K-ON! - Episode 2

After a solid start last week, K-ON! really gets into the swing of things this time around. Well, in terms of episode quality at least, as for much of this episode we're still left with a guitar-less Yui.

Obtaining said guitar is, of course, the focus of this instalment, with Yui setting her heart on a guitar that's way out of her price range - Indeed, it's amazing that she makes it to the guitar shop at all given her easily distracted nature. At this point, things actually deviate from the manga for a bit, with the light music club's foursome deciding to get jobs to help pay for the object of Yui's desire, carefully picking a jobs that won't conflict too much with Mio's shy and sensitive nature.


It may not be part of the manga, but the segment showing the girls at work counting traffic was definitely an excellent and humorous addition to the story, while still allowing us to return to walk the manga's path again when it comes to the crunch, with Tsumugi making the most of her connections to exhibit some awesome bargaining skills. That leaves us with all four girls kitted up with the equipment they need - Now, how to get Yui to stop admiring how she looks with a guitar in her hands and actually start practising with it...

From setting the scene quite nicely last time around, this second episode of K-ON! really hit the spot with me - It was fun, it was funny and it was cute in all the right measures, blending together into pretty much exactly what I was hoping the series would be. Its story-telling may be simple, but that simplicity allows both the main characters and those amusing little slice of life moments (Ritsu "drumming" on her car counting machine and Yui unplugging her guitar from the amp without turning the volume down spring to mind) to shine through, leaving you laughing and/or nodding in remembrance of having done similar things yourself. At the risk of sounding too much like a KyoAni fanboy, this really is the kind of thing they do best, and it shows.