Entry 101: "K-On!!" Ep. 14-26 End

We can see here the show's plot described in exorbitant detail.

Dear Internet,

                Here is to a new hundred posts, provided I do not self destruct before then.

                I am finished with "K-On!!", AKA "Double Dessert Edition."  And I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised with the last group of thirteen episodes.  That does not mean that the final batch makes me reverse my judgments of the last two days worth of episodes.  No, those episodes range from sucking to only being slightly amusing.  The final episodes are a group that has finally learned how to make a slice of life show.  At the same time, they display the show's inability to make the episodes more focused.

                I will start on the bad note so that I can end on the good ones.  The show does not devote itself to one specific theme in each episode.  It usually has two or three things it is trying to balance at one time.  When it tries to do too much, the show falls flat with all the jokes falling to the floor.  For example, in episode 14 the keyboard player and the drummer find each other while out shopping.  A portion of the episode devotes itself to the drummer taking the keyboardist out to the arcade.  They have fun in the various things there and enjoy spending time together.  This is one of the few times that the two characters are alone and are able to interact without the presence or interference of the others.  The part of the episode that only had the two characters includes a refreshing dynamic that the rest of the show is lacking of.  Usually, the whole band is together and there is a single and solitary group dynamic occurring.  Sadly, this part of the episode ends quickly and is replaced with a pathetic excuse afterwards.  Basically, the keyboardist wants a more physical relationship with her peers.  One hugs another frequently.  Another scolds a forth and reprimands using a light blow to the head.  The keyboardist wants to be hit on the head because she feels left out of the kind of relationship that her peers are experiencing.  While it is understandable that she feels this way, the fact that she does not identify being slapped as a negative reaction rather than a positive one makes what comes afterward so much more annoying.  She then decides that to fulfill her dream of "being slapped" she will do scatterbrained things to warrant a natural slap rather than asking her friend, the drummer, to do it.  The rest of the episode feels forced because the humor is stemming from this.  It would have been better if the episode just had her get hit and then move on with itself.

                Take episode 16 as another example.  The whole episode, the secondary guitarist is trying to get the group to practice for a change.  If this were not the umpteenth time that this joke was made, it might actually be funny.  The episode does do one thing right.  It makes the character pair off with each of the other four band members, one at a time, and has the pairs interact.  This, like episode 14, explores a number of one on one relationships that the show usually never gets the chance to touch on.  At times, the episode is heartwarming since the characters can talk about things on a more intimate level or do things that feel like exceptions to the show's norm.  However, the episode is constantly falling back to the old joke, and reality, that the band does not practice often.  

                In the last batch, there are next to no performances of the group.  There are about three strong ones where they play full songs and a few other times where they only get as far as the intro.  I think it is the least amount of performances per batch I have watched.  All it does is point out the fact that this show is not about a group of girls in a school band.  It is just not about the music, Internet.  It is not about the music at all.  Which is a real shame.

                The few times that the group performs, the show really takes off and does what it is supposed to do.  Take the final concert that the group gives at the spring festival.  The band plays three songs, two of which are actually displayed.  In between, the main guitarist talks briefly about the various characters who surround her.  When she does this, the various relationships are highlighted to the point where the audience gains in insight to the character's specific feelings regarding to her friends.  They are touching moments because they reveal something that the show normally skips over or downplays for humor.  The graduation episode does this as well.  By not trying to be a humorous episode and instead focus on the emotional aspects of the show, it makes for better viewing since it does a much better job.  There were a few times that the show made me laugh, but those were here and there to the point of being at the same frequency of comedic relief found in dramatic stories.  I still do not think of this show as being a comedy because it fails in that regards, but there are a few moments here are there that marks it as a slice of life.

                Those moments are far apart, too far to make me recommend the show to someone.  However, in the last stretch, the show does an OK to good job of making heartwarming moments.   This might be because the show took a long enough chunk of time out of me to get used to the characters.  They are sort of like that weird uncle that the family tries to ignore at reunions.  No one really interacts with him, and he does not interact with him.  The kids like him well enough but only after gathering enough courage to talk to him.  You would miss him if he did not make it to the gathering, but you might not realize it until he actually does not come.  That is when you realize he had been taking care of all the kids the entire time and allowed you to talk to everyone else without the kids pulling at your skirt/pant leg.  Yeah, the characters in "K-On!!" are like that.  They grow on you after a while because they are there to grow.  

                At the end of the day, "K-On!!" is an average anime that has its good points too late and too far apart.  It is like getting a chocolate candy that is wrapped in ten layers of wax paper.  The wax paper is taped over at each layer, too.  Not to mention that you do not have a knife and you just cut your nails down.  Eventually you will get to the center and find something enjoyable, but it will not be filling after all the work it took to get there.  If the show had more musical segments and played up the slice of life moments than try to inject humor where it failed to do so, it would have been much better.  But all the "if"s of the world cannot play a stanza of music.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Next is "Brick" (2005).

