You are killing me here. It is such a sweet death.

I realize that there's something about a concert or some such, but other people have covered that in more detail than I feel like. I have but one gimmick, and I am going to milk that gimmick for all it is worth.

Mind you, I'm well aware that given Tsumugi's inclinations, it would be highly disingenuous of me to ever consider her Mai Waifu material. At the most, I can only observe her from afar, which is probably why the thought "Mugi-chan in a maid outfit" quickly turned into "Mugi-chan in a maid", and all that entails.

I'm not the only one who keeps humming that upon discovery that Tsumugi spends her summer holiday in Finland, am I?

Mugi's holiday adventures aside, I get the impression that her home life resembles one of the two extremes often seen in anime involving very rich ojou-sama types: in this case, the whole Apple Of Her Father's Eye (and it's almost always the father, possibly because it's more acceptable to see guys acting like idiots) thing. Anything for the little lady of the house, cost and consequences be damned.

I can almost imagine Mugi's father (seen in silhouette plus eyebrows in episode two) fountaining tears of joy that his lovely daughter has managed to find such good friends in her high school club. Use the villa? Why of course, anything for the treasure of the Kotobuki family! Unfortunately, the largest beach villa is being used for a meeting with other company presidents, and the old farts just won't see reason, so please bear with this tiny one for now, I promise you'll be able to use the big one next year. For now, we'll prepare the rooms to your utmost satisfaction, stock the fridge with the finest Kobe beef, and bring out the yacht…

Gods help the man who, in the distant hypothetical future, wishes to initiate any form of relationship with Tsumugi. Although with Mugi's apparent interests, this may take another, far more intriguing form.

Fending off such overbearing affection may explain the flower of the Kotobuki family's uncanny carrying capacity.

Mugi-chan in a maid- wait, I think I've used this joke before.

The focus of this episode is the introduction (but not yet the personality) of Azusa Nakano, the new first-year member of the light music club. This means that the band has been together for about a year after eight episodes, which is a fairly brisk episode-to-time ratio. In all this time, it appears that the band's talents appear only during live performances, since their demonstrations sound rather sloppy (like an actual high school light music club, I'd think). I believe Azusa even remarks as much later in the story, if I remember the manga correctly.

This time, we remain in the auditorium while the band plays. I half expect complaints to arise that watching a band play on stage is boring and they should have segued into a music video or something, thus proving once again that it is impossible to please everyone.

What intrigues me most about this episode is that we hear two songs (well, one song and the tail end of another just before that) which are, thus far, not yet released. It is safe to assume that another single will be forthcoming. If you're wondering, the songs listed on the piece of paper Mio gave Ritsu are, roughly translated and in order: "Fuwa Fuwa Time" (which we've heard back at the school festival episode and which we've gotten a single of), "The Rice Under the Curry" (I think), "My Love is Hotchkiss" ("HOCCHIKISU", whatever that means apparently it means "stapler"; it's the song we hear the majority of in this episode), and "Calligraphy Pen Ball(point) Pen". Of these, only "Fuwa Fuwa Time" has gotten a single; admittedly, we also have "Please Give Me Wings" ("Tsubasa wo Kudasai", if you want the Japanese) as the B-side for that, as well as "Happy! Sorry!!" and "Sweet Bitter Beauty Song" as the B-sides for the opening and ending themes respectively.

I did expect an anime about a musical club to have lots of soundtrack albums and singles released. I am impressed at the band's expanding repertoire, although I'd like to see something written by someone other than Mio. Not that I dislike Mio's lyrical sense, but I do think it would be fascinating to see what Yui or Tsumugi would come up with.

Another thing which struck me as a little (not a lot, just a little) odd was Ui's clapping during the concert. Apart from being slightly off-time, I didn't expect that sort of song to be a clapping sort, like "Fuwa Fuwa Time" was. Admittedly, I'm not sure what sort of appreciative action the audience could have done to that song; probably clapping to the beat anyway, but only on the second and fourth beats rather than 4/4 time. Singing along, maybe? It's also not really the sort of song one would wave lighters (or cellphones or whatever point source of light one might have handy) to.

I wonder which rock concert movement number that would be.

Looking at the K-On girls' popularity as seen from blog posts, it appears that Mio's lead is still unchallenged, but there has been a growing contingent of fellow Mugi fans. Ritsu has a few die-hard supporters, albeit some who feel it necessary to proclaim Ritsu's superiority by flinging insults at the other girls for some reason. Yui, however, gets a lot of flak.

This, to me, is kind of odd.

I'm not a stranger to not liking a character, since it's quite difficult to love each and every single character in fiction, but the amount of active dislike I've seen makes me suspect that something else is in play. Yui, in herself, is not that offensive, at least in my view.

The most common reason I've heard is that she seems not quite right in the head. The word often used is "retarded", which means a great many things on the Internet, ranging from the broad medical definitions of developmental disabilities, to the perjorative sense that may or may not indicate an actual mental disorder.

Let's have a look at Yui's most prominent personality traits:

• Easily distracted.
• Usually has problems focusing on things.
• When able to focus, concentrates on the subject nearly to the exclusion of all else. (May not confer hypercompetence.)
• Forgets about everything other than what is focused on, thus requiring frequent relearning.
• Starts high-maintenance projects on impulse that may or may not reach conclusion.
• Sweet tooth.
• Late sleeper.

Just taking these traits, it's a pretty accurate description of myself.

Oddly, this is why I'm not that interested in Yui. Yes, it amuses me to see my own foibles writ large on the screen, especially when performed by a cute anime girl, but since I deal with them every day, it's too familiar. I do get distracted in bizarre ways: I can space out in the middle of a conversation just in time to miss out on the middle two items out of a list of five. I've stopped in my tracks before just to observe the way a raindrop falls. And when I really wanted to, I taught myself Java in two weeks (with several applets to show for it), before being distracted by something else (the guitar, if you were wondering) and forgetting it all again.

The sweet tooth and late sleeper bits are fairly common in others, so it's not that significant. If there's any character trait I can call my own (as opposed to sharing with Yui), I'd say that I panic easily in pressure situations, so even though I may theoretically know everything about how to deal with a crisis, when the time comes I blank out and stare at nothing in particular. It is not such a large leap of imagination to picture Yui with the same problem.

Considering that I've managed to survive this far without being committed to a mental institution, I'd say that these traits are not especially debilitating. In fact, Yui does have the advantage of being hypercompetent when she focuses on something, possibly due to natural talent or something. Obviously I cannot claim to this myself. Seeing as Yui has garnered such hate despite being better than I am, I have to say that I've been examining my own interactions with others quite closely, since I must be annoying my friends to no end.

Now, let's take my favourite K-On character, Tsumugi. Mugi-chan is intelligent, polite, confident, talented, graceful, and delightfully enthusiastic about experiencing everything life as a Normal High School Student has to offer. (Also, she's very very cute.) If this were any other bishoujo anime, she'd be the school idol. Since she's next to nothing like myself but still full of all these positive traits, I can sort of place her as the goal of a change in personality for the better, and learn by observation. Failing that, I'd be happy to simply be the invisible observer in her group of friends.

Mio and Ritsu are just kind of there. I find Mio amusing but strangely not as compelling as Mugi, and I'm not really a fan of the hyperactive prankster type that Ritsu is based on. But then I've mentioned all of this already.

From what I've heard over the years, I should either be loving Yui for being so close to myself, or hating her for reminding me of my own bad parts. But she's just so familiar that it's like looking into a mirror or some such; there may be a brief period of introspection and self-examination, but after a while it's not very interesting.

Mugi-chan in a nurse outfit~

Sometimes I wonder what my place is in the fandom. On the one hand, I'm part of the teeming masses who actually like this show, thus making me somehow defective in the eyes of those who have something against moe, or prize individuality for individuality's sake. On the other hand, while I appreciate that Mio is amusing enough to watch, Tsumugi remains firmly in first place for me, leading to a certain disconnect when discussing the show with others.

So it goes.

In the meantime, I've been idly updating the TVTropes page for the series for lack of any other way to participate in this fandom-ness. The scanlations for the original 4-koma manga have been floating around for a while, so the broad strokes of the plot or lack thereof is already known, but there have been changes from the manga to the anime, which is inevitable considering the transition from one-shot gags to a full episode. It is in these changes where my wiki edits live, skulking in the shadows where they justly belong, lest they be shriveled into ash by the harsh light of canon scrutiny.

