So, if you’ve watched a lot of anime from Kyoto Animation, you may have noticed that in the late 2000s, the animation quality of their work was a bit inconsistent. I touched on this in my Clannad Afterstory review, but K-On! seems to get the brunt of the attention from this issue, even though I’d still argue that Afterstory had it way worse. For most of Kyo-Ani’s existence, they were known to produce only the highest quality animation, full of consistent character models, fluid, gorgeous animation and highly expensive art techniques, but there was a gap around this particular time period, and K-On! is firmly a product of that time. I’d like to call it K-On!’s ugly phase, but the truth is, it’s inconsistent nature meant that it also looked fine, or even downright good, at least some of the time. To be sure, there are moments in K-On! that proudly carry the flag of what Kyo-Ani’s capable of, but they’re unfortunately few and far between, and their usage isn’t even consistent, as similar scenes will be animated differently.
to give you an example of what I’m talking about, there are two scenes where the cast sings on stage at their school... Once at their first culture fest, and again at their second one a year later(yes, time passes awkwardly fast at first). For the first one, the animators pulled out all the stops, providing fluid animation that was almost on par with the Live Alive scene from Haruhi, and pairing it up with a beautiful fantasy music video of the girls getting in trouble with the law while cruising the desert in a convertible. It’s a very inspired and well executed scene, and it had a fucking tank in it. At the second scene, a year later, the visuals are heavily downplayed, and shows a lean towards what many have dubbed the ‘runny eggs’ style of animation, a technique that somehow showcases frantic movement on the cheap using broken and ugly character models, and if I’m being honest, even the singing itself looks terrible in this scene, with the animators doing god knows what with Yui and Mio’s over-animated but under-budget lips.
Actually, now that I think of it, that whole episode looks pretty bad. Culture festival episodes are normally one of the occasions when a production team should work their hardest, since they’re expected to animate an environment where there are a lot of people walking around and a lot of events going on, and they nailed it with the first year, but this one feels stiff and static all the way through, with lifeless frozen crowds and stills of the freeze-framed audience intersperced throughout the concert, like they were trying desperately to save money. This says to me one of two things: Either they blew their budget early and had to work on fumes from there on, which suggests poor budget management, or the whole show was just plagued with poor budget management in general. Seeing how the very first scene of the very first episode was in fact done in the runny eggs style, I’m tempted to believe the latter. Rather than hiding their shoestring budget smartly, they tried to make the series look lavish on as little funds as possible, and it often feels like the most try-hardy thing ever as a result.
As for the artwork itself, it’s a lot better. The backgrounds are very well detailed, right down to the seemingly pointless and random elements of wear and tear on building interiors, scuff marks on school floors, and merchandise in stores and shops. There are a few scenes that take place in a music shop, and while I don’t personally know enough about guitars to verify if all the models shown on the pegs are taken from real life, they’re convincing enough that I wouldn’t argue if someone said they were. The character designs are also really well done, but it’s kind of to a fault, because I can’t look at them without seeing the work that went primarily into their marketability, as they were very clearly designed to look attractive to a certain sort of viewer, who’d be likely to divide into waifu-worship camps and buy figures and body-pillows of their chosen best girl. It’s true that this sort of thing happens with a lot of anime, but K-On! is one of a very special few where it feels like their proportions, moe elements and appearance varieties were specifically geared towards gaining such a reaction. Color coding wasn’t really a thing yet, I don’t think, but the intention is still right there just the same.
Now, you would think a series that’s about music would have great music, am I right? Well, yeah, in some respects. Being that it’s a series about a band, it’s obvious that there’d be insert sings, aka the songs that are actually written and performed by the band, which is probably the biggest advantage this type of story has over it’s manga counterparts. Yeah, it’s possible for a book series to have fully realized canonical music, but since Mercedes Lackey doesn’t make anime, we’ll have to settle for adaptations. The in-universe music is one of the biggest highlights of K-On!, as it not only feels perfectly in-character and believable given the sensibilities of the character writing the songs and the experience level of the band, but it’s also fun to listen to on it’s own, just as ordinary singles. Granted, it’s no Beck, but it can still sound pretty awesome. The song titles are genuinely funny, with titles as ridiculous as (I’m not making this up) ‘My Love is a Stapler,’ which might just overtake Chobits’ ‘I Beg your Pudding’ as the weirdest song title in anime.
