K-On!

K-On!

Kyoto Animation

K-On! is, essentially, a slice-of-life music anime about a band of five girls who very, very occasionally play music.

I don't care that I have no idea what they're saying, this song is goddamn catchy.

(If you're curious, this is an entire song about rice... It's not even the only one about rice in the show!)

K-On begins with Yui Hirasawa, adorable klutz and complete airhead, on her first day of high school. The school's 'light music' (a broad Japanese term for light rock or pop-style music) club is under threats of disembandment, with only Ritsu Tanaka (drums), the tomboyish and energetic leader of the club, and Mio Akiyama (bass), introvert and Ritsu's unlikely best friend, as members. After they gain Tsumugi Kotobuki (goes by Mugi, keyboard), Yui eventually decides to join the club as their fourth member, thinking that it'll be easy... and despite the fact that she plays no instruments, Yui is persuaded to stay in the club so that they have enough members to continue, and spends most of the first series learning lead guitar to round out the band. Many antics ensue, and they form the band 'Ho-kago Tea Time' (After School Tea Time, or HTT).

L-R: Ritsu, Mugi, Asuza (who joins later in the series on rhythm guitar) Yui, and Mio.

A big part of K-On's selling point, and why it has exploded in popularity (especially overseas), is 'moe'. 'Moe' refers to an infatuation with, or taste for, extreme cuteness (or 'kawaii') things, especially in anime or other hobbies, and very common in refering to 'shojo' ('gir') anime that has a large male following. 'Moe' can also refer to the cute factor itself (you could describe a character or specific scene as 'moe', for example).

Critics of a slice-of-life or knowingly 'cute' anime will use 'moe' derisivelyto refer to anime that relies very heavily on the 'cute' factor to bring in its audience, sometimes as a main character trait.

It's true that a lot of anime that relies on gimmicky cuteness and character interaction can sometimes lack in plot and be less inviting to watch, and K-On is no exception to this rule in places.

Moe moe kyun!~

This is part of a running joke in episode 10 where they tease Mio about how 'moe' she is.

In any case, K-On is very aware of its nature as a moe anime (see above), and isn't afraid to play with it for effect.

Another very common criticism of K-On and other slice-of-life anime like it is that the plot is very slow, and could even be described as 'plotless' in some cases. Ho-kago Tea Time don't even properly play as a band together after the first episode until the 6th episode (halfway through the series), and the majority of the anime is made up mostly of other distractions - a 'training camp', exams, shopping for equipment, and general fun. But the fact that they aren't playing enough is always lampshaded, usually by Mio (and Asuza in later episodes), and the group do play as a band together most afternoons through all the tea and cakes, just offscreen.

Just a sidenote - because the actual playing of their instruments is animated using a different and more expensive technique (CGI), music anime as a genre tends to be plagued with shots that don't quite show the fingers - but when HTT do play onscreen, it's given full justice, which is refreshing.

  

K-On's comic & stylistic elements make sure the anime stays tongue-in-cheek about how plotless it is, and doesn't take itself too seriously.
(See 'moe moe kyun~' above for an example of this, too).

It's a running joke both in the fandom and in the series itself that all HTT do is sit in their music room after school and have tea and cakes (the big hint there being that their name 'Ho-kago Tea Time' literally means 'After-School Tea Time'), but that's part of it's nature as a slice of life series. K-On itself originated as a 4-koma series (a four-panel genre of manga much like comics that appear in Western newspapers), and while the anime expands a lot on the obviously limited resources given to it, at its heart the plot is still just a simplistic device to show off the characters and the sense of humour that the original 4-koma was so good at establishing.

The episode where Yui is adorable - wait, that's all of them.

Anyway, my point is that slice-of-life genres, in anime and wider media alike, allows you to explore characters in a truly insulating way - not under life-threatening stresses or unrealistic horror/fantasy situations, but how they interact and evolve on a day-to-day basis, which I think is the whole appeal to slice-of-life. It's escapism at its finest, and despite the criticism that HTT doesn't play on-screen enough, ultimately, K-On is about emotion and exploring relationships between friends, not music. 

The second series, especially (entitled K-On!! - the two exclamation marks denoting it as the second series) is a serious tug on the heartstrings with the recurring plotline of the first four members having to graduate at the end of the series and leave Asuza (who is a year below them). I'm not ashamed to say that I teared up.

K-On isn't meant to be a serious look at philosophy or psychology like more 'serious anime'. It's fun, and it's engaging, and it's emotional; its plotless overly moe elements are for tongue-in-cheek humour and because it's cute, not just for attention.

_____________________________________________________________

gifs:

studying with cake, group shot, header, cake and sparkles, mio cry, beaver yui

word count: 938