Tag Archives: k-on!

K-On and On and On!!

Posted on by

In college, a teacher gave me some good advice on animation. He was a 3-D animation teacher, and he knew full well how time-consuming it could be, and how rewarding it was to make something really impressive. His advice, however, was a message of artistic prudence. I don’t remember the exact words, but the message was basically, “Don’t get so attached to a bit of strong animation that you reuse it to excess.” I was reminded of his words while watching K-On!! (the second season of K-On!).

In the new opening, there’s a very distinct part where the camera pans around the five girls of Houkago Tea Time, and it’s really some impressive animation, especially because while the background of the clubroom is 2-D, the girls themselves are still animated in 2-D, and overall it looks pretty natural.

So it looks really nice. But then they use the effect again. And then a third time. At that point, I think it’s just excess.

The opening for the first season also had something similar, a shot where all the girls are playing together that gets reused about three times total. However, in my opinion the recycling isn’t as jarring for a number of reasons. First, it doesn’t have that three-dimensional rotation effect going on like the new opening, where that piece is so different from the rest of the opening that you notice it immediately. The shot in K-On!! sticks out like a really nice-looking sore thumb, and it becomes all the more obvious when they use it another two times. Second, the first opening changes the background between usages of the stock animation, and while this can be seen as simply being lazy, the change in scenery makes the reuse more comfortable to the viewer.

If they really, really wanted to use the revolving camera effect that much, I think a good solution would have been to put more camera movement in the scenes right before that animation to ease the transition into it.

Not that Kyoto Animation is reading this blog, of course.

Over-Counter-Reaction

Posted on by

Interest in anime, especially among otaku, can be a very personal thing, and so it is often easy to consider an insult to your favorite anime an insult to you, and so you come up with all sorts of reasons why the other person might be wrong. The more extreme their response, the more extreme yours potentially can be unless you step back for a moment.

One defensive response that I know I’ve used before is that if doesn’t like your favorite show, it’s because they don’t like whatever it is you like most about the show. Using K-On! as an example, if someone talks about how they think it’s a bad show, an easy response would be, “Oh that’s just because you can’t enjoy the simple things in life,” even if that doesn’t even influence whether or not they like it.

The most dangerous aspect of this line of reasoning is that it’s not like it never applies. There are definitely times when a person hates the show for the exact reason you like it, or that they don’t pay attention to the parts that you pay attention to the most. Because these valid instances exist, it becomes very easy to think of it as a “rule,” and then for another person to see you using it and come out with their own very rigid, extreme opinion opposite yours.

Even if people disagree on fundamental levels, I think it is important for arguments not to get too unnecessarily heated and overly personal (though a little I feel is okay). However, I know that doing so can be very difficult because it only takes one person to start attaching insults to their opinion in order for everyone to be doing so, and then from there it’s all too easy to say that criticism simply should not exist at all, ever when that potentially can stifle discussion. There is definitely a middle ground in terms of discussion, even if it doesn’t necessarily exist for opinions.

Haruhi vs Lucky Star vs K-On!

Posted on by

No I am not pitting each cast of girls against each other to see who would win in a fight, but rather I want to talk about the ways in which these three shows differ beyond a superficial level. You’ll sometimes hear people say that Kyoto Animation’s about is all the same, and I will agree with them as far as saying that they know their audience, i.e. otaku, but when you actually watch these shows you will most likely get a different vibe from each one.

I won’t be discussing the Key adaptations because that’s another beast entirely.

With Haruhi, you’ll notice an air of mystery that permeates the show due to the supernatural aspects of it. Sometimes it’s more obvious, but other times simple actions can imply greater things, and it gives a certain sense of intrigue to the series. It’s still all about a bunch of high school kids hanging out and doing dumb things, but even the dumb things are given a sort of significance as a result of the setting. You can always feel that Haruhi is moving somewhere (right to what the light novels have already spoken about!).

Lucky Star is not just otaku pandering, it is active otaku pandering, and that’s also what makes the show enjoyable. More than either of the other two shows, Lucky Star asks if you’re an otaku, then asks one more time just to make sure, and then high fives you because you watch a lot of anime. In fact, Lucky Star probably does this more than any other show, but don’t think that all the humor is in-jokes with no setup; all I’m saying is that the show rewards otaku.

