Ritsu Tainaka - Club president, who does the bare minimum to actually keep the club afloat, often having to be reminded of things she must do by other members. A tomboyish character, who plays the drums.
Tsumugi Kotobuki - Usually referred to as just Mugi, she is HTT's keyboarder. She has a very gentle attitude and prefers to take things easily, and due to her extreme wealth, is most notable for the fact that she brings copious amounts of tea, cakes and biscuits into the club room. Due to her wealth, she often finds herself fascinated by "middle class" things such as eating at McDonalds or working a part time job.
Mio Akiyama - Shy, reserved, and easily scared, Mio is the voice of reason, often having to play the straight man to Yui or Ritsu, and is much more concerned with trying to make sure the band performs well than the others. She plays the bass, but also writes the lyrics, and sometimes acts as a secondary vocalist.
Yui Hirasawa - Extremely unintelligent and almost unable to comprehend what's going on around her, it's a wonder how Yui can dress herself in the mornings. In any case, she is the aloof guitarist for HTT, as well as vocalist.
Azusa Nakano - Azusa is kohai to the rest of HTT, and joins slightly later than the rest of them. She is much more serious than any of the other characters, frustrated that they spend their time joking around and drinking tea, as she joined to play music, but does find herself accepting this more laid-back nature, and is often subject to excessive affection from Yui, who calls her Azunyan. Azusa is a guitarist.
Now, K-On is at the end of the day, a CGDCT. It features a group of 5 teenage girls doing what they do, and not much conflict arises or anything of the sort, as you should know if you are familiar with it. However, upon viewing, I found myself very perplexed by what came about. On one hand, it was just a CGDCT like any other, but, I did find it to, though not exactly groundbreaking or philosophical in its portrayal, seem like some sort of coming of age story as well, almost. It is a difficult concept for me to convey, but I did observe how there was something more to it all. It wasn't just tea parties and band practice (albeit that's what it mostly was), there were several instances of HTT accepting their future of having to go to college, and maybe being separated, of sadness from having to graduate, etc. I suppose perhaps this is just a case of having to watch it yourself to find out, and ultimately, these sort of concepts do take some time to develop, unlike some other shows out there, wherein the emotional and dramatic conflict is nearly instantly created.
So, to finally stop digressing, K-On is about 5 members of a high school band playing music, and having tea parties together, in a very archetypal form of moe, and one I do not doubt influenced future anime, for better or for worse, depending on where you stand in regards to moe. Now, the characters are musicians, so it is not surprise that the music in K-On is quite splendid as a natural byproduct. Though HTT's music isn't intellectually groundbreaking by any means, it meets its purpose of being enjoyable to listen to, as is the OST that plays throughout the show, with many comfortably recurring themes. One criticism on this front I must make is that I believed all but the first OP and first 2 EDs were very poor, but this is an extremely minor complaint. The music produced by HTT is quite enjoyable to listen to, and I find that the intermission between performances via drinking tea and going down to the arcade is quite a well-placed one, as, in an actual band, it's a whole lot of playing the same few songs over and over, which isn't particularly fun to listen to, and I commend that the times in which we heard the songs was kept to a rather low count, so as to prevent the viewer from growing tired of them, and, as one can rather predictably expect (predictability isn't a bad thing per se), the show ends with a climax via a final performance by HTT.
The later film release for K-On (titled simply K-On the Movie) is somewhat different from its earlier TV release counterpart, but not majorly so. Rather than taking place in Japan (and generic Japanese highschool #fiftyfuckingmillion), the film has them on a graduation trip to London, wherein I live, and can assuredly say that the director definitely did his research, since London is pretty much spot on, one pleasant surprise being the fact that the people there spoke English with believable London accents, and in the film, the cast visit many major London locations, and thrive in the delightful atmosphere of London. Perhaps I was in a good mood the day I saw the film, but it did seem considerably better than the TV release. The animation looked crisper, the comedy was much better (a commonplace setup for a joke was HTT not understanding things properly due to not speaking English very fluently, and this was executed very well, it did not ever get tired or used in a time when it shouldn't have been), and overall, the structure of it all was far superior, perhaps due to the fact that it is demanded by a 90 minute film, as opposed to 26 episodes 30 minutes each.
I have jabbered on quite a bit here, and perhaps somewhat inarticulately as well, but I shall wrap things up here. K-On is a superb anime, combined with an even better film. The comedy, music, characters, writing and flow all is orchestrated in a way quite unlike any of the many previous CGDCTs I've seen. It is something I can strongly to recommend to anyone but the most staunch critics of moe. I can only hope for a season 3 some time this decade.
