Hibike! Euphonium

Kyoto Animation's success with K-On gave a new face to the genre of music anime—a face that focused on the activities of cute girls in a group, and to a lesser extent, their relationships. Hibike Euphonium is more or less the same formula, but on a much larger scale; a school band of boys and girls alike. Said school band is aiming for a mere shot at the nationals with the help of an instructor much stricter than they'd prefer. It's by no means an original concept, but it would be acceptable if it showcased the trials a band faces in an admirable fashion; instead, ... Hibike is more concerned about weak shoujo ai coupled with the insecurities of its characters.

Kumiko and her friends are the main source of those insecurities, and they're not much more than what you'd expect from a teenage group of anime characters: naïve, overstating, and worried about love. Little can be said about unique characteristics or personalities, since aside from a few cute quirks (like a character naming her tuba 'Tubacabra'), there are next to none. To balance this weakness out, the show introduces the collected and beautiful bandmate Reina, whose mutual admiration with Kumiko tends to go a little overboard. There's a load of flirting between the two without any romantic development, which leads me to believe the relationship is only there to give a reason to the protagonist's unnatural success; the two are driven by a non-existent love for each other, and it is not convincing in the slightest.

That wasted screentime could have been better used on the development of the school band, who the viewer only gets to know about a quarter of. Because of that lack of focus, there is no unifying element of teamwork to the storyline—you are merely watching a few people surrounded by background characters whenever they play. Their instructor, Taki, is often pointing out musical flaws or weaknesses in certain sections of the band, but the lack of familiarity with the members makes their struggle to improve near meaningless. Unless you're driven by any personal nostalgia, it is seemingly impossible to empathize with anyone. It really makes the end goal to reach the nationals both predictable and uninteresting, as well as boring to watch.

The animation of Hibike Euphonium is great. Crisp, fluid, and full of detail, it's something that can only be expected of the notorious studio behind it. The art itself isn't as impressive, but acceptable; everything looks as if it's been bathed in layers upon layers of oil, even excessive by the standards of teenage hygiene. Regardless, watching each instrument as it's being played is always a real treat.

Hearing them is pretty nice, too. It's likely the only real indicator of progress in the series, as they go from sounding like your average school band to something deserving of recognition pretty quickly. In fact, it's a little too abrupt of an improvement. Later performances begin to sound too professional for their age level, and as beautiful as it is, it's immersion-breaking. For better or for worse, you can tell that the soundtrack was performed by a group that makes its anime counterpart pale in comparison.

Clumsiness aside, Hibike manages to fit into the formula its predecessors put in place, albeit quite half-heartedly. The fundamentals are all there, but the soul is missing. It's drab, often slow, and questionable in focus, but it is what it is. If you're looking for something light and simplistic, go nuts. Just don't expect much in the drama department, OK?

I really don’t know about this series. I know for sure that it WAS NOT good, but I don’t really know what to think about it and what exactly I liked and disliked about the series. I know that it looked really pretty and there were some beautiful moments, but many of these key scenes didn’t have a purpose that was fulfilled by how they looked. Its as if the show wanted to look nice just to look nice and the images didn’t enhance the plot as much as they should have.

Speaking of the plot, it was mostly hit or miss with both the ... first and second halves feeling weak in their own ways. The first half had some enjoyable parts but the main cast didn’t really mesh together in any real or believable way, and most characters didn’t have anything to really like about them. Many were bland and didn’t have much purpose aside from either being an obstacle or fulfilling an aside that fed into the main conflict. Kumiko was likable to an extent and received the most development, and I can really appreciate that she isn’t put into a certain mold and feels conflicting and layered enough that she feels the most real, but she was a character that would have been better served in a better plot.

The plot was, personally, the weakest part of the series in part to how inconsequential it felt at times, and how many of the surrounding elements did not service it in a meaningful way. What I mean by this is that many of the asides that the series which served to either flesh out the world, provide character development, or explain the situation in a practical way, didn’t seem to have much impact because the time spent developing these scenes did not, in turn, provide a similarly large effect on the world. Often the understandings of other characters to what is happening or the status quo does not change and it feels like most of these moments could have easily been tossed aside and it almost seems like they were. That is not to say that certain scenes such as Kumiko and Rikka on the mountain aren’t memorable, but that it instead feels like it came out of nowhere and disappeared without any real impact on what is going on. You could call it subtlety and say that development on these characters is meant to be subdued and realistic, but even in that case it doesn’t work because we do not spend enough time getting to know these people to really know how their feeling. Other than Kumiko who, admittedly, did believably change over the course of the series.

Aside from this, the series feels the need to shove all development down our throat with useless narration which often repeats to us things we could understand just by watching what is happening, and most of the time comes off as redundant and unnecessary which ultimately takes you out of the experience.

As a whole, the plot showed promise, particularly at the beginning where the destination and the obstacles were made clear and the possibilities of truly coming together while working towards something meaningful as a group seemed like what the series was aiming for, while emphasizing the attempted repair of an awkward friendship. The problem, I think, is that the series was too short. I faulted the series’ inconsequential asides but I believe if this same story was told over more episodes and we really got to know more members of the band then while seeing them all interact would have given the story more impact as we see how the events of the story matter to them and better understand what makes them who they are. Instead nothing feels like it really matters because as certain elements are introduced, they often don’t have a worthwhile conclusion or don’t add anything to the story. They may tell you more but not enough that you know why it matters.

As the story progresses certain events only add unnecessary drama or hold the overall plot back either because the whole story also has the misfortune of being largely predictable, and because they do not add any further tension when the stakes were clearly established and characters act in a way that defy what is best for everyone and holds everyone back.

