First Impressions / K-ON!

Mouse over screenshots for captions
 
Summary
We kick off this episode with a female fap session, as sensei busts out her mastered dvd of Mio’s shimapan. Sensei always delivers.

Turns out Ritsu forgot to turn in the signup sheet for the stage again, so Nodoka has to bail them out again. Except this time, Ritsu gets a little jealous cuz Mio and Nodoka get along so well. Great, it’s gonna be one of those eps… sigh

In other news, Yui’s Les Paul is already in crappy condition, considering she treats it like a damn stuffed animal. You know, kinda like how Chiaki treats her pedobear. Yui’s just weird like that, I guess… calling her vintage guitar cute, dressing it up, sleeping with it… at any rate, they decide to take it to the music store to get it fixed up.

After some Mio moe moments and a hapless store employee who isn’t having any of Yui’s random shit, the guitar gets fixed up quite nicely, but then Ritsu starts PMSing after Yui says she’s meeting up with Nodoka, and Mio goes with her. Sigh, doesn’t this shit only happen with elementary school kids? Girls, I’ll never understand them.

Practice the next day goes awkward as hell, and while Azusa and sensei try to break them out of the funk, they realize they are just not the same band when there’s some DRAMA weighing down on them. Almost too conveniently, however, Ritsu gets sick the next day, so Mio goes to take care of her and that’s the end of that.

They also name their band, which is a bit surprising considering they’ve been together for almost a year now. “After School Tea Time” – a bit too appropriate. I would’ve gone for Moeroon 5.
 
Preview

Up next on K-ON!: I try to rediscover my sense of humor
 
Thoughts
Wow, I could feel it as I was doing the captions… I can’t write worth shit today. But um, at least I beat the sub!

Couple things I gotta say about this ep – first of all, UGH. The bit with Yui fixing up her guitar was normal K-ON fare, which was totally fine and pretty fun, but what the hell was up with the Ritsu bit? Sorry Ritsu fans, but she’s by far my least favorite girl in this show, and that was before this episode. Now we know she’s a jealous, selfish bitch who starts hating on other girls who spend time with her friend. Unbelievable. But whatever, I didn’t like her to begin with. Of course, I’d have to ask myself, what if Ritsu’s personality was put in Mio’s character instead? I’d probably forgive her.

– Any guitar heads out there want to tell us less informed viewers what happens when a guitar is in a condition like Yui’s? Why does getting it dusty or having worn strings or whatever have anything to do with how an electric guitar sounds? I mean, I can cake my digital piano in mud and it would still sound the same. Please explain!

– “After School Tea Time” is a pretty nice name for their band.

– Why doesn’t Kobe have 50 points yet? Getting tired of watching the Lakers suck…

– I am Koromo not kodomo!!! <3 <3 <3 <3

66 Comments

  7. Let me try and explaine the guitar bit. I may be wrong on some regards but it’s all about how and electric guitar works. The vibration of the string when picked runs down and is “picked up” by the pickups under the strings where you strum. So dust cover the pickups making them less sensitive and old strings dont vibrate as clearly as new strings. Therefor, keeping a guitar clean is imperative to good sound.

    stupid noob
    Reply

  8. Guitars, electric or acoustic rely on the strings to make sound. Acoustics amplify it with its body and its natural resonance. Electrics use pickups that generate a magnetic field. When the string vibrates over the pickup, it distorts the magnetic field and that distortion gets converted into a signal which goes to an amplifier which turns it into sound.

    So unlike your digital piano which makes sound solely from a digital bank of stored data, throwing a electric guitar into mud would be a bad bad thing. Kinda like pouring mud into a grand piano.

    Old rusty strings mute the sound of the guitar. They also vibrate less so the sustain of a note or notes is cut. It also makes playing harder. So generally old strings makes everything worse when it comes to guitars.

    Kyuusei
    Reply

  9. As a side note, dust generally doesn’t do much to impair the sound of a guitar. Unless its like caked on/in it or something. Generally any kinda cosmetic damage to the finish or body of the guitar doesn’t really do much to affect sound or tone. Might screw with playability though.

    Kyuusei
    Reply

  15. *raises hand…jumping*
    Yui got my attention with the way she’s being drawn (kawaii!!!!111!1!)

    …though must be me seeing too many black haired women that did it … lol

    info600
    Reply

  22. Just to inform those who don’t know, the entire melo-drama part with Ritsu is completely tacked on, and detracts from her character in a really unnecessary way, bad move on the producers part imo. The drama at the end of episode 8 is in a similar boat as well.

    Moral of the story? No one likes unnecessary angst/drama, especially in a slice-of-life comedy anime. :/

    Zeru
    Reply

  30. Ok… So it seems that Ritsu part was uncalled for. Well.. Disturbed since I never expected that. Well they had to alter it in some ways I guess so it’s not a complete ripoff of the source.

    megalith
    Reply

  31. Ritsu gets jealous of people spending time with Mio? O.O

    I sense a potential yuri element. ^_^

    Anyways, I like my girls with a little backbone to ’em–girls who know what they want, and have their minds made up at once. That’s why Ritsu’ll always be my favorite of the group…so, yeah.

    Raze
    Reply

  35. First, i don`t understand why this Ritsu bashing? Everybody can have a bad day sometimes.
    As a guitarist, bassist and alto saxophonist since 1964 i may say something about instrument cleanliness. Generally, all area around strings and under them should be clean. You can`t get clean, precise chords from dirty neck(both sides of it), your tuning can become false by badly working tuning gear, your fingertops slip, greasy & dirty strings do lose their best vibration, sustain and magnetic capacity. Dust etc. elsewhere does not so much damage to tone. I believe those keynoards can get their shortcuts in circuitry too with too much dirt. What about some water? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!

    Savofenno
    Reply

  38. I personally Like Sensei the best over Mio. She is full of pointless stupidity. I wished I had a fun teacher like her. Most of mine are sadistic freaks who glorified themselves by making us (students) feel stupid.

    I still get night terrors from my junior high school days…

    Fortune's fool
    Reply

  41. Yeah I don’t get all the Ritsu bashing. So she’s not the perfect, polite moe moe girl. Girls are catty. They get jealous and emotional. It doesn’t make her a bitch, that’s just how some girls are. That’s reality.

    Kiki
    Reply

  44. @jaalin

    You want a break from reality? Watch Kannazuki no Miko. K-On! cuts a little close to the “could-be-real” area, if you’re looking for something outside of reality.

    Maybe I’m nuts though. But I like my girls to be believable. That’s why Ritsu pwns. ^_^

    Raze
    Reply

  47. The drama portion was actually pretty well done in terms of tone and atmosphere. You could feel the tension begin to mount after Mio’s first “Baka Ritsu”, when Ritsu pulled her from the lefty guitars. They built on Ritsu’s “What’s this feeling of loneliness?” from the previous episode (when Mio was patting Azusa). It was a nice attempt trying to create drama from a gag.

    Sadly, the reason it fails is because Ritsu was acting the way primary school a kid would, not how a 16 or 17 year old would. I kept thinking, “Shougakusei ka?”

    Still can’t trump Lucky Star’s Kanata flashback scene though. XP

    masamune111
    Reply

  49. This episode was at least half anime-original. In the manga, we got a sick Yui and a little moment for Ui to shine. In this one, in the same way that there was an episode focusing on the shimai-ai between Yui and Ui, they decided to play up Ritsu and Mio’s relationship as well. I wouldn’t have much of a problem with that idea, though, if they were going for at least 24 episodes.

    There’s just not enough time to spare for filler like this.

    Though for that, the things that made me go “ugh” the most was that they removed two of the best moments. One was the settlement of the price for the guitar repair, where they just made the clerks quick not to have Mugi pay for anything. In the manga, she gives the clerks an evil eye that terrifies them into making it free.

    The other bit was the Sawa-chan+Mio moment. This version just had Sawa-chan being lazy and telling Yui to take the guitar to the shop. Originally, she’d offered to do the maintenance in exchange for a full day to “do as she pleases” with Mio.

    DeadMonkeys
    Reply

  50. I have to say, I’m in agreement with masamune.

    While, I find it debatable whether or not Ritsu was
    acting like a teenager or toddler, this is the closest
    thing we’re gonna get to antagonism in a slice-of-life
    show. What better way? We don’t always see eye-to-eye
    with even our best of friends. In that sense added
    some a bit more of realism to this show.

    I don’t understand women myself, as I see this sort of
    jealousy with them the most (no offense)…

    BUT…

    Also, how many bands/musical groups do you know have
    dissolved because of some differences or other?

    It’s nothing new in this area either.

