K-On!

I only recently got to K-On!, despite it being an influential part of the anime landscape for a decade now. I was not particularly excited going in, but I wasn't hugely pessimistic either. After all plenty of fairly inane slice of life shows have managed to solidly entertain me for their duration - Lucky Star, Azumanga Daioh, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid and so forth. The character designs looked cute and I figured it'd probably have some catchy pop-y numbers to go along with the day-to-day antics.

One episode in, however, I was already having my doubts, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I ... probably shouldn't have, because things didn't pick up from there. K-On! is the moe genre stripped of all extraneous parts, watching it is like mainlining moe. It literally has no qualities, but its moe-ness, and if that isn't enough for you as a viewer to subsist on, this is going to be a spectacularly disappointing experience.

Let me put it another way. Have you ever gone to a fast food joint with a post-mix soft drink machine that has malfunctioned? When you go to fill your cup it shoots a steady stream of syrup into your cup, but not the other component. You end up this revolting, sticky and undrinkable substance. Well that is the essence of K-On! I think by the end of watching it I hadn't only contracted diabetes, but my diabetes had diabetes.

This is, of course, KyoAni, so the animation is impressively fluid and never looks cheap or like corners have been cut. That isn't to say there's anything outstanding about the animation - rather there's a high-level of technical sophistication bereft of any particular artistry.

There's also less music in this show than you might expect, given its subject matter. What there is is once again perfectly competent, but largely uninspired. You're not going to see these girls performing anything as memorable as Haruhi's 'God Knows'.

Finally we have the characters. The MC, Yui, is utterly insufferable. She is so miserably incompetent at the most basic tasks that watching her bumble through even a few hours of her life is a grating, enraging-ly frustrating experience. The other characters are not significantly better. They're all so mind-numbingly naive, saccharine and just straight up pathetic as to be utterly insufferable. Anything that this show does have to offer is completely drowned out by its failure right out of the gates - these horrible, horrible characters.

Look, I'm not gonna say don't watch it. It's a landmark work of the moe revolution and at least you'll know what people are on about once you've let this glutinous mass ooze over you. But just... have the insulin ready.

This is the most boring and time eating show ever(Even if tis 12 ep). Most of the characters are stereotypes, actually all of the characters are stereotypes. The story is not well written, it's a mess. The writers of the show.. they didn't even bother too add something original to the show. You can just fill your daily Cringe-Meter with this "Anime".

My first impression about this anime was "wow! anime about music and cute girls, hell ye!" but when i cam to episode 3 then i realized that this show is complete full of sh*t!


BUT if you're saying ''i like cute girls doing music" ... than this show is for you(even if they are doing "music" rarely).

Initially, K-On! fascinated me as a show about the experiences of an upcoming band. It’s not very common to encounter a show about musicians; so as a musician myself, I was curious what it could offer. The slice-of-life elements seemed a welcome touch, too.

Turns out, K-On! is a slice-of-life disguised as a music anime. The musical aspect is only a vehicle to deliver moe anime-stuff. All things considered, this “music” anime doesn’t really have much to do with music. It’s not for musicians by any stretch, and contrarily, it’s probably better suited for non-musicians.

This might simply be a misalignment of expectations. But even on a ... moe-anime level, the show isn’t doing too well either. To summarize, the plot is bland, uncompelling, and uninspired. The comedy is as well. And this is coming from a guy whose only experience with this sort of stuff is Doki Doki Literature Club. That game made fun of this genre, yet it wouldn’t be surprising if it was exclusively making fun of K-On!, specifically.

Diving into musical territory would seemingly offer many fresh opportunities for humor and scenarios, yet the band’s members still decided to go to the beach, celebrate Christmas, and go to school festivals. And when that was over, they went to the beach. Again. There was nothing compelling that drove the episodes forward. While moe anime isn’t designed for its conflicts and heavy emotions, it certainly requires some of it in order to establish compelling characters in the first place. Knowledge about all the characters is pretty surface-level, each confined to their own quirks.

