K-On!

Mod Edit: Minor Spoilers mentioned. I'm just going to say this straight away: These kind of animes bring out the silly little girl in me. And as I'm a 19-year old guy, it's kind of an unexpected thing, even for me. And I mean this in the most positive way possible. "K-On!" follows the story of Hirasawa Yui, a girl who lives a life similar to your average person on the net, except for the internet part. It's difficult to explain without using the words "carefree" and "lazy". In a way, she probably reflects a majority of people I know, including myself, except for the fact shedoesn't really have any real life issues other than school. This changes however when she decides to join the Light Music Club, where she now has to learn and play guitar. We also got 3 other characters that will be focused on: Ritsu (drummer), Mio (bass), Tsumugi (keyboard), followed by another one half-way through the first season, namely Azusa (guitar). Inbetween their "goal" to reach fame, they have a few concerts and a lot of fun. Quite lovely. The story itself is memorable, but unoriginal and consisting mostly of filler to build character. However, I myself don't consider this to be a bad thing at all. With animes like this one, filler is what pretty much drives it, and I love every single minute of it. Each episode being just as silly, and if not even sillier than the other. Although it doesn't beat Lucky Star, but if you've seen that, you know that's a difficult thing to do. The music itself is great and quite catchy, but I'm not a big fan of Yui's singing. I know this might piss some people off, but hey, it's my opinion, and I prefer Mio on the mic anytime. The first ED is in this case also my favorite song in the anime, "Don't Say Lazy". The instrumentals are great, although not that original, but still enjoyable. The art is cute and silly, and like I said before, combined with cute voices I often find myself randomly squeeing simply because of how cute it is. If it didn't have that factor, I would be far less interested in this anime. There are animes for all kinds of people, be it sci-fi, action, romance, drama, adventure, etc. But for me, comedies are my thing because they distract me from how stupid life can be from time to time. The characters in this anime are a lot of fun, and very different in personality. We got Yui who, as we know, is carefree and quite lazy, and tends to be awkward on the weirdest of times, but in a cute way. Then, we have Mio, who's pretty much the opposite of Yui, shy and easily scared. Ritsu is energetic and a bit of a devil when it comes to pranks, especially aimed at Mio as they are childhood friends. Tsumugi, who's not as energetic as Ritsu, but still enjoys the little things in life, and she's also the "rich kid" as you may call her, but thankfully you won't notice that in this anime. And later on we get Azusa, a very serious junior girl, but also easily distracted and really silly at times. All the characters share one thing: They're happy high school students who like to play music. The bond they have is emphasized in the anime, as each episode tries not to leave anyone out. And once again, that's one of the things I love about it. "K-ON!" is not for everyone, but if you like cute and silly characters with a cute and silly story, then I definitely recommend giving it a shot. Just don't expect any real seriousness, except for when they prepare for concerts. For me, it's a proper balance of a funny story, with funny characters and fun music. It's definitely not original, but as long as it's executed properly, it doesn't have to be, as long as it's fun. And yeah, like I said pretty much a million times... This anime sure is!

This review is going to be broken down into the 5 parts that MAL focuses on with each section getting critiqued. Story: As you know by the description on the anime's page, K-on is suppose to be about Yui Hirasawa and joining of saving of her high school's light music club, with the problem being that Yui has never read music or knows how to play a guitar. Slowly a few of these problems get cleared up but the main bulk of the plot goes no where whatsoever. You can come in at any episode and still get what's going. The anime is heavy on the theme"light and fluffy." to which when watching it you don't have to know anything nor necessarily be there the entire episode to know what is going to happen and that's the main problem, like every other "moe" anime it's generic and predictable in the events category. Art: This is probably the biggest problem with the show in my opinion, the art. Seriously I can guarantee you that the studio used a step by step handbook and stencil set to create yui, mio, ristu and mugi, it's what is seriously killing the industry today in my opinion...generic characters. There is nothing that makes any one character in K-on stand out. The backgrounds themselves are nothing to praise about either as they are the standard school, bustling street/shop and from time to time inside one of the girls home scenes. To sum it up the art lacks originality and there is no direction for it. Sound: This is probably the only place that K-on climbs up outta the rubbish category. The times that you hear music made by the club it's actually not that bad and can be catchy at times, and with it's suppose plot revolving around music you'd think to hear it a lot but it's quite the opposite, the girls spend more time sitting around being airheads then trying to do anything music related. Character: What can I say,all of the characters of K-on have traits that superficial. They all are generic and no one has anything that makes them unique or stand out. Enjoyment: After watching 13 episodes, I can say overall the enjoyment was just another thing including original art and characters that the show was missing...I mean it was boring and painful as well as predictable to watch. Summary: K-on is a light and fluffy fan service anime to which it hosts no original art and set of characters. If your looking for something to which you don't need to think or understand maybe you'd enjoy k-on but even then your going to have to endure lackluster scenes of boring pointless conversations to which watching windows screen saver can provide more enjoyment.

