Mouse over screenshots for captions
 
Summary
If K-ON! is your typical moe-blob anime, then the first couple minutes of this ep is probably better described as a moe h-bomb, infinitely more potent than that clunker of a thing in Lost. Speaking of Lost, I can’t believe I have to wait until 2010 for the next season. What a joke, it’s not even that good. Time travel? H-bombs and alternate realities? JJ Abrams is like the Sunrise of American TV – take some horribly simple plot, make it needlessly complex, throw some hot chicks with gravity-defying boobs in, add a touch of time travel, and viola – instant hit!

Anyways, this ep is all about the relationship between Yui and Ui, and it’s so goddamn sweet I felt like I was getting attacked by cavities. We start with a flash to a Christmas when they were real young, when Yui’s current pajamas were her outerwear, when Ui still wore shirts with penis-elephant on them, when they were so young I wouldn’t be branded a lolicon for calling them “cute”. Ui wishes for a white Christmas, and Yui gives it to her in a sweet cotton-polyester form by ripping up some crappy pillows.

Flash forward to present day, where the girls are talking about their Christmas party. It was supposed to be at Mugi’s house, but that got shot down, probably because the housekeepers didn’t have time to procure another slab of marble beef. They decide to hold it at Yui’s house (guess the inaugural viewing of Mugi’s house will be a later ep…), which is prefectly fine with me since we haven’t see Ui in a while. Ui is quite happy to have everyone over, but decides that her boke sister should probably stay out of the kitchen. She’s so sweet.

They go shopping for gifts, which seems to be a giant excuse to show Mio get abused some more, but then they bump into Mugi, who just won a trip to Hawaii. And promptly turned it down, opting for The Game of Life instead, cuz she wanted to play it with everyone. Yea, your friendship is worth more to Mugi than sandy beaches and spf 45. Oh Mugi, you’re an angel.

After another sweet scene involving tasty looking sandwiches, everyone shows up and starts getting their party on. Along the way, sensei just kinda shows up, which is kinda random but then all too appropriate given her relationship status. I’d like to poke her, and not just on Facebook if you know what I mean. I’d totally quiver over her and not just on Okcupid if you know what I mean. I’d totally @tweet her and not just on Twitter if you know what I mean. I’d tota… nevermind.

Sawachan does a wonderful job of making the party incredibly awkward yet awesome at the same time – it’s like the girls are on one wavelength and sensei is on a completely different one, but since she’s the sensei everyone’s gotta listen to her. Sensei makes Yui dress up in some ridiculously sexy Santa outfit, but Yui could never be sexy so sensei starts undressing Mio instead. Along the way, they start doing some awkward talent show thing, and sensei does some cold joke that I don’t understand but probably would’ve rofl’d all over the room over had I understood.

After everybody leaves, and after cleanup (doubtless all done by Ui), Y/Ui heads to bed – together on this special day, and snuggle up like the darling sisters they are. Awwwwwwheystopstealingthecoversdammit

And then, the visit to the shrine. Mio is dressed in something epic, Mugi looks like a snowman, and I don’t remember anything else.

 
Preview

Up next on K-ON!: Moe moe… SQUAWK
 
Thoughts

Ok I need to just come out and flat out say it, probably much to the delight of people that have been critics of this show from the start: this show is too goddamn cute. Like, it’s getting excessive. Of course, everyone has a certain tolerance level for this kind of stuff, and while early critics may find relatively tame stuff like Haruhi to already be too much, my tolerance for moe is pretty freakin high. And K-ON – this ep in particular – is making me question my manhood. Or at least my moehood, or whatever you call it. Understandably it’s exactly what the show intends to do, but all these uber-cute moments are getting awkward for me. Like Yui jumping up and down playing air guitar out of nowhere, that’s just weird yo. Remember that scene from the last ep where Yui and Ritsu were doing their sumo routine and everyone just looked at them like uhhhwtf – yea I’m getting close to that. Well, it’s probably because I’m a heartless bastard and that super mushy stuff makes me cringe, but then what does it say for those who hated this show from the start!