Enty 100: "K-On!!" Ep. 1-13

The extra capitalization adds even more emphasis.

Dear Internet,

                Well, here I go.  This will be my one hundredth review.  It is somewhat a shame that I have to spend it on a show like "K-On!!", but what can I do about it?  The first review was on a copycat King Kong film, so I really should not try and make this little experiment any more glamorous that it really is.  This whole thing is just an attempt for me to keep my sanity together.  There are a few other reasons, but those are frivolous.  And I think that explains "K-On!!" pretty well.  It is a show that tests my sanity more than anything else.  It makes me laugh a few times, but those are few and far between.  This is sadder considering that it bills itself as a comedy and slice of life show.

                "K-On!!" is the second season of the first show, but it is a second production show from a technical standpoint.  You can tell this is the situation since there are two exclamation points in the title.  Do not think that it means that the show is twice as exciting.  Do not think it means that the show is twice as energetic.  Do not think it means the twice as funny.  If anything, the extra exclamation point means that the show got a little more of a budget.  Either that or it is evidence that the show is trying too hard, like reading forum posts made by middle school kids.  I suspect that if the show got another season after this it would be titled "K-On!?!"  At least then it would reflect the show's questionable ability to entertain.

                The second season picks up right where the first left off, not that the first season left us at a cliffhanger.  The closest thing to a wonder that the show could instill was what kind of food the girls were going to eat next.  This is something that boggles my mind.  The cast spends more time eating than practicing music.  At the rate that the group consumes sugary sweets and other edible confections, they should all have gained twice as much body mass at this point.  The only one that gets a free ride against this is the drummer since it is the most active instrument being played.  The main guitarist is said to never gain any weight, but that is more of an escape rather than an explanation as to how the characters regularly consume half of their diet from the cake bar.  But I digress.  

                The show is the same story from the first one, just going at a slower pace.  In thirteen episodes, the first season covered two years of high school.  In the first half of the second season, only one year passes.  With that stretched out time frame, the show does a few things differently.  It is not much but I will give the show its due.  The one difference is that there is a bit more emphasis on the musical aspects of the show, something that the first season flaked out too much on.  The show still has as one of its half dozen core jokes being that the group never seems to practice their music.  However, in the thirteen episodes toad, there were nearly twice as many performances from either the main band or from some other group.  On top of that, the show did spend an entire episode on the problems of humidity and moisture in relation to its effects on fine tuned instruments.  It did this with the backdrop of a rainy day episode, but at least it actually talked about the instruments for a change.  The show still threw it out the window when the characters started to become overly attached to their instruments.  I am talking about naming their instruments and treating them like people.  It comes across less like a joke and more like a disturbing episode from a relapsing mental patient.  Maybe this is because the straight man character, the bassist, succumbs to the same blob of a personality that the rest are already a part of.

                Perhaps I am looking at this show incorrectly.  Perhaps I am looking at it as though it is supposed to be something it is not.  Maybe instead of expecting the show to be about music and the various intricacies that come with it, I should look at it instead as a slice of life show.  Except, the show fails in that regard as well.  A slice of life show is supposed to be about nothing in particular and be about a specific thing at the same time.  Look at a show like "Usagi Drop."  The show is specifically about a man who has to take in his grandfather's child as his own, but the show as a whole is about the various troubles and blessings that come with having to raise a child.  The skill of "Usagi Drop" comes from the topics that the episode centers on.  Whether it be on learning to take care of a person besides yourself or having to change one's career for the sake of another, the slice of life genre deals with the little things of life that are in actuality the big things.  "K-On!!" does next to none of this.  There is an occasional aspect of an episode that deals with the mundane aspects of life, but it never touches upon the profoundness of that monotony.  

                A slice of life knows how to show the grandeur of the simple things in life.  A shower of rain becomes an outdoor bath.  A snail traveling across the leaf no longer becomes a garden pest, but a new pet.  A trip to the grocery store becomes an adventure into the unknown.  Taking the garbage to the curb in the middle of the night becomes a test of bravery.  A lazy afternoon becomes a display of the benefits of being lazy.  But no matter what, it has to be entertaining to the audience.  If the show does not make the viewer see these things but only gets the characters to do such, it fails as a slice of life show.  "K-On!!" has a few moments of these displays of everyday life turned extraordinary.  A cleaning of a closet becomes an expedition of buried treasure.  A summer afternoon filled with daydreams shows how close their reality is to fantasy, and so on.  The problem is that the show does not make theme moments magical.  It makes them comical, which is not really a problem if it were not for the fact that it does not do this very well.  It sets up the slice of life situation, works it a bit into a wonder, and delivers a less than average joke about it.

