Ranked #407

K-On!! Special

K-ON has always been an anime over which flame wars were fought. There are people who absolutely love the series and are great fans of it, people who hate it and if given a chance would simply destroy the fandom, and somewhere between the two exists a small group of people who have managed to maintain their impartiality. With the special episode of the second season of K-ON, the fading battles have obtained more fuel; let’s try to find out which side is more accurate in their judgements in this very case.

We are welcomed by the same opening song we’ve grew accustomed to during the second half of the K-ON!! What follows is – what a surprise – our usual dose of moe and cuteness. The episode reminded me of the first season rather than of the second one (which had scraps of plot here and there), as it followed the well-known “cute girls doing cute things” scheme. Given it’s a special episode though, it’s not really something one should complain about, is it? So anyway, the episode consists purely of 20-something minutes of sheer moe. Good? Bad? Hard to say, some people might like it, some might not.

The story tells us about HTT’s planning of their vacation – this time, they’re headed overseas. Basically, the whole episode is about them not being able to decide where to go, problems with applications for passports, taking photos and… food-related discussions. Nothing new as you can see. But that’s the peculiar thing about K-ON, even though we’re not given as much as an interesting plot or unique characters, it still attracts thousands of people. And that’s the case in this episode too, not much content, but it was still fun to watch. That’s a truly positive thing about K-ON, it proves that even without massive amount of panty-shots and revealing camera angles, you can still create a huge fandom and gather hundreds of people around.

Regarding music and graphics – not a single thing changed: the same animation, the same soundtrack – though that was to be expected as it’s only an extra episode, right?

It’s pretty hard to rate what I’ve just watched – it wasn’t exceptionally good, but it wasn’t a let-down too. I guess that when it comes to K-ON it really is hard to maintain status quo and not drift to the one side or another. It certainly lacked any logical plot – but if plot is a mean of getting people attracted and interested in something, this anime manages just fine even without it. It wasn’t dull, it wasn’t boring, and time sure flew by during watching it – and that’s what counts. The one thing that concerns me and makes the whole series a bit weird to watch is the age of the five girls, they’re applying to college (meaning they are about 18 years old) yet they behave as if they were 12 y/o. That creates this feeling of absurdity and impossibility – it affects the reception of the whole a little, but it’s nothing major (it’s a damn anime, me, stop being such a nitpicker).

So, let’s just that 7 is fair enough - though I’d add +0.5 for Mio’s reference to The Beatles and funny Engrish. Also, after this episode, I kind of know what to expect from the movie.
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