Among them is the ramping up of Mugi's yuri goggles, from merely seeing Something There That Was Not There Before between Mio and Yui, to a more general pairing off of any two female characters engaged in close interaction, regardless of context. One speculates that this is a girl who thoroughly enjoys romance novels and possibly manga, and a sizeable portion of her family fortune is dedicated to collecting such reading material. Considering the casualness with which she provides the apparently expensive silverware and tableware for the light music club, her book collection must be impressive indeed.

Yamanaka-sensei is substantially scarier in her Wild Mode here, compared to the manga, which is probably limited by the panel layouts. There's also the revelation of why she has a Wild Mode in the first place, which is not in the original manga, at least as far as I've seen. Despite her desire to be a Quiet Character, though, she does seem to be in very good shape. I think part of why I like the humour in shows like this is because the context may make the action-packed bits ridiculous and over-animated, but the scene itself, shorn of said context, is still pretty fun to watch, instead of merely cringe-inducing.

Tomorrow, either a rambling essay-type post (which does touch on all these K-On posts I seem to be making), or more Nanoha GamerS, depending on how motivated I feel.

Not that they actually did any of that. Or pumpkins, for that matter.

This week has been taken up mainly by Administrative Matters, as they apply in Real Life. In fact, this blog post is being written at this very moment while I am waiting to collect my brand new biometric passport, courtesy of the March Of Technological Progress and Singapore's place in it. There are about a hundred people ahead of me in the queue; this is likely to take a while.

In the meantime, I managed to get K-On episode 4 onto the Eee PC, and so that is what I shall be occupying myself with, keeping a watchful eye on the big board with numbers which May Not Be Called In Order, presumably to mess with our minds.

I'm a little surprised that Mio is able to get her hands on a working portable cassette tape player in this day and age. It does look like one of those old blocky ones without a CD function (but with auto-reverse, a luxury when I was little), so maybe I just need to take better care of mine.

I see that they've started with the Shiny Forehead jokes at Ritsu's expense. I have to admit that if it weren't for that, I wouldn't be able to tell Ritsu and Yui apart at a distance. This could be due to the art style, but then I'm horrible at recognizing people, even close friends, anyway.

When Mio was rummaging through her bag for her swimsuit, she kept bringing out the same two items (what looks like a small towel and a bottle of shampoo) in what is obviously a looped animation. It may say something about my current state of mind that I was going to say how this seems oddly lazy on the part of the animators, but got sidetracked by my brain automatically adding "datte hontou wa CRAZY".

I like the BGM for K-On, although it's nothing too special by anime standards (compared to, say, Card Captor Sakura). It's just the simple tunes and arrangements, possibly reminding me of Azumanga Daioh, although here I think they could be transplanted without attracting much notice into Lucky Star, and from Lucky Star to K-On. Also, the previous sentence was written while under the influence of the sorts of distractions and annoyances inherent in large waiting room crowds, if you were wondering about the coherency.

There's a lot of focus on Mio here, which will undoubtedly be of great interest to the majority of the Anglophone anime bloggers, at least from the reception Mio has received so far. I will say that Mio is interesting to watch in action, but my heart still belongs to Mugi-chan, and I have no idea why.

Yui and Ritsu act in unison a lot. I mean, my friends and I like to play along with each other when doing silly stuff (because youth is the best time to do silly stuff, before arthritis sets in), but the "moe moe kyun!" bit was uncannily well-timed.

Finally, if you can help it, don't watch anime on an Eee PC running off battery power. It's going to stutter pretty badly.

(If you were wondering, I wrote this while waiting, but only got around to posting it now. And no, my number was still not up by the time I finished.)

Don't expect this to be a regular feature. If nothing else, I'll lose interest quite quickly.

K-On has garnered the usual amount of attention from anime bloggers, with Mio appearing to be the fan favourite. Whether this is intentional on the part of the creators is beyond me; I'm just here for the cute girls, man. Specifically Tsumugi, or Mugi-chan as her recently-attained nickname goes. People who were in my gaming group will be aware of the reason for my low amusement.

