K-ON! and K-ON!!

K-ON! and K-ON!!

A 12 episode anime and its 24 episode sequel, taken from the 4-panel slice of life strip of the same name.

OVERVIEW -Taken from an obscure "Yonkoma" or "4-koma" comic, a type of short, quick "funny pages" comic like peanuts or other western paper's comics, This series almost literally exploded once the anime began, hence its lopsided seasons. Called by many "Lucky stars with music" because of its similar origin, style and subject matter (high school girls just goofing about in their every day lives) its proved to be a huge hit in Japan, with sales of one of the guitarist models (the cheaper-to-buy Fender Mustang) increasing by almost 60%, and has seen record breaking sales, competing with Bakemonogatori and Macross Frontier as the most popular anime of recent years. 

REVIEW -Set around the members of a high school's "Light music club" (keionbu, taken from the word for light music keiongaku, with light music essentially meaning "popular" music), and more specifically the life of one of the members, Yui Hirasawa, as they live, play and have constant tea-breaks, facing the troubles being in a band, being in high school and being lazy brings. The series' title "K-On" being a phonetic pronunciation of the term Keion.

Its worth mentioning here that how well you enjoy the series depends on how you view Yui. On one hand you may see her as a ditzy, lazy, useless clutz who leaches off those around her while constantly daydreaming, appearing little more than a drooling halfwit with ADD who somehow flukes her way through most things. If that is the impression you have after the first three episodes, you will likely NOT enjoy the rest of the anime.. If however you see an airheaded but kind hearted girl, confused with what to do in her life who overcomes her troubles with sincerity and the bonds of friendship she builds than carry on watching, as you will find a great deal of enjoyment in the show. 

The story starts as Yui enters high school, determined to find a path in life, something that interests her, being drawn to the idea of the "light music club" thinking it'd be easy and fun. The club was however on the verge of being shut down, all the previous members having graduated. Now being run by the childhood friend combo of Ritsu Tainaka and Mio Akiyama, who's unintentional comedic behaviour draw the interest of Tsumugi Kotobuki. Faced with needing a 4th member or being shut down by the end of the month the three finally manage to bribe Yui into staying by offering her tea and snacks, setting the tone for the whole club's existance. 

Yui, who's never played anything more than castenets in her life, decides to learn the guitar to fill out the band the club wants to form. This is a primary point of humour for the series, as Yui displays a complete lack of knowledge about music theory, is unable to read music or understand its terms yet is a natural talent with the guitar. The four of them overcome troubles, like lack of money, failing exams and almost having the club disbanded again as they didnt have a teacher to supervise them in their comidic fashion, at one point actually blackmailing the music teacher, Sawako Yamanaka, with her "Shameful" past as a heavily make-up caked heavy metal singer from the club's history.

At the start of the second year, they manage to convince a freshman, Azusa Nakano, to join them, adding a second guitar and a 5th member to the band. 

the second season is set entirely in the third and final year of the original girls high school life, and the mood has an underlaying current of sadness, as they all begin to realise that this is the last year they're going to be together, and that they'd have to leave Azusa behind, likely on her own. As the season gets closer to its climax that bittersweet feeling comes more to the forefront, and affects the actions of the characters, with the 4 older girls working hard to try and eventually succeed at going to the same university, and Azusa being able to find friends in her own year who will join the club as they enter their third year.

Culminating in the 24th episode with the girls graduation and a tear-jerking "special song" written and performed by the 4 for Azusa, the series is followed by a couple of "extra episodes" set further back in time, before the girls graduate and there is also a movie, set before the girls graduation and that basically follows the story of the process behind the song for Azusa, as the girls take in a trip to London and perform a one-off last concert in their classroom on the last day. 

I'm also going to take a moment here to talk about the music of the series, Normally I'd leave this to the summery section, but as its a driving element of the show, set around a band, I feel its important to bring up here. 

