K-On The Movie: A Betrayal of its Series and Genre - Part 4 - London Sightseeing, Yui and Azusa Semi-Conflict & Yui's Mistreatment
As of the time I'm writing this, I've made a start on Sonic Battle, a Sonic fighting game for the Game Boy Advance, and it's been so much of a blast that it's pretty much become one of my favourite Sonic games now. The joy I've been getting from it has definitely helped me regain my braincells and sanity from trying to comprehend the sushi bar bullshit, so I'm in the right headspace to continue ripping this movie apart. With all that out of the way, let's get back into the story.
HTT are finally at their hotel rooms, and a cold and hungry Yui realises that Ui packed some food for her, which I assume is meant to be an alleviation that the sushi bar scene ended with HTT not eating at all, but it actually isn't, because Ritsu mentions that there isn't a microwave in either hotel room to cook any of the food that Ui packed, so this doesn't really change anything. While Ritsu and Mugi are playing around in their school uniforms (with Mio also being in hers for some reason), Yui comes back from her bath and tries activating an appliance that proceeds to spark electricity on her because she didn't use a transformer. I have no idea what just happened there, but this little moment is gonna become crucial later, so you might want to take notes here.
Next, we cut to Azusa having a dream with oddly disturbing music playing in the background. And what is this dream about, exactly? Well, it turns out it’s about Yui holding herself back a year, and it’s all clearly framed as some sort of nightmare for her, which makes sense considering that Yui staying back a year would obviously be a terrible thing fo… WAIT, WAIT, WAIT WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WHAT THE FUCK?!? AZUSA’S HAVING A NIGHTMARE ABOUT YUI STAYING BACK A YEAR?!? WHY IS SHE HAVING A NIGHTMARE ABOUT YUI STAYING BACK A YEAR?!? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!? WHY COULD AZUSA EVER THINK THAT YUI IS STILL HIDING THIS FROM HER?! AFTER SHE SAW WITH HER OWN EYES THAT YUI SUCKS AT HIDING THINGS WHEN SHE TRIED COVERING UP THE GRADUATION TRIP LOTTERY CHEAT?!? AFTER UI, THE ONE PERSON IN THE ENTIRE WORLD THAT KNOWS YUI BETTER THAN LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE, SAID...
AND AFTER THE SEVERAL DAYS THAT PASSED WHILE SHE AND THE OTHERS WERE PREPARING FOR THE GRADUATION TRIP?!? AFTER ALL THIS, SHE'S JUST GOING TO LET THE ONE SINGLE INSTANCE WHERE SHE OVERHEARD YUI SAY “REPEATING A YEAR” LIVE RENT FREE IN HER HEAD?!? Plus, she only seemed to overhear those words with no context whatsoever, so for all she knows, Yui could have meant something else when she said that considering the wide possibilities regarding what she said before. She could have said “No-one’s repeating a year” or “Sawa-chan mentioned repeating a year” or listed it alongside the things she wouldn’t want to do before graduating, or just said it randomly without any context whatsoever! All of these possibilities and alternatives are on the table, and Azusa never considers any of them, just going with the outcome that would be the most horrifying for her.
Remember in the episode Romeo and Juilet where she thought that because the others were so focused on their Romeo and Juilet play, they didn’t care about the light music club, but shot that down almost immediately and gave them the benefit of the doubt knowing that it made sense for them to work as hard as they did on it because it was a major event for their entire class? And how it was another showcase of how close Azusa had become with them as it proved how much she trusted them to not bail on her like that? Yeah, well, not anymore. Now she thinks about the worst outcome for a single out of context thing that Yui said for days on end. Awesome. What even was the catalyst for Azusa suspecting this stuff again? The scene where Azusa checked to see if anything was wrong with her guitar was when she started suspecting Yui again? Because if that's meant to be it, then, one, days had passed between then and the day where they went to the airport, and two, literally all 4 of them were acting weird there. How would that add up to Azusa knowing exactly what Yui could be hiding from her? Why doesn’t she end up having weird dreams about any of the other 3 if that’s meant to be the justification?! Nothing about ths makes any sense at all! And this colossal bullshit is what kicks off the semi-conflict between Yui and Azusa. Because the last time K-On attempted to have conflict like this in the episode Crisis, it worked soooooooo well. By the way, when I say “semi-conflict”, I mean that Yui has no idea what’s going on while Azusa is acting differently towards her, but it’s no less frustrating than a normal conflict, and it’s easily one of the worst written ones I’ve seen in any piece of media ever. Why? Well, you’ll get to see how bad things get as we go through this part of the analysis. But we’re already off to a terrible start with it because this shouldn't even be happening in the first place.