If the songs the characters perform are too amateurish for you, there’s always the closing theme, Don’t Say Lazy, which acts as a sort of alternate universe representation of the kind of music video the club might make if they ever went pro(and I say alternate universe because that’s not really the direction the series was ever gonna go), and it is legitimately awesome. On a somewhat sour note however is the opening, because I’m being honest, the endings were always better than the openings for this series. The song “Cagayake! GIRLS” is okay, but the singing is a bit too nasally for my taste, and the visuals are way too frenetic and hastily edited, which makes the whole video feel like one giant headache to me. The actual soundtrack is a bit more tolerable, but it’s still very generic and loopy, and if you remember any of it, it’ll probably be for the wrong reasons, as the tracks sometimes play way too loudly, becoming annoying during a lot of the show’s less eventful moments.
The insert songs are still awesome, and while they didn’t get dubbed for the show’s English release, the dub is still really solid. for the main cast, Bang! Zoom grabbed the legendary Stephanie Sheh for the lead role, where she was able to add a mischievous and cheerful edge to her light-voice, soft-spoken type-casting, playing a character that was firmly within her comfort zone but still different enough to stand out. I should hardly have to state that she loses herself in the role, because this is Sheh we’re talking bout, and this is what she does. They then surrounded her with newcomers to the business and a few under-appreciated journeymen actors, with other voice acting veterans like Karen Strassman, Laura Bailey and Xanthe Huynh appearing in side and supporting roles as the class adviser, a helpful student council member, and Yui’s little sister, who does sound convincingly like she might be related to her. There’s a definite resemblance in her voice. Strassmen also deserves high praise for playing such a nuanced and mood-swing afflicted teacher.
For the journeyman, Cristina Vee and Cassandra Lee Morris, who play the dynamic duo of Mio and Ritsu respectively, have been working their asses off since 2005, and they’re two of the most reliable character actors in the business. They’ve worked on a lot of projects together in the past, which no doubt helped them pull off the chemistry needed to portray two best friends who’ve been stuck with each other since childhood. I often see Vee brought up, more recently than in the past, as a voice actor to keep your eyes out for, but there aren’t enough people talking about Morris, who seems to have the ability to deeply understand the inner workings of whatever character she’s given, and can play them with such natural ease that she kind of gets overlooked. The perfect example of this is her performance as Kyuubey in Madoka Magika. Of course, Vee also knocked it out of the park in that show, which actually has a few other connections to K-On! now that I think about it.
Moving onto the newcomers, we have Christine Marie Cabanos and Shelby Lindley, both of whom were also in Madoka Magika, which is a sure sign that around the turn of the decade, Bang Zoom was really trying to push these four girls as the next big thing. Lindley and Cabanos both got their start in the 2010’s, but while Lindley played a very lovable Tsumugi, she didn’t do much else in the field. She had a few other roles, but her main source of employment seems to have been Hyperdimension Neptunia, which she played the character Ram in both the series and the games. Cabanos has stuck around, which is a good thing, because it sort of took her a while to find her feet. I honestly don’t like her as Azusa, because just like her role as Madoka, she feels kind of awkward and out of place, like she’s trying to sound smaller and quieter than she really is. If you’ve read my reviews of Kill La Kill and Toradora, you’ll know that I’m much, much more fond of her nowadays, as she’s really proven herself to be a star. Anyway, the dub is great, it’s fairly accurate to the sub, give it a listen.
Now, if I may confess something, I’m not the hugest fan of the slice of life genre. That’s not to say I hate it or anything... I don’t really hate any genre, really. There are quite a few slice of life anime I like, quite a few that I hate, a ton that I’m more or less ambivalent to, and a very small number of them that I love. There’s nothing specific that they have to do to please me, but I do ask that whatever they’re doing, they do it well, and put forth a genuine effort. I love Azumanga Daioh because it had a unique identity, it knew exactly what it was and what it wanted to be, and almost everything it did was effective. I love Beck because it’s slice of life elements were overshadowed by it’s coming of age elements, and I love shows like Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid and The Devil is a Part timer because they had really bizarre premises that they explored to the fullest. None of these shows were really plot-heavy, but they all had something about them that I could enjoy either all of or most of the time.
However, slice of life has earned a bad reputation for itself over the last decade or so, and I’m sad to say that K-On! is kind of a milestone in that evolution. I don’t know how accurate this observation is, but from what I’ve seen, Haruhi Suzumiya popularized the use of school clubs in an anime, and Lucky Star established how successful a show about high school girls doing nothing could be as long as it was aimed at the right audience. K-On!, which was suspiciously produced by the same company as those two titles, was the show that combined those two ideas, and it became such a monster hit that streaming sites have been littered with shows about high school kids... Normally either all-girl, or with just enough boys to establish a harem... Forming a club and then fucking around with no purpose other than to create shipping fantasies, fuel the fetishy fantasies of a bunch of basement dwellers, and sell tons of licensed merchandise. This may not have started with K-On!, but you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that it wasn’t a major inspiration for this particular trend.
