K-ON!! - Episode 11

It's hot! No really, the sun is shining down on us here in England's south coast today, which makes this latest episode of K-ON!! at least somewhat relevant.

The reason for this is that it's hot in this show's world this week too, leaving the members of the light music club even less inspired than usual to get on and actually practice playing music. But how do you cool down in such terrific heat? Needless to say, the girls try plenty of things (some more sensible than others), and indeed Mugi and Mio actually give going to the other extreme a try in the name of weight loss via sweating, but nothing will do the job.


This concern for the hot weather is only broken briefly when the girls come to the decision that everyone's favourite turtle Ton-chan is in need of a bigger home to aid his growth, and with Mugi claiming that she has a larger tank at home their path is clear... apart from the need for Sawako to help collect said tank and bring it back to the school for them.

Once this is over and done with, heat becomes the issue yet again, bringing the club members to the realisation that what they really need is some air conditioning... air conditioning that they could already have had if only Ritsu had actually been paying attention for once. Still, opportunity knocks and before we know it our fab five have their AC - Except there's a catch, as always...

Despite lurching about all over the place and effectively containing three different sub-stories, there's little change in this episode when it comes to delivering the usual lashings of charm. Forgiving the instalment its incredibly cheesy gag at the end, there were a fair few decent laughs throughout (be it Mio and Mugi trying to play instruments in animal costumes or otherwise), while there's something oddly fascinating about watching these girls goofing off and larking around - Perhaps worryingly, it reminds me of some of the more bizarre moments during free periods towards the end of my own school days. No, we didn't try playing the guitar in school swimsuits, but these kind of small-scale conversations and captors of our attention were certainly the order of the day, making K-ON!! almost feel a little nostalgic at times. Then again, I say "almost" because things were never quite that fun at school.