And it’s about to get even worse, because after waking up and getting out of her bed, Azusa notices Yui’s notepad on her bed, which was definitely due to her trying to think of song lyrics again, and when she gets a closer look of the notepad, she finds that “Azu-nyan Love” is written on it alongside a doodle of her as a cat, and as a result, this is how Azusa reacts!
Okay... can I just... like... use this meme to explain why this doesn't work?
No? Not good enough? Okay, fine, I'll actually explain why everything about this is broken. Why the hell is Azusa acting so horrified by that note as if this level of affection isn't normal for Yui to give to her? Oh wait, is it because upon seeing that, Azusa thought that Yui genuinely has romantic feelings for her? Okay, I guess that makes sense, after all, Azusa never really… WAIT, NO IT FUCKING DOESN’T!!! How is “Azu-nyan Love” any different from the affection that Yui has been giving her throughout the series?! Now yes, Azusa definitely didn’t like said affection throughout the series most of the time, but her feelings towards Yui fawning over her were those of apathy at best and annoyance at worst. And let’s go through some of these affectionate moments that Azusa has fallen victim to for the sake of comparison, shall we? Being hugged by her on several occasions is the most obvious example, but some other standouts are Yui saying that she’ll always have a place in her heart for Azusa when the topic of how she treats her guitar like a lover is brought up, Yui sniffing Azusa when she and the others return from their summer festival trip, Yui trying to kiss Azusa, etc. And despite her annoyance towards all those listed examples, Azusa never came to the assumption that Yui liked her in that kind of way, nor did she act like she was ever a creep for any of it. But I guess it makes all the fucking difference when said affection is written in a notepad. And if it’s because of the Azusa cat doodle Yui drew that’s making her uncomfortable because it’s so creepy, please excuse me while I punch a wall in response. This isn’t the first time Yui drew Azusa with cat features. It was presented as a cute little thing that Azusa was annoyed by in Finals, but now I’m expected to believe that it further justifies Azusa being horrified over this? Nice try, movie. Your bullshit hasn’t worked on me up until this point, and it’s not gonna work on me here.
Now, you may say “But what about the scenes where Yui tried to kiss Azusa? She was more than annoyed by those advances, and she actually slapped her in one of them, clearly showcasing that Azusa doesn’t like Yui in a romantic way and is incredibly discomforted by anything remotely relating to that from Yui.” and come to the conclusion that her reaction here makes sense. But then you actually think about it for 10 seconds and realize that in those instances, Azusa felt that Yui was taking her affection too far and acted accordingly. There was nothing that implied that she genuinely started to think Yui had romantic feelings for her. And even then, even fucking then, when you combine those scenes together, you see that there Azusa goes from slapping Yui to pushing her face away, meaning that she learnt to deal with Yui sporadically trying to kiss her better, and it’s definitely apparent that she never saw her as a creep during or after those scenes. With all this in mind, and after spending two years with someone who has been consistently affectionate with her, completely void of any romantic hints that she would believe, please tell me how it makes any sense for Azusa to treat Yui’s written affection as this horrible, creepy thing. And if you wanted her to have an exaggerated reaction to that, have her be pissed from discomfort that Yui is still continuing this kind of stuff with her. It would be perfectly in character for her given the nature of the scenes where Yui tried to kiss her. But hey, she had just woken up from a sleep after having nightmares about Yui (that don’t make any sense, but whatever), so surely she’ll forget about it in the next morning since there’s no way she would actually believe Yui has romantic feelings for her. RIGHT?!? I guess we’ll find out soon enough because it’s now time to see what happens the next day.
Really? HTT's day of sightseeing London is relegated to a montage that doesn't even last 2 minutes? Isn't this supposed to be, you know, the main purpose of the trip in the first place? Too many minutes were wasted with that broken disaster of a sushi bar scene that led to pretty much nothing, but I guess when the characters finally get to just enjoy London to the fullest now that they can actually do stuff, we get to see very little of it. Because why would we want to see characters making the most out of their graduation trip in an entirely new location in a slice of life anime movie? What a ridiculous concept, right? And before you say "London isn't the main point of the movie, it's seeing the friendship between these girls prevail in every scenario", I just wanna add that spending minimal time on the London trip like this also means we don't get to see more of the friendship between the cast. And this is giving the benefit of the doubt that the movie even properly showcased the friendship between HTT prior to this point, because it really hasn't, especially with how much it's distanced Azusa from the rest of the band and that moment in the sushi bar where Yui was treated like a weirdo for being pumped to perform.
But whatever, maybe there's something actually substantial in this montage, so let's look through it, shall we? Okay, so, I find the pigeons sitting on a clock in one shot oddly humorous, a lot of the shots here are pretty nice, we see that Azusa is keeping her distance from Yui, I wonder if Berry Blue Eyes is a good movie, and… HOLD UP! AZUSA’S DOING WHAT NOW?!? You’re telling me that she still believes Yui has romantic feelings for her because she saw fucking “Azu-nyan Love” and is trying to stay as far away from her as possible as a result?!? Why is this movie actually committing to this broken conflict?!? Remember like a minute ago when I mentioned how Azusa never saw Yui as a creep even when she tried to kiss her? Well, one major detail that drives that point home is that she doesn’t think about those instances after they’ve come and gone. After those scenes, she’s seen happily spending time with Yui, not feeling heavily uncomfortable every time she got up close to her because she was aware that Yui was just being Yui when she took her affections too far. And she’s not shown to be having a dead inside expression when around her the following days either. Don’t try to tell me that she won’t let nearly being kissed live rent free in her head, but she’ll let written affection get to her so much that she’ll want to avoid one of her closest friends completely, because it doesn’t hold up under any amount of scrutiny. But one part of the montage I really want to break down is starting from this shot, because it's more broken bullshit that further damages Mio's character to the point of character assassination on the same level as Azusa.
Yui is seen with her hand in a dog waste bin, unaware of what the text says. While Ritsu and Mugi join her in playing around during this, Mio is seen taking pictures of it with her camera.. But then, a woman comes up with a bag of dogshit, and upon realizing that she wants to put it in the bin that Yui put her hand in, Ritsu, Mio, Mugi and Azusa start running away from Yui, with Mio wanting to keep her distance from her the most! What beef does this movie have with Yui's mere existence?!? Because it seems to be doing everything to shit all over her! Remember that little moment where Mio read the bus times, implying that she could read English well enough? Well, that bin clearly had text on it saying “dog waste only”, and Mio just decided to take pictures of Yui putting her hand in it instead of telling her not to do it? You’ve gotta be kidding me. And that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that Mio is the one who wants to keep her distance from Yui more than anyone when the others realise that the bin was for dog waste. Literally why?!? You brought this on yourself for not warning Yui when you can fucikng read English! Actually wait, it doesn’t even make sense for the others to be running away from Yui right now. We can see in this shot that she didn’t put her hand deep enough into the bin to get a feel of any of the dog waste, so I doubt she caught the smell of it, and her hand certainly wouldn’t be covered in any of the dog waste, especially considering that they would have been in bags! Why are all of you being dicks to Yui right now and leaving her behind?!