K-On! meanwhile does away with the pretenses of the other two and is simply about what it advertises: cute girls playing instruments and not being too obsessive about it. There are no undercurrents, no subtle themes at work here. At the same time, I wouldn’t call K-On a shallow anime, as the humor derives from the characters’ personalities very heavily, possibly more than Haruhi or Lucky Star.

All three shows feature groups of girls having fun, but the effects they have on the viewers will vary tremendously due to the inherent differences in each show. If you hate one show you might not necessarily hate the others, and if you do like all theree, there’s a good chance you’ll be liking them for different reasons.

The Deception of Hirasawa Ui

Posted on by

This is Hirasawa Ui. She is the younger sister of the Light Music Club’s lead guitarist Hirasawa Yui. She is also a TRICK designed to pull in otaku and leave them with more than they anticipated!

Yes Ui is a little sister, and in that sense many fans may be drawn in by her “little sister” appeal. However, that imouto moe is only on the surface, and what lies underneath is a beast from yesteryear, ready to reclaim the throne of fandom, away from the tsundere, away from the “Onii-chan!” spouting imouto, away from the maids, away from the tsundere imouto maids.

Hirasawa Ui is actually a 1980s Childhood Friend Shounen Heroine in the guise of a little sister. She bears few similarites to Kyon’s sister from Haruhi or Cardcaptor Sakura, while her personality is closer to that of Yuria from Hokuto no Ken or Minami from Touch! Closer to her is Mikan from ToLoveRu but Mikan still leans closer to the imouto moe side. Capable, smart, responsible, and always in a position to help those close to her, Ui is the start of a secret plan to bring back the 80s Shounen Heroine, or at the very least the To Heart’s Akari-style childhood friend (as opposed to the To Heart 2 Konomi-style childhood friend).

“Oh!” you might say, “But she’s not the most popular character!” But that’s where they get you. Because she’s not in the main cast, because she’s not at the forefront of her show, she can slowly build up momentum. She is the first of many. She is avantgarde.

Now that you know the truth, you have two choices: embrace it or fight it. Just know that Hirasawa Ui will be there to serve you tea and make sure you’re comfortable.

Understanding the Girls of K-On!, Instantly!

Posted on by

Now this is an interesting shot from episode 6 of K-On!

All four characters are in the same place, and just from this one still you can get a basic idea of their personalities. On the flipside, if you already know the characters then you can definitely see that this is instantly accurate.

In general, K-On! pays a good amount of attention to these sort of things, and I think it’s characteristic of Kyoto Animation in general. Some wonder why others are so fond of Kyoto Animation’s various works, from Haruhi to Lucky Star to various Key adaptations, and the answer is care. These are not just moe blob shows with no real content, they’re visually rich with a good sense of timing and comedy (or tragedy as the case may be). K-On! is no exception.

Aim for Mediocrity

Posted on by

There’s two new shows this season where the apparent premise is that the main characters do not strive to be the very best, like no one ever was. One of these is the moe-powered 25-minute mahjong commercial Saki, and the other is the latest Kyoto Animation cute girls fest about a high school band K-ON! While the titular Miyanaga Saki is simply a mahjong genius who has found a way to merely seem mediocre, and K-ON!‘s Hirasawa Yui is simply a no-talent clumsy girl who’s trying to find something she can sort-of kind-of do, both girls are clearly going for the same goal, which is to be okay.

While both shows are clearly aimed at otaku with their ensembles of adorable girls with relatively harmless personalities, I don’t think it’s necessarily a case of “otaku are afraid to succeed and that’s why these girls aren’t striving to be the very best!” How I personally feel about it is that it’s actually kind of refreshing to not have characters who are entirely about toppling their opposition in a given field. Even if the story turns out that way eventually (a likely scenario for Saki), the fact that it started out that way is pretty nice.

Also, Saki is basically Takumi from Initial D only with mahjong tiles instead of a AE-86 Sprinter Trueno.