A Journey to Remember

The psychological effects of a cold winter day.

I like the unko-chan lol.

Besides the earlier scene with wet hair way back during their first training camp, Ritsu actually looks great with her bangs down. A futile wish, but I hope to see her with that hairstyle in a magazine poster one day. Newtype maybe?

Mio in black = sexiness. And I can’t help but notice that sexiness has more of a mature and even masculine edge to it. Despite Mio constantly getting cos-raeped into cute costumes and having fans fawn over her moé moé “iyaaa~ don’t bully me”-ness, whenever she manages to look cool in front of people, I can understand why she has a group of female admirers in her school, with a stalker in tow. Even Azusa eventually developed a slight akogare crush on her…or was that already obvious since the first few days of Azu-nyan joining the club?

A bit of a different twist on Ritsu’s usual character but it’s quite sweet seeing a more feminine side of her –> mulling over a “love letter”, fiddling with her hair. It’s one of those rare times where she’s all serious and bothered (in a good sense) by something. But uh… Shouldn’t she be worried that “potential admirer” dropped those letters into her home’s mailbox and not in her school desk drawer or something? We can skip the shoe locker because that would noticeably not work in Mio’s favor.

Thinking on the same brain wavelength. Yui has good naming sense.

It’s amusing how they like to portray girls as having weird food sense and on more common occasions, a tendency to concoct potent disasters when it comes to cooking. Well, one thing you can’t dispute is that they mixed TLC into it, even if the consumer suffers from food poisoning…

Yui may not be my favorite K-ON! girl but I adore her as much as the others. Whether she’s being her usual goofy self or showing genuine care and concern towards someone, she has this knack of defusing the tension and making people smile despite being oblivious to the situation sometimes. She may not be as reliable as her younger sister but the way she looks out for all of her friends, Yui definitely makes for one good Oneechan to have.

“I poured a lot of my thoughts and feelings into it…”

“They were only lyrics??? You got my hopes up for nothin’!!?”

“How dare you play with my feelings!!!!”

Somehow, in some little corner of my LFG mind, I’d like to think Mio’s choice of words disguised a more cryptic meaning than what is being seen on the surface wrt Ritsu. ;3

“That’s right! Come to me! I guarantee my chest is warmer than my hands!”

And K-ON! ends with how it started, with everyone spending their laidback day eating cakes and drinking tea.

Guess that fully wraps it up then. Can see why this is called a bonus episode instead of Episode 13, as everything that happened in this one was portrayed in a more relaxed pace compared to last week’s climatic curtain call. Quite a neat way of bowing out as it showed us what I think is one of the best traits of K-ON! – the slice-of-life aspect of it.

My final thoughts… To be honest, yes, I loved this series. Yes, I enjoyed watching it, and yes, I looked forward to it every week. My reasons on why I found it endearing at first and later overall may be different from the reasons of fans who jumped on the bandwagon when its release was initially announced. Granted, I agree that it wasn’t the most fantastic masterpiece EVAR, nor was it an expected first class production by a reputable studio like KyoAni, but as Janette and Hanners mentioned, a show doesn’t need to be award-winning material to be entertaining. I do admit, I originally hopped on board the early news because I heard KyoAni was behind the project and kind of had expectations on how they would go about tackling a mainly music-themed series (Mmm yes… EPIC SONGS I AWAIT!!)…or so it was what I thought. I decided to start reading the Manga a few weeks before the airdate and to my surprise, K-ON! leans more towards slice-of-life comedy depicting the daily antics of a group of girls getting through the normal routine of high school life and trying their best to (sanely) do whatever light music club members do.

As for the bucket load of rat I’ve seen K-ON! take, I see a lot of truth in 7’s discussion on why many perceived the series as a failure. I came across quite a number of remarks along the lines of:
- It’s a pile of moé sh!t. Kyoto Animation is trying too hard to appeal to fans with that cr@p. (Oricon chart and music stores testify otherwise though)
- Is it funny? I didn’t laugh even once.
- It’s supposed to be an AWSM series about music, right? Well, where’s my “God Knows”? I’m disappointed.

Like they always say, everyone is entitled to their own opinions and preferences, so perhaps there isn’t much point in debating why we find something appealing while others don’t. It could be many were let down because K-ON! either didn’t live up to their expectations or didn’t pull a big enough impact to leave them with say, an unforgettable busted gut from LOL-ing too hard. Would it have made a difference if KyoAni wasn’t the studio behind it? Also, the most frequent reason I’ve encountered for people slapping a “FAIL” on K-ON! – “It was overrated and didn’t deserve the hype”.

Hmm… Overrated or not, K-ON! has honestly been an absolute joy to watch week after week. It’s one of those light TV snacks I dig in to relax and let its warm fuzziness do its filling. Yes, it has its flaws and it falls short in many areas but for a series that was adapted from a 4koma, guess there’s no need for us to take it that seriously ;)…though being the hypocrite I am, my only general complaint is that the Anime adaptation stripped away some of Mugi’s interesting personalities. As for the expected epic songs, yeah, there were no “God Knows” but for me, put Hikasa Youko in charge of main vocals for anything and I’m sold. Animation wasn’t your typical KyoAni fare, but I must confess…I love the hair. No one draws and animates hair like KyoAni does. :3

I’ll miss K-ON!, but at least there’s still the Manga. Plus, Rajion! is still running every week. It’s like K-ON! IRL anyway, although that could be ending soon as well since the girls spend almost half of each radio broadcast discussing the current week’s episode unless they can come up with a new corner for discussion. Whether or not talks will be underway for a new season or an OVA, we can only wait. In the meantime, I’ll just have to content myself with doujins by two of my favorite (yuri) artists – Fujieda Miyabi (Tsumugi Filter FTW!!) and Münchausen Shoukougun.

Thank You, K-ON! It’s been an awesome 13 weeks! :D

Rajion! Corner
>> As usual, the highlight has always been the 4 seiyuu’s band activities

Frankly, I’m amazed at how far they’ve come with their instruments (compared to their first attempt on “FUWA☆FUWA Time”), with Satou being the most impressive one among the four. Even though she has never played the drums before she started working on K-ON! and Rajion!, it’s fairly evident she’s been working hard on it and this week’s performance really showed her effort. Toyosaki was pretty good on the guitar as well.
>> As expected, Hikasa failed to get Toyosaki to sing, resulting in Boss Akkyo shooting her a straight “No”. Hikasa was made to do special training in vocals (Not that she can’t sing well. She finds it impossible to sing and play the bass at the same time). LOL kind of unfair for poor Hiyo. Toyosaki should at least help out with the back-up vocals.
>> Pony Canyon is squeezing more money out of fans by releasing a single containing songs by Sawako’s legendary band, Death Devil on August 12, 2009. Gawd, I can’t wait to listen to that XD. Go Go Asa-nee! Oh, and Azusa gets an image song album as well on August 26, the same release date as Ritsu and Tsumugi’s albums.