Reviews

Aug 23, 2024
Spoiler
3 Seasons. 2 Films. 9 Years in the making… Hibike! Euphonium isn’t just an anime, it’s an experience; beginning with Omae Kumiko’s first year of High School and ending with her final performance as President of the Wind Ensemble (Music Club) in the third year of High School.
Kyoto Animation is not particularly known for the most fulfilling endings, in fact, most of their anime end on cliffhangers, leaving fans still desiring a continuation years after their broadcasting has finished. I mean, just look at ‘Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu’ and ‘Hyouka’. Both series’ broadcasting has finished long, long ago, yet they still have dedicated fanbases that want them to return. In this sense, Hibike is an anomaly. An anomaly not just as a work by KyoAni, but an anomaly as a High-School anime. Most anime that takes place in High-School usually have a protagonist who is already a second or third year (Clannad, Toradora, Horimiya) and the anime usually wraps up before the protagonist’s life as a High-Schooler ends (Oregairu, Your Lie in April). Hibike Euphonium is different, It begins with Omae Kumiko’s first day at Kitauji High-School and ends with her last performance as a member of the Wind Ensemble. At first she doesn’t even want to join the Music Club because she had already done so in Middle School, but she is convinced by her new friends, Midori and Hazuki to join, and she dedicates her entire High-School life to playing music. Three years spent practicing every day, even on breaks and summer vacation. And that is what’s so special about this anime, we see these characters mature over the span of their entire high school lives.
In the third year of their High-School lives, it is now up to Kumiko, Reina and Shuuichi to run the Wind Ensemble. We actually get to see how messed up their schedules have become as third years, it’s their final year of High-School and with that comes a lot of responsability, the three of them literally don’t even manage to talk face to face anymore, they use a shared notebook to discuss important things.
As they have been taught by Taki-sensei since the beginning, the third years have a lot of trust in him, and he has a lot of respect for them (“I’m privileged to have met students like you” - Taki-sensei) We see this when the new management of the Wind Ensemble proposes to Taki-sensei that they have separate auditions for every competition. This is to ensure that the members don’t become complacent, and that the best of the best get picked as to ensure qualification to the nationals. Even though it would be much easier for the teacher to do one set of auditions and be done with it, he trusts his students' judgment, and goes ahead with the new audition system. In Kumiko’s words, “Kitauji is a meritocracy first and foremost”. This new audition system gives birth to the biggest controversy this season. There’s a new transfer student called Mayu who shows up at Kitauji in the third year, joining the Wind Ensemble as a euphonium player. This new transfer student is unarguably talented, she “produces the exact sound that Taki-sensei wants”. The reason why this season is so controversial is because of a certain choice that was made for this adaptation. Near to the nationals, there is a sort of dual audition as to choose someone to play the solo part, kind of like we see in season one, where two players play the solo, and the members of the club vote on who they thought sounded best. In order to ensure unbiased voting, the girls play the part while hiding their face. The votes are tied until Reina, who plays alongside the euphonium for the solo, votes for Mayu instead of Kumiko. Reina had every intention to play the solo together with Kumiko at the nationals, as she mentions this multiple times to Kumiko, yet she votes for Mayu because, in her eyes, she simply sounded better. This seems to be the source of much of the discord surrounding this season of Hibike, but in my opinion I think it was a good decision. At the end of the day, things don’t always go the way you want them to, and that’s life. Disappointment is a part of life. Acceptance is a part of life. What matters is that Kumiko tried, she tried as much as she could to get the solo as to play together with Reina one more time, and Reina undoubtedly wished for this as well but, to her, Mayu simply just sounded better. Reina had to make a decision: play the solo with her friend one last time, or maximize the chances of winning gold at the Nationals, and she chose the latter.
Now, I want to talk about some of the problems I have with this season. There are very, very few performances, and considering this is an anime about a MUSIC club, it’s a pretty big problem. Sunfes performance was completely cut, and we do not get to see the Wind Ensemble perform at any other time other than the Nationals. So, we know that Kitauji plays really well, I mean they’re going to nationals, winning gold left and right in the prefecturals, but we don’t actually see how the Wind Ensemble evolves over the span of this season, we just have to take the writer’s word for it. There was something really interesting going on near the end, all the first and second years seemed really demotivated to play and completely distrusting of Taki-sensei. I was excited to see where this would lead, but it didn’t actually go anywhere. One speech from president Kumiko, and boom, we’re ready to win gold. There was another interesting thing as well, at the beginning of the season, everyone seemed really tense due to practicing nonstop, there were parallels to the first season and how the third years back then put their desires over what everyone else wanted, but this doesn’t really go anywhere. One discussion with president Kumiko, and boom, we’re ready to go. I guess you could say this highlights the maturity that the club members possess, I mean they did say they would focus on winning gold at the beginning of the year, so they knew how tough practice would be, but come on, these are still High-School kids, you really expecting me to believe that no one just got up and left the club? It seems to me the writers chose to favor mediocre drama that doesn’t really go anywhere instead of musical performances this season, which I very much dislike.
Now, let’s talk about the characters, which is undoubtedly this anime’s biggest strength. We have a large cast of characters, not everyone gets screen time but that’s okay, the main focus is on Reina and Kumiko, Sapphire and Hazuki. And also when the writers are feeling generous, Shuuichi gets screen time. Around the end, there’s some discourse between Reina and Kumiko, about the direction that Taki-sensei is taking. As the president, Kumiko feels like Taki has been making some bad decisions lately regarding the auditions, while Reina believes in Taki 100%. They fight over this and then Reina throws in the “then you’re a failure as a club president”. I thought it was great that there was finally some discourse and was wondering where this would lead but guess what, it goes nowhere. They resolve the situation in the following episode.
The relationship between Kanade-chan and Kumiko is a very special one I'd say, they're both euphonium players so they work together very well, it's a relationship very similar to that of Yuuko and Kaori, kind of a mentor-student relationship.
There’s also another thing, Kumiko does not really know what she wants to do with her life. This is something prevalent throughout the season, her parents tell her that they won’t force her to do anything in particular and that she should think it over. She even goes to a sort of convention for Universities, yet she’s still undecided. She doesn’t want to do Music School but still feels lukewarm about a standard University. We also see her discussing it with her homeroom teacher once. I thought this would climax into something really interesting, like we’d have a scene with Kumiko where she’s doing a deep self reflection about what she wants from the future, near the end of the season, her hopes and ideals, but nope, she decides to become a teacher. As we know from the movie, "Chikai no Finale", Kumiko kind of finds it a pain in the ass to deal with those younger than her, so this decision kind of comes from nowhere. If I were to characterize her, I'd say the reason why she becomes a music teacher is that she wants to continue playing music, but at the same time wouldn't like to play in a band/ensemble setting. In the epilogue she has become the new music teacher of Kitauji High School.
In conclusion, I liked this season of Hibike Euphonium, I do have some issues with it and generally feel like seasons one and two were stronger than season three, but I still really enjoyed watching it, and like I mentioned earlier I find it fantastic that we actually get to see the beginning and end of these characters High-School life, we get to see them grow and mature over the span of these three seasons. There’s too much drama this season that just straight up goes nowhere, but other than that I really like the characters, the soundtrack, the animation is absolutely stunning and even better than the first two seasons, the voice acting is also amazing. I recommend it to everyone.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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