Those of you who have allocated enough points to Perception may have noticed a distinct lack of blog activity on my part. I certainly have plenty of time to kill, what with the economy’s unkindness to English majors and all (I may have a job lined up, finally, but I’m not getting my hopes up); I simply haven’t been able to muster the patience required to watch anime for any stretch of time. Which is pathetic, since it doesn’t require a lot of patience. But I’ve had things on my mind, namely real life, so I do hope you’ll forgive me for straying from the One True Path of the Enlightened Nerd.

At any rate, here I present to you a post about K-ON!, for which I have high hopes. I won’t blog every episode, as I don’t really like episodic blogging, even in this less formal context, and also I’m just lazy, but I will at least note a few initial observations here, and keep tabs on them as the show progresses.

• Unordered list, activate!
• When Yui mentions that the light music club is, at present, not very good, she’s right, and in that regard all is as it should be. I had worried that they’d make our musically-inclined heroines (with the exception of Yui, the weakest link/loose cannon by design) better than could be expected, and they didn’t, really, to my great relief. One of the first things I look for in characters is growth potential (or, alternately, change potential), which doesn’t always mesh with early talent.
• Speaking of growth potential, Yui has it in spades. She doesn’t just lack talent musically; apparently, she lacks any kind of skill or interest in anything at all (except the castanets, I guess, and hiding under the kotatsu). So many anime and manga franchises can be taken as coming-of-age stories that this one isn’t really remarkable in that regard, though essentially inept protagonists seem rarer than those who possess some ability and grow by honing it. We’ll actually see Yui acquire her ability in the first place, as we see Keitaro Urashima acquire archeology, or Stephen Dedalus acquire writing. The latter example is more relevant, probably, insofar as K-ON! sets itself up to deal with the birth and growth of artists.
• I read some blog post or another (I forget where; this is why I could never do lelangir’s job) which expressed concern about being able to relate to K-ON! due to its band angle. Fortunately, this isn’t something I need to be worried about; my tenure as drummer for a band aptly named The Love Explosion equips me to relate to some of the problems the light music club will face, or at least I assume so. I wonder, though, if inability to relate will prove to be a common complaint. If the show’s good enough, it won’t matter much whether its viewers have their own band experiences to draw upon anyway.
• Simplifying character designs to emphasize emotion is a device we’re all used to by now. It’s one of the most visually evident recurring techniques of anime and manga. But on at least one occasion, K-ON! does it in a way that caught my attention.

  

  Here, Yui transitions into the end state of simplification more smoothly than seems usual. The visual state lines up well with the emotional state at any given moment, which is a nice touch.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 12:20 pm and is filed under K-ON! (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.