Why she keeps hoping the answer will change is beyond me.

                The jokes of the show can mostly be listed as such:  The main guitarist is a scatterbrained, unmotivated airhead.  The bassist reacts overly to scary things.  The drummer is an annoying git who skirts her responsibilities.  The keyboard player is rich.  The teacher is a mature adult except she is not.  The main guitarist's younger sister acts more like a mother than a younger sibling.  The secondary guitarist calls out the group for not practicing until they appease her with sweets.  They all will do anything for that white drug, sugar.  And they do not have enough common sense to function most times, yet alone learn how to play an instrument.  That is the sum of the majority of the jokes in the show.  They are funny in the first five times or so, but the show has such a small bag of tricks that it shows very quickly.  Even when it falls back on this bag of tricks, it does not use much variety when executing these jokes.

                Overall, "K-On!!" is more of the same.  It is supposed to be, considering that it is the second season.  But does that mean it has to be so much of the same?  Even the slight variety of the episodes in season two could not make the show feel like it is repeating itself.  The show had a much larger change in scenery from one episode to the next, yet it constantly felt like the circle it was traveling in was shrinking.  Not even the revival of the old light music club's band, Death Devil, could save this show.  At least I only have one more day of this.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

Entry 099: "K-On!"

I hope you like your characters like you like your cake.

Dear Internet,

                I do not get it, Internet.  I do not get the hype over the anime "K-On!"  If you had monitored any sort of anime forum or message board, or even a few print formats if you can find one, that monitors the anime circuit, you would have noticed the explosion that came from this show.  People clamored for "K-On!"  They claimed it was the best thing since slice bread.  The sheer number of fan works that stem from this show is proof enough of this show's popularity.  This further confounds me considering that the show is based on a four panel comic strip manga.  One would think that the manga would receive more attention, but from what I gather, this outpouring of admiration is directed towards the anime mostly.  The characters have been plastered on everything from high level calculators to being used as marketing spokeswomen.  They are even plastered on trains and cars by some people.  But then again, considering that Pokemon got on a plane, I should not be surprised at how Japan knows how to sell a product, and sell it repeatedly.  The multitude of music albums and side items besides home videos of the show prove this.  A quick count shows 15 music albums, and I do not want to try and count all the models and statures that were made.  But I am getting ahead of myself again.

                "K-On!" follows the everyday lives of some half dozen high school girls.  There are the four, and then five, members of the light music club who form a band.  There is the guitarist, the drummer, the bassist, a keyboard player, and then another guitarist that comes later.  Then there is a childhood friend, a teacher advisor for the club, and one or two other nameless characters here and there.  But then again, I have not named any of the characters to begin with.  That is because there is not really much of a reason to remember their names.  The characters are pretty bland and forgettable with only one or two traits that are exclusive to each one.  The main guitarist is a ditz, the bassist is the mature one that is easily scared, the keyboardist is rich and somewhat quiet, the drummer is energetic and somewhat an airhead, the second guitarist is serious and the youngest, and the teacher is a fanatic for cosplay with a punk rocker past.  After that, nearly every other facet of their personalities becomes almost indistinguishable from one another.

                Take for example sweets, teas and candies.  After a long day in school, the group retires to their clubroom.  What do they do once they have reached their room of solace?  Do they begin to shred those electric guitars?  Do they beat out a rhythm to drive away their fears on the drums?  Do they play that keyboard a melody that gets them feeling alright?  No, they eat cake, drink tea, and play around.  And they do this for the entirety of some episodes.  In the thirteen episodes that the first season makes use of, the group only makes three live performances with a few jam sessions scattered here and there.  When these jam sessions take place, they are short and sometimes painfully to the point.  What I mean by this is that when they practice, sometimes the show will completely skip over the practice and only show the result of the session.  If someone plays poorly, the show does not display their inability by actually showing them playing badly so that we can hear them play off beat or miss a note.  The show will cut straight to when they are no longer playing and instead shows the reactions of the other characters.  This format repeats in a number of different varieties, but it points out a big problem with the show.

Practice, who needs to practice?  They got the power of friendship to make them play better.

                The show is not much about music despite depicting itself as such, especially considering it is following a music club.  The show even recognizes this when the second guitarist calls out the group for not practicing much.  Consider that in the span of the thirteen episodes, there are two major references to musical techniques concerning the guitar.  Not counting the chords since that would be like mentioning the term "beat" regarding the drums, the show mentions vibrato and mutes.  Beyond that, the show never delves deeper into the intricacies of music or music theory.  It is all somewhat whitewashed over by pure ignorance and willful ignoring.  The ignorance is on the behalf of the main guitarist who does not know much about the instrument she plays.  The ignoring aspect comes from the fact that the show makes her play nearly perfectly to the point that it needs to be called out.  She does not know what a tuner is until her second year of playing the guitar and has been tuning her instrument solely by ear.  On top of that, she picks up her skill so quickly that it is laughable, even though this is what the show is aiming for, but I will get to the comedy aspect in a bit.  The fact that she gets so good at playing the guitar while at the same time has massive holes in her knowledge of the item is more unbelievable rather that humorous.  The amount of practice that she would have to do to get that good would require much more blistering and bloody fingers than the show displays or hints to.  In the thirteen episodes, she gets one finger injury that requires a Band-Aid.  Otherwise, her talent is supernatural.

