What could possibly be worse than a show with no plot, no character development, and a double helping of dress-up objectification? Why, it’s the reaction of the fan “community” to said show!
My esteemed colleague has already examined the failings of K-on!, the hit anime that’s taking the ’16-24 shut-in virgin’ demographic by storm, but to really grasp the inhumanity to woman that the show represents you have to read the responses from the vast anime blog apparatus.
At this point the majority of internet activity in the world seems to be divided evenly between anime and pornography, with of course a considerable overlap. The anime-to-blog relationship has begun more and more to resemble the military-industrial complex in its vast size and lack of utility; I’m fairly certain that with a fraction of the man-hours involved in writing amateur reviews of anime read only by other writers of amateur reviews of anime we could implement universal healthcare. I might be affording these ‘men’ too much credit though, what’s most infuriating about realizing that there is an entire generation of overfed, overprivileged underachievers creating a body of literary criticism for childrens’ cartoons is how astonishingly inept most of it is. You’d think that with the time these people invest in watching entertainment created for Japanese boys and girls half a generation younger than them they might come up with something more insightful than this:
“*DEPRESSION*” indeed. The idea that K-on!’s characters in some way grow is hilariously baseless, the protagonist stumbles her way from being a clumsy airhead to being a clumsy airhead with a guitar she can barely play or maintain or remember to bring to the concert (one of only two in a series that was supposed to be about music). No one matures in K-on!, the only responsible characters are Yui’s best friend and sister, who seem to be employed full-time in cleaning up her messes from the beginning of the show to the end.
A real high school student with her level of irresponsibility would be a wreck, but apparently this is just another kind of ‘moe’. It says something about a person’s approach to relationships that they’re attracted to a girl who can barely manage her own bodily functions, and it’s not a good thing.
(Do you think Ui gets, uh, excited wearing Yui’s clothes?)[…]
Know what else Kyoto does well? Waterworks. They’re the Saudi Arabia of moe girls crying.
This guy thinks he‘s outraged. E Minor’s post touched on how pathetic anime fans’ obsession with a girl who becomes a weeping mess at the drop of a hat is, but it really can’t be emphasized enough. More than anything these people seem to want to see women, specifically young girls, in distress. If anime fans weren’t such uniformly unmotivated blobs of pale flesh I would almost suggest that they were potential predators. Luckily they mostly seem content to sit at home and fantasize about the 2D girls of their dreams sleeping with their own sisters, another disturbing trend in anime ‘pairing’ or ‘shipping’.
Why this odd desire for incest? I couldn’t tell you, but Kyoani seems willing to pander to it.
There’s nothing especially damning about this one besides the spelling and grammatical errors, and the simple fact that they willingly watched K-on!. What drives me up the wall is that the entire post is written in the same tone. It’s just a long summary of the episode, not especially well-written, with some screenshots.
Something like ninety percent of the posts I’ve read follow the same pattern. What on earth are these people doing? Who is their audience? If you’ve already seen the episode, you know what happened; if you haven’t seen it then why would you read a summary? Even more than the abundance of idiot opinions, the ridiculous number of episode re-caps is mind-boggling. This is the sound of a thousand boring, lonely people calling out to each other across the desolate wasteland of popular entertainment.
I talk about this at length in my introduction (found in our about section), but what really defines anime as a horrible genre is the willingness of its audience to lap up what they know are clichés. They’re always willing and eager to watch the exact same characters follow through the exact same plot, which is itself a trope centuries old that’s been done better by a thousand other books, movies, and tv shows. There’s no room for originality or growth, every season anime fans want to watch the same thing they saw last season, but with different hairdos.
This would have been a more creative ending, but still just a ripoff of School Days
And some advice for all you would-be anime critics out there: recognizing the clichés doesn’t make you any less of a tasteless bore for enjoying them. Just like using sarcasm and strikethrough tags on your self-promoting narcissism doesn’t make it any less grating.
This reviewer goes more in-depth about how different characters have “grown”… except that he flat out admits that Yui and Tsumugi were entirely static, and that Mio actually devolved into a quivering lump of phobias (oh but at least now she can join in Sawako’s perverted games, what progress). I think his assertions that Ritsu has somehow become more stable is contradicted by how in the second-to-last episode she throws a fit over nothing and almost ruins the story’s climactic concert. But yeah, I guess Azusa did grow… from someone who gave a shit about music into another complete slacker and human doll for the perverted teacher.
Let’s talk briefly about the perverted teacher. I can’t claim much knowledge of the Japanese education system, but I’m reasonably certain that it would be considered inappropriate to show up uninvited at your students’ social gatherings outside of school, then get drunk and try to undress them. The show portrays this kind of thing as quirky, laughable behavior, but I doubt that a victim of real sexual abuse would find it very amusing, and for a small country Japan sure suffers an awful lot from this kind of crime (yes, from female teachers too). Imagine what it would be like to have your own sister or friend or daughter assaulted by a teacher or other authority figure, of any gender, in real life, and see if it still seems cute.
Which brings us back to “our lovable little retards”. I just don’t know what to tell you if you think moe is about loving and hugging and protecting, go ahead and google ‘hentai’ or spend some time on 4chan or any other nsfw imageboard for anime discussion. The best translation I’ve seen for ‘moe’ is ‘turn-on’, and that is what it’s all about; the classification of fetishes. Claiming that your interest in these characters’ moe isn’t explicitly sexual doesn’t make it much less pathetic that you waste your affection on fictional characters, strikingly one-dimensional and unoriginal ones at that. Enjoying K-on! and its lovable retards on any level is indefensible.
Moe Sucks 
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Replying to your comment, I think your post is very well written. It probably won’t affect my enjoyment of K-On but it’s probably true that it’s a show that can’t be watched critically.
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Nice post. I sort of agree with you. It’s a bit shallow and fetish-driven indeed. For me, I liked the guitar references, like the Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page mentions, but I wish it had more of these, and it also needed MUCH more music, instead of all the cake eating and playing with the perverted teacher… And the moe stereotypes thing gets a bit on my nerves sometimes…
It’s been a while but I seem to remember that there were like 2-3 songs actually performed the entire show. And one of those with Yui singing backup with the scratchy throat. And all of them had the dumbest godamn lyrics imaginable about marshmallows and pencil erasers. I don’t know that Hendrix would really appreciate the shout-out.
I watched because I thought it would be harmless enough to show my sisters, and it worked. It got them to actually like a show that I had seen. You see, they tend to prefer “cute” shows, and I thought, “Hey. This looks like something my sisters would like. It’s harmless enough and the ecchi content is at least lower than a lot of other shows. They ought to like this.” So basically, I watched it for their sake, and it turns out they liked, so while it may seemed like a Romeo and Juliet-style double suicide, at least they enjoyed it. I’m willing to take the fall for my OLDER sisters even if it costs me about 288 or so minutes of my time….
If my sister were that age I’d sooner have her watching the Bratz movie than K-on! honestly. The show is certainly more on an elementary school than the average age of its fans would suggest, but I would feel like I was complicit in brainwashing my poor sister with shitty ideas about what it means to be a girl. Maybe I’m too sensitive about it but next time I’d stick with FMP if you wanna entertain with some Kyoani comedy.
My sisters are 18 and 21, but you know what’s ironic about the way you worded that? They rather enjoyed the Bratz movies….They just have different tastes. They basically enjoy anything without serious violence or blood and anything that could be considered cute. They also have a bit of what I have as far as story elevation. You see, when I get interested in something, storywise, I tend to pursue it till the end. In some cases, I pursue it in order to find out whether there was really a story or not. My sisters an I all get attached to characters too quickly, and in their cases, they just get stuck to some pretty low-class characters. We’re all perfectly smart people, they just have some…difference in their tastes. They definitely don’t view things with a critical eye like I do, that’s for sure…
In regards to incest, it’s really a kink for the shippers. I much rather see people pair up fictional characters then actually do it in real life.
Same goes for the Naruto fandom who insist on pairing up the teachers with their students.
to be fair, the first episode of the second season has yui jamming alone, improvising.
so yeah, she kind of grew in terms of guitar skills.
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You guys just forgot how to have fun. Don’t worry, it’s usual in the anime community.
You first start bashing people for liking things you don’t, then hating on popular things, and before you know it, you are wasting your time writing a Wall of Text on something you hate in a random unimportant blog somewhere instead of watching an episode or two of something you love.
But that’s the anime fandom for you, always so dedicated. Keep it on!
+1
You are just taking K-ON! too seriously. Off course K-ON characters are far from normal, that’s why the audience enjoys their interactions. Slice of life animes tend to have abnormal characters so that we won’t get bored. Would you rather observe a life of a normal people? If K-ON was suppose to be an anime about compelling plot and characters your criticism makes sense, but since the anime is about lighthearted comedy you shouldn’t care how inappropriate their actions are and compare the anime to real life. Sure the show has some serious episodes and they have shallow story line, but they worked as nice change of pace at least
In addition, it’s a typical mistake that Yui’s irresponsibility and lack of intelligence is supposed to be cute. They made her dumb because her character brings comedy element to the show. Mio is a coward but she tries so hard to fix her flaw and she shows her courage at important moments like the school performance.
I shouldn’t really bothered by this but I hate criticism based entirely on the reviewer’s opinion and calling someone a retard because that’s just lazy and immature. Review of any form should contain examples, opinions of other kind of people, and personal opinion based on them so that the review would be more compelling. In your case you don’t even criticize in depth and you are nagging about how you don’t understand why other people have enjoyed K-ON.
OMG sorry but i just couldn’t read half of what you just wrote, i was torn between the duty of analyzing the whole blog and just plain skimming it since you seem to have wasted your time on bashing a show.
Truthfully K-on is one of those series that don’t show any progress, it’s a slice of life, what the hell did you expect? They’d be rocking out and becoming break-out artists by now? That’s just stupid.
My suggestion right now is why don’t you try not to take every fucking show seriously, sure k-on is a moe blob but I must admit I’m a pretty serious person but even I can’t handle a few comedic moe-ments in my life (badpun -_-) anyways, sure k-on is a story-less show, ok fine with that, you on the other hand have to choose between bashing a show that some people love just for kicks or better yet get your own life and stop wasting your time on the fucking internet bonding with other people who love to waste their time. Capise?
get a life loser
Bashing his life based on a critique of a show (in my opinion is spot-on anyways) is far more immature than actually taking what’s being said into consideration. The problem K-ON has unlike most shows it’s type is that the selling point is the art. What I mean is that this show is not made for entertainment. It’s secret porn for pedophiles. I’d be able to dismiss all of the overly cute stuff if there was some soul in it, but it’s a marketing fad. Sure, it’s hard for all of us. But Tora Dora had soul, while being a slice-of-life anime with all the cute shit. I don’t really care if someone likes this. I like stuff that other people don’t like. You think I care? Absolutely not. But for the most part, I rarely dislike something as a whole. K-ON is going to start a heavier trend in moe pandering, which will destroy the art form. And maybe that’s a good thing. Anime needs to go back to it’s roots where people were just making stories just to be making stories.
If that’s how you see this anime then I guess it’s not for you then. I agree he is immature since everyone has right to express their opinions, but you are no different from him because you have no right to insult the fans yet you called them as perverts. Yes, there are perverted fans around the world, but how do you know the anime developer’s intent? Do you have any proof? If you are saying this just because you couldn’t understand the point of the show, then that statement is irrelevant, because it’s just the way you see it.
I think K-ON! has a lot of entertaining moments. The light hearted gags always brought me smiles while I was watching it. For instance, how can you not love the moment when Ritsu constantly annoys the other girls when they are studying and finally she decides to do this crazy rolling action? Plus, interaction and reaction of all the girls are interesting to watch. Usually the reactions turn into something wacky and funny. That being said, the gags aren’t as funny as regular comedy shows, but that’s the right formula for K-ON!. The series is supposed to be light hearted because that kind of mood is what slice-of-life anime fans want. At least I enjoyed the mood, and so as the other fans of slice-of-life anime because it is so calm and relaxing.
I have no intention to deny the fact that K-ON is moe infested anime, but the description of moe cannot be easily defined by a person, thus no one can say it is bad or good. The meaning differs depending on how people use the term. I think it’s an expression of love towards a character or it can be defined as cuteness of a character. (Just because someone thinks this person is cute, it doesn’t mean he want to sexually harass her) Either ways, I don’t see why someone would bash an anime because of moe. It just means the characters are cute and likable, either because of their personalities or looks. There are obsessive fans who fantasize weird shit in their heads, but not all of them are the same. There are fans who simply admire a show’s quality and what it does best. In case of K-ON, it rarely tells sexual jokes. In fact, the show has only one sexual moment. So why would you think K-ON as some kind of porno?
And finally, about the Kyo-ani’s marketing strategy. Yes they have been releasing lots of CD albums based on the anime characters and they are now planning to sell the movie ticket for the upcoming K-ON movie, but at least they kept the quality and the mood of K-ON for both seasons. Look at the scores of Anime Seasons and MyAnimeList, the average scores for both sites are over 8 points out of 10. You can’t deny the fact that a lot of people liked this anime.
But, I can see why many people would be concerned about this trend. If a show like K-ON gets popular, every other developer would try to make a similar animes, which would prevent creativity of anime industry to evolve. I do miss the good old animes from 90s. But for now, most of us have no choice, but to adapt to the current situation and accept what we have. Otherwise, just leave them alone.
Would you call them pedophiles and perverts just because they liked it? Would you call those thousands of people who voted for this anime in the sites like MyAnimeList and Anime Seasons are bunch of mentally disturbed people? Seriously, I know we are all allowed saying our opinions, but both you and the reviewer on this site criticized the fans, despite the fact that nobody has a right answer and we all got different tastes.
If you want good anime, stop conflating popularity with quality. If you want moeblobs then admit it. You can have your fuwa-fuwa cake, but you can’t eat it too. K-on! sucks and it sucks because of moe, and because it’s so disconnected from what actual people go through. What can we learn from it? What do we take away? Who will remember it when they run out of new ways to repackage the special edition?
For you this anime sucks, but for me and all the other fans who voted for this show its an entertaining slice-of-life comedy. If it is popular then there must be some kind of qualities that attracts a lot of people. But, off course, it does not assure you would enjoy it. But that does not mean it sucks for everyone.
