The Finale…

The final episode of K-ON! felt more like a DVD extra episode, since it was just a day in the life of the girls episode and really didn’t amount to anything. Yui wants to make nabe for the girls, but none of them can make it since they have prior engagements. Mio wants to go write new songs, Ritsu has to bring her brother to the movies, Mugi is trying her hand at an actual job, and Azusa is babysitting her classmate’s pet kitten.

The only actual story to this episode was Ritsu thinking she had an admirer when she receives what she believes to be a love letter, but all it turns out to be was a draft of lyrics Mio left in her mailbox.

Also should be noted this episode had the most MALE characters with speaking parts compared to the entire series up till this point.

And nope, no jamming what so ever this episode either with the excuse that it was too cold to practice.

The Verdict: Would I watch this show again on my own time? Not really. I’d watch it if they aired it on Animax, but I probably wouldn’t be bothered to pick up the DVD to watch this all again. This show has the same fatal flaw Maria+Holic had, which is that the story drifted away from it’s gimmick. Instead of seeing a bunch of cute girls get together to play music, we see a bunch of cute girls get together and goof off, and only play the music because the had too. Sure they already established that they are good, but I would have preferred actually seeing them put the songs together and develop their sound, instead of Ritsu doing a countdown and in the next shot the song it done.

Took ‘em long enough.

Playing with your guitar….your doing it wrong…

Episode 11 is split into 2 parts; first, after a year of playing, it turns out Yui hasn’t been taking care of her guitar, so they bring it to get serviced.

The second half is Ritsu getting jealous of Mio’s growing relationship with her classmate Nadoka, and it’s after Ritsu gets sick that they manage to settle their problems and keep the band together.

Episode 12 is the big one where they get to play the school festival for the second time, unfortunately, Yui caught Ritsu’s cold and it’s doubtful she will be able to make it for the show. It gets to the point the Ui even dresses up like her and impersonates her so as not to disappoint the rest of the band, but they see through her disguise when it turns out she might be better than Yui!
Yui does get better in time, but on the big day she forgets her guitar, and runs all the way home to get it and back to school as well, all while reflecting on how much she has changed from the way she used to be. Sawako stands in for her on the opening number and Yui makes it in time for the 2nd number and encore. Alls well, ends well.

But they toss the fanboys a bone with one more episode coming up.

The general reaction I’m sure many of us got when the direction of the show concentrated less on the music…


Azusa joins the group in episode 9, and almost regrets it when she sees the carefree attitude of the group. It takes seeing them perform again and realizing they have a kind of chemistry to get her to want to stick with them.

Episode 10 sees the girls going on their second training camp trip, with Azusa in tow. Of course, while Mio and Azusa want to practice more, the other girls just want to have fun. So we get the usual beach antics before the actual practice session, which they of course we don’t actually get to see.

The plus side is that we actually see Yui learn something in this episode when Asuza discovers her practicing by herself late into the night, and subsequently joining her. More scenes like this wouldn’t hurt ya know.

Christmas time.

Episode 7 is the Christmas episode. The girls throw a Christmas party and we get to look at Yui’s relationship with her younger, but more mature sister, Ui. Innocent fun episode to take a break from all the hard training and practicing we usually see the girls do. Yes, I was being sarcastic there.

We know she’ll get better. We’re just not gonna see the progression.

Episode 8 is the beginning of the new school term. And Yui’s sister Ui manages to get into the same school as the girls. It’s also time that the school clubs recruit new members, including the light music club, who decide to throw a mini concert to convince would be members to join. They do the gig, and out of the hundreds of new students in attendance, they only get ONE new member.

Breaks my heart to know kids in Japan aren’t interested in learning to play instruments and are probably more interested in being in boybands and girl groups.

This could be said for a lot of other shows out there.


Episode 4 sees the girls spending their summer vacation on a training camp to improve their playing after Mio finds an old demo tape from the previous light music club, and it inspires her to want to get the band to play at the school festival after the summer vacation.

Of course, Yui and Ritsu could only think about having fun in the sun. They eventually do practice though, and they end up being confident enough to perform at the school festival.

Episode 5 sees the girls realize that their club isn’t recognized by the student council since Ritsu failed to hand in the club application months ago when they first got together!

Re-submitting their application, they realize that they need an adviser for their club, and they decide to blackmail Ms. Sawako into the position when they find out her past as a member of the light music club as well as an ex-metalhead. Sawako gives in and she quickly points out after watching them perform that they they need to add lyrics to their music and find a singer. Big “DUH” there.
Mio ends up writing the lyrics and they pick Yui to do the vocals, but Yui loses her voice while training under Sawako to learn to play and sing at the same time. Mio ends up on vocal duties due to this.

Episode 6 is the school festival episode. The first half sees the girls taking part in their class activities for the festival, except for Mio who is concerned about the upcoming performance. Second half is the girls practicing and building up their confidence before taking to the stage and not screwing up. Until the rice bowl incident that is, which I don’t think I need to cover.

