Anime Thoughts: K-ON!!
Aug. 8th, 2013 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerStill working on watching "follow-up series" out of my large stock of anime series, I got around to the second instalment of a popular yet polarizing franchise. It had seemed to me that when people watched K-ON!, a series that might be too briefly described as about a rock band of high school girls, they either got it or they didn't (and if they didn't, they would often complain about "moeblobs"); after reading the original four-panel comic strip manga and watching the original series, I was left wondering if I only thought I got it. Hearing the second series (identified with an extra exclamation mark), twice the length of the first, had been licensed as well did get my attention all the same; it did take me a while to get around to ordering and then watching the Blu-Rays, though.
With the additional length, though, I began to feel a bit more certain I was getting it; additional time with the girls might have helped me get used to them. It also might have helped in its own way that I was no longer weighed down quite so much by swirling bad feelings about the release over here of the original series (one of Bandai Entertainment's last), when various inadequacies about it were identified and proclaimed. Things didn't seem quite so bad with Sentai Filmworks's release of the second series, or at least it had been longer since people had discussed it and I couldn't remember if they'd been saying anything.
As well, I suppose I was just that much more comfortable with the basic joke of the series seeming to be that the girls aren't a "hard-rocking band" and spend most of their time goofing around. The extended series adapted about as much manga as the first had, but the additional material added fit in quite well; I did take note the bit of the manga, apparently quite controversial, where everyone else thinks Ritsu has a boyfriend was left out of the anime. (Certain fans seem to dwell on pairing the characters off with each other, although I do wonder about the far more unspoken possibility of "possessing" characters in someone's imagination... although maybe saying "I don't think about them that way" is open for the beginnings of interpretation.)
Wondering "are you really getting it?" did flash back to my mind every so often, but I'd say I felt I enjoyed the series "as it is," or at least "as whatever it is," in the end. I also got to thinking about how there's also a movie as well, but there I suppose I'm waiting for a sale of suitable proportions before ordering it.
With the additional length, though, I began to feel a bit more certain I was getting it; additional time with the girls might have helped me get used to them. It also might have helped in its own way that I was no longer weighed down quite so much by swirling bad feelings about the release over here of the original series (one of Bandai Entertainment's last), when various inadequacies about it were identified and proclaimed. Things didn't seem quite so bad with Sentai Filmworks's release of the second series, or at least it had been longer since people had discussed it and I couldn't remember if they'd been saying anything.
As well, I suppose I was just that much more comfortable with the basic joke of the series seeming to be that the girls aren't a "hard-rocking band" and spend most of their time goofing around. The extended series adapted about as much manga as the first had, but the additional material added fit in quite well; I did take note the bit of the manga, apparently quite controversial, where everyone else thinks Ritsu has a boyfriend was left out of the anime. (Certain fans seem to dwell on pairing the characters off with each other, although I do wonder about the far more unspoken possibility of "possessing" characters in someone's imagination... although maybe saying "I don't think about them that way" is open for the beginnings of interpretation.)
Wondering "are you really getting it?" did flash back to my mind every so often, but I'd say I felt I enjoyed the series "as it is," or at least "as whatever it is," in the end. I also got to thinking about how there's also a movie as well, but there I suppose I'm waiting for a sale of suitable proportions before ordering it.