Yes, I do enjoy moe animes, but thats not the only reason I watched it. I watched it because its a funny show with likable characters. You may not agree on this and you don’t have to. I was just saying that life of an individual can not be judged by what medias they like or dislike. After all, pros and cons people make are rather abstract. Each explanations may sound logical but those points may not be as important or mundane as other people think. Such as unrealistic and nonsensical story line of K-ON. I know its a flaw but its just doesn’t matter for me since almost all of slice-of-life comedies never had compelling stories. Only things I care for this genre are comedic moments and characters and K-ON delivers these formula.
If you actually like K-on!, little high school girls with strangely simple minds presenting a weird parody of life and bleeding perverted 2D sexuality, then whatever. Accept it warts and all, embrace it. You go, girl. But remember that your uncritical reception, multiplied across the thousands of other nerds who bought into the K-on! phenomenon will only ever get you more K-on!. To a producer, that good ol’ 90s anime and K-on! are imperfect substitutes, differentiated only by how much shit they can sell using them. If the market, and that’s you, buys K-on! without question or comment, then next season you’ll get K-on! season 2, and more like it the season after. And that good ol’ 90s stuff will be gone. That’s why I slam the show so hard and why I encourage others to do the same. If you think it has flaws then criticize them, don’t just go with the flow; that’s the attitude that brought us to this point, where 75% of any given season is unwatchable moe trash.
I don’t usually say this to people on a forum since the following things I am going to say pretty much stop an argument. But why don’t you go out and make some differences to the world so that there will be animes of your liking. I’m sure it is far more productive than spending time on a small forum like this.
I don’t know much about animes as much as most of anime fanatics out there, since I am more of a gamer, but I do know the fact that industries of pretty much every medias are following this “moe” trend in Japan. Because most of them believe that selling out characters of their products is the only way to ensure to gain profits out of customers. Which is true in terms of gaining profits, but they are forgetting the fact that quality of their products will sell out their stuffs a lot more than selling out characters in them. But they are not simply forgetting these things, they are just afraid of taking risks. Because of this, a website like NicoNico Douga (Smiley Video) is perfect place for advertisements.
I also miss animes from that era. My favorite animes are Haibane Renmei, Saiyuki, Castle from the Sky, and GTO. But I watched them only as part of my TV watching. Now I rarely watch TV channels anymore except for News and documentaries.
I used to play games from both Japan and western countries, but because of the situation I wrote above, I lost hopes for Japanese games. But I am not compelled enough to be rebellious like you are since I still have my games from foreign countries and I am happy with it. I am in no mood to make such a change, but you on the other hand sounds motivated enough to make a move.
But the question is, do you have enough guts to do it? Or if you don’t why are you here ranting about the end of 90s animes? Do you think Japanese industries would give a crap about what you are saying on this website? I’m sure almost all of Japanese people won’t care about you and other people who are ranting about the same stuff, because almost all Japanese citizens don’t understand English.
By the way, I am kinda surprised that you don’t know about the second season of K-ON, which has already been aired. And I bet you also don’t know the Movie of K-ON is coming this year. Are you sure you should linger like this?
I didn’t really like Toradora, but yeah K-on! was and I guess still is a special kind of awful. If you think about it outside of the context created by all the awful anime that lead up to it, the creepy combination of childish innocence and totally inappropriate sexual overtones is sort of breathtaking. Anime has built its own tower of Babel, becoming so divorced from the human experience and wrapped in convention and memes that it is incomprehensible and strange. How would you explain half the shit that happens in K-on! to someone who isn’t already a huge dork? I’d like to think anime can return to storytelling, but sometimes it seems like it’s so tangled in its own complexes that it can no longer speak to an audience broader than nerds like us and those dudes who paid a thousand bucks to wear the same headphones as Mio.
you gay!
i mean cycnic and that anyomus shit!
they can be a imperfect gay couple
blogs are blogs for such a reason. its the persons talking space, in which comments do little justice to the word “arguement”. so basically, “don’t like it – don’t read it”.
k-on sucks ass, btw. but i too, did not want to fuck any of the chars.
YEAH sure.
k-on sucks NOT
it rules its WAAAAAAAAY better than you
gabriel is right!
go masturbate to a blank bolster!
WHY DO YOU HATE K-ON! ?
ITS JUST AN ANIME SERIES
ILOVEK-ON!
LEAVE THEM ALONE YOU ANIME HATER
Very witty and well written. It’s good to be reminded that there are some sober blogwriters among people watching anime. Certainly someone could say ‘Oh, what do you care Fin, let k-on fanboys watch their thing and hell with them’. However, it’s true that as long as the trend continues, truly interesting, insightful and artistic anime will remain rare exceptions.
i am and k-on fanboy!
and i know who are you:
YOU ARE YOUR OWN DAD’S PENIS GAY FANBOY!
and do you want to know how much i care about k-on?
LETS HAVE A FIGHT WITH WE BOTH GOT A BIBLE ON OUR POCKET SO GOD CAN SEE US!
are you afraid?i know you was,go masturbate with mrs.cynic shit!
Thanks, and yeah, anime as a genre could really benefit from more criticism that’s actually critical. So long as all it gets is more ‘me too’ fanboi luv, we can’t expect producers to be willing to break out of any boxes. Garbage in, garbage out.
I WISH U BURN IN HELL,I WISH U BURN SOOOOOO BAD THAT YOUR MOM WILL REGRET FOR MAKING A SHIT LIKE YOU IN HER WOMB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ps: if you hate k-on why dont you prove it by say it outloud in front of public rather than writting it in the internet like a coward?
Yeah! I’ll meet you behind the school, at the jungle gym, at 3PM sharp! Let’s see you say “K-on sucks” to my face, lil’ Miss Fingerbritches. Oh it’s going down. You’re gonna be sorry you ever messed with Mio-sama. I got a couple knuckle sandwiches to serve and you’re the first in line! C’mon, lady, quit hiding on them internets. We’re keeping it real. REAL DAWG, RUFF RUFF. BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!
Motherfucker if you want to throw down I am ready, any time, any place. I ain’t a punk, I’m an O.G. anime blogger and will gladly put my money where my mouth is. Best sleep with one eye open.
“Please do not unpack the ideological messages behind my popular entertainment product of choice. I do not wish to be confronted with the realities of what I consume because it would involve a degree of self reflection. Allow me to live in my capital driven fantasy world where nothing I experience or consume has any meaning or impact on society.”
– Typical Anime Fan 88
This guy gets it. All of this “stop thinking so hard” shit is just plausible deniability. You nerds know what you’re doing when you let your entertainment pander to you, and if you don’t face up you’ll just perpetuate the trend towards uninspired drivel. Take a little pride in your own thoughts for chrissakes.
it’s really dumb how people that don’t agree with someone just ask “why do you bother talking about something you don’t like?”. itt seems really narrow-minded to ask such a question, as anyone that spent time doing something has all the right to express their thoughts on whatever they did whether they liked it or not. especially in k-on!’s case as it’s just a really vapid and uninspired piece of animated garbage and the people that didn’t like it have even more reason to go and spread awareness at how bad k-on! i”why do you tell me you don’t like the things i like?”as if it was aimed at them in the first place. maybe it was, but by default the target of a message grows much bigger and said target is everyone that is even remotely interested. truth is people ignore the truth (k-on is badddd) and just hide behind the legions of brain-washed weeaboos in search for the perfect waifu. it’s too bad these people settled for the most static and uninteresting of women (leaving asides the fact they’re worshipping someone in an anime in the first place). these funny k-on! fans bewildered by the thought of (gasp!) people not liking k-on! make my world seem brighter every day
sorry if this was long-winded and/or overdone. i’m on my deathbed right now and the doctor classiffied my (mortal) disease as unknown and most likely uncurable, so i decided to spend my final days watching anime (i’m rewatching some random Revolutionary Girl Utena episodes right now. i really like it, even though objectively it’s on the bad side of good i guess.) and reading anime blogs to educate myself the most on the most meaningful media experience on earth before making my final words, which will be a book that treads through my life as a gay anime man, beginning from the day i transferred to my new school and met my crush conveniently just a few minutes before class and we developed a bond that could not be broken sometime afterwards (possibly after i beat the school’s strongerst student, because he was a jerk, see). my editor said it would be a top seller. a japanese man aproached me saying they had an anime already in the planned for it. i hope this has been worth writing, i don’t have much time and i’m currently having a lot of trouble seeing correctly, as my eyes keep on turning brighter and brighter even if i close my eyes… but… i think if i squint just right, i can see heaven. and all i see is a beautiful face. a noseless face. well, she has a dot, but a dot does not a nose make. very kawaii however. i understand now. it was you all along, mio. your scrawny and fragile stupid girl ass was not the one in need for help, it was me who was looking for a savior, and i found it by watching 12 episodes of this stupid girl i desperately wanted to protect, because i myself felt useless for not being able to transcend the laws of time and space to get in there and be your eternal bishonen (or bishie for short) husband. but now you’re here, and i will never leave you.
….also, it’s funny how k-on! is actually seinen but i guess that’s exactly the audience that would even bother reading this kind of shit, kids are too busy reading hardboiled buffed men punching each other to be bothered by these silly anime girls and their silly anime problems. then again lucky star and haruhi are shonen but fortunately that’s what manchildren are for. children will forever keep the balance with their purity and lust for violence. in this way k-on! seems really out of place as seinen when put next to stuff like Freesia and The World Is Mine, but i guess no one cares about manga in an anime world. heh
ps. i forgot to say it tangled up in this ocean of emotions and looking for the right words to express my thoughts but i really liked this article. even if it didn’t put a smile on my face like the other articles on the site do, this was right on every accord and embodies everything i ever thought about k-on!.
in conclusion: there are way more words in this post than there should be and a lot of them are “k-on!”. i can’t wait to die
i wasn’t kidding about my eyes being flooded by light though, i think my lack of sleep and lack of care for my eyes is really taking its toll. i just noticed a lot of mistakes i didn’t mean nor did i think i would make (dear god), which is weird since i tend to make typos on purpose but not this time. i’ll go take a nap and hopefully god will forgive my grammatical sins, but in retrospect my only real sin is making these messages much longer than they should be.
I feel really sorry for you being infected by an incurable disease, but as I read your comment, I’m not sure whether you hate K-ON or not. First you state that K-ON is an uninspired piece of work, but on the other hand you are obviously in love with the character Mio. Even as a fanboy of K-ON series, I am really disgusted by all those people who is denying its flaws. But I don’t blame them either because I almost become one of these trolls. Mostly because I was confused because of the show’s reputation and popularity and I was also obsessed by these characters. On one hand the show is extremely popular and there are many faithful fans out there who have rational reasons to like this show. On the other hand there are a lot of people who hate the anime, and they also have logical reasons for their hate toward K-ON.
Personally I started watching K-ON not only for its cuteness, but also because of its light-hearted comedy sequences. Plus, I liked all of the main casts in this show despite the fact that they don’t develop their personalities that much. They are already likable as they are and the show showed me their various sides of their unchanging personalities.
This show is not as shitty as you think it is. The running gags are just as funny as any comedy shows, and most of the times it doesn’t stress you with serious stories. But this is where K-ON is infamous for: it has rather lackluster story line. The story falls flat mainly because the main characters don’t practice for their school concerts. This is a price this show paid for the sake of showing more comedy sequences and cute scenes. Quite a few people say that even the gags aren’t funny enough to save the show. This is a rather common complaint, which I really don’t understand.
I wish you luck and spend your time wisely.
as i mentioned my real beef is the fact people can’t seem to accept these flaws even you just menti0ned, and hold k-on! as a nearly divine entity for some reason. i don’t really dislike the show for what it is but how it’s achieving way more than it should have. it’s really little more than moe fodder and yet it’s popularity has become incomprehensibly big.
anyway i wrote most of that without my brain since like i mentioned i was really tired so i let my hands think by themselves instead. my left hand loves super cute anime things and my right hand is a mysoginistic jerk that watches anime half-ironically just to hate on it later on. they don’t work together very well it seems, letting them type by themselves is like watching two moonwalking crabs duke it out on my keyboard.
I read all of this, it was kinda fun. May your passing be easy, stream of thought K-on! comment guy/girl. I hope this humble anime blog critique I wrote 2 years ago brought some light to your final days.
my life is complete
I really urge you guys to consider if there’s anything worth saying before posting here again. I haven’t closed the comments to this post, but like that Sasameki Koto dramafest, I really want to. In a couple of months, this article will be two years old. Hey, I’m always grateful for readers, but life goes on, anime goes on, and so should this silly topic.
Since the discussion has been mostly cordial for the most part, I haven’t decided to close the comments, but honestly, we’re veering toward the point of absurdity in the discussion. No, no one here is gonna make a difference in the anime industry and I hope no one here is arrogant enough to think they could. No, you can’t blame shitty anime on K-On! and its fans; I’d say they’re more a symptom but I’m sure someone out there will take offense to my word choice.
At the same time, the idea that there are more productive things to do with our time than express some negative opinions about a TV show, please… 99% of the things we do in life are hardly “productive.” You can pull that card on everybody. You’ve got people out there blogging about whether or not Kate Middleton is a virgin so God forbid anyone hates on a silly anime. I personally think there are better things to do than defend K-On! every single time someone makes a negative comment, but hey, some of you guys do it, and I’m not telling you to go out and evangelize for the damn show on a street corner in the name of productivity.
So really — and this goes for both the pro- and anti-K-On! people — unless you’ve got something brilliant up your sleeves that no one’s ever heard before, just let it go. I like to think I have. When the second season aired, I didn’t even touch it nor did I encourage anyone else here to write about it. I think it’s about time this post and its commenters should follow suit. For the K-On! lovers, enjoy your movie. For the rest of us, we’ll just keep on ranting in our little corner about some other anime. Sorry we’re not revolutionary!
K-on sucks! End of story. Well, maybe not, moe sucks just as bad as K-on and any other abominables like so.
Murky sucks! End of story. Well, maybe not, moe sucks just as bad as E Minor and any other abominables like so.
hey,e minor is in our side!
Just because someone says k-on sucks, doesn’t mean the peeson who says it sucks. This is why I hate most animu fans. K-On sucks, in my opinion. Get over it. Go watch your K-On and fap to Mio-sama.
Haha, I know you hate K-ON, but your name instantly sucks credibility from your comment.
Anyway, yeah I agree. Even though I really like the show, I really feel sorry for those obsessive fan boys. They don’t reallize how they are lowering the reputation of their favorite show. But you should’t really provoke them like that because you’ll attract their attention to yourself.
