K-ON!! Part 4 Episodes 13-16

As summer vacation draws to a close, the final semester for Yui, Ritsu, Mio and Mugi draws closer.  There’s college entrance exams to prepare for; a mandatory 5k school marathon; and the upcoming summer school festival that could be their final musical act together as a band coming their way.  And yet they’ll always find time to hang around the club room, get lost in an arcade and even find time to help each other out with simple homework assignments.  As the good times roll on, young Azusa ponders the Light Music Club without the four upperclassmen who welcomed her into their family.  The future looks scary but it doesn’t have to be taken on alone.

The second half of K-ON!! kicks off appropriately with the start of a new semester for the girls, the last one for the bulk of the group.  As such, it’s no wonder we’re finding new ways to get introspective while also keeping with the usual LMC spirit.  As Jun worded it at one point, “Every journey needs some rest stops”.  And in a way, that’s how you could see K-ON as a whole.  You might not enjoy every single one, but the stops towards the end of the journey are still the best part.

We returned to Azusa pretty heavily this week as the set kind of bookended with her and how her experiences with her LMC Sempai’s have changed her for the better.  Yui and the girls don’t just see Azusa as their little sister, they see her as an equal and are legitimately bummed when she cant come on every adventure with them.  So yeah…not quite a shocker that Azusa is going to miss the hell out of them all.  Getting to see her spend time with Mio and Mugi in the last episode of the set was particularly important.  First, we’ve never really seen Mugi and Azusa interact as a pairing before and it was kind of fun, especially with Mugi trying to learn guitar from the underclassman.  And Mio is pretty much the cool, confident and pretty idol every girl, including Azusa, wants to be when they get older…and Mio was the closest Azusa got to actually getting in some music practice.  But just as the last episode of this set was about firming up Azusa’s bonds with her club members, the first was about nailing down that Ui and Jun will have important roles to play once theyre gone.  Jun herself admitted that even though she realizes they might not practice a lot and goof off, she’s jealous of the bond the LMC has…and hey who wouldn’t be?  This is the quintet that makes everyday life seem like an epic adventure always worth having.  It just goes to show that things are gonna be different for Azusa when Yui, Mio, Ritsu and Mugi all bow out.  But the journey is far from over for the little Kohai that could now that she has new friends jumping onboard.

Speaking of Mugi, not only did we get to see her and Azusa hang out, we also saw her paired up with Ritsu.  It makes you wonder…how have we not had any personal moments with just the two of them yet and how could we have waited so long to have one?  Ritsu showing Mugi around town was a highlight.  Then again seeing the highly privileged and incredibly aloof Mugi gawk and fawn over the simple things like convenience stores and arcades can be just as entertaining as it is comically alarming.  One minor road block was Mugi wishing to experience getting hit on the head by Mio, in order to experience some kind of personal physical affection…ooooook how to even begin unpacking this.  Mugi notes that Mio tends to bop Ritsu on the head as a sign of affection (when really it might be that but it’s more out of annoyance) and Yui tends to clomp Azusa at any given moment.  One of these should be the preferred method of showing care and adoration.  Mugi’s desperation to be hit is, again, both alarming and comical.  And you thought Yui is the one whose future you should be most concerned about.

Lastly I should bring up one episode that I really feel I tuned out due to Yui being a little more overbearing than usual.  The High School Marathon is one of only a couple of K-ON episodes I feel could just be excised from Season Two altogether without much lost.  I guess it overall depends on how much of Yui complaining endlessly you can tolerate.  Me?  I love the scatterbrained goof but even this pushed my limits.  It’s one of those moments of hesitation I have where I wonder if Season Two pushed things by being 24 episodes (plus 3 OVAs that I may or may not cover…still debating that but I have a reason) instead of Season One’s 14 episodes.  At some point you’re just going to be trying to fill time without much reason and hope that it works.  Most Anime are guilty of this (Hell so are most 13-24 episode US TV shows).  I just hope K-ON does more with it’s remaining time than trying to fill time without much purpose.

With one last show on the horizon, it’s more and more clear that the end is in sight for this current iteration of the LMC…just don’t expect them to get there right away.  This is K-ON after all.  Part of the journey is the end…but when has this show ever been concerned with that?  See ya next week for more fun with Yui, Mio, Ritsu, Mugi and Azusa right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.