Yui is the lead singer and guitarist of the band, Mio is the bassist and second singer, performing backing and occasional lead vocals, Tsumugi, or "Mugi" plays keyboard with occasional backing, Ritsu is the drummer and Azusa joins to play second guitar. Each of the girls play real intstruments, Yui's Les Paul, Mio playing a left-handed Fender Jazz bass, Mugi plays a Korg Triton, Ritsu a Yamaha hipgig kit with Zildjian cymbols and Azusa a Fender Mustang, and the instruments are lovingly re-created in the show, rendered in cell-shaded 3D. 

The songs are sung by the actual voice-actresses of the various characters, however the instruments are not, played by studio musicians to create the music. The songs written by the girls in the series are of an oddly "light and fluffy" style, with most written by Mio, featuring lyrics about sweets, stationary and when she's in a slump, cute animals. Yui's songs tend to be about food, with at least two songs talking about rice. These songs are less technical, more the level you'd expect from high-school aged musicians. However the insert music, and the theme music for end and finish (3 of each, one for the first season, two for the second) are much more polished, technical and professional sounding. Yui's vocals always grace the opening theme, while the ending theme is sung by Mio, with the openers being up-tempo, energetic songs and the ending themes having a more serious feel. 

There's also a fair bit of music from the Teacher, Sawako's old light music club band, "Death Devil", a slice of classic early 90's style thrash metal. again, vocals provided by the voice actress. 

there's a lot of referances to "classic rock" icons, such as the who, hendrix, led zepplin etc, and the music itself, both the in-story songs and the theme songs have a degree of that kind of melodic pop-rock that grew out of such bands. As to be expected from an anime about music, there's a huge amount of singles, soundtracks and "character imprint" music out there, and the merchandising of the series is massive, a fact aped by the second season episode "Tea party!" where the girls throw a special part for the members of Mio's fan club (gained in her first year when she tripped coming offstage from their first show, giving the entire audience a full view of her panties and Mio a never-ending emotional trauma) and the girls make a ton of "Mio-chan" merch. 

Yui - "Mio-chan pencils, Mio-chan erasers, Mio-chan pocket tissues, Mio-chan chocolates, Mio-chan bottle openers, Mio-chan chopsticks and Mio-chan back-scratchers!"

Mio - "Stop making weird items!"

Yui - "We just put Mio-chan stickers on them"

The characters of the girls are all well developed but fairly simple in execution, with most of them having a defining characteristic and an contrasting trait, Such as Yui being basically useless in most things, but able to achieve the almost impossible when bothering to focus on things, learning the guitar to a skilled performance level in a matter of about 6 months, though this is offset by the fact that learning anything new causes her to forget something she already knew (such as cramming for a maths exam and forgetting all the guitar chords she'd learnt), or Mugi, who is from an exceedingly rich family but is fascinated by mundane things like cheap sweets, being asked "do you want fries with that" at a fast food resturant. The most often seen aspect of this however is Mio's. A quiet, dedicated and serious person, she is completely unable to deal with anything remotely scary, panicking and freezing at the slightest thing, including hearing a scream on a tape from a previous light music club band (actually Sawako's "Death Devil"). This kind of behaviour allows for some great humour, some touching moments and a lot of inter-play between the characters, and in the lack of a "good guy vs bad guy" story such as this, is really the main driving force of the story movement. 

Finally, i'll touch on the animation. In the first season, as what was likely a "risky investment" taken from a then-obscure 4-koma, the animation values are pretty poor, lots of bad "forced perspective" shots, making the characters look deformed, like with legs way too short and feet of tiny size. While addressed somewhat in the second (and better funded) season it still crops up from time to time. While the CG is noticable, especially with the cars and instruments, its not overly intrusive, and is used quite heavily in the opening/ends. The animation's drawing style is very simple, and makes use of the "emoticon faces" style often favoured in comedy animes. One of the let-downs however is it becomes hard to visually tell characters apart except by their hair styles, another point made into a joke in the series itself, with 3 examples, Yui and her sister Ui are almost impossible to tell apart once Ui puts her hair down, Sawako notes that Mio and Azusa cant be told apart by her without her glasses, and Ritsu deliberately ties Mio's hair up like Azusa's at one point. 