This show is an anime that I can truly say is overrated. I mean, it wasn’t THAT bad (I can think of a hundred moe shows that are MUCH worse), but it wasn’t that great, either. It got boring at times, with how it focused more on the moe than the music (which was a shame, because I’m an audiophile and I really hoped it would be a music-centric show). Oh, and the characters were walking stereotypes, too. I know it’s a comedy show, but since when did “anime comedy” mean “cardboard cutout characters”? And the music had the stupidest lyrics I’ve ever heard in a song….
Crap, I rambled too much. In short, this show wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t shit, either. It’s simply overrated. It still boggles my mind why it’s so popular.
They seem to be stereotypical to you because you didn’t cared about them isn’t it? I liked the characters from the start, and I noticed that the show kept showing their personalities as it went on. You can learn a lot about them through their conversations. For instance, Ritsu seems like your typical hyperactive girl from any slice-of-life show, but you’ll notice that she is a good leader and a bit more sensitive and girly than how she acts. She is also the best supporter of Mio. Mio tries her best to look and sound more confident than she is, but she simply can’t and she constantly tries to fix her cowardliness. She is a type of person who prefers to help others in a background just like her role as bassist.
See? Fans see things that others don’t. And I bet I am not the only one who noticed these things about the characters. It is a matter of your perspective and opinion. So I don’t see how something is overrated or underrated. It just happens to be appealing for a lot of people. Just because you don’t understand the appeal of it, doesn’t mean it is a crapy show.
Sorry if I bored you with my rambling. I just like to talk about what I like.
Oh, I denifitely understand why K-On! is popular. In fact, I could probably list all the reasons why it’s popular in this very comment, but that would take up too much space.
The problem with the characters in K-On! is that they are far too 1-Dimensional. I agree with you when you said that some of them come more developed over time, such as Ritsu, so I can give K-On! THAT credit. The problem is though, they stay too stereotyped for the audience to really care about them emotionally instead of artifically in a “moe” manner. For example, why is Azu-nyan so single-mindlendly serious about music and practicing? Why does Mio never over come her fears, phobias, and shyness? Why does the Light Music Club in general never really grow up and act like adults and practice, instead of slacking on their homework, eating tea and cakes on fancy platters, dressing up in cosplay outfits from the perverted (possibly lesbian) teacher, and basically not givng a shit about their band?!?!
I know I’m expecting too much from this show, and it’s just a moe show and isn’t required to have well-developed characters or plot. I just expected this show, from all the hubbub about it, to be really something special. Oh, how naive that turned out to be.
When I said K-On! is overrated, I wasn’t saying it’s a crappy show. Like I said the first time, there are tons of moe shows out there that are worse, like that new show Ro-Kyu-Bu! I just mean it simply does not deserve the accaim it’s getting. I’m perfectley fine with you, or any another anime fan, saying K-On! is nice and funny. But when people start saying that it’s the best comedy anime ever, it has the best set of characters ever in a slice-of-life anime, or it’s the best moe show, that’s just crossing the line.
In short, K-On! is good. Not terrible, not fantastic, just good.
I hope I didn’t bore you with MY rambling…XD
Not at all. Thanks for enlightening me. Yeah you didn’t say K-ON is shity. I should have read your comment more carefully.
You know what I didn’t like about the show? It’s the main story line, which is about becoming a famous band. Even as a fan I can see how this subject has been dumped in the abyss long time ago. I know it’s not a story based show, but if they have decided to tell a story, they should at least finish and make some sense out of it. At first I didn’t cared about their laziness because I thought they just wanted to get together and have fun with their music. But then they occasionally act like they are passionate about music, and how they want to perform at the stadium, which is overly pretentious. I think this is why quite a few people wanted the characters to be more developed. On the other hand, the second season treated this subject better than the first because there are some scenes they clearly admit that they have been fooling around too much to be professional musicians, and the main focus of the story became more about how they are having fun and the closure of their precious times.
If the creator has excluded the main plot or made a better story for the series, it would have been perfect, because for a slice-of-life/light-hearted comedy, the series has interesting characters. The girls aren’t as developed as characters from GTO or Gungrave, but HTT girls have entertaining and cute personalities to cover it up. Its so aggravating to think about it. Kyoani has made the most dickish move this time. It still doesn’t change the fact that I like the girls, but because I like them so much I wanted the show to be perfect so they can be more dignified than they are.
So yeah, I can see why you think K-ON is overrated. It shouldn’t be treated as some kind of perfect being. But where did you get the impression of K-ON being overrated? The average score for the show on MyAnimeList is 8 out of 10, which is reasonable in my opinion. If you think this score is too high, thats fine but at least it’s not 9 or 10.
All good points, fair enough.
People who believe that “slice-of-life” means “no development” have clearly had either an abnormal life or an extremely boring one.
Well seeing as how everyone in the world doesn’t live the same I can say that the majority of people do live extremely boring lives. Especially if they are everday things that happen in your life that’s nothing special.