                While the whole time I watched this show today, I was constantly thinking of "Eyeshield 21."  This is perhaps a silly little notion, but, please, humor me for a while, at least longer than "K-On!" humored me.  "Eyeshield 21" and "K-On" both follow the high school club formula.  That is to say they both consist of high school students gathering together in an extracurricular activity while setting on their sights on some goal.  "Eyeshield 21" had the Christmas Bowl, and the show centered on the various dreams of those that aimed for it as well as the lengths they were willing to go to try and reach that goal.  "K-On!" has got Budokan, a major venue that can be thought of as a Japanese Madison Square Garden.  "K-On! treats the goal as more of a joke rather than a respectable dream considering how Budokan is featured as a punch line often and how the show does not really showcase the girls earnestly aiming for that goal.  Both shows feature some sort of end point, but they do it in different ways.  In "Eyeshield 21" it is a dream, but in "K-On!" it is a daydream made of fluff and marshmallows.  It is not a serious thing in "K-On!" despite the characters claiming it is, especially with the lack of hard work that the group puts into their practice.

I could add an "or bust" joke here, but the show makes enough boob jokes.

                Another comparison between the two shows can be made concerning how the shows handle interpersonal relationships.  Both shows have a group dynamic that requires the individuals to forego themselves for the betterment of the others.  One is an American football team, and the other is a musical band.  Both need cooperation for the group to reach the short term goals and the long term ones.  But I want to mention the intricacies that exist outside the game and the performances.  Each handles the relationships between characters similar.  They focus on the bonds of friendship that ensure that strengthen the resolve and ability of the group as a whole.  In "K-On!", the bassist and drummer are old friends, so that dynamic is already there.  Early on, the group comes together to help the guitarist make enough money to buy her dream guitar.  Even though their work is for naught in the end, it still shows their willingness to come to the aid of each other, even if at the same time it displays the stupidity of the guitarist to aim for a guitar that costs $2500 rather than a starting instrument.

                I want to touch upon the show's humor briefly before I end this rant.  The jokes are poorly timed.  There is no doubt about this, especially considering how the show is overall not very funny.  If one compares it to another 4 panel comedy manga adaptation like "Azumanga Daioh" or even "Cromatie high School," one will find what the show is instead placing emphasis on.  It is not on the comedy, otherwise the amount of jokes could double or triple in their amount, considering how infrequent they occur.  Instead, the show wants to put emphasis on the growing phenomena of "cute girls doing cute things."  It is exactly what it sounds like with all the lack of a definitive plot line or even a central theme beyond that.  I do not necessarily mind this rather shallow theme.  Sometimes you got to watch a bunch of kittens on Youtube, but that does not mean that it is an excuse for anything more than a mild amusement at best.  "Azumanga Daioh" might fall under this category accidently, but that would require one to completely ignore the comical aspect of the show which is much more important to the show's dynamics.  One would do a better job of being a matador and ignoring the bull's horns.  "K-On! spends an extensive amount of time trying to show the characters either being cute through their ditzy behavior or absentmindedness.   Almost all of the jokes stem from this to the point that if you do not find them cute, or even irritating and unlikable, the show then has no merit.  Perhaps if the show were to make the characters more fleshed out and actually individuals with all that entail, one might become emotionally empathetic to them.  However, the show never goes that far since the girls are made as shallow cardboard cut outs with the only difference being how much each contains post-consumer waste.

                "K-On!" is a bland, average show.  It does nothing unique or very enjoyable.  The only single thing it does right is the musical performances, which include the opening/closing credits.  The songs are somewhat fun, if not a bit lacking on the lyrical department.  Then again, that might be due to a cross language barrier, so I will not strike against the show.  The characters are forgettable.  The plot is nonexistent.  The jokes rely too much on shallow emotional tricks rather than tangible comedy.  Slapstick is better than the watching the same joke for the tenth time that relies on them eating cake.  All I can think about right now is that I have to watch the second season, which has twice the amount of episodes as the first.  The only reason I can think of as why this show got a second season was that it was highly marketable beyond sales of home media.  Either that or the Japanese are suckers for cute girls doing nothing, which includes being entertaining.

Merchandising! Merchandising!

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop