Sadly, claiming this to be my blogging return would be greatly exaggerated. Even though I would love to return to the spotlight at the same time as lolikitsune, acting as his most disturbing senpai, the words aren’t flowing yet.

Times have changed. The economy is tough these days. Where before the word counts of my articles were inflated beyond belief as the flow of anime seemed limitless and I took gambles on subprime shows, now there’s just sort of a general recession as interest rates lower and I’m just praying that one of the moe-moe shows this season bails me out.

Hah, not like I should really be sounding like the next doombringer in the otakusphere; there are still many shows I have urges to watch, just that the free time for watching – and by extension, for writing – has gone off a metaphorical cliff due to my own irresponsibility (International Saimoe League being the least of it, although I’ve started forcing work upon other people as well – thanks, Nazari and the rest).

But certainly, Saki and K-ON! were shows in the spring season I was waiting on with some form of bated breath. And certainly, that breath was released in the form of a deep sigh, compared to shows that came out of nowhere, like Eden of the East which gave me prentiousgasms (and awwwww-gasms, but that doesn’t sound as good out loud).

Or Hayate S2 which has left me paralyzed from laughter and from exposure to raw Isumi.

Not to mention Hatsukoi Limited, which perked my ears up from the first hint of a mention of KimiKiss (but which I have not watched yet). And naturally I should mention the journey to Hell’s Gate, led by Owen, of which I have followed faithfully for 24 episodes (for some reason, the last 2 have been hanging an uncomfortable time, but that ends tonight.)

But the point advertised on the door here was K-ON! and Saki, of which I should probably get back to, mainly because initially it seemed like more fun to say that both of them sucked.

Maybe I’m a bit slow to troll K-ON!, but it seemed like it would be exceedingly pleasurable considering that the otakusphere at large has seemed to latch on unusually hard, even for a KyoAni show. Perhaps this is indicative that it is not KyoAni, nor KeyAni, that causes magic enrapture, but MoeAni. (Considering Munto’s lack of success.)

And while there probably have been at least two big names in the otakusphere field that have lashed out in witty or raegish fashion against K-ON!, I would hope that I could at least turn some heads for merging all two-and-a-half popular views on K-ON!, that being that

1a) BLOODY MOE BLOODY EVERYWHERE HIT ME MORE KYOANI
1b) BLOODY MOE BLOODY EVERYWHERE MAKE IT STOP KYOANI
2) Mio is quite attractive (although I never like to use the word ‘waifu’)

…in addition to shocking people with my ability to dislike things. Or my ability to like things without glasses.

Sadly something silly has happened in that I managed to lose a fair portion of my seething discontent towards K-ON! after watching the third episode, when suddenly it stopped being stupid and started being vaguely amusing.

Initially my impression of K-ON! was that it was a fairly standard four-girls slice-of-life show, complete with The Clumsy One, The Tsundere, The Ojou-Sama, and The Funny Man (Woman), the core difference being that all non-moe elements were removed and replaced with moe elements.

Why have normal comedy when you could have CO-MOE-DY?
Why have character development when you could have CHARACTER MOE-VELOPMENT?
Why have a plot when you could have … uh … A PLOT INVOLVING MOE?
And so on, so forth.

My hunch is that this remains true for a lot of parts of K-ON; if you derive the rate of moe with respect to Yui, I’m pretty sure that value is going to approach infinity as she continues to do silly things like skid around on kitchen floor like she’s a car on ice, make funny facial expressions, be awesome at studying, and UN TAN UN TAN UN TAN UN TAN adslkfjdlskjwe.

Certainly it’s a bit like distilled Tsukasa, which is a bit scary considering how Tsukasa was distilled moeblob herself. It gets to the point where even if you really adored Tsukasa, Yui might be trying … too hard.

This is not the case for some people, who do not have a moe ceiling, but I, who was already falling out of favor with Tsukasa, was slamming into the moe rev limiter harder than Makoto Itou hits the womens. With his Johnny.

Likewise, with Miyuki being my halo character in Lucky Star, emboding all that is good and holy about being smart, beautiful (brb renaming blog to Mega Pink/Purple Hair Moe), clumsy, and naive, Tsumugi comes off as but a pale imitation, in addition to having a really horrible hairstyle in the ED. So she’s dead weight.

