REVIEW: K-ON!

 There are no spoilers in this review.

PLOT: Graduation draws near for Yui, Ritsu, Mio, and Tsumugi, the four 3rd-year students of the Light Music Club. They, together with Azusa, decide to go on a post-graduation trip. Their destination is London!

THE GOOD: Animation. With a box office revenue of 1.7 billion yen ($21 million), K-ON! was the most successful anime movie last year. I have been a huge fan of the TV series since its very first episode. Seeing as how I'm a slice-of-life anime guy rather than an action/fighting anime guy, K-ON! made it on my radar pretty early on. It's a special show that is easy for anyone to enjoy. In fact, my wife doesn't care for anime, but she liked watching K-ON! with me. My oldest daughter, too. Anime is still dominated by male fans as a whole all around the world, but according to ASCII Research Institute, 37% of K-ON! fans are women. Furthermore, 15% of the audience of K-ON! don’t watch anime regularly. It's a real testament to the simple story and loveable characters of the show. I even bought all of the manga series and Bethany's read some of those, as well. When I heard that they were making a movie, I wasn't surprised. The series got incredibly popular. Season 1 broke the record for opening day sales for the Blu-ray and DVD editions selling over 41,000. And as of February 20th of last year, K-ON! became the first television animation series to sell over 500,000 Blu-ray Discs on Oricon's sales chart in Japan. When the Alter version of the Yui Hirasawa figure went on sale, there were literally fist fights to get her in front of anime toy stores. (I got mine safely.) Us American anime fans have been impatiently waiting for the Japanese Blu-ray/DVD release of the K-ON! movie and I finally got to watch it. The first thing that stands out is the improved animation. This is fairly expected with TV anime turned into films. I think they did an especially good job of capturing the sights of London.

YUI: "Pretty sure that's not how you ride the tube, Azu-nyan." 

Music. Consistently amazed that the songwriters who work on K-ON! can continue to produce such catchy tunes. I especially love the song that they wrote for Azu-nyan at the end. It was cute and oh so very sweet.


THE BAD: Story. I was expecting something more with the story in this one. There is no substance to this movie at all. I don't think people who have never seen K-ON! before would be attracted to this in any way. It was more of a way to see what kind of hijinks the girls would get in to when they placed them in London. For me, this is the only reason that the movie was a slight disappointment.

I like how all westerners have tiny eyes, but Japanese anime character have huge sparkly eyes.

THE END: K-ON! fans will appreciate this film and maybe some admirers of the anime genre. Other than that, there's not enough interesting here to check out. Skip this one unless you are a fan.


DISCUSS: What did you think of K-ON? Were you a fan of the series? Who is your favorite character? Did you read the manga?

How can you not just want to squeeze those cheeks!?!?