    They could’ve really dragged the story on with this
    if they wanted, lol. But this is show wasn’t meant
    for that. =/

    Disillusion
    Reply

  52. They will air #13 for sure.
    An extra episode after the “last” episode, kinda usual Kyo Ani tactics.

    As for Ritsu in this episode, it”s all sickness. She felt bad and her mind went south. That’s all and all other club members know that. I guess they will conclude the “last” epiosode with the emphasis of togetherness of the 5 as a band. Like, “5 girls=1 band”.

    calde
    Reply

  53. For starters, an electric guitar is not “digital”, thus the comparison with a digital piano nullified.

    An electric guitar works a lot like a classic acoustic guitar, except that the “resonance body” (i.e. the empty body and the hole in the body that basically “amplify” the sound) is replaced with electric pickups that “pick up” the sound and tranfer it (via a cable) to the amplifier.

    An electric guitar will still make a sound even if not connected to anything, it’s just faint.

    Because the strings are the things that “make” the initial sound (no matter how it goes through effects pedals and amplifiers later), obviously the strings make a difference in how it sounds (and also the pickups).

    tokugawa
    Reply

  58. Well, I’m definitely a Mio fan but I don’t hate Ritsu. I mean, I love all the characters; I can’t find anything worth hating about them.

    But my first question was, “What’s Mio’s problem?”
    Then I was like, “Ooh~ Ristu’s jealous.”

    Besides the fact Ritsu knows how to annoy the hell out of Mio, (and I would probably snap too if I were Mio), it was kind of “Jeez. Calm down,” moment for me.

    Ritsu acts like a jealous boyfriend in this episode. xD
    But Mio x Ritsu is total cuteness. We just need Ritsu to be sick. :3

    Kiyohime
    Reply

  60. Ritsu has been a fav of mine since the first ep. I just love her energy, she’s amusing.
    She doesn’t back down. One of the only characters to have an intact personality from the Manga. >_> disregarding this episode. Same with Ui.

    I like Manga Yui much more than Anime Yui (who is a moron). She is an absent minded girl, but KyoAni has her acting like a gurgling brain dead baby. She has a “sometimes cute, sometimes not” thing going on.

    I got tired of Mio after her constantly cowardly antics and flip outs. She can really suck the fun out of things. At first I was pleased with how her Anime counterpart was, then KyoAni started making her do all these things, and I just got annoyed.

    I am not liking Anime Mugi very much. I prefer her in the Manga. KyoAni just doesn’t know what to do with her! She is literally walking furniture. Then the whole “She’s Yuri-con!! tee hee hee”. Was eyeroll worthy. By this point I am surprised KyoAni didn’t make up some tacky personality for Nodoka, since she is hardly in either mediums.

    I am rather… bored with how predictable anime watchers have gotten.

    unicogirl
    Reply

  61. Though I agree 100% with unicogirl, this is the fate that all us manga readers must accept. We can only get lucky a few times. It’s just not easy to translate manga into animation. I’m still liking the anime version, though the manga still rox my sox.

    To add to unicogirl’s comment, I was more surprised at the entire treatment. Being a 4-koma manga you’d thought that the jokes would be more snappy and fast a-coming, but I guess the director took a different approach. Oh well.

    ahbonk
    Reply

  63. I think people are being a little harsh on Ritsu. I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that when she was being catty to Mio she was starting to come down with her illness, which put her in a bad mood, even if she didn’t realise it at the time.

    Maverick
    Reply

  65. If I’m not mistaken, they said the octave tunning was screwed up, which is a far worse problem than simply rusty strings (disgusting thing by itself). What it means is that you can’t tune your guitar properly; if you tune it so open chords (played at the end of the neck) sound good, the closer you’d play to the base of the neck the worst it would sound. in other words, if play a note and then the same note an octave higher, on the same string, it will become painfuly obviouse that you’re out of tune.

    Nadavu
    Reply

  66. Finally finished this show~

    I find it absurd how Ritsu’s getting bashed while Mio’s hailed as “endearing”. Because resorting to violence and insults when at odds with your friend’s is endearing? Mio and Ritsu were both participants in a fight, they happen all the time and neither party deserves all the blame.

    I like it how they made the anime different from the manga. I can read the manga for lulz and lightheartedness, and watch the anime for some moe slice-of-lifeness. If it’s a “slice-of-life” shouldn’t they include all parts of life, even the awkward tense ones that we’d rather ignore?

    oslapedo
    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *