#Anime K-On! 06: School Festival!
Anime
"Woooooo… you will be the lead singer! Wooooo…"
So after all this preparation spanned over the course of five K-On episodes the light music club feel as though they're ready to perform at the school festival thingy. With this series I'm now up to where I was when my anime blog was wiped!
First of all I have to say right off the bat or other athletic instrument (hah, pun) that Yui's ability to learn guitar and play it smashingly having started that same year when she couldn't even read music is nothing short of miraculous. People seem to have this impression online that Yui is a few modules short of a kernel (Aussie FreeBSD joke), but learning that quick would take skill! If I could learn keyboards and drums that quickly I'd go ahead and do it.
"I am the pride of Japan! Ha! National sport! Ha!"
One of the things I never quite understood with Japanese school festivals is if most of the people attending are also the people putting all the cafes and plays and other events on, who's left to actually go to the events themselves? Turns out (and it's obvious really!) people aren't attending to their own stalls and whatnot the whole time, they attend in shifts. Makes sense, my keyboard has two shifts. Feel free to laugh at that joke.
So in this episode the girls are all off taking care of various different events much to the dismay of Her Mioness who wants to… oh I don't know… practise before they perform! Yui is cooking and still hasn't got her voice back and Ritsu and Tsumugi are taking care of a spook house. Yes, a spook house, with a character like Mio it seems the writers didn't have a choice in the matter ;). Squeak, duck, shudder, cry, aaaaa!
Before their first performance in front of a Live Studio Audience though, their supervisor and former super rock star pops out from out of nowhere with cute outfits she made for them that (surprise!) Mio is also terrified of and even Ritsu even questions. Of course Tsumugi thinks they're fabulous (she things everything is fabulous!) and Yui's face lights up like a lit up face (sorry I got to bed really late last night, best I could do), even if her costume is somewhat surreal compared to the others.
Of course they also have that they have to carry all the instruments to the stage which Yui has nothing but trouble with and Tsumigi comically does with ease. That's what I love about K-On, the timing and sound effects in these hilarious scenes are hilarious. And hilarious!
Eventually with much trepidation and Mio trembling they finally assemble on stage and perform their bubbly marshmallow song complete with a whimsical music video. When the song is over the crowd erupts into applause and the girls smile knowing that nothing bad or embarrassing had happened as they feared it'd happen beforehand.
Then of course Mio has her fanclub catalyst moment when she turns around to walk off stage and trips on a speaker cable, you know, the one that revealed she was in the same league as Shigure Asa from Shuffle, Francesca Lucchini from Strike Witches and Hatuse Miku in a certain way. A particular class of people were expecting to be presented slightly different version in the Blu Ray release, but having watched the Blu Ray release I can say I saw a 1080p image of a certain shima-rice bowl. Speaking of which I saw such a thing at Ikea recently and couldn't stop laughing :).
When I watched K-On the first time, this was the episode I got up to before my first anime blog was wiped so next episode I'll be seeing stuff I've never seen before. If I didn't have any self control I'd put aside all my studying and current family troubles and watch all of them in an afternoon. It's happened before.