K-on?

[talitha cumi]

Who's watching K-on out there?. .. I had seen some of it's chapters and my only impression is: "it's so funny".. Hmmp.. It's all about four high school students who are forming a band..

[Just making anything to post a new thread..hehe]

[talitha cumi]

I was assuming that no one would reply.. Thank God you did.. hehe... Irritating?? Why?.. Ritsu is on the drums right??... I like the ignorance of Yui though sometimes, she looks like totally unaware of everything... Tsumugi's super cute... Is Mio the main character among the four??

[blkmage]

So, K-ON! was okay. I read a good chunk of the manga and found it to be much funnier than the anime, probably because I didn't care for the fluff and padding that the anime added to make a 4-koma adaptation feasible. My main problem with K-ON! is that I expected it to live up to the other slice of life shows that I adored, but it didn't. Basically, it contained a lot of elements that other shows did better and the result is that I found K-ON! to be middling.

There are two directions to this. The first is the comparison to other slice-of-life comedies, like Lucky Star and Hidamari Sketch. The difference between K-ON! and these was that the other two focused on interesting things outside of what they usually do. In K-ON!, they're doing the same things over and over again: eating cake, not practicing, etc. This is really apparent when Azusa gets introduced and we're treated to what's basically the same episodes again.

The other direction is similar to Manabi Straight, where they try to overcome their trials and accomplish something. The problem here is that K-ON! couldn't decide to be serious enough to make this meaningful. Don't get me wrong, Manabi Straight is not serious business, but the problems the cast has aren't trivially thrown in and resolved an episode later.

I found the best parts of K-ON! to be when they actually performed their music. Unfortunately, Kyoto Animation didn't agree with me and tried as hard as possible to not animate the girls actually playing their instruments, instead, opting to cut away or or show them from a distance or throw in a weird music video.

And the characters. Usually, I can get behind at least a few characters. Here, Yui, Ritsu, and Tsumugi all irritate me. I'm really tired of Yui's character archetype, which seems to be magnified and brought out in full in her. Ritsu is pretty much the worst aspects of every genki girl rolled into one person. And Tsumugi didn't really serve any real purpose except to be rich and supply the club with cakes.

I liked Mio, mostly for being a bassist and not Kagami II. Nodoka was boring, and both her and Ui were there just to keep Yui from dying in some terrible accident she'd cause or something. Sawako is actually not bad when she's not all GET INTO THIS COSTUME UEHEHEHE. And I don't like Azusa for the reason that she's essentially a carbon-copy of Mio.

tl;dr: I watch too much anime and immediately make parallels to other shows.

Although, I really enjoyed was the flood of MADs and covers that got spawned on Nico Nico Douga because of K-ON!.

[minakichan]

People who despise K-On! are humorless black holes of fun. People who adore it are shallow, obsessive perverts.

I like it, though. So most people are somewhere in the middle =/

[Blitzkrieg1701]

I actually like the K-On anime BETTER than the manga. Something about the 4-koma format just drains the humor out of any material for me, so I prefer the more fleshed out TV version.

All in all, I enjoy K-On quite a bit. I'd probably call it a "guilty pleasure" if I believed in that sort of thing. But hey, why feel guilty about enjoying some charming, simply fluff? Ain't nothing wrong with that. There's actually not a lot of music-based anime were I LIKE the music, but the soundtrack here is extremely nice. And really, the production values in general are very nice for TV anime.

However, while the characters are generally likable, I do wish they had some depth beyond "Moe trope B" and so forth. I actually kind of like Ritsu for that reason. Yeah, she's pretty obnoxious, but that makes her the one character who honestly resembles a real human being. I mean, honestly, a being like Yui shouldn't be able to exist outside of an assisted living facility.

I found the best parts of K-ON! to be when they actually performed their music. Unfortunately, Kyoto Animation didn't agree with me and tried as hard as possible to not animate the girls actually playing their instruments, instead, opting to cut away or or show them from a distance or throw in a weird music video.

Agreed. I mean, I understand that actual performance scenes are deceptively hard to animate well, especially on a TV budget. Still, the way the constantly cut around them is very awkward and hurts the flow of the episodes.

[blkmage]

I actually like the K-On anime BETTER than the manga. Something about the 4-koma format just drains the humor out of any material for me, so I prefer the more fleshed out TV version.

Yeah, this is mostly personal preference. Personally, I found the gags in the manga a lot tighter than in the anime, where I felt like they'd linger too long on some of them.

Agreed. I mean, I understand that actual performance scenes are deceptively hard to animate well, especially on a TV budget. Still, the way the constantly cut around them is very awkward and hurts the flow of the episodes.

Yeah, thinking about it some more, I realized that this is probably the source of a lot of letdown. Prior to airing, the hope was for Kyoto to wow us with another Haruhi-calibre concert scene. Obviously, that didn't happen. And I'd say that people were also disappointed with K-ON!'s art after having been spoiled for two seasons with Clannad.

Did we have unrealistic expectations? Probably, but if you think about it, it's amazing how high peoples' opinions and expectations were of KyoAni with the amazing work that they'd been pushing out at that point. And then a few short months later, they poured all of that down the drain.

[Blitzkrieg1701]

Well, the thing about the Haruhi concert is it's the only one in the whole show, so they could really throw a lot of effort into it. On a show like K-On, where that attention has to be spread across multiple episodes, the results can't help but be less impressive.

Something else comes to mind, though. The manga skips over the a lot of the performances too, but for a much better reason: you can't draw music (well, not CONVINCINGLY anyway) so it HAS to avoid the songs. I guess the anime crew was sticking close to the source material.

[pikmintaro]

I watched a few episodes of K-on and then I stopped. I liked it ok, but it was sort of boring to me, I might watch more of it in the future.

It just seemed sort of like Lucky Star and Haruhi, except a lot less interesting to me.

[talitha cumi]

Oh thank you for all those information guys.. I'm not really watching anime that much nor reading mangas that often.. I've only seen three episodes of K-on by the way..hehe:P

This is maybe a bit of embarrassing for me but I can reflect myself on Yui whenever she stumbles because of clumsiness.. What a girl! At least I'm not alone though she's just an anime character.. lolz!

God bless you all! Keep the faith!

[S.M.O.G.]

I read a bit of the Manga, saw this, started watching, and now I'm addicted.

One thing that stands out to me is the detial of the art with the guitars and other instruments. They look almost real, but also fit the art style perfectly. I play guitar, so I notice things like that.

I started watching the anime as I thought it would be bteer as I can actually hear the music, though the anime only has what, fourteen episodes? And the manga is still ongoing, is there much of a difference? And are there plans for more anime?

[Blitzkrieg1701]

One thing that stands out to me is the detial of the art with the guitars and other instruments. They look almost real, but also fit the art style perfectly. I play guitar, so I notice things like that.

I know, that's one of the things that impressed me most. Somebody obviously put a LOT of care into making sure the technical side of the band was well represented.

...of course, that DOES kind of make the lack of performances sting all the more, but what are ya gonna do?