K-On The Movie: A Betrayal of its Series and Genre - Part 2 - Graduation Trip Planning & Butchered HTT Shenanigans

Alright, so things didn't bode well when this movie started. What, with the illogical and unnecessary bait and switch and the nullifciation of Azusa's experiences with her friends and all, but hey, we got another 92 minutes to go, it has plenty of time to get back on track or break itself even further, but hey, better to be hopeful about this, so lets continue our journey through the K-On Movie, shall we?

After a moment where Yui is sat on her bed, still thinking about what Azusa would want, we cut to the next morning where we get an admittedly cute moment between her and Mugi as they meet up on the way to school, and upon also meeting up with Ritsu and Mio, they discuss if anyone had come up with any ideas for Azusa’s graduation gift. Then, Yui and Mugi mention that they fell asleep trying to think of something, with the latter also bringing up that she slept with her socks on, which leads to Mio saying that she takes them off when she sleeps, and Yui and Ritsu respond by acting like she meant she takes her panties off when she sleeps. And I'm just like, huh?!? I’m aware that they’re attempting a double entendre here, but it makes absolutely no sense. How can anyone hear what Mugi said, then hear Mio's response to that right after she says it, and then come to the conclusion of "Yeah, Mio sleeps without her panties on." It's just baffling, who put this joke into the script?

 

Anyways, they head into their classroom where Yui and Mugi overhear a group of students talking about a graduation trip, which makes them want to go on one, but Ritsu says nah because focusing on Azusa’s graduation gift is more important, only for her to say that they should go on one the instant we cut to them in the club room, because Ritsu. Mio shoots down the idea because Ritsu’s always a procrastinator, feeling that the same thing will apply with Azusa’s gift once the graduation trip is said and done, which is definitely not going to be indicative of what happens later in the movie with no self awareness. Surely that wouldn’t be the case. And now we get a continuation of where the scene I covered at the end of the first part of this analysis left off, as Yui tells the others that Ui suggested they should stay back a year. And just as she states “staying back a year”, Azusa comes into the club room at the exact moment for her to hear only that, but not any other part of the conversation, which is then followed up by everyone being surprised that she appeared, which is THEN followed up by Yui trying stupid ways to cover it up! 

Uh, what the hell just happened there?!? Okay, putting aside Azusa only hearing that part of the conversation as she came into the room when she could hear a goddamn cassette at a low volume from a much further distance earlier, putting aside that Ritsu, Mio and Mugi end up being surprised that Azusa came in at the exact point she enters their eyesight despite the obvious sound effect of the door opening being triggered a second before, on top of them being right in the line of sight of the door when it opened, putting aside the fact that their reactions feel incredibly overblown, and putting aside the fact that Yui’s attempts to cover it up made me want to cringe out of existence, I cannot understate how much the astronomically convenient timing for Azusa to come into the room to hear Yui mentioning staying back a year, but not at any other point in the conversation where she could have been able to have more context of the situation, is going to shatter this movie later down the line, on top of culminating in this incredibly awkward and unfunny scene. Not that it’s keeping itself together currently, but you’ll see what I mean very soon. After that cringefest and Mugi's admittedly clever cover-up, Azusa's suspicions are dropped for the time being, and HTT begin their discussion about where they should go for theirn graduation trip.

They all mention the locations they wanna go to, with Ritsu wanting to go to Dubai in spite of her expressing her desire to go to Hawaii in the Season 2 OVA titled Plan, Yui wanting to go anywhere in Europe, Mugi just wanting to go to a hot spring, and Mio wanting to go to London, which could be the perfect place for this movie to be set in. Taking a band named Ho-kago Tea Time to a place that’s best known for their tea on a grand trip is full of possibilities that I’m certain the movie will take full advantage of. They ask Azusa what location she’d like to go to, where she says she doesn't know as she's not graduating yet, and while she’s feeding Ton-chan, it seems like this movie wasn’t done with the nonsensical conversations, because we now get another one right here.

  

I genuinely do not know how much more of this my brain can take, because not a single line said here added up at all. First, It’s at least been 5 minutes since Ritsu brought up the idea for everyone to go on a graduation trip, and a minute later than that, Mugi said that they’re trying to decide where to go. That’s when the graduation trip was decided on, and I don’t buy for a second that Mio would forget something that only happened that long ago. Second, what the fuck is Ritsu talking about? What flow were they going with in the first place that led up to wanting to go on a graduation trip? She looks at Yui a second after saying this, but that’s even more confusing because what exactly did Yui do here? Third, WHY IS SHE APOLOGISING?!? This implies she knows she did something to lead up to wanting to go on a graduation trip, but what the fuck did she do?! And furthermore, what reason would she have to feel guilty over this? She wasn’t being scolded by anyone here! And fourth, why are you all whispering the moment Azusa isn’t in earshot?! You’re not discussing her graduation gift, you’re just continuing your graduation trip discussion, something that you’ve made Azusa entirely aware of. Nothing that either of you have said is going to draw suspicion for Azusa, nor will it risk revealing the fact that you’re planning a graduation gift for her. Is asking for coherent conversations between these characters too much to ask for? Because we've gotten a constant string of them when they were never this disjointed in the show.

Yui suggests that they should do a ghostleg lottery to decide which place they should go to, and said lottery involves drawing some pathways, getting Ritsu to pick one and Yui drawing along the selected pathway to reveal the location while she and Mugi sing a cute melody in the rhythm of the Can-Can. And from the looks of it, it seems like Europe has been decided! But Ritsu wonders which part of Europe they're going to, and Mio tells her to ask Yui about it despite the fact that Ritsu was literally looking at Yui when she asked that! What was the point of Mio making that remark when Ritsu's questioning clearly wasn't directed at her? 

 

Then Azusa asks to see the paper, and Yui starts sweating nervously and proceeds to fumble about and I don’t really have the words for how painful this is to see unfold. But not as painful as the bullshit we’re going to see once Yui falls. Ritsu runs over to Yui, who acts like she’s about to fucking die and then saying that she's finally able to bend her fingers like what's shown in the image below. Okay, when were you ever aiming to bend your fingers like that? Literally when? Because last time I checked, when you and Ritsu were doing this act in the episode Hot, you said you wanted to snap your fingers before you die. God, you can’t even follow up a joke from the original series consistently?! 

Then Azusa grabs the paper and reveals that Yui rigged the lottery by having all the choices be Europe, causing Yui to break her act, and Azusa commenting that she saw through what she was doing. Ah, so you know that Yui sucks at hiding things. That’s good to know. Really nice to see how much you’ve come to know Yui throughout the years you’ve spent with her. I wonder if you'll stick by that later in this movie, but I don't have any doubts. Ritsu and Azusa show unamusement towards Yui's cheat while Mugi happily calls her incredible for it, but seconds after she says that, Mio remarks that they're not praising her?!? WHAT?!? How can anyone say that someone is incredible and use it in a way that’s not fucking praise?! Plus, Mugi’s the only one here who’s smiling at Yui’s lottery cheat. How is this not praise from her?!? So because everyone else was unamused by Yui’s cheating, they promptly punish her by sticking the paper that now has a funny drawing on the back of it on her face, and then Mio decides to fucking TAKE A PICTURE OF YUI AS SHE’S CRYING FROM EMBARASSMENT, FOLLOWED UP WITH HER AND THE OTHERS LAUGHING AT HER!!! 

Okay, first off, Mio would never fucking do this! She just wouldn’t! She would never just casually take a picture of someone who clearly feels embarrassed considering everything that she herself has had to deal with! Second, why does everyone proceed to laugh at Yui after Mio takes a picture of her like that?! We can’t see Mio and Mugi’s faces in this shot right now, but Azusa’s just watching casually and Ritsu still looks unamused at Yui even with that funny paper on her face. If it’s really that funny, then why weren’t any of you laughing before Mio took the picture?! And third, why is Mugi laughing at this?!? She’s the only one who wasn’t pissed at Yui for cheating the lottery, and in fact, praised her for it! Why is she finding amusement in Yui’s embarrassment alongside everyone else? Am I supposed to be laughing at Yui alongside the others because she “deserved it for cheating”?! Because I’m not. It’s more infuriating that this moment played out the way that it did! But then the scene is topped off with this nonsense!

WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON ANYMORE?!? What the hell did Yui trip over?!? A part of me assumed that she had tripped over the leg of Ritsu’s chair, but you can see her feet below the table and she’s nowhere near it before she falls, so why did she fall over?! And what’s with Ritsu’s line of dialogue here?! What did Yui do here that caused her to say this in that specific tone?!? What is this fucking scene, who put together this script?!? I'm almost starting to lose track of what's happening because of the non-stop disjointed dialogue exchanges, so can we please get a breather with the next scene?

 

They decide to go through with the option of having Ton-chan vote for the graduation trip location by placing teacups in his tank with the chosen locations labeled on each one. Yui mentions that she feels like the Europe cup is smaller than the other ones, and Ritsu says that it's to punish the cheater. Seriously? You didn't notice this when the cups were being chosen? Or when they were being placed in the tank? Or at any other point in the duration you were looking directly at the tank close up?! It only seems normal here because they skipped past that entire process, but it's literally impossible for Yui to have only noticed now. Also, you only get a feeling that the cup is smaller? You are up close to the tank right now, and the difference between the size of your cup and the other cups is not at all minor! Also also, if Yui seriously deserved a punishment for the lottery cheat, then why didn’t the others just go with this from the beginning instead of one where everyone else got amusement out of her embarrassment?!?

Anyways, some time passes and Ton-chan still hasn’t picked a cup. But then Yui notices that Ton-chan is swimming in front of the Europe cup, meaning that in spite of everything, Yui won this and they’re going to whichever part of Europe she dec.. NOPE! Because as we get a closer look, Ton-chan was, touching the London cup?!? HOW?!? LITERALLY HOW?!? How is he fucking touching the London cup! How did it get to this? Oh, I know how! Because they cheat with the shots to make it seem Ton-chan is positioned a specific way in one angle, but is actually in an entirely different one from another, but instead of cleverly showcasing that, they just didn’t even try. Look at these shots very carefully.

   

In the first shot, Ton-chan is in front of the Europe cup, and seemingly in front of the London cup handle, in the second shot, he’s further away from the London cup, in the third shot, his leg seems to be slightly behind the London cup, and then, in the fourth and final shot, his leg is right under the London cup handle. And none of these shots add up. They purposely positioned Ton-chan differently in each shot, with no natural connection or correlation between any of them for the final one to make sense. On all accounts, Europe should have been picked, but I guess because we can’t have Yui feel any level of satisfaction or victory for 5 seconds after the lottery cheat, they bullshitted their way out of her winning. And before anyone says anything, the outcome of the rest of the movie hinges on the fact that London was specifically picked, so this is far from just a minor thing to be hung up over. This scene is critical to how the rest of the movie plays out, and the fact that they couldn’t even come up with a logical reason for that to happen is baffling to say the least “But London is in Europe, so isn’t Yui getting exactly what she wants either way?” Yeah, if only we actually saw her feeling happy about ithat fact. But instead, we get her asking how far “Europe Europe” is, which leads to Azusa making a remark about how she feels sorry for the college she got into (this will be important later), while Mio is overjoyed over London being picked. It would have been nice to see if not for the fact that they had to drag Yui down this much to even get to this point, but whatever.

   

I'll be touching on this later, but this is the movie's only attempt at being expressive with its character animation, and it looks tacky as fuck. Take that how you will.

