Wednesday, 7 April 2010

K-ON!! - Episode 1

I'm sure you don't need telling, but this new spring anime season means that the girls of the light music club are back, back, back! It also appears that things have changed right from the off, with Yui turning up at school early to practice, a far cry from how we were introduced to her in the first series. Except she set the alarm on her clock wrong, thus explaining her early appearance. Oh.

So, in truth, absolutely nothing has changed as K-ON!! kicks off, aside from most of the girls now enjoying their final year of high school as seniors while Asuza is now a junior. With a new school year beginning, the good news comes early for the main four girls, as they find themselves fortuitously grouped together in the same class... surely that's no coincidence?


From here, the opening episode takes on a familiar feel, with the girls performing as part of the ceremony to introduce the freshmen to the school, before going out hunting for a new member - An all-important task, considering that Asuza will otherwise be left in the club all on her own once the others graduate. As you might expect though, any recruitment drive attempted by the light music club isn't exactly successful, with numerous plans falling by the wayside and not a single new member in sight.

In a way, it's rather a shame that this series won't be introducing any new characters (at this juncture at least), but after an almost painfully sluggish start, the second half of this opening episode manages to recapture the K-ON! of old, bringing together a bit of humour with the kind of relaxed fun and entertainment we tend to expect from this particular series. Indeed, there are a few decent gags and moments on show here, not least Yui's new-found windmill guitar-playing technique which probably impressed me more than it strictly should have done. Anyway, with that awkward first half of this episode out of the way and the series now hopefully back in the swing of things, I can't help but get a slight warm and fuzzy feeling at K-ON!!'s return, additional exclamation mark and all.