K-ON! is inconsequential fluff. One might compare it to popcorn or cotton candy: a tasty treat, but if you're looking for a meal, it will leave you looking for something more substantial after it's done. K-ON! follows the tried and true formula of cute girls doing cute things. Based on a 4-koma comic, the series is about several high school girls who form (technically join, but all the previous members graduated) a light music club and follows their activities. The music itself often takes a back seat to the antics of the girls, and audiophiles may find themselves somewhat disappointed if they go in expecting detailedattention to techniques or references to real life bands (there are a couple, but few and far between). There are two concerts in the thirteen episode series, but neither is as impressive as the one from the Live A Live episode of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (one of Kyoto Animation's earlier shows), but still very enjoyable. The most common scene in the series features the main girls sitting in the club room snacking on tea and cakes while discussing various mundane events, particularly with the more dedicated girls trying to get the rest to practice. The girls all have their own distinct personality. Yui, the main character, is the some clumsy and adorable airhead. She joined the club hoping to play an easy instrument like the castanets but ends up playing guitar because the club needed a guitarist. Ritsu is the energetic idiot of the show, drummer, and club president because she was the one who dragged everyone else into the club. Mio is Ritsu's long time friend, and the sensible, serious one of the group. She writes the groups songs, and plays the bass. She is also the most moe character, being the prettiest, easily embarrassed, and terrified of ghosts and yucky things. Mugi is the pianist. She comes from a wealthy family, and thus is a source of amusement by displaying the difference in wealth between rich people and normal people. She is also the provider of the tea and sweets that are regularly consumed at the club meetings. There are a few regular minor characters, too. Ui is Yui's younger, but more mature and reliable sister. Yui has a friend named Nodoka who joins the student council, which means her role is essentially to let everyone know that Ritsu has forgotten something regarding paperwork for the club. Sawako is a music teacher who is recruited as the club adviser in one of the more memorable scenes of the series. Also, a late addition to the cast is Azusa, an underclassman who is much like a miniature version of Mio. Character designs are generally cute, with the kind of big round faces typical of most Kyoto Animation works. Background art is consistently good, as is the animation, which should come as no surprise. When characters are shown playing their instruments, there is generally more attention to detail than seen in anime to the point where the sound properly matches the characters actions. The singing at the concert features the same style animation as Live A Live, where you can just about lip read the lyrics (if you know Japanese, of course). The music used in the series can generally be described as light and fluffy, both the background music and the couple of songs the girls play at their concerts, with the exception of the closer, which rocks a little bit harder than rest. The voice acting fits well all around, with Yui being notable for regularly coming off as someone who isn't all there, fitting her character well. I don't want to close saying this show is like Azumanga Daioh with a music club, but that's about the easiest comparison I can make, and not too far off a description.

