Hibike! Euphonium sits on the very pinnacle of my "anime of the season" list. If I have to pick one word to describe Hibike! Euphonium, I will choose "beautiful".
The story might not involved saving the world, flashy missions, or other typical heroic things. It is a very everyday thing, like many of KyoAni's masterpieces. Throughout the story, we closely follow Oumae Kumiko - the main protagonist. We wade through a life of a high school female student who tries to get a fresh start in her life, meet new friends, join the Brass Band, getting by in a club that sets what is a very unlikely goal (at first), dealing with her past, and experience how her character develops through every problem she bumps onto. Things we might stumbled upon in our own life.
Wait, what's the big deal, then?
For me, it's the detail.
I really love how Kyoto Animation pours all the details beautifully to present the story to us. How the characters move and act, how and when the music seeps in, how they set the layout, how very well drawn the anime is (characters, background, instruments, everything), how the voice actors sounds, when they cut the scenes, everything.
Take some examples from minor scenes, how we can tell that Kumiko isn't so much delighted with how carefree Hazuki called her by her given name "Kumiko" and even worse, told Midori (Sapphire) to call Kumiko that way as well - just by seeing the dynamic on her expression. The other will be one moment when Kumiko went home late, very tired after an intensive practice. In the train on her way home, she checked to make sure that nobody was around then yawned widely, that her legs got slightly pulled up and her shoes messily slid off as if she's at her own home...then visibly tried to correct her manner after she spotted Reina watching from the other car - hiding her embarrassment. Kumiko didn't have to say a word. We just know.
Those are minor scenes, but the details that KyoAni put beautifully describe what Kumiko felt. And we can find them everywhere throughout the episodes. As for important scenes, well..., I guess it goes without saying.
Thanks to the effort in those details, I can very much grasp what the characters are feeling, the drive that made them did things, how each character's personality is - even most of the supporting characters. So that's also why I am very much cheering our main protagonist, who is refreshingly sarcastic (unlike typical protagonists out there) but kind and reasonable.
Hibike! Euphonium is a beautiful portrayal of life that - if not our own experience - might be actually happening somewhere around us right now.
It's a complete package!
