could see playing at dances)
Pure Pure Heart (Probably the weakest out of all the insert songs, but it still is very good. It is just the one with the least plays on my iPod.)
Gohan wa Okazu (This song is so much fun, it is my favorite out of all the insert song. This song is so like Yui, it defines her to a T. If I was in a band I would play this song because its just so much fun and hilarious.)
U&I (My second favorite insert song, the lyrics are perfect and have great meaning. It was the perfect ending song to their last festival. It gave me chills.)
Tenshi ni Fureta yo! (This song was done so perfectly, and was so sad. 1. Because it was the last song of the series 2. the lyrics were all about Azu-nyan and it was sad seeing Azu-nyan cry while they played it. Beautiful song, perfect ending to the series)

Character: 10/10 Here's another place where “K-ON!!” excels. The main characters are really memorable and have good development throughout the series. Mio is the quiet, extremely shy, yet the most mature out of the group. Yui is the lazy, cute, spaced out and lazy member of the group (She reminds me a bit of Osaka from Azumanga but is more lazy and less spaced out.) Mugi is the rich girl who has no street smarts and it very impressed by everything people do. Ritchan is the crazy wild girl who always stirs up trouble. Azu-nyan is the one that is always pushing the group to practice and is really good at playing the guitar, she ends up even teaching Yui when she joins the group. I might as well mention Sawa-chan, their adviser. She was hilarious when she first showed up and is the metal head/cosplayer of the group. She always tries to dress up everyone in cute, moe outfits.

Enjoyment/Overall 10/10. I love this series, it will always be in my Top 5. The music in it is legend and everything else makes up the series is amazing. If your a fan of Music and Slice of Life, this Anime is for you. If your not into that, then this show is not for you. But, it won't hurt just to try it out, you just might like it

This is a review about both seasons. They are the same thing to the most part.

K-On belongs to the after effects Haruhi had on the industry and it’s the next big moe title to hit the streets after Lucky Star. It is hard not to compare these shows, since they are made by the same people, chronologically very close to one another, and even have the same target audience. At the same time, there is no other way to show how even such a genre can slowly evolve its mold and slowly become an entirely different experience.

Compared to Lucky Star, K-On is more elaborate and less of a farce. It focuses more on moe and less on product placement, which automatically makes it superior. Otaku references and Haruhi advertisements were only managing to turn that show into an in-joke that couldn’t stand on its own two feet. Unlike Lucky Star, K-On is NOT making anime promotions and is still successful without being directly related to an older superior source. I mean, ok, it is not the first moe show with schoolgirls (that title goes to Azumanga Daioh) but it definitely is not using titles to make itself seem better than it is with cheap tricks. It is still of course a show running on fan service of the cute type but it does it with its own strength.

Not that it’s completely innocent. It still does some indirect product placement with the type of guitars the girls use in their band (they are an existing brand) and thanks to its success that firm had a huge raise in sales. In fact, thanks to its success all of a sudden the world was filled with boy and girl bands, all inspired by the anime to have a shot at music; which is another indirect thing that makes it better. While Lucky Star was practically whispering in your ear to go buy Haruhi merchandise and other not-so-proud-to-admit-in-public anime affiliated material, K-On told you to get a few friends, buy some music instruments, and start making your own music, leave your own mark in the world, have fun with friends in public places. Get out of your room and do something dammit! That is a very positive influence a show can have on you, compared to the other one, which is basically telling you to shut yourself in a room and stare ronery at the screen. It is also ironic how other strictly-about-music anime like Beck, had far less influence on the community for being not-moe. Man, the power of cuteness is frightening!

Many would of course claim that the above trait was a result of Haruhi and not K-On (it had a band too) but that show was too many things at once and thus too blurry to draw a line at WHAT its influence exactly was. I mean, it even created its own pseudo-religion for God’s sake! Being motivated is one thing but turning to an ass who worships a 2D moe chick is plain lame. YOU ARE MAKING AN ASS OF YOURSELVES YOU E8 FREAKS! K-on is hardly like that; it is far more subtle in the way it affects you, calmer and more sophisticated.

If I stretch it a bit, there is another trend it promoted, which is none other than the love for sweets. WE HAVE CAKE! Sure, the other moe shows had that too but it was all mingled along with otaku jokes and pseudo-religions and the feeling of love for sugar was lost in all that. Being free of all those extras, the show made it far more clear how they LOOOOVE sweets. In fact, I have a sweet tooth for pastries as well and seeing that along with cute girls (another sweet tooth for those, hehe) had all the feeling of joy one would ever want from such a series. No otaku jokes, no aliens and espers and time travellers and WHO CARES WHAT OTHER UNNECESSARY STUFF. This is moe in its “almost” purest form. And I say almost because guitars and sweets (accompanied by tea) are still elements that are dressing the show in a rather overkill way. Azumanga Daioh didn’t have all that and was still fine for its time, thus even more successful at being purely about moe without promoting anything else. Of course, many would rush to say that for the same reason it doesn’t inspire you to do anything meta-series and that makes it inferior. I on the other hand say WHY WOULD IT??? Do you so much want to pick up a hobby that you need an anime show to choose? Find it yourself damn you! Geez, people love being manipulated so much, it is disturbing…

Anyways, mishaps aside K-On is still successful at what it was made to be. Its production values are great for being rather simple in artwork yet very successful in aesthetics. True brilliance is to show as much as possible with less as possible, and this is a good example where simply drawn characters and stories can make you feel a lot more than most other, more complicating and elaborate shows. I consider them almost perfect, not because of their detail but because of their effect on the audience.

The story part is still unimportant as ever but at least here you feel like there is a simple objective of sorts. The girls want to have a concert. And that’s all of it… Better than nothing but still not something you would be looking forward to or be anxious to see what will happen next; it is still just some simple girls eating cake, drinking tea, and playing guitars, as cute as possible.

