K-ON! The Movie [Review]

…I can die happy now.

Impression

On the morning of July 18th, I woke up and realized something. Today was the release day of the K-ON! movie.

And with K-ON! being what it is, it definitely didn’t disappoint. Under normal circumstances, it’d be classified as an anime in which nothing much really happens, with cute girls doing cute things – and indeed that’s pretty much the basic storyline. Five girls form a light music club and have fun eating sweets and (occasionally) playing music. But you know what? K-ON! is special and is different from all the rest. I’m sure some people will disagree with me, but there’s just something about the show that makes it so utterly adorable that you could sit watching them all day and not get bored. Maybe it’s the memorable seiyuu, various references to the past seasons (jakka-jan forever) or just these hilarious quips, like Yui somehow making it into uni without knowing that London is in England. It’s just so moe that I find myself staring at every little movement and still getting something out of it, because KyoAni makes it count.

I was surprised that a good chunk of the movie was spent actually planning the trip to London, since the summary made it sound like they’d already had it all prepared – but then I remembered that this was Yui and friends we’re talking about, and no-one except Azu-nyan would have even thought of preparing. We were also reminded of the song that they ended up writing Azusa, which was performed at the end of S2 (manly tears were shed). In the typical K-ON! fashion, they ended up getting Ton-chan to decide, but admittedly it would have been far less amusing if they ended up going to a hot springs inn, as per Mugi’s suggestion.

You guys probably don’t know, but I live in London, so it was interesting to see how they’d portray the city compared to how it is in real life. Ibis hotels are scattered all over the place, and the buses and taxis were well done – though there’s no way the taxi drivers or hotel staff are that kind in real life xD Similarly, really iconic places like a tube station or the London Eye were realistic, and the atmosphere felt pretty similar too. The whole trip definitely felt much faster for us than it did for them!

Proper English accents and everything were included, like in the first episode of Higashi no Eden – hey Yui, I bet you wished you paid more attention in lessons now xD On the reverse side of things, everyone’s Engrish was hilariously funny when they all tried to break the language barrier, and you gotta love Ricchan at times like these. They ended up playing “Curry Nochi Rice” in the sushi bar anyway, as well as various other songs in their repertoire. Anyway, I got loads of great shots that can become new desktop backgrounds ^^

Even though I felt so giddy at starting the movie, it was the worst feeling ever when graduation loomed and the girls thought about the song they were going to write for Azusa, and everything started becoming nostalgic again ;_; It reminded me of those days when I kinda took K-ON!’s presence for granted, and when it was over, the reality hit me like a ton of bricks. Of course this is the last of K-ON! that we’ll probably be getting – the manga has a university arc as well as a continuation of Ui and Azu-nyan’s senior year, but it’d be pushing it to ask for an anime of that, especially when everything so far has revolved around the current light music club. K-ON! finished a few years ago, but it was amazing to revisit everything that it stands for one more time before saying goodbye to it – or not, since you can be sure I’ll rewatch this again and again, complete with a Mio-chan ED on par with “No Thank You!”

But first, I’ll need someone to azu-sist me through the post-K-ON! depression ^^