Leaving it’s cultural impact aside, how is K-On! on it’s own merits? Well, if you’ve been reading my reviews for a while, you may remember my main complaint about Lucky Star being that some characters had stronger comedic chemistry than other characters, and they became more and more boring the farthest you got from the main cast, with several side characters seemingly only existing for the sake of supporting the bigger draws. K-On! doesn’t have this problem. In fact, I’d say it’s strongest element is the synergy of it’s cast. Rather than there being only two characters with a spark between them, and a bunch of extra characters added in at the eleventh hour, K-On! keeps it’s cast small, and they all have strong chemistry with each other. You could take any two characters, put them in any situation, and there’s a chance... Granted, not a guarantee... That something entertaining will happen between them, as they all have strengths and weaknesses that either clash or click with each other.
Part of this is the fact that these characters are all very well written and developed. That’s not to say any of them are unique or anything, because trust me, you’ve seen these characters both before and since, but there’s just enough nuance to their identities that none of them ever feel like one-note jokes. They’re all flawed, but they contribute both to the band and to their friendship, forming some surprisingly complex connections with each other. They make sense together, and on a lot of different levels. This can unfortunately lead to some less than healthy relationships, a few of which are distinctly codependent... Mio’s dynamic with Ritsu, or the far more worrisome one that Yui shares with her younger sister... But they feel natural rather than contrived. Yui is shameless and has a natural charisma, but is also spoiled and lazy. Mio is mature and responsible, but also shy and delicate. Ritsu is passionate and energetic, but also greedy and careless. Tsumugi is generous and agreeable, but also socially awkward and a bit sheltered. They bring out the best and worst in each other, which makes for great comedy.
Sadly, as funny as the show can be, it’s miserable at drama, and oh boy does it try it’s hand at drama. That’s not to say it never works... At one point, Mio and Ritsu have a fight that feels pretty raw and poignant, for what it is... But if you’re going to have an inspirational drama where your characters have to overcome the odds in order to create some feel good moments, then you have to have stakes, and there are absolutely none here. Yeah, you kinda want to see the band get better and achieve their dreams of performing at the Budokan, but it’s also pretty solidly established that they’re largely fine with goofing off and sitting around a table eating sweets together. The absolute worst case scenario would be if the club got disbanded due to someone’s failing grades, but if that happened, they could easily just hang out and do the same exact thing at someone’s house. Even if you want to see them succeed, there’s absolutely nothing lost if they don’t, which would be fine if they didn’t try so damn hard to make you care.
The most frustrating thing about this is that they had the perfect solution to this problem, in the form of the fifth band member, Azusa Nakano. an underclassmen who joins in the band’s second year, who is a serious guitarist, and who is actually way better at said instrument than her senpai Yui. You’d kind of think her experience would add some perspective to the group, and she’d inspire them to get off their asses and practice more, and that does kind of happen, but it doesn’t have much of a lasting impact, as she quickly gets drawn into their lackadaisical nature, and I know I’ve been praising the show for the nuance of it’s characters, but this is one instance where there shouldn’t have been as much of a compromise. I’d like to say that her presence is felt more in the second season, but it’s really not, as that season has even less plot and story than this season does, and yeah, it didn’t really have a lot of plot or story to lose in the first place. I know I prefer shows that put forth effort, but the higher you aim, the more you have to commit to it, and K-On! really doesn’t have what it takes to shoot for the moon.
K-On! is available from Sentai filmworks. The second season is twice as long, and while it gets boring more often than not, the movie is pretty damn good. It’s not a retelling of the series... I really hate those, for the record... But it’s not really a sequel either, as it follows events that take place during the second season, which were smartly kept off-screen. The manga is available from Yen Press, which is slightly dirtier than the series, but still mostly PG. There are also two sequel manga, one featuring the girls in college, and one featuring Azusa as a senior forming her own Light Music Club, but that second one’s honestly pretty weak. There are a few OVA episodes that are included in the series DVD releases, and there’s a current manga that started this year called K-On! shuffle, which I know nothing about.
Despite it’s flaws, and it has a few, K-On! is still a fun show to watch, and I really don’t think it’s aged that badly. It actually feels more at home in today’s market, which has been flooded with the dredge that it inspired, than it did back in 2009. Part of this is because of it’s strong cast of relatable characters(seriously, I see bits of myself in every single one of them), but it’s also due to the banging in-universe soundtrack and it’s keen sense of comedy. It’s never going to achieve any sort of legendary status, but I don’t think it really has to, as it succeeds at being a fun little diversion, a decent waste of time, and arguably one of the better school club slice of life anime, even if that’s not saying a whole lot. If you’re looking for a fulfilling story, you could do a lot better, but if you’re looking for some light-hearted fun, you could do a lot worse. I give K-On! a 7/10.
