Though personally I felt that the season was pretty boring, there were some moments that were absolutely beautiful which made it worth checking out I guess.
Story 5/10
Like I said, most of the drama in Euphonium is pretty realistic, so I had already experienced those kind of moments before. Especially the merciless verbal abuse from the conductor. For many hours. I used to play in my province's honour band, so the band room is very familiar to me. Don't get me wrong; I would be content rehearsing with a band forever, but frankly watching the band room in cartoon version was kind of dull for me. The drama with auditions, the anxiety on stage, drama with who gets to play the solos (well I was the best in a section of about 5 or played every solo) , I had experienced all of that in real life, so I guess it was interesting to watch, but story-wise not very strong for me.
Art 10/10
I believe the art is by far the strongest aspect of Euphonium. The characters are so well drawn they look shiny. The sunset through the windows, reflection from objects that cast light into the shade on a sunny day, the lights from the street lamps and cars on a street at night, the starlight mixed with the cityscape view from the mountain, the art was all mind-blowingly well done. It was so beautiful that it made my heart hurt. Strangely the most beautiful scenes were always centred around Kousaka but I'll talk about her in the characters section later. Even if you don't care for anything that was happening in the band, enjoy the art.
Sound 10/10
You probably don't need to be told this but the anime Hibike!(Sound!) Euphonium is about sound. Consequently the effort put into sound in the production was pretty amazing.
There was one moment in the anime (this might be a spoiler, but not really. I'm trying to give you adequate time to consider whether or not you will consider this a spoiler or not before you read on) where Kousaka and Kimiko climb a mountain and play a duet with the backdrop of the city's night skyline. I think this moment in the show made it worth watching for me because it was really beautiful. The duet wasn't especially complicated......it was just a really simple duet, but I found it really special and memorable.
Characters 6/10
I wasn't really a fan of most of the characters in the series. I found Kousaka to be a pretty interesting character, and after a little while Kimiko caught her interesting-ness.......if that makes any sense.
Kousaka was kind of a controversial character within her band. Because she was so good, there were people who hated her as well as loved her, but she really didn't care about any of them. She also said some.....controversial things and I'm still deciding on my understanding of her sexual preferences. I really liked how decisive and strong her personality was and I think every scene with her in it was some kind of beautiful. There were two scenes in the series that were so beautiful that they're hard to forget, and both of them involve Kousaka. The first was the scene I described above on the mountain. The second was a scene where Kousaka turns around to face Kimiko on a city street at night, and smiles for once. It was only a couple seconds long, but it was animated insanely well: the first time we see her smile, the night lights reflecting off her face, sparkling eyes, it was just amazing to watch. I feel like the creators put a little extra work when making her if you know what I mean.
Kimiko started off as kind of a indecisive person. It was pretty realistic how on the fence she was about everything, but as the story progressed she picked up on some of Kousaka's......absoluteness? I guess I was a little interested watching her become stronger.
I'm glad with what the creators did with Kousaka and Kimiko because they are so distinctly different from any other characters in anime, but other than that I didn't really see much.
Enjoyment 8/10
Like I said before, I was a little bored by the band room scenes which take up most of the time, but seeing Kousaka be beautiful made it worth it for me.
Overall 8/10
I feel like this was better than the average anime because of its incredible quality of production. Without showing off with action-packed fighting scenes Euphonium still tops as one of the most well animated shows I've seen.
I wouldn't say this was a "must-watch", but those couple moments of beauty made the whole series worth it. I admit that it made me a little nostalgic and I did spontaneously run upstairs a couple times to blast a few notes on my trombone.
