hontou ni Stripey Insists Sisters Cry Oniichan Now

K-ON 12

For me, an anime's end is often trumps its journey - particularly if I felt the ending or non-ending made a mockery of the journey. Such as the resets of School Rumble. I recall reacting badly to the final episode of the first iteration of Fullmetal Alchemist which continues to dampen my enthusiasm for the Brotherhood version. And my frustration with the Love Hina manga also placed a restraining order on any potential interest for getting into anything else by Ken Akamatsu.

But K-ON is not one of those shows where the ending matters to me. Unlike Azumanga Daioh's clear teleological momentum towards the End of High School and beyond the event horizon into the possibility of the loveless and lovably dysfunctional futurama of Nyamo and Yukari-chan, to me, K-ON is about making friends, friends having fun together with lots of heart - with us voyeurs picking our favourite in the girl band.

Omo really hits the proverbial nail amidst the tl;dr haystack (Ed: Stop mixing metaphors.) when he said unto us:

I thought K-ON was a lot more fun once I realized the show is about band chemistry.

It's not quite the end yet, with one more episode to go but here's some thoughts overall thus far. I do like yuri but yuri siscon, the gattai of the Hontou Ni fetishes I do not want. Sorry Ui but the most likely (one-sided) yuri in this series is just a bit too disturbing for me.

The cheongsam was my favourite too. I would have liked to see more Mugi Vision scenes but I still have my doubts aplenty as to whether Mugi is actually a lesbian herself. My take on this is that she likes looking at pretty girls, especially pretty girls being touchy feely with each other, but IIRC she hasn't pictured herself in the picture. She's more a bystander, a voyeur - probably belong to that demographic of girls who buy yuri manga but who are 99% straight themselves.

Yui running home to get Gitah and racing back, recalling the sequence of the first episode, was also a KyoAni innovation. In the manga, Ui saved the day again. Like the innovation of the previous episode, it had a nice flow and brought back all of Yui's FUD prior to joining K-ON / After School Teatime, underlining just how many great memories she's created for herself and her friends as a result of a whimsical decision and the right circumstances during that fleeting period of youth and freedom known as high school.

Never forget that love - even if it's not yuri.

Related posts:

1. K-ON 5
2. K-ON 7
3. K-ON 13