Review for K-On! Season 2 Part 2

Introduction

I’m sure there are moments while watching K-On!! that you’ll start to question your sanity. I mean a plot thread about girls debating the ethics of eating the strawberry from atop your friend’s slice of cake? A plot thread where someone wants the experience of being bonked on the head, comedy stooge style? You begin to question just why someone thinks that this is riveting material for an anime series. You begin to wonder just what is so fascinating about it, why you are spending your precious time watching it, wondering if there is actually something wrong with you for liking such light and inconsequential airiness. The secret of course is to not question at all, just go with the flow. I have been looking forward to the second part of K-On!! Season 2 with unseemly eagerness, although that’s nothing compared to my need for the K-On! movie. October has never seemed so far away.


Yui Hirasawa spaced her way through elementary and middle school, but once she got to high school, her friend Nodoka convinced her to at least try some sort of extra-curricular activity, lest she become a NEET. She chose the Light Music Club, inspired by some happy memories of playing the castanets in nursery school. She wasn’t quite ready for what membership entailed. She wound up lead guitarist in a rock band, Hokago Tea Time. On bass is the seriously minded, and seriously shy and easily spooked Mio Akiyama, while Mio's best friend, the brash and outgoing Ritsu Tainaka is the drummer. On keyboards is fellow surprise recruit and warm-hearted rich kid Tsumugi Kotobuki, and in the second year of high school, they got a new recruit in Azusa Nakano, also a keen guitarist. In Season 2 of K-On!!, the girls start their final year of high school, one last year in which to hit the big time, and one final year that promises big changes for the band, not least as four of their number will graduate. Of course none of that is really as important as tea, cakes, and having fun.


The final thirteen episodes of K-On!! Season 2 are presented across two discs by Manga Entertainment thus...

Disc 1
14. Summer Training!
15. Marathon Tournament!
16. Upperclassmen!
17. No Club Room!
18. Leading Role!
19. Romeo & Juliet!
20. Yet Another School Festival!

Disc 2
21. Graduation Yearbook!
22. Entrance Exam!
23. After School!
24. Graduation Ceremony!
25. Extra: Planning Discussion!
26. Extra: Visiting!
27. Extra: Plan!

Picture

K-On!! Season 2 gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, which gets a PAL conversion courtesy of our friends in Australia, Madman Entertainment. The animation is excellent, detailed and fluid, while the show is replete with bright, sunny colours, and very pleasant character designs. This is another high-end anime production, and it shows on the screen, with some very imaginative animation, and thoughtful character study. I noticed no problems with compression or judder, and the image looks fine, even when scaled up on a high definition display. Of course Blu-ray would have been preferable, with lower compression, better detail, and richer colours, but the DVD isn’t to be sniffed at.

Sound

You have the option here of DD 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese, along with the usual translated subtitles or a signs only track. The audio is fine; the show's splendid light pop music comes across with great effect, while the dialogue is clear throughout. As usual I opted for the original language track, but from what I sampled of the English dub, it's one that follows the original pretty closely in terms of character voices, style, and mood. Having witnessed a few Sentai rush jobs in recent months, Sentai do pretty well in terms of maintaining the quality of the dub, and indeed the Bang Zoom dub cast from the first season. The subtitles are timed accurately, and are free of error, although once again they get overeager with the translations. In one episode in the Japanese audio, Yui uses the English word ‘slump’, but in the subtitles we read ‘rut’.

Extras

Nothing too special here, just the usual presentation of static menus (with the season 1 opening theme), jacket pictures to look at in compatible players when the disc isn’t spinning, and on disc 2 the textless credit sequences, which this time are truly textless.

Sentai usually put a translated English language credit scroll at the end of each episode, as they don’t bother re-versioning the original credits anymore. With Madman Entertainment, it’s a matter of pot luck as to whether they maintain these translated credits. Part 1 of K-On!! didn’t have them, but Part 2 does, which contributes to an overall runtime some 20 minutes longer.

Conclusion

I love this show! It’s pure unadulterated fun. If nothing else, just twenty minutes in the company of K-On! or indeed K-On!! is guaranteed to brighten up your day. It’s a comedy of inconsequence. It’s about finding the humour in the smallest things in life, about finding joy in triviality, and with a cast that is designed, both in appearance and in characterisation, to tug on the sympathetic heartstrings, it’s a person of cold, calculating demeanour indeed that won’t fall for this show’s appeal. Of course the cynic in me realises that this is done wholly by design, this is a show created specifically to appeal to a male otaku demographic, and it’s just a matter of pure coincidence and good fortune that the show has expanded its fanbase beyond that. There are even moments when I can sense that contrivance at work, but they are few and far between and easily ignored.


The main arc in this collection of episodes, even more so than in the first half, is one of impending finality and closure, as the girls’ high school career comes to an end, and the next chapter of their lives begins to unfold. With Azusa still in the second year, it does mean an ending of sorts for Hokago Tea Time, and the growing knowledge that at the end of the year, that halcyon period of their lives spent in the Light Music Club room, having fun, eating cakes, drinking tea, and occasionally playing music will all come to an end. Of course this happens in the background, and the episodes are more focussed on the silliness of school marathons, finding a place to practice when plumbers seal off their club room, Mio and Ritsu being cast as Romeo and Juliet in the school play (and Yui being cast as a tree), Yui getting her hair just right for the yearbook photo, revising for exams, and eventually graduation.


As the episodes unfold, more attention is given to Azusa’s viewpoint, as she has to come to terms with her friends leaving, and the tension and the build up to the conclusion are so well judged, that when the tearful hugs eventually arrive, you may just have a little moistness in the corner of the eye as well. Where this half of K-On!! improves on the first is in the music stakes, as while the show had to be more circumspect about the group’s songs given its longer run time, there are more songs to be had in the second half, especially with the show coming to an end, and another School Festival for the girls to perform at.


It doesn’t end with graduation either, as there are three bonus episodes to enjoy as well, with the girls making a recruitment video for the next year of the Light Music Club, an attempt to get ‘that’ photo in the yearbook changed, and finally deciding to take the Light Music Club on a trip abroad, which all sets up the forthcoming movie quite neatly. Again, October can’t come soon enough. But with two series and the movie out of the way, I still wouldn’t write K-On! off quite just yet. When it comes to graduation, it’s notable that the girls all choose to go to the same college, and the week that this DVD was released in the UK, was also the week that the K-On! College manga was released to English speaking territories, while this October will see the release of the K-On! High School manga, which sees Azusa trying to keep the Light Music Club going after the other girls have graduated.


K-On! is the perfect feel-good anime, and in all likelihood, these might actually be the first DVDs that I wear out through repeat play!