Finally, and this is much more personal, I did not enjoy Kumiko and Rikka’s relationship. To be clear, most of the characters lacked meaningful relationships, but I did not see a reason to enjoy their’s in particular. Nor did I see any reason to justify them as a yuri pairing. NONE AT ALL. I am being entirely serious. None of their interactions in the beginning gave me any reason to believe either of them even liked each other nor do they even seem to get along most of the time. They just have vaguely romantic moments that serve no purpose and feel very out of place.

All in all, I don’t hate the series, but I do have many problems with it, and would easily say that it is my least favorite Kyoto Animation show of recent memory. I can give credit to Kumiko being likable enough to make some parts bearable, and for the ending actually feeling fulfilling. However, most everything else was not enjoyable and I began to actively dislike the show by the 3rd quarter. I didn’t like the characters, I didn’t like how the plot flowed, and while the show is beautiful, the art does not add anything nor do anything to bring you closer to the world. Its pretty but without substance.

The main character has no role in the show whatsoever. Their purpose is literally just to play as a voyeur to the mostly boring drama of band schoolmates. Most of these issues include multiple episodes of drama from both sides of the party, and then a final episode when both parties have a single conversation that instantly resolves the issue. At least the show does a decent job developing these characters through these incidents, using the main character as a foil to rehash everything up until that point. Art is standard. Sound is slightly better than average, seeing as it's a show about music. There ... are some nice pieces thrown in there. So if you enjoy endless drivel and random lesbian girls love between main characters, then this is the show for you.

In my short life watching animated series, if there's something I learned through the years is that the best pieces of animation are those ones which can balance remarkable and original art, animation with a fascinating or at least compelling story with well written and rounded characters, and last but not least, making a good use of music to make the experience more delightful, memorable and even complement the atmosphere and characterization, especially if music is the central theme of the aforementioned series.

In this case I am reviewing one which art is kind of remarkable, with decent musical compositions, but appalling melodrama and cardboard characters: ... Sound! Euphonium.

Art & Animation:
I am, like everyone, a biased person, and I have to confess that I'm not a fan of how Kyoani confront their creations: they clearly are almost unbeatable in how they animate every detail and how fluid can look, only comparable with cinematographic works of Ghibli, CoMix Wave, or any film with high display of production values like Redline or Sword of the Stranger.

Of course, they lack of creativity in some aspects like character design in order to make them look as cute as possible ends up falling into the generic department, losing against other formidable pieces like Dennou Coil, Cowboy Bebop and FLCL. And don't make me start on how some animes with budget limits prove that your animation can have high standards like Haibane Renmei, Rakugo, Trust and Betrayal, Evangelion or Berserk '97.

Music:
In a series about music, someone may expect masterpieces that can give classical musicians a run for their money or at least if the staff are using non original soundtrack, to use it properly like Nodame Cantabile so you can mentally relate the music with the anime. And even though it's not bad music per se, it's unfortunate how average are such compositions and how wasted it feels at the end of the day (you can separate it almost completely from the anime and enjoy it more on your own!). I can forgive this if we weren't talking about a slice of life where the cast is in a school band. Fortunately, sound effects are extremely polished but that can be expected from Kyoani.

Story:
So far I haven't spoken about what is this all about. So, what's this all about?
Well, a group of Moe girls walking and talking nonsense most of the time, and supposedly focused on winning a place in the school band and rehearsing as hard as possible. This second part is, again, supposedly to be the main plot but Kyoani preferred to focus on their specialty: giving queerbaiting between cute innocent schoolgirls because yuri-bait helps a lot with merchandising. At least 30% of the camera is entirely focused on schoolgirl thighs just for the sake of having them somewhere rather than giving more space to actual characterization, so far we've been told rather than shown the motivation of the main cast to find the Euphonium, hence the pace of this series is also appalling in spite of having less than 15 chapters.

Characters:
And now the biggest offender: the characters. To be fair, Kyoani never was a studio that gave half a damn about good screenplay or writing, so the closest thing to decent writing that I've ever seen of them is the characterization of Haruhi suzumiya (instead of being a cute retarded cardboard, she's a full sentient girl with bad manners) and the comedy of Nichijou, that worked somehow in each chapter.

Nevertheless, do not be fooled by those who claim that the portrayal of these girls are totally realistic -whose names can be replaced by the main girls from K-ON due to how awfully similar they are-. There's nothing that helps people to point a single trait of personality of ANY of these girls. Why? Because it's not necessary to even try to give them a personality. On the other hand, checking other music-centered animes like Kids on the Slope, Beck or Kono oto Tomare, you can easily make a distinction between each one of their respective casts. Also, there's not character development at all, not saying that this is mandatory but at least the writer could make these moe dolls had some charisma and more traits to convince me to care about them. And before you ask, no, Liz and the Blue Bird is not realistic or even remotely good either, but wins against Euphonium due to the segments of the tale of Liz where animation and music actually merge with each other smoothly and they forget about the high school setting

Overall, it's only worthy if you are a hardcore fan of this overrated studio. Otherwise, I advise you to stay away from it and find the other examples of how great some anime music can be: Nodame Cantabile, Kids on the Slope, Beck, Kono oto Tomare, Forest of Piano.
If you really want to see how good Kyoani can be with their high production values, go check Violet Evergarden or Nichijou, which are so far their best works.
And if you wanted an actual GL story rather than dirty pandering, Revolutionary Girl Utena is always available, or Shinsekai Yori.