adorable rockets

So the way I heard it was that Yoshida, Reiko, one of the script writers at Kyoto Animation got Rock Band(tm) last Christmas because she was such a big fan of Karaoke and Western music. This inevitably led to the entire animation department spending time in the break room endlessly trying to master Maps on expert mode instead of working on their next heartful anime. When the producer caught them at it, all they could do was mutter some half-hearted excuses about doing ‘research’ for a new show… and so K-ON! was born. Well, maybe it didn’t exactly happen like that, but you have to admit the timing does fit!

In any case there’s a few shows I was eagerly awaiting this season. K-ON had huge potential because, well rock bands are awesome (and they are more so now that we play entirely too much Rock Band(tm)), Japanese highschool girls are awesome (and they are more so when uber moé), so it could be two great tastes and all that… Of course it also had the potential to be utter dreck since an all-too clever concept can easily be a crutch that replaces the more important things like plot, and characterization.

So how did it turn out? Read on…

So it is with great relief that I can report that the first episode of K-ON! did not suck. In fact it positively rocked. The animation was delightfully dynamic, the cinematography solid, as was the pacing and development. The overall production quality lived up to the lovely character designs – whereas the preview has actually convinced me that it would not. Now, of course a heartful show that is fundamentally about highschool girls forming a band really rests on two things: the music and the characters.

The music is your average anime J-pop, but at least it is of the more rocking variety, and given the setting I would have found anything harder or ‘more authentic’ to be distractingly less moé. It’s catchy and not irritating and most importantly fun and fitting.

Likewise our heroines are adorable and engaging, and though stereotypical, deliver their cliches with wonderful nuance and depth. Akiyama Mio is the main character, and she posesses the holy moétic trinity of shy, lazy, and clumsy in Tsukasa proportions. However, her hyper animated facial expressions (matching her internal monologue), and the blunt yet enthusiastic appraisal she has of her new bandmate’s talent (You guys aren’t really that good.. but it looks like fun!) deliver a subtlety of execution beyond the typical play for laughs and kneejerk appeal. I’m reminded of the excellent portrayal of Yurie in Kamichu! (another great anime with with awkward punctuation in the name).

Only time will tell if the excellence of the first episode can be sustained for the entire series, but one is for sure… I’ve found my new Toradora.

P.S. Of course there will be meido!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 8:37 am and is filed under MOÉ, Reviews, anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.