Still, not wanting to get ahead of myself, it was still an extremely enjoyable episode – I particularly liked those random little bits that showed what the girls were thinking. The relationship between Yui and Ui is real sweet, and it’s always funny to hear their inner opinions of Ui’s (frequent) defense of Yui’s contributions and good points. Much nicer imouto than Yakumo…

One thing that was done really really well in this ep was the costume design – most anime don’t even have characters’ clothes changing from episode to episode, let alone scene to scene. Besides the typical high-budget fare, another show that did this particularly well was Pita-ten, which can probably be classified in the same “moe blob” genre as K-ON. That show was uber sweet too, had real cute characters and a real nice story to it – I wonder, would I still remember it as fondly had I watched K-ON before it? Shia-san was something incredible…

Anyways, is this show still my favorite? Probably of this season – Saki a close second (lol)- but probably not of all time, not anymore. There’s still enough episodes to change that, but isn’t it ironic how the blatant overuse of the very thing that drew me in to the show in the first place is what is ultimately changing my opinion of it? Ahhh karma

54 Comments

  1. @LQY

    that’s definitely an ilya fanservice >.<

    on another note, i sympathize with the trend of beautiful teachers that are still single and i think it has become a trend that any k-on! ep is not worthwhile to watch for unless they had mio strip n change her outfit. it doesn’t matter how many times she does it in an episode as long as she did it.

    baka~
  2. whaaaaaaat??? <— my reaction after seen Lost finale…
    Lost finale was great to me…it’s coherent with the entire story…plus…anything involve time travel is always interesting…

    anyway…super moe eps…sister’s love…=3

    nutsy
  3. “And K-ON – this ep in particular – is making me question my manhood. Or at least my moehood, or whatever you call it. Understandably it’s exactly what the show intends to do, but all these uber-cute moments are getting awkward for me.”

    LOL!!!

    wutdafeezyyy
  4. Honestly, K-ON! has been nothing but pure gold up until now. Ep 7 is probably gold as well. However, when they introduce Show Spoiler ▼

    I will most like drop K-ON! If any of you have read the manga (I have), you’ll know Show Spoiler ▼

    plrockerdude
  5. guess it can’t be helped… her arrival brings about a ton of stress for the k-on! band. though i wonder who’ll voice her… i’m still rooting for tomatsu haruka though due to her impressive tsundere nagi and sannomiya shihoh performance in kannagi and zettai karen children. that and because her age isn’t far from the ages of the voice members of the 4 band members. if kugimiya rie would fill in then she might stand out due to her being already the tsundere-voice queen besides the fact that she’s already a pro ~_~

    can’t help but wait X_X

    baka~
  6. After seeing the first 4 episodes of K-On, I started thinking this will be one of my favorite animes of all time. But after seeing ep 6 and now this 7… I just don’t see it like this anymore. Frankly, I think this episode was boring. The only feeling I got watching it was, like Jaalin said, the feeling that I question my manhood.
    If the next episode doesn’t fix this, I think I’m just going to drop watching this series.

    I don’t know, for a perspective – Lucky Star is one of my favorite shows of all times, and I watch a wide variety of genres. K-On was doing something right in the beginning, but right now it’s blatantly doin it rong~

    Just drop Sawako, the excessive Mio abuse, Mugi acting like a dork, and all that highly forced fanservice, it’s just BAD and derails the show heavily imo D:

    Aqo
  7. @baka~ regardless of who voices her, its almost guaranteed Show Spoiler ▼

    will appear this season. Considering the anime has followed the manga on a 1 Ep=1~2 Ch basis, we might see her by Ep 9 or 10. If Kugimiya Rie voices her, that could be either interesting, or horrible (bakabakabakabakabakabaka—> everyone of her tsundere roles features it. It pisses me off. At least it was toned down in Toradora!), but only time will tell. Judging on the Show Spoiler ▼

    conversation in the manga, Show Spoiler ▼

    I will say this — all the jokes/sarcasm found in the manga is replicated exactly in the anime.

    plrockerdude
  8. K-on doesn’t emasculate me at all…. also nice to see someone else sees Sawako-sensei as the real hotness in K-on. Ah Mugi, a true friend indeed. Screw the trip to hawaii, I have friends!