Episodes are standard length, but they certainly didn’t feel that way. Counter-intuitively, each episode felt longer due to its lack of content. Thus, the episodes felt stretched-out and empty. We’ve seen everything before. We’ve seen characters go to the beach, celebrate holidays, and attending school events. And when those things happen, there’s no twist on them whatsoever. It’s all filler, no killer.

There are some redeeming qualities here and there. Most noticeably, the music is quite nice (when it’s played for longer than 3 seconds, that is). The characters are all serviceable but I found everyone undeveloped, though Yui and Ritsu received a little more attention.

K-On! is about music as much as going to the movie theater is about food. One episode perfectly illustrates the essence of the show: During practice, Ritsu counts to four, the camera cuts away, and then it cuts back to the band playing the last chord. It has the appearance of a music anime and is nominally one, but when it sheds its skin, it’s a bland slice-of-life that’s too scared to touch its central premise.

K-On! suffers from total creative bankruptcy. The comedy is as flat as possible, there is no conflict, and the characters are as bland as eggshell-painted drywall. I apologize if I sound hyperbolic, but believe me when I say that everything I say about K-On! is my own truth. It is a slice-of-life that makes an unoriginal setting, a high school, as safe and boring as possible. The back-and-forth between characters is predictable, and dull as a result. It's fan-service for people who get turned on at the sight of high school freshmen in bikinis and laugh at adults making perverted comments toward those same teenagers ... as well. The show's total lack of creativity, conflict, story, or anything that makes art worthwhile make it a frustrating experience to sift through. The music presented in the show is also generic, poorly-written J-pop to boot. The show's existence is almost a full-fledged attack on what people even consume art for in the first place; what is there to gain from this outside of fetishizing young teenage girls? The whole niche of this show is that the girls are "cute," yet they are all bland, live lives that present no conflict, and annoying. I will not spoil the name of the characters, but there are two characters in this show who take the annoying trait, and crank it to the max. If you are a self-respecting adult who appreciates art to any degree, avoid this one at all costs.

[STORY: 3/10]
"K-ON!" is not a very story-rich or enticing show. It wants to be a slice of life, but one that does little to tell a good story, which is something pretty important for this type of show to do, or it just gets boring fast. Cute girls doing everyday things isn't enough to keep me interested.

[ART: 7/10]
The art is above average and the character design is very well done, but that's all I can say. Nothing is spectacular about it that makes it stand out besides the carefully crafted cute characters.

[SOUND: 4/10]
Characters can be annoying and loud, but the voice actors do a good ... job at least. Music for openings is pretty enjoyable, but otherwise, it's pretty mediocre.

[CHARACTER: 2/10]
There are a couple of enjoyable characters, but mostly, the cast is made up of lackluster and generic ones. The character design is done very well, as I said earlier, but only to appeal in a cutesy way. Nothing much to say besides that.

[ENJOYMENT/OVERALL: 3/10]
"K-ON!" could've benefited from a more interesting series of events that strayed away from the generic "let's do club stuff and be high school kids" idea that a huge chunk of these slice of life shows try to replicate (and only a few get it right). It definitely has standout character design, but lacks in most other areas and really brings it down to an awful rating.

I watched this anime a few months ago, deciding that it was time to finally sit down and watch the ever hyped, very popular, well known, slice of life K-On!

I started off actually enjoying the cute-ness of the show, though very slow and even rarer funny moments, it was good veg out material. You don't think, nothing bad happens, but after 4 or 5 episodes I start to notice, *nothing* ever happens. I sit for a little while longer because hey, it's cute and veg out material isn't a bad thing, I wanna see these girls succeed at putting together a band!

The characters ... started to get very meh to me. I don't like one characteristic personalities and the high pitch voices were really starting to wear on me. I don't mind high pitch, but when that's your cast it's... a lot. The jokes and episodes were starting to blur together. I knew *exactly* how everything was going to go. So why even watch it?

I had to, since it's been just a few months now, look up where I left off. I can't remember for the life of me. All the episodes have blurred together because nothing memorable was there, just repitition. It's harmless, really, but that's about it.