The comparisons to other series have tapered off, although I admit to some surprise that I haven't seen anything about resemblances to Manabi Straight. Or not, as the case may be, since an argument could be made either way; the opening animation at least seemed Manabi-ish, if also rather Beatles-ish, but I'm always prepared for the usual "how could you think such a thing? There is no such comparison to be made!" arguments. It is a diverse Internet out there.

In this episode, Yui gets a guitar, which people have been calling a "Les Paul Fender" or some arcane title along those lines. Having never delved, even shallowly, into the world of Real Guitars, I am lost, adrift; I mean, I can play a G chord, a C chord, and I think an F-sharp chord, but that's about the limit of my knowledge on the matter. Presumably I can try to learn, but I share Mio's apprehension at the starring role a guitarist would be placed in. I would be interested in learning the bass, though, especially since I like how it sounds, so maybe that might swing me over to Mio's side more than Tsumugi, although I doubt it.

(The only musical instrument I can claim to some competence with is the saxophone. Not exactly rock band material, and I lack the improvisational imagination necessary for jazz.)

It is hard to fully pin down Tsumugi's entire personality, since so little has been noted about who she is, rather than what she is. She's a rich girl who's not entirely experienced in the ways of the common people, of the nice, cheerful, polite, pleasant personality type, with occasional flights of fancy into the realms of the bizarre. Like a more naive Tomoyo Daidouji from Card Captor Sakura, which is probably why I'm drawn to her.

One thing I've never been able to understand about how some other bloggers think is that sometimes they go from "OMG WORST ANIME EVER" to "OMG BEST ANIME EVER" within the space of one episode. Now, in a medium with more than one work in it that can be objectively judged for quality, the two are mutually exclusive.

Kurogane compared the main characters of K-On to those of Lucky Star, which does rather fit, but to be honest the first comparison I thought of was Hidamari Sketch:

• Yui – Yuno
• Ritsu – Miyako
• Mio – Sae
• Tsumugi – Hiro

To be fair, the interactions don't exactly break down exactly as compared: Ritsu hangs out with Mio instead of Yui, Mio is a lot more honest to herself than Sae was, and Tsumugi is a bit more out-there compared to Hiro (in fact, she probably fits the least closely). I wouldn't say air-headed, but perhaps naive is a better word. (Or not.) "Inexperienced with the ways of the world" would probably be more accurate if it weren't too unwieldy a phrase, and if my brain ever emigrated from the gutter.

It's also telling that Tsumugi is invariably the last name mentioned in the listing of the four girls. We have Main Character Yui, and the boke-and-tsukkomi routine of Ritsu and Mio, which all leap to mind more readily than the Rich Talented Girl that is Tsumugi, whom one can't really feel jealous of, since she's so amazingly nice. (Of course, with my luck, she'll turn out to have some hidden nasty side or something. So it goes.)

It's also also telling that I've latched onto Tsumugi as my Favourite Character So Far, just as I did for Miyuki in Lucky Star. There Is Something Wrong With Me.

As for the actual episode itself, there is little to say. It does take an oddly long time for Yui to join the Light Music Club; I say "oddly" because I could be biased by knowing what the series is supposed to be about. We know that Yui's going to join up, and taking most of the episode for her to do so just feels like teasing the audience. Still, I enjoyed it, which is all I ask for in my entertainment. (Why did I enjoy it, you may ask? Please note the title of this blog.)

Finally, I have been accused of being a KyoAni fanboy. This is like accusing a beer-lover of being a Guinness fanboy; from an extremely stretched definition it is true, but it fails to address the main point: I am a moe fanboy, and it doesn't matter who draws the cute girls, as long as the cute girls are present. Thus, it is more proper to say that I am also a lolicon a KyoAni fanboy.

Also on my to-watch list, which is by no means the same as my to-follow list, are Asura Cryin (ghost in the mecha, or some strange bizarreness in that general direction), as well as the much-mocked Queen's Blade (containing copious amounts of breasts bosoms melons milk factories busts funbags knockers boobies jugs jubblies stonking great tits).