This leaves Ritsu, who seems like she needs a fang or something (I forget if she actually has one) with her attitude – she is one of those characters that seems rather secondary, despite being part of the core group. She makes good jokes that make me smirk, but I mean, I don’t have much to like or dislike about her. Her funniness about cancels her annoyingness.

Sadly since I like Mio, I won’t get to rack up 99 comments by going on about how much she sucks (break up with her guys, she’s only 15). Initially I thought that lelangir’s comparison of her to Kagami was true, but given that Mio is apparently more shy girl than tsundere – probably shy girl with a side of Straight Man (Woman) is closer to the mark, this is wrong.

This can also be proven false using a Proof By Baka-Raptor, which is to say, I use big text and short sentence to say:
“Kagami sucks, Mio doesn’t, therefore Kagami != Mio.”

But despite her excellent character design and superb role in the ED (which is catchy to all hell I’ll say), Mio isn’t a show-carrier. The affection, as you might say, is only skin-deep. Her personality doesn’t drive the show the same way I would pause and squeal when Minor Hayate Girl I’m Smitten With (Hamster, Isumi, Saki, pick one) gets some development time.

So what the point I’m getting to here is that K-ON! is more than the spiritual successor to Lucky Star in terms of moe, KyoAni, ridicucrazy popularity, etc, but also in terms of how much of a throwaway fluff show it is, for better and worse.

Maybe this is just the case with me and all slice-of-life, but I find circumstances become important when watching this genre. I cite the famous case of Azumanga, which I tried to watch multiple times, and never liked until I sat down during the slow summertime and simply fell in love.

Similarly, I watched two episodes of K-ON! during my lunch break during the school week and was ready to punch people through my computer screen, but when watching the first three episodes (yes, again) with a friend late at night on the weekend, I found myself rather soothed, almost in an Aria-like fashion.

In that sense, I found that perhaps K-ON! is joining a group of shows in a subset of the slice-of-life genre that I would best term “moe healing”. It’s not quite a ‘healing’ show like Aria, maybe Hidamari, or, I’ve heard, Sketchbook, where the healing comes from the pace and style of the show; rather, it’s more healing in the raw adorability of it all, kind of like how some people are with kittens of the non-lol variety. While you hate it at first for being too cute, you realize that it’s not meant to be ambitious or meaningful, it’s just sort of fun to watch, a step up from a time-killer and many steps down from anything intensive.

If I wanted to really stretch, I could call it the “imouto” genre, as said in the title. Like the ideal little sister in anime, K-ON! is cute; it isn’t that bright and it does a lot of silly things, but the type that make you want to pat it on the head. You wouldn’t marry your sister, but you’d enjoy spending time with it. At least a little.

(And like imoutos in hentai, a quite large amount of people are busy orgasming over the face of K-ON!.)

This is more or less what I saw in Lucky Star; the targeted genres are a bit different, as K-ON! tilts a little more towards moe while Lucky Star is more referential in nature (although both crank the moe to 11 at the minimum), so I’m not surprised at its popularity.

Although, it caught on instantly, unlike Lucky Star, which makes me wonder whether this is a result of a shift in tastes, or a result of not being really boring the first episode (ostensibly).

In the business I call this kind of stuff ‘things that are pretty difficult to blog about’ (despite the 1300 words I’ve pumped out), where it’s not good enough nor open-ended / controversial / deep enough to induce massive wordgasms. Indeed, I’d probably have a more interesting time analyzing the meta of K-ON!, such as why Mio or the anime have hit it off so well, or the above question about Instant Popularity, more than the show itself.

As such this will probably be my last post on K-ON!; assuming that I post again before it ends, anyway. I’ll continue to follow it, at least until my moe fuses blow out again, but only as light enjoyment. Perhaps it’s a testament to its ability to be “soothing moe” that I could not get too worked up in favor or against this anime.

If I’m feeling particularly controversial I could claim this is just a budget-builder, something nice and easy (but high-volume) for KyoAni that will pave the way for something new, groundbreaking, mindrending, or sexily-animated. Like Haruhi II. I know I am funny. (It will probably be Little Busters.)

Certainly K-ON! is just a shallow well, but that’s fine for a show like this. Sometimes we’re looking just to be refreshed, not to go swimming in deepness.

-CCY