This post marks the first time I’ve started and finished an episodic for every single episode in an anime series.
Episode summary time!
It’s winter time, and with the exception of Yui, the light music club members all seem to have personal issues, and they end up drifting apart (sorta). Ritsu receives a love letter in the mail, while Mio wants to head to the beach (in winter, yes) to get inspiration for moar lyrics. Tsumugi wants to start working, and Azusa promises her friend to take care of her kitten (though she has no idea how to).
Yui ends up organising a “hot pot” alone with her sister (and Gitah) and somehow manages to send everyone else a text message at the exact moment when their moods are at their lowest. Azusa’s the first to reply, asking for help with the kitten since she has no idea about feline 101.
Slowly the club members gather together at Tsumugi’s workplace (which happens to be McD’s), and Mio reveals that Ritsu’s “love letter” is in fact her lyrics which she had mailed to her. With that, everyone lives happily ever after etc.
Minus the clubroom parts, as well as any cheek grabbing (not buttcheek, mind you), the episode was actually pretty slow compared to the rest. Then again, you can’t exactly have a fast pace when everyone’s gloomy and all.
For a last episode, I expected the OP and ED sequences to be replaced by additional scenes, but somehow that wasn’t the case here. It almost felt like there was going to be a next episode (since it felt so normal)…but then again we all know K-ON’s reached its end (for now).
Since there really isn’t much else to talk about, time to review the series as a whole!
Series Review
Back when K-ON! started, it received a hell lot of hype after the first episode aired. This was probably due to the OP and ED sequences, since it’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything as dynamic, accompanied by a good soundtrack. It didn’t stop some from noticing animation errors, however.
After a while though, that hype died down to average levels. It didn’t stop otaku from buying all those guitars. Opportunistic music store owners didn’t help though.
Speaking of which, there was a great amount of product placement in the series (prompting obsessed fans to identify each and every one of them). I haven’t seen this much product placement in a series. Then again, the only product placement I’ve seen so far was the pizza in Code Geass.
Animation quality wise…it sucked. Kyoto Animation wasn’t constant with the QC (Quality Control), and from time to time (more than average) errors popped up. It also felt like KyoAni was disguising it with bloom (similar to the gaming industry), since there was only one scene (if I remember correctly) which lacked the effect.
In my opinion though, that one scene looked better than the rest. I prefer sharper lines as opposed to slightly blurred ones.
Story-wise though, the animation studio did a good job of portraying the manga, even going so far as to inject a few more scenes here and there. However, adapting a 4koma manga also caused some scenes to feel disjointed, with the characters running over a joke and then immediately moving onto the next without giving the viewer time to comprehend. I think if I hadn’t read the manga in advance I wouldn’t have caught half the jokes that were carried over.
The characters were alright, and none of the characters had terrible voice acting, or felt out of place. I didn’t feel any real attachment to any of them though excluding Yui, and maybe Azusa. But then again I have an affinity to lolis being just…loli. 
There was just one problem: the anime (and manga) lacked male characters, as well as actual parents living with them (though we’ve seen Yui’s parents, sort of). It was almost as if all the members of the light music club lived on their own, similar to the girls in Hidamari Sketch. It’s probably one of the biggest plot holes in the series.
Overall? K-ON! was a slightly flawed anime in terms of quality, and I believe that if Kyoto Animation had paid more attention to quality control than product placement, K-ON!’s popularity and quality could have easily overcome the likes of other slice-of-life anime such as Haruhi and Lucky Star.
I gives it 6.5/10. The 0.5 was for bestowing upon us Yui and Azu-nyan. :3
5 Responses to “K-ON! EXTRA, and a Series Review”
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I think that as long as the moe does the magic and gets the fans to raise the hype so much, KyoAni has already done its job as quality isn’t so much what they’ve been going for. Besides they might have been focusing a bit more on Haruhi while keeping fans happy with this series without having to put as much effort in.
Q’s last blog post..Inside a Shokugan Shop
I don’t even watch Haruhi. Poor me.
either way, its all good! no more K-on…now the world is back to black and white…
tragic comedy’s last blog post..So it has come to this…
the manga is way better now.. esp the newer material….
its true