    Duran
  9. lol, I never find anything “cute” so this show is so normal to me. Its just a silly slice-of-life, characters-just-mess-around-show for me since I can’t get that feeling of getting “moe” shoved in my face.

    Sarukah
  10. About the joke, I think i have got it –

    Well, sensei’s skin is so white that it look like the Canadian flag (White flag with a mable leaf), I don’t think it is funny, but maybe it is some where is in teh world ..

    If anyone got a better explanation, please write it 😀

  11. @plockerdude

    well i have no qualms if the show turns itself to becoming serious mindfuck due to a-“her” tantrums but i think the intensity of the mindfuck relies on who’d be voicing her. the last thing i need is to have her persona become so similar with taiga/shana since the three are both small, they are tsundere, and rie voices good quality tsundere(if rie would voice her).

    also im guessing a new OP/ED is due once she arrives…

    oh and wiki hints that she’ll be arriving at around ep 9

    baka~
  12. I totally agree with your comments. I started to come to understand it somewhere in this episode. The show is moe, which I can stand and enjoy, but at this point, it’s almost overkill.

    meonlyme775
  13. Sawaka just did something REALLY stupid (i.e. slapping her stomach to produce what is supposed to be a maple leaf) and it’s much different from what she was presented to be in the beginning of the series. It’s not really supposed to make much sense (it’s one of those jokes a guy would do out of random) and that’s really the joke (and it made me laugh XD)

    I-I still like all the cuteness. Mostly because I’m a girl…who loves cute things. And I’m a Yui fan, so this episode was much love.

    Charlo
  14. Maybe if you spun it as “full of deep, hidden meaning and smart parody, ala Haibane Renmei and Paranoia Agent,” you would get past being thrown off by the moe, and see the real story being so eloquently portrayed.

    That is, that these girls ROCK!

    skyhack
  15. about Azusa Show Spoiler ▼

    Raso
  16. Actually we have to be glad that the anime is very moe oriented. The original manga story is quite pale and boring. In the manga, there isn’t much moe features as the anime. Really, read the manga once and then you will appreciate that this is one of the rare cases where the anime turns out to be way better than the manga.

    banzemanga
  17. One favorite part of the episode that wasn’t mentioned here was Yui not gaining weight and Mugi’s reaction to it. It was so unexpected for Mugi to react envious that it adds to her character.

    panaghoy88
  18. Ok… There were some parts that I didn’t like how it was adapted. 🙁

    I was waiting for Mugi vision and Sawako’s crazy luck on the last cramped scene of this episode. It felt like ep 7 and ep 5 had been made by two different staffs who handle the storyboard/script. Overall decent but… a bit shaky….

    megalith
  19. Ok…. Now I have a different opinion. I’m starting to hate KyoAni’s adaptation. I’m just enjoying the manga more. Definitely needs more music to this. Any more unnecessary moe will make me drop this.

    megalith
  20. Oh lord. The bits of cute moeness and fanservice here (SANTA YUI/MIO GOOO) were just oh god. It too makes me question my manhood…moehood, whatever. Either way, I’m still loving this show, though Eden of the East is probably in my Top 5 for favorite series ever. D:

    Akiyama
  21. I don’t really get it. Why’s everyone turning on the show all of a sudden. You guys were the same people who said there can never be too much moe. Personally, I think you guys hyped up the show WAY too much and now your expectations are too high. It’s still an awesome show, I never thought it would be my all time favorite, at least not yet.

    geneVa
  22. Hmm… regarding Show Spoiler ▼

    There’s still a little ways to go, though, and if this is only slated for 12 eps, it’s not as though much more will really happen looking at the episode titles through to ep 10.

    DeadMonkeys

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