 

Mugi mentions that they can have afternoon tea in London as that is a country best known for it, meaning that this movie is fully aware of the potential that bringing this band to London holds, and I fully expect it to live up to that potential, because it would be really, REALLY awkward if they didn't. Anyways, she also brings up that since there's five of them, they'll need to book two rooms with a 2 by 3 split, but Azusa is hesitant to join them on the trip, since it's their graduation trip and not hers, and she still has school. sigh It looks like we're back to the Azusa Nakano character assassination, because I was definitely thinking the movie hadn't done enough to shit all over her character. We've already covered nullifying her positive experiences with her friends, now we're going through the process of this movie emotionally distancing her from the rest of them! Why the hell is she this goddamn hesitant to join her friends on a graduation trip?! I don't care if she's not graduating yet, there is absolutely no reason for her to not be okay with her friends bringing her along with them for their journey without a second thought! 

This movie hasn’t forgotten about Plan since they referenced Ritsu’s previous desire to go to Hawaii from that OVA, and that was where they even got the passports that allow them to go on this trip in the first place, so we really need to look back on that, especially given that it’s supposedly the prequel to this film. The plot for it was that HTT wanted to make plans for a graduation retreat, and when they’re at a fast food place discussing it, Yui tells Azusa that she's coming with them, but here, she never hesitated or expressed any uncertainty over the fact that her closest friends wanted to bring her along with their plans for a trip despite the fact that she's not graduating yet. The most she ever questioned was if they should be doing this at all given that, at the time, summer classes were upcoming, but beyond that, she didn't have any concerns or any sense of uncertainty, because there wouldn’t be much reason for her to be hesitant about joining her closest friends on an overseas trip when the friends in question want you to come along. 

Unless, of course, you’re K-On The Movie and you want to disregard all of that to continue making Azusa feel like she doesn’t belong in the light music club, to the point where it takes nearly a minute worth of convincing from her friends that she won’t just be in the way for her to eventually agree to come along after it’s revealed that there’s a 5 day break after the second year finals. Love the consistency here, guys. Azusa decides to call her mother for permission to go on the trip, and after she's done, she expresses a lot of happiness outside the club room doors from her mother saying yes, but when she comes back in, she clears her throat as she keeps her composure and then says that she'll have to stay level-headed during the trip. What?!? What do you mean you’ll have to stay level-headed? Are you trying to tell me that you feel like you have to keep your emotions in check around the rest of HTT?! Are you fucking serious?! You’ve had no issue expressing your happiness and excitement around them throughout the entire series, and it seemed quite clear that you felt more and more comfortable with showing those positive emotions the closer you got with them. But I guess that doesn’t mean anything at all now because for some reason you’re being written as someone who rarely ever expresses any emotion. Kill me. 

But moving on, we cut to nighttime as Yui is talking with Nodoka about going to London. She brings up everything that happened during the scene we saw earlier and then says that they're going to London, not England, as Nodoka had wondered why they wanted to go to England so badly. And then Nodoka reluctantly breaks to Yui that London is in England, with Yui having a confused reaction to that. Uhhhh, what? We literally had a scene that showcased Yui’s lack of understanding when it came to London’s location 3 minutes ago. Why do we need another one? Especially when this one makes less sense. Did Nodoka really think Yui was gonna have a viscerally negative reaction to London being in England? I know she expressed her disgust for the language before, but that doesn’t mean she’d want to avoid the country at all costs. Heck, we've seen her show an interest in the country in Plan when Mio talked about it. But what they show of Yui’s reaction leaves me the most baffled. They show her going “Hm?” and then they immediately cut to the next scene. Wha- Why di- What was the point of that?

Anyways, the next day, Azusa and Ui go to a bookstore, with the former picking out books related to London for the sake of research so the trip goes as smoothly as possible, because a character like her would absolutely want to take everything into account. You know what a character like her wouldn't want to do, though? Have no faith in her friends helping her, because when Ui comments that Azusa has a lot of books, she says that she has to do the research because no-one else will! Okay, I understand not expecting Yui or Ritsu to be able to help, but why do you have no faith in Mio or Mugi doing that? There's no way you don’t know about the former’s love for English band culture given how passionate she has been with that kind of stuff, with said passion even being shown shortly after this scene, and her being the one who wanted to go to London in the first place, or the latter’s amount of cultural knowledge on top of being the type of person who wouldn’t hesitate to help with preparing for this kind of stuff.