The characters don’t develop in any significant way but at least the second season changed the way they interact with each other, based on the experiences they had before. So you are given a vague impression that they remember what happened before and won’t fall for the same tricks. They also added an extra girl to the party for flavour which meant a shift in behaviours, as means to adjust to her. Other than that they are archetypes with simple but vivid personality but the idea of acting a bit differently sounds like a lot for a genre that is not in favour of change and progress.

The value of the show is definitely high, as it is yet another cornerstone in moe history. Kyoto Animation managed to once again win this round as none of the various other moe shows that popped up to get a piece of the pie managed to fare as well. It also has a lot of meta-value, since it also affected the very lives of so many people to the point they bought guitars and created their own music bands. I don’t fancy that sort of influence but it’s a fact that further proves its importance.

My enjoyment of the series used to be high for awhile but after a point on started to lower more and more to the point I now don’t exactly love it anymore. It is still a mostly aimless show about cute girls eating cake and drinking tea and I am in favour of action and mystery. Some alteration in the second season helped to get some of the excitement back but even that was eventually not working out very well. But besides me, it definitely feels nice if each new season has something different to show as it prevents the boredom from the repetitive structure of moe to kick in. I hear if they ever make a third season, it will be about the girls going to university. That will again be a nice way to keep things fresh for awhile and possibly making their challenges a bit hard for a change. Anyways, as long as the creators are willing to experiment on the formula instead of going for one of the same is enough to keep this moe franchise at the top.

It is still not the best moe; especially after the same company made Hyouka later on, which has far more elaborate character interactions. But it still deserves a good pat in the back and it’s a good recommendation for moe fans.

To review K-On!! is almost redundant. The first series was such a love/hate proposition that everyone already knows whether they want to watch season 2. But at least I can reassure readers that there has been no dramatic shift; K-On!! sticks closely to the (successful) formula of its predecessor.

This doesn't always work well. The first few episodes are something of a disappointment. Sure, we have the usual cute schoolgirl antics; tea is drunk, cake is eaten, even the occasional song played. But it feels somehow... empty. We've seen it all before, and none of it seems to mean anything; the story isn't going anywhere. K-On! was never about the plot, but were the episodes always this similar? Horrifying as the notion is, has the franchise gone stale?

Then the series finds its stride. Of course there is nothing blunt enough to be called an ongoing plot - but little threads appear, and are gradually woven together to give a gentle underlying narrative. There are perhaps only two arcs of real substance over the whole series, but that's enough. It makes the passage of time feel real, and means that when the girls come to graduate, we really believe it. Ultimately, the finale was as emotionally involving as any I've ever seen.

Of course, the main reason for that is the characters. With no large-scale storyline to consume airtime, most of each episode is devoted to characterisation. We spend enough time with the girls to feel like members of the club ourselves. For all that, though, there's surprisingly little development of the main cast. Some existing traits are highlighted, but no hidden depths of character are revealed. I found myself wishing for something like the first series' flashback (where Ritsu and Mio agree to form a band); we still have no idea of (e.g.) Mugi's life pre-K-On (much as I'm glad there were no contrived meetups of the club in earlier life). If anything the characters seem less fleshed out by the end of the series than they were at the start. They've retreated into their defining characteristics (Ritsu's the loud one, Mio's the shy one, Azusa the conscientious one...), leaving them recognizable but flat.

Characters outside the band fare much better. Nodoka (the student council president) and Miss Sawako both become more rounded, and two characters in the year below (Ui and the jazz club's Jun) form a sort of beta club with Azusa. They get an episode so of their own, and become much more fully-formed characters. But welcome as such development is, the main cast need it more. It gets particularly jarring with the graduation storyline; the characters are older, but they never grew up any. I only hope this isn't a deliberate decision to avoid pissing off fans by never changing anything; while I have come to love the current cast, I still want them to grow.

The music is a more positive mix; there are good new songs including a simply stunning second ending theme, though the first opening is weak. Voice acting is very good: the actors are confident enough to play around with the degree of emotional expression, so we have some scenes done in stylised ways. It feels like changing the saturation, only for speech, and I hope to see more of this kind of thing done. The themes in the background music mesh well with each other and the band's own style, though occasionally they can be a little overwhelming; I would've preferred (ironically enough) less music (or rather less soundtrack). The animation maintains the all-important factor of actually animating the band playing their instruments (sadly quite a rare occurrence, but beautiful when it happens. More than anything else about the series, the look is the same as always, but given how good it looks that's no bad thing.

In writing this I've found far more flaws than I expected. The character development, when considered objectively, is quite weak. The plot is, of course, mostly conspicuous by its absence, and (just as with the first series) this more than anything will be the decisive factor for most viewers. For me, the gentle almost-plotlessness strikes just the right note; there's enough that we feel a sense of progress, but nothing more than that. Ultimately it manages to seem quite realistic, and it works for me in a way that e.g. Lucky Star didn't.

I'm being defensive here, but when I was watching K-On!! none of this even crossed my mind(*). I got caught up in show; it manages to capture some of the sheer joy of making music - and more than that, the joy of friendship itself. The presentation no doubt helps, but it was that joy that kept me looking forward all week to the next episode. And with the exception of Honey and Clover, it spoke to me emotionally more than anything else I've seen.

Critics will no doubt cite the shortage of plot and the failure to experiment; K-On! surely isn't pushing any boundaries. But what it has done is to take a form and polish it to perfection, and what results is a little slice of pure happiness. I am absolutely sincere when I say K-On!! is the second-best series I know.

(*) Or rather, it wouldn't have crossed my mind if I hadn't been planning to write this review