I picked up "K-On!" envisioning it as some kind of healing, mundane slice of life in the same vein as "Aria the Animation", something nice and gentle that would help soothe my severe withdraw symptoms brought on by finishing "Hikaru no Go". Even though on the surface I mostly got what I was looking for (it is mundane, and it is a slice of life), the end product was a huge disappointment. It's a bit like one of those twisted fairy tales in which some greedy guy makes wishes to the devil or a genie or something. Even though his wishes are all granted,fulfilling all the criteria that he specified, none of the result turns out to be what he wanted - there's always something very wrong with what he ends up with. It took me a few episodes to figure out what's wrong with "K-On!". First of all, it starts off disappointingly dull. I'm one of the most patient of viewers, but even I found my attention wandering frequently, and I kept having to rewind to see what I'd missed - and usually the answer turned out to be "not very much". It's rare that I get really bored when watch anime, especially given my fondness for the more mundane slice of life shows, but "K-On!" managed to seriously test my patience (it took me half a year to finish). And then I realised something worse - "K-On!" is MOE. Not as blatant as "Clannad", but still, it's all about cute girls doing cute things for the sake of being cute. It also serves to explain why I found it to be dull, given that I have no interest in watching artificially cute girls doing mundanely cute things, and there isn't much else to be found in the show. I find it interesting to compare "K-On!" with "Aria the Animation", which is also about cute girls doing cute things. I don't know whether it's because I watched "Aria the Animation" before and "K-On!" after "Clannad", a show that is so moe that it's caused me to develop allergic reactions to anything vaguely resembling cute, but with "Aria the Animation", the cuteness seemed more innocent; the natural calming beauty of the settings also made "Aria the Animation" less one dimensional, and it just seems to have a charm about it that's severely lacking in "K-On!". As much as I was unimpressed by "K-On!", I must admit that towards the mid-series, the slice of life settings began to work its magic, and I found the series growing on me ever so slightly, I even started finding it mildly amusing and enjoyable at times... and that's when the makers of the show decided the time is ripe to give its targeted audience more of what they want - that is to say, the more obnoxious cliches of anime. Unsatisfied with just having cute, clumsy girls procrastinating over homework and cutely drooling over sweets and "cakies", they started rolling out the dreaded maid outfit and the cat ears etc. The already limited quality of the series took a dip and sunk to a new low as the girls started spending a lot of time inflicting these the disturbing costumes and distasteful accessories on one another. Obviously, the shy characters would meow pitifully as they are victimised, but of course at the same time they also show signs that a part of them is secretly enjoying the experience. Yes, of course they like it deep down - they're moe blobs after all! Anyway I'm sure you get the picture, so lets move swiftly on... Though "K-On!" is about a music club, they do so little music-related activity that it's easy to mistake it for something else (like, a show about a cake eating club, for example). When it comes to the subject of music, the series is the antithesis of "Nodame Cantabile". The latter emphasises the importance of hard work even when the musician is already ridiculously talented. In "K-On!", however, we have Yui, someone who'd never played an instrument before, but who very quickly started reproducing face melting solos she hears with apparent ease, and is able to immediately master the techniques demonstrated to her. And she does all of this with just a small amount of casual and unmethodic practice. As I am also learning to play an instrument, this complete undermining of the effort required really doesn't sit well with me. I know it's not supposed to be very focused on the music, but come on, they could have at least made *some* attempt to make it seem less like a piece of cake! The final nail in the coffin actually came when "K-On!" tried to do some character development in an episode towards the end of the series. For the first half of that episode, I was bewildered because the characters were acting quite strangely. Then I realised what the episode was trying to achieve - it was going out of its way to create a rift between a couple of characters in order to set up a kiss-and-make-up scenario. Upon realising this, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that they botched up the attempt so badly that it reached a painful level of transparency. Perhaps the makers were better off keeping things simple and sticking to pandering to the moe crowd as they're clearly incapable to doing anything more substantial All in all, "K-On!" is an interesting specimen for being a slice of life without a soul. Compared to, say, "Azumanga Daioh", which is not a slice of life (yes I know it revolves around mundane things, but it's clearly very comedy inclined and not too concerned about being down to earth), but radiated that pleasant warmth associated with a good slice of life, I can barely feel anything in "K-On!", and I certainly don't have any fondness for any of the characters. Something feels fundamentally wrong with the series - the creepy elements dispels any sense of innocence and charm it might otherwise have had, and once you strip away those elements, what's left is disturbingly hollow. Perhaps I'm being overly harsh on an anime that I consider mediocre, and sure there are anime out there that are a lot worse (like "Clannad"), but I guess I'm feeling rather grumpy that "K-On" shattered my naively comforting delusion that slice of life shows can't be anything short of pleasant.

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