With all that in mind, plus both of them being more mature than the other 2 and that being one of the things you admired Mio for, it makes no sense that you’d suddenly group them alongside Yui and Ritsu as not caring enough to research London! While Azusa’s spouting this garbage, she mentions that she feels like Yui is keeping a secret from her, to which Ui says that she doesn’t think she could keep any at all, and Azusa agrees with that, because as far as she knows, Yui isn’t the type of person who’s capable of doing that, and Ui knows Yui better than literally anybody else.. Don’t. Forget. This. Scene. Keep it in mind for later. Do not let it slip for a single second. It is going to become more critical to the integrity of this movie's plot than you could ever imagine

 

Then we cut to HTT visiting a travel agent to book a travel itinerary for London, listing out the areas they want to check out in the city, including a cafe and the homes of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and David Bowie. Can’t wait to see them actually visit all these places. The desk woman then suggests that they take a personal trip if they want to go sightseeing, which Yui and Ritsu are happy to do. Next, Yui runs into the walking contradictions that are the Occult Club members (imagine having the main crux of the beginning of the series be that a club will be disbanded without 4 members, only for these fuckers to have one with only two, what the fuck) who she tells about the light music club’s planned graduation trip to London, and there's nothing to really note here, so moving on. Azusa is writing out the itinerary for the trip, and when Yui and Ritsu confirm that they’ve picked out everywhere they wanna go in London, she gets ready to go sort it out.

But before she goes, Mio asks if she’s sure she doesn’t need any help, and that’s when she realizes that she’s not as obligated to do the trip planning all by herself as she thought, and happily accepts Mio’s off- NOPE! Instead, she tells Mio that she doesn't need the help because she loves planning things!

You cannot be fucking serious right now. 3 minutes ago, you were complaining about how you had to do the research on London because you thought no-one else would bother, and said research obviously has to be part of the planning process, and yet the moment that sentiment is contradicted, you deny the help? Why?!? And if you really love planning things as much as you say here, then why did you sound like you didn’t want to do it in the earlier scene? But if you want to make the argument that Azusa’s keeping her true feelings about being the one to plan everything out hidden from her friends, then that’s even worse because that’s yet another blow to her character. I previously mentioned that she had no issue expressing her positive emotions to her friends, but it’s also true on the other end. Discomfort, anger, sadness and unamusement were all emotions she felt during her time in the light music club, and she never kept them hidden. Yet that’s all thrown out the window because I guess this movie has to emotionally distance Azusa from the rest of the band as much as possible, but what is being gained from doing this?! By this point, what Yui said about the light music club not being complete without Azusa during the scene where she hesitated to join them on the London trip is becoming harder and harder to buy.

Then once Azusa leaves, Ritsu kicks Sawako out of the club room so they can continue their discussion about Azusa’s graduation gif… Wait, wait, wait, wait, it’s sunset now?!? I… What?!? It literally took that long to kick Sawako out of the club room?! Unless it didn’t take that long, then the argument would simply shift from “it shouldn’t have taken this long” to WHAT WERE YOU FUCKS DOING AFTER YOU KICKED SAWAKO OUT?!? They clearly didn’t start the discussion the moment she was out, because there’s no way Yui would be asking what they should get for Azusa almost immediately after the cut to the scene if they did. They might as well have kept Sawako around if they were just gonna spend all this time dicking around once she was out.

 
 

Anyways, yeah, they continue their discussion about Azusa’s graduation present, and as Yui looks around for hints, she sees that Azusa left her guitar behind. How did none of you notice until now? a A significant amount of time must have passed if it’s currently sunset, and as I just mentioned, the discussion didn’t start until now, so if you weren’t busy with that, then how come it took this long to see that Azusa’s guitar was still in the club room? But whatever, Yui runs over to Muttan, and after she says that Azusa left Muttan behind, Mio remarks that it's Mustang! Oh, fuck off! They make this out as Yui being a weirdo for nicknaming Azusa's guitar, except for the fact that it was literally Azusa who gave her guitar that nickname! She even said this in earshot of Mio in Yet Another School Festival!