Thoughts: I think I would have preferred if the whole series was building up to this moment of the band working hard to get it together and play this performance, which was glossed over with a music video rather than the actual performance. 12 Episodes could have covered a lot of territory in Yui’s training and the band’s song writing. But hey, the whole band thing is just a gimmick and not to be taken seriously, right?

One other thing…

The real Dangerous Queen is joshi wrestler Akira Hokuto if anyone cares to know.

But then again…

K-ON! Ep.1 – 3


Yes, I finally started watching the much hyped moe-blob anime K-ON!. My original reason for wanting to check it out when it was first announced was because it was about a group of girls trying to put a band together. So I was interested to check out that aspect of it, since putting a band together is something I myself have been wanting to do for years now.

So anyways, the first 3 episodes cover the formation of the band, with our air-headed heroine Yui (pictured above) joining the Light Music Club, started up by Ritsu and Mio, who themselves have been wanting to start up a band after watching a concert on TV. They managed to convince rich girl Tsumugi to join and they only needed one more member to keep the club from being disbanded. This leads to them playing a song for Yui and it’s enough to convince her to join and learn to play the guitar as well.

The 2nd episode sees the girls combine their efforts to buy Yui a guitar for her to play. Yui gets 50 grand from her parents, but she instead eyes a 250,000 yen Strat, so they all end up working part time jobs to make up the money. After 2 days of hard work counting cars, Yui decides it’s better to just get what she can afford, and when they head back to the music shop, Tsumugi tries her hand at bargaining with the store clerk, but it turns out he family owns the store and the manage to get the guitar for an insane discount price of 50,000 yen. Lucky girls.

Episode 3 sees the Light Music Club in crisis as Yui has failed her exams, and she will not be able to participate in club activities if she doesn’t pass a make up exam. Being the air head that she is, she’s easily distracted and can’t study, leading to the girls giving her a hand on the final day before the test. And she aces it to keep the club going.

So far so good.

After the shock of hearing Kotaro’s denial, Chinami is surprised to find that she has lost her Type-E ability! She spends the following weeks living the life of a normal girl, even buying herself a handphone and getting along well with her friends, but she continues to avoid Kannagi.

That is until she goes on the school summer trip to some experimental electronic resort. Here it her abilities suddenly come back, but much more powerful, and even Saihashi suddenly loses the ability to control her abilities! Turns out the whole thing is a setup, and there are multiple Type-E users in attendance. They are never really pointed out, but it seems like the animals living in the area are also affected.

Anyway, on the last night of the trip Kannangi finally confesses his feeling to Chinami, and we get our happy ending. It almost looked like they were going to pull a swerve and have Kannagi killed off when the whole facility collapses, but they didn’t go through it.

Unfortunately it looks like they killed off Mils, the female foreign sibling. Might not be for sure until watching the 2nd season, but I’m not watching that since the fansub group stopped abruptly, kinda like the final episode here where they crammed everything into the last few minutes and end with some loose ends.

Good series, but I don’t think I would watch it again.

In this batch of episodes the foreign siblings finally get green cards and infiltrate the school Chinami is studying at, Chinami finds out her classmate Saihashi is also a “Type-E” like her, but not as powerful, and she helps Chinami to try and learn to control her powers by doing shrine maiden work.

Chinami actually gets the hang of controlling her powers and is going all lovery dovey over Kannangi, but that all goes to Hell when she walks in on him and Sonomiya, denying he has any feelings for her and only views her as a science experiment. This of course puts Chinami in super gloom mode and she unknowingly shuts down an entire shopping district while on her way home.

A third party has also shown up with interest in Chinami’s abilities, and the siblings have taken notice of this.

Anybody else thinks that the viewers of AniMax played a cruel joke on the winner of their Shakugan no Shana II lookalike contest? I mean seriously, just my opinion, but the ugliest girl won! Heck, I voted on the first day of the polls, and she was already leading by a wide margin!

It was either national pride and she was showered with votes by her fellow countrymen, or like I’m saying, a cruel joke was instigated. A lot of the girls look a hell lot better than she did, and way more sexier in Shana’s outfit, and I know the otaku society has a sharp eye for beauty.

Or maybe it’s true that otaku really shun the “real” world and picked the ugliest girl in an act of spite?

As you would expect, the wrong choice of words lead to an awkward moment.

Taking a break from Soul Eater to check out another of the many series in my backlog. Code-E is the interesting story about a girl (Chinami Ebihara) who has the power to emit electromagnetic waves which effects anything electrical. A curious classmate (Kotaro Kannagi) offers to help her control her abilities, but there seems to be more to the story as there are other parties interested in her and her special gift.

So far I’m up to episode 4, which deals with Chinami’s first days at her new school, meeting up with Kotaro, sorting out her problems with Kotaro’s childhood friend, Sonomi Kujo, and the arrival of two foreigners, the Brinberg siblings, as well as the realization that another classmate, Yuma Saihashi, might also have a special gift of her own.

Liking what I’ve seen so far, and interested to see where it goes.