It took me a few episodes to figure out what's wrong with "K-On!". First of all, it starts off disappointingly dull. I'm one of the most patient of viewers, but even I found my attention wandering frequently, and I kept having to rewind to see what I'd missed - and usually the answer turned out to be "not very much". It's rare that I get really bored when watch anime, especially given my fondness for the more mundane slice of life shows, but "K-On!" managed to seriously test my patience (it took me half a year to finish).
And then I realised something worse - "K-On!" is MOE. Not as blatant as "Clannad", but still, it's all about cute girls doing cute things for the sake of being cute. It also serves to explain why I found it to be dull, given that I have no interest in watching artificially cute girls doing mundanely cute things, and there isn't much else to be found in the show. I find it interesting to compare "K-On!" with "Aria the Animation", which is also about cute girls doing cute things. I don't know whether it's because I watched "Aria the Animation" before and "K-On!" after "Clannad", a show that is so moe that it's caused me to develop allergic reactions to anything vaguely resembling cute, but with "Aria the Animation", the cuteness seemed more innocent; the natural calming beauty of the settings also made "Aria the Animation" less one dimensional, and it just seems to have a charm about it that's severely lacking in "K-On!".
As much as I was unimpressed by "K-On!", I must admit that towards the mid-series, the slice of life settings began to work its magic, and I found the series growing on me ever so slightly, I even started finding it mildly amusing and enjoyable at times... and that's when the makers of the show decided the time is ripe to give its targeted audience more of what they want - that is to say, the more obnoxious cliches of anime. Unsatisfied with just having cute, clumsy girls procrastinating over homework and cutely drooling over sweets and "cakies", they started rolling out the dreaded maid outfit and the cat ears etc. The already limited quality of the series took a dip and sunk to a new low as the girls started spending a lot of time inflicting these the disturbing costumes and distasteful accessories on one another. Obviously, the shy characters would meow pitifully as they are victimised, but of course at the same time they also show signs that a part of them is secretly enjoying the experience. Yes, of course they like it deep down - they're moe blobs after all! Anyway I'm sure you get the picture, so lets move swiftly on...
Though "K-On!" is about a music club, they do so little music-related activity that it's easy to mistake it for something else (like, a show about a cake eating club, for example). When it comes to the subject of music, the series is the antithesis of "Nodame Cantabile". The latter emphasises the importance of hard work even when the musician is already ridiculously talented. In "K-On!", however, we have Yui, someone who'd never played an instrument before, but who very quickly started reproducing face melting solos she hears with apparent ease, and is able to immediately master the techniques demonstrated to her. And she does all of this with just a small amount of casual and unmethodic practice. As I am also learning to play an instrument, this complete undermining of the effort required really doesn't sit well with me. I know it's not supposed to be very focused on the music, but come on, they could have at least made *some* attempt to make it seem less like a piece of cake!
The final nail in the coffin actually came when "K-On!" tried to do some character development in an episode towards the end of the series. For the first half of that episode, I was bewildered because the characters were acting quite strangely. Then I realised what the episode was trying to achieve - it was going out of its way to create a rift between a couple of characters in order to set up a kiss-and-make-up scenario. Upon realising this, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that they botched up the attempt so badly that it reached a painful level of transparency. Perhaps the makers were better off keeping things simple and sticking to pandering to the moe crowd as they're clearly incapable to doing anything more substantial
All in all, "K-On!" is an interesting specimen for being a slice of life without a soul. Compared to, say, "Azumanga Daioh", which is not a slice of life (yes I know it revolves around mundane things, but it's clearly very comedy inclined and not too concerned about being down to earth), but radiated that pleasant warmth associated with a good slice of life, I can barely feel anything in "K-On!", and I certainly don't have any fondness for any of the characters. Something feels fundamentally wrong with the series - the creepy elements dispels any sense of innocence and charm it might otherwise have had, and once you strip away those elements, what's left is disturbingly hollow. Perhaps I'm being overly harsh on an anime that I consider mediocre, and sure there are anime out there that are a lot worse (like "Clannad"), but I guess I'm feeling rather grumpy that "K-On" shattered my naively comforting delusion that slice of life shows can't be anything short of pleasant.