 
 

Did Mio suddenly go deaf, then? At this point, I already want her to stop making remarks towards shit! Every single one she's made so far has either been completely unnecessary or made absolutely no sense!

Yui decides to ask Muttan for gift ideas, but oh no, she accidentally causes it to almost fall over, so she frantically jumps in and takes the fall for it, and as she hears the guitar strings upon impact, she suddenly gets an idea, which doesn’t register to Ritsu or Mugi right away, because they interpet it as Yui taking a fall that briefly damaged her brain, and assume that she meant a train track, a trick and a track field each time she says track! Bruh, have these two literally never heard anyone refer to a song as a track before?! Or use that word in any music related way?!? Man, I sure do love when jokes are horrifically dragged out like this, especially when they have to reduce the brain cells of the characters to make it happen. Truly the pinnacle of comedy. And the idiocy doesn’t even stop here, because once it finally registers to the others that Yui’s idea is to write a song for Azusa, she says that Ui told her that Azusa loves the light music club and its music! NO! ACTUALLY FUCKING NO! What Ui actually ended up telling you is that Azusa only has negative things to say about the light music club, and that it was all she talked about. It was already ridiculous that you thought being reminded of the reason Azusa joined at all was enough to make up for that, but there’s no way you believe that it suddenly links to her loving the light music club, especially given that her feelings towards HTT’s music were not brought up once during that discussion! And I’m definitely not buying into that sentiment after how much this movie has attempted to emotionally distance Azusa from the rest of the band throughout several scenes prior to this point!

Moving on, Yui wants to write a song for Azusa that’s on a bigger scale than anything else they’ve ever written, being another great showcase of Yui’s immense determination when it comes to her friends, wanting to send Azusa off in the best way imaginable. Shortly after, Azusa comes back into the club room to get her guitar that she left behind and, jokingly says good morning? Huh? What was… why did… sigh, just forget it. And the others are once again surprised that she’s here, but this time it actually feels at least a bit more natural and is far less painfully awkward compared to last time, since they were all lost in thought by the time she came in.. I’ll give credit there. Unfortunately, I’ll have to immediately get rid of that credit because the moment Yui gives Muttan back to Azusa, she checks the bag to see if anything weird happened to it.. Okay, just to clarify, Azusa checking to see if her guitar’s okay after seeing Yui holding onto it isn’t the issue here. The problem comes with what she says, the tone she says it in and her expression after seeing that nothing’s wrong with it.

 

A part of me wanted to give the benefit of the doubt that she was just quickly checking that her guitar didn’t unintentionally get damaged in any way by Yui, but the way it’s being expressed is giving off the impression that she thinks something more suspicious happened. Like, god damn, Azusa, what did you think Yui did? Place a pipe bomb in your guitar bag? Anyways, Azusa leaves while acting like nothing’s wrong and thinks about how the others looked uncharacteristically serious, raising her suspicions towards all of them once again. 

And that's all I'm covering for now. This was a bit shorter than the last part, but sweet mother of Ton-chan, has this movie only sent itself deeper down a hole. The entirety of these last 19 minutes just consisted of heavily disjointed dialogue, more logic breaks to the story, comedy that was more baffling than funny, and not only has Azusa been damaged even more as character, Mio's also gotten a heavy dose of it with her nonsensical remarks and especially what she did to Yui. All of this in a colossally botched attempt to capture the charm and appeal of HTT's antics. Sadly, all of this is still only a taste of what's to come. Because after this point, HTT are about to start their London journey, and believe me when I say that the cavalcade of idiocy that will unfold on their way to their hotel is gonna be a lot to handle, so be prepared for that next time.

Thanks again for reading if you enjoyed this, and stay tuned for Part 3 of K-On The Movie: A Betrayal of its Series and Genre. Solaris/Indigo out.

   

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