You are right about most things that happens in those animes are things we face everyday. But there is more to it. At least a good slice-of-life anime has casts of abnormal characters. That’s the key point. A group of abnormal characters having normal lives. If you’ve ever wanted to see your favorite action stars or superheroes in everyday situations, you’ll get the appeal of it. In my opinion, slice-of-life animes are like sit-coms. If you’ve got your favorite kind of characters in this show, you’ll want to see how they react to everyday situations in some wacky ways, or how they would converse with each others when they are relaxed and see how it goes.
If you can call any of those girls normal by any real life standards, I dare you. The girls are unrealistic. Yui Hirasawa, in real life, would be a wreck and prime target of bullies. She is in such a mess, yet her personality works in the world of anime because she is easy to make fun of. Characters like Mio is there to correct her and be thrown around by Yui’s stupidities. Mio doesn’t seem to have wacky personality like Yui, but she is quirky in her own way. Aside from the fact that she is cowardly and shy, she seems like a normal well behaving girl. But she also has a weird habit of writing ridiculous songs and when she gets really excited she tends to overreact to everything. An interesting thing about Mio is that she acts manly in front of Ritsu. Probably most of you foreigners couldn’t get this part but you’ll notice her tones and words she uses are mostly used by men.
That should explain pretty much everything about slice-of-life animes and K-ON. Sure the anime makes it sound like a band anime and took itself too seriously at several points. But aside from that, I think it is the prime example of what slice-of-life anime should be.
The dromologist is right,the writer must had a very fucked life!
Two Word: YOU SUCK!
am I the only one who thinks K-On girls represent the most ridiculous face of the 80’s rock bands? :P now seriously, K-On is pure shit, and i mock at all that moeatards that say crap about 90’s anime; at least, 90’s anime was FUNNY. And GREAT in work. I’m returning to it, honestly.
Greetings from Barcelona, Spain!
César
1. K-On! is NOT pure shit. If K-On! is shit, then so is Hyouka, Nichijou, and every other Kyouto Animations production out there. K-On! is almost their mascot.
2. I haven’t heard any crap in my life about 90’s anime. The only quark I have with them is the English dubs because they were actually pretty terrible, but for a good reason: translating things from Japanese to English in a serious and ‘realistic’ manner was a fairly newer ordeal. But I concur with the fact that animations from the 90’s are worth watching, and more so than many modern productions.
3. Modern productions are still FAR from anything but ‘GREAT in work’. Have you never seen RWBY? The story is terrible and there is no action development. But the sequence and art are just fucking divine. Granted, this is a Western animation, but many still group it with this sort of thing.
And if you want a ‘slice-of-life’ example, Lucky Star. There is no real story. It is literally just the everyday life of schoolgirls as the years progress. Nothing more, nothing less, plot-wise. But it’s what people look for in this genre: a slice of life. A section of every-day endeavors. If just for being able to relate to little things, looking to laugh at other little things that may or may not be related to the viewer in some way, or even just for the cuteness. But in the end, it’s exactly what the signs lead to. It is slice-of-life.
The main point is, it is really dull to say that something is pure shit just because of your preferences. Personally, I prefer the modern productions, but I highly respect those of the previous eras. After all, the present always reflects the past in one way or another. Every shounen after about 1990 was based on the Dragon Ball series (i.e. Bleach, Naruto, Fairy Tail, etc.). Hell, K-On! rips lots from Haruhi Suzumiya, but in its own original way. Just as things like this should be. Kyouto Animations is pretty much my hero.
I just read your comment and i’m ashamed of myself; you’re right, there’s nothing like laughing a bit about little things in life. It’s almost like i lost my ability to do so. I was so centered on the good stories that i forgot the most important of all; FUN.
Thank you for making me see it. I think i’ll give K-On another chance.
And I, like Yui and the rest of the girls do, will again find the point of little things :)
By, and thanks again from the bottom of my heart.
César
K-on is shit
It’s an remarkable article designed for all the online
people; they will get benefit from it I am sure.
k-on sucks dicklmao
But why are you insulting people who liked the show legitimately. If I liked the show, does that make me a terrible person.
More than a decade later and this post has aged worse than an orange left to rot after being set out for too long. There are so many things wrong here, too many to count actually, but let’s go over just a few of them:
– Downplaying the characters strengths and growth throughout the series (Especially Yui, because every single cretin that riffs on K-ON seems to downplay her the most)? Check.
– Acting like you’re better than everyone that found value in K-ON and riffing on those that actually enjoy it? Check.
– Taking the show as a whole WAY too seriously? Check.
Couldn’t read this whole thing without feeling my eyes roll back into my head, good lord. Some of the comments left here are almost just as bad.
I personally think K-On as more of a calm, light-hearted refreshing anime where there isn’t much tensity and can give you a good laugh. It’s not one of my favorites but it’s sort of relieving to me like Saiki K. Honestly I agree that K-On is overrated but it isn’t trash.
Also, I hope I don’t sound rude but you could’ve worded this better. It’s rude to fans of K-On which is why some readers are rude to you. Do you like non-anime watchers calling you a “stupid weeaboo”? What you sound like is “moe lovers are trash”.