A funny, non-serious comedy about the lives of a small group of girls going through high-school, it features some great music, likable characters, drama, humour, is light on the relationship drama side (all girls school, hints of "girl/girl action" but in a fluffy, romantic manner... oh, except Yui sleeps with her guitar that she's named "Giita" on occasion) and that wonderful "Bittersweetness" that is so often found in Japanese stories. Its a real "love-or-hate" show in the west however, with many feeling it and others like it (such as "Lucky Star") as being "too moe" and abusing the whole "moe culture" for profit or just basically being unable to stomach the sheer level of cuteness of it, a fact also mocked by the anime itself, when Sawako, recently blackmailed into becoming the advisor to hide her "Shameful heavy metal past" under her "kind and cute teacher" personna she'd been cultivating at the school has a realisation after hearing the lyrics to "Fuwa Fuwa time" (fluffy time).

Sawako (inner monologue) - "Wait a minute, my image might improve if i say i like cutesy stuff like this..."

fades to fantasy images of first the band praising her, then the whole school worshping her like a goddess
 Sawako - "I.. I guess I like that song too"
Ritsu - "huh?!"

I would suggest that if the anime interests you, or you just want to know what the fuss is about, then watch the first three episodes and see what you think of Yui, fitting her into one of the two descriptions i mentioned at the start. If she comes across as annoying to you, then you're really not going to enjoy the anime.

SUMMARY -

Story -  As a "slice of life" story, there's no real "epic" tale here, its just a look at the day to day of people. It does a good job of showing the closeness and bonds the group develops, not only within the five band members but with others too. easy to watch and with some great moments of humour, its no "tale for the centuries" but very worth a look. 7/10

 Production - Very split here, as the first season obviously had less funding than the second season, CG is obvious but not overpoweringly so across both seasons, The first season has a real miss-match of production values, with one scene looking fine the next having an obvious colour/style mismatch between animated sections and background. As the second season goes on these sorts of things get smoothed out and the production becomes more consistant and solid. I'm personally willing to make accomodations to the whole "low budget first season" thing, but for the review, I have to be objective, hence the lower score. 4/10

Music - For a music based anime, anything below an 8 here would be a distaster. K-on however has a great soundtrack, with distinct styles, themes, mood setting inserts and the music of the band, both in-story and out is top-notch. Many of the tracks, due to the energertic drumming, impressive "walking bassline" style and great harmonies, have made their way into my very elitist and obscure personal playlists, a feat only 3 other anime's have achieved out of the hundreds i've seen (Macross frontier, Gundam 00 and Bakemonogatari). The majority of the music has a "pop-rock" style, with a few exceptions in the "character imprint" singles and obviously Sawako's "Death Devil". One of my favourite points is that the voice actors sing the songs themselves, as one of my pet-peeves with music anime's is when the singer and voice actor are different (Macross 7 i'm looking at you, stupid fake singing voices....). For the series the sound mix is spot on too, with no instrument overpowering the other. 10/10

Accessability - Set in a high school, this is exceptionally hard to follow without really getting to know a lot of the modern cultural referances in Japanese teen culture. Even translators have failed at this, notably turning the phrase "Moe moe kyun" (kyun being a sound made to represent the "twang of the heartstrings" as such) into "the power of cute compells you"... In fact, because its so full of this kind of thing, i'm including this link to TVTropes to help people follow some of the behaviour and events and understand the reasoning behind them. 1/10 (because some things in the show are just universally funny)

Overall Impression - Its success is phenomonal, its characters being used to sell almost everything but especially musical instruments, and its easy to see why, its a light-hearted, funny anime with some real characters who's lives may just move you. The impact of this series cannot be denied and if you like anime, or follow Japanese pop culture at all this series will make itself known to you one way or another. tricky for a beginner to grasp, once you're familiar with the culture and settings the humour shines through, it's music is lively, compelling and well executed and its very easy to form attachments to the characters. It wont change your life, unless it inspires you into music, but its a great way to enjoy a (fair) few hours. 8/10

Final Score - 30/50