No, I am not suffering from any kind of multiple personality disorder. It’s just that watching K-ON!! and reading about what other bloggers were saying about the show leads to great deal of conflict in my thoughts. For me, the show stands right in the middle between love and hate and probably significant and insignificant. So in this post, I write my review in the form of conversation between the two conflicting persona of myself.
Positive Canne: K-ON!! is the story about high school life of five girls who we all know very well from the first season. Like its predecessor, this show is mostly character-driven. Each episode contains short and simple plot element like senior photo, music room cleaning or school play rehearsal. These simple plots give the girls plenty of time to shine and develop themselves.
Negative Canne: That’s a lie. K-ON!! has no plot and the creators make no effort to create one. Those plot elements is so generic and can be found in any story remotely involved with high school. K-ON!! wants us to think that less is more but in actuality, less is less. Each episode is just one insignificant girly idle day one after another. The show solely relied on these girls’ personal charm to keep the audience entertained. If there’s one thing the show does right, it is characterization not storytelling. We love these girls and we let them get away with anything including plotless anime.
Positive Canne: Have you heard of ‘slice of life anime’ at all? This show is about life, love and friendship. It’s about growing up. If that’s insignificant to you, I can’t imagine how your life must be. It’s all about the characters and their evolution into adulthood. K-ON!!, with incredible attention to details and top-notch humor, nail this department from beginning to end. This is one of the only few shows that deal with this universal matter and somehow manages to be distinguished. Many people have already categorized this show into its own genre. Now, do yourself a favor and get back to your action/sci-fi/shonen anime where you get to save the world and do something ‘significant’ in every single episode!
Negative Canne: Well, I know you can conjure up some deep, meaningful things from watching idle girls doing nothing. But can you really look me in the eye and tell me that you never get bored during this series? Not even once?
Positive Canne: I am not listening! *covers ears*
Negative Canne: Alright, alright, let’s move on to other topics. What about the music? I thought that was one of the main attractions of the first season. This one hardly features any music except the school festival and summer festival arcs. Most of the time, it’s about the girls planning to practice and end up having a tea break or something else. In short, they scarcely practice, the band gets to perform only a few times and their performance does not improve one bit.
Positive Canne: Sure they have less scenes about music. And I must admit that this second season has fully shifted towards their high school life. The first season seemed to suggest that the band wanted to pursue career in musical industry. But in K-ON!!, Sawa-chan clearly states that the girls need to set more solid goal and they all apply for college. You know what? This is very real. K-ON!! is telling us that you cannot rely only on dreams. You must act logically and realistically.
Negative Canne: Fine, I get you *waves hands annoyingly*
Positive Canne: Another thing worth mentioning is K-ON!!’s high production value. The animation is so brilliantly done, lively and colorful! Oh, and I can’t get enough of these girls clothes. Talk about fashion-forward anime!
Negative Canne: *rolls eyes*At least I can agree to how good the animation is. Nevertheless, the original soundtrack is still a bit lazy. There are too few themes and they are used too often. I remember there was this only one sad theme that got played in every sad/teary scene. Oh, you probably never noticed that since you are too busy observing how lovely Mugi’s hair moved and how trendy Mio’s dress was.
Positive Canne: Haters will hate. Let’s conclude this review. You go first.
Negative Canne: K-ON!! is K-ON!! It is not exactly a train wreck but it is a train that carries nothing that really matters. If you really like these girls, go on and watch it because that’s all you are going to get. My rating is C+.
Positive Canne: K-ON!! is K-ON!! and it’s clearly not for everyone. I am sure that if you know what to expect and watch it with open mind, you’ll find an anime that excels in character building and full of harmless humor. I give it B+.
Rating: B
Facts
Title: K-ON!!
Genre: comedy, drama
Released date: April 7, 2010 – September 28, 2010
Episode: 26
Director: Naoko Yamada
Animated by: Kyoto Animation
Ps. Tell me what you think about this form of review, thanks :)
Canne's anime review blog 
lol this is, kinda amusing to read xD
I’m not exactly a fan of K-ON!! but I still enjoyed it; so my only reaction to the opposed thoughts the anime fandom has on it pretty much rolls to: must a series have a plot? I think modern series require a ‘premise’, but ‘plot’ is merely one of the ways to drive a story. What’s wrong with character-driven? Or even purely slice-of-life comedy-driven? (I mean we already have strictly comedy TV shows that has no plot whatsoever). K-ON!! aims to be entertainment that makes fans happy, not a masterpiece of literary methods in use.
I agree with you that certain shows do not need real plot as long as the premise works. I feel that it all comes down to personal preference and how well one can really relate to the show personally :)
We all know K-On’s just a slice of life-not-worth-watching. People sometimes just want to procrastinate by watching others procrastinate and/or eat cake.. and if that’s what you want, K-On delivers it in spades. If you wanted things like character development, comedy, plot, etc, then you wouldn’t be watching it in the first place.
It was probably life not worth watching…but as long as it’s funny, lots of people wouldn’t mind. I think o_o
Negative Canne seems immensely more reasonable than Positive Canne, who seems intent on putting his head in the sand and recycling the old “haters gonna hate” line. I think I’ll listen to what Negative Canne says.
Thanks! (from negative Canne :P)
I’m with Negative Canne on this one though I will say that Positive Canne pretty much grasps why the other side likes it. If nothing else, this does make for a pretty fair and balanced review =p
Thank you. I did have really hard time trying to figure how to make my review balance :)
Why all the negative..K-ON is great! … well in my opinion, i didnt find anything wrong with it..but i must agree with what aorii wrote.
There is nothing wrong with loving K-ON!!. That’s the truth and I am glad you enjoyed it :)
The way you posted this article reflected well the inner debate of some of the K-ON fans. I found myself enjoying the second season less than the first. I certainly can’t say I like the second season as much as I do with the first. Music taking the backstage may be one of the reasons. As for lack of plot, I know this is a slice-of-life anime so there’s nothing to complain about really.
The first season felt more fresh back then. This second season did not offer any really new things to the series. :)
I haven’t watched the series just yet, but I’ve read enough blog posts to have the gist.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this form of the review. Watching (reading) a self-argument is great fun.
I was afraid that people would think doing self-argument was creepy.
Glad you enjoy reading it :)
I wished I had thought of this earlier =D It’s hilarious.
I was all negative at the start , until I finally learnt to think positively. Now I like the show much more than I used to.
I feel like borrowing this idea, and taking it up a notch. I’ll link you if I do xD
We all have both sides on everything and sometimes it’s easier to let both voices speak.
You can borrow the idea but make sure the link back is really really big, bold and sparkling :P
Nicely done. The show itself isn’t bad but it lacks so much depth, it’s a waste. Like you said, the animation is top notch. If only they include real plot and REAL character development… this would have been a hit. Unfortunately all they see is moe and moe means $$$ nowadays. Or at least in Japan it is >>
People would have a lot to argue about what’s ‘real’ character development. I am not even sure what that is. As for K-ON!!, the one character with most dramatic change is Sawa-chan, I guess. :)
I had this split idea of cutting myself into two and the positive me just watch K-on! and brag the other on how good K-on! is.
Well, it depends on how an individual takes it.
I wonder what the negative you would have to say about this show.
Yes, it depends on how we take it and sometime, on who we are talking to :)
Lol nice review style, it was definitely fun to read.
I have to agree with both of your views, since it does tend to hit both the highs and lows for me. A B-grade is fair in the end
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed reading and I plan to use this review style in some of my future review. Hope it would go well :)
This is a fun read and I love reading dichotomy. I truly agree, K-on is not for everyone. It’s funny though because it’s oversimplified plot and slow paced (arguably minimal) character development is what captivated me the most when I was watching this anime. For me, K-On’s simplicity made it extraordinary. It’s like as the unconstructive components sufficed, the more I got enthralled.
Btw, it’s rare to find an anime where haters don’t really hate the show; rather they just don’t care. C+ is still more than just an “a-ok” :)
I suppose making over-simplified story into an entertaining show is not very easy. In that regard, K-ON!! did very well. It was fun :)
Fun read! Positive very nicely sums up my thoughts on K-On!! while Negative Canne reminds me of a lot of comments I saw when I professed my love for K-On!! as one of the best anime. It’s such a polarizing anime and both sides have valid points. Not for everyone I guess, but what is?
Yeah, you are right. Nothing is completely for everyone.
I read your K-ON!! review post…that was nothing less than a bloody battle field! *shudders* >_<
I love your internal conflict lol. I can’t comment on season 2 and you already know how I feel about season 1. But at the end of the day I will say that I really like the animation and song in the ending of the episodes in season 1.
It is indeed fun to watch people arguing as long as I am not part of it :P
hmmm..as for me…i found the argument very interesting, yes this anime is not for everyone……
but i really found this anime K-ON!! very addicting to watch,well for my part.
hmmmm.. i’ll go with positive canne…
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Haha! This was amusing to read indeed.
First, I think that we can agree this show is nothing but mediocre, if even the Positive Canne couldn’t get higher than B+ for it.
I too wanted to hear more music, and it was annoying that every time they practised it was the same 4 seconds, the beginning of the same song. It felt both slightly unreal as a result, and extremely lazy – “We’ll record these 4 seconds, and whenever the girls begin practising we’ll just reuse the same track rather than record anything again.”
I disagree with Positive-Canne on a couple of points: There is no character development, there is no character growth. As was said, we know the characters very well, and we don’t really discover new traits of theirs or see them change. This is the definition of “SitCom”, we throw a known property (the characters, who are just a grab-bag of traits) into a new situation and see how their character causes them to act. No change, no development.
The second thing I disagree with Positive-Canne on is actually what I addressed in my review of the show; K-On! and K-On!! aren’t a slice of life show, it’s an idealized, sanitized, slice-of-life-wannabe. It just cuts too many parts of life, that it ends up being only remotely reminiscent of any person’s life – no conflict, no boys, no parents…
Thank you for sharing!
I completely agree with you that K-ON is at least not a complete slice-of-life show. Many aspects of life was evidently excluded from the show. But I suspect that it was exactly why ‘positive Canne’ liked the show; the unrealistic quality of the anime.