Then we cut to HTT hoping to find someplace to rest after all the walking they’ve done. Azusa mentions that there’s a place nearby where they can have afternoon tea, and from the looks of it, this is the moment that at least a few of you have been waiting for. For Ho-kago Tea Time to finally get the chance to do their usual thing and enjoy afternoon tea in a location that’s best known for their tea. This’ll be great on several levels, especially given the build-up to this that we got before the trip even started! We’ll get another relaxing tea time scene after not getting one at all barring the beginning of the movie, the biggest potential of the HTT and London combo will finally be reached, and I’ll be able to get a break from the infuriating insanity that I've had to endure prior to this. Sure, I’m expecting a broken interaction or two, but who cares? HO-KAGO TEA TIME WILL FINALLY GET TO EXPERIENCE THE JOYS OF LONDON’S TEA TIME! And at the very least, it will be able to capture at least one aspect of the show that made it what it w-
WELL THEN, GUESS I WAS ASKING TOO MUCH OUT OF THE MOVIE FOR IT TO EVEN DO THIS! Not only has it wasted the insanely evident potential of this band drinking tea in a country best known for it, it was fully aware of it with how it teased the idea during this very scene and earlier on when they were discussing the planning. K-On as a whole is known as the cute slice of life where a group of girls goof off a lot eating cake and tea and playing music, so a scene that falls into the former in any capacity should be the bare minimum that this movie can achieve, but it seems like it can't even do this. It's just pathetic. Oh wait, I just remembered. They do get to have tea time in London. Where do they do it, exactly? On the fucking promo art. Yeah, there are two pieces of promo art where they’re happily having afternoon tea time, and yet a scene like that in the movie never happens. I've been hesitating to call the writing of this movie "lazy", but when I see stuff like this and the cut museum scene I mentioned earlier, I'm really getting off the vibe that the team behind this just didn't care an ounce to make this movie line up with the vibes and appeal of the show it's based on.
And as if everything about this "HTT drinking tea in London" handwave wasn't perplexing enough, It actually makes no logical sense for these characters to not be able to drink tea in London right now. The girls planned out their own travel itinerary, with Azusa asking the others on which places they want to see during the trip, and surely a place for afternoon tea time would’ve been mentioned by Yui or Mugi, AT LEAST. Because it sure as hell wouldn’t make sense for them not to bring it up, especially given how they mentioned London being best known for their tea before they even started preparing for their trip. Plus, Azusa got a lot of books from the bookstore prior to that to do research on London. How was there no mention that the cafe they wanted to go to required reservations, or when Azusa was getting the travel itinerary checked? Or when Mugi fucking mentioned wanting to go to a tea house when they were looking through a book that listed a lot of things in the London City?!? So yeah, this doesn’t even work as a reality check type of scene because there’s too much here that doesn’t add up to justify them not knowing about the fact that a reservation was required, but most importantly, why not just go find another cafe? There’s no chance in the world that every single one requires a reservation for tea time, and you have 3 days to explore as much of the city as you can. Plus, there’s no way any member of HTT would so easily give up on the idea of having tea in London, if for no other reason than to experience more of the culture and get the fullest taste of what the city is like! Although perhaps they did do it off-screen because of the artwork I brought up earlier, but it doesn't make this scene any less messy or baffling.
Anyways, they now make a trip to the London Eye, which I should be praising because they're actually visiting a landmark in the area, right? Well, sadly, it's not getting any points for this, for two reasons. The first is that this is immediately after the museum scene and the afternoon tea handwave, so it's 2 against 1 here, and the second is that they just use this as a way to enforce Mio's fear of spinning things by having her hesitate to come on the London Eye with the others at first, and I already explained why that doesn't work in the previous part of this analysis, so I'm not gonna dwell much on it again. Then Yui and Ritsu just casually drag her onto the London Eye and she actuallys enjoys being on it, so at the very least, the movie seems to have done away with this stupid fear as soon as it came. After that, we get two random scenarios that result in Ritsu and Mio respectively doing the "Azu-cat" gag, and I already mentioned why this doesn't make sense when they previously pulled it with Mugi, so onto the next scene.
But y'all better brace yourselves because we are now about to witness what may very well be the single worst scene in the whole movie. I’m a bit hesitant to call it the absolute worst, but it’s easily the most painful to sit through. Remember when I mentioned at the beginning of this analysis series that it took a while for me to catch onto why this movie didn’t click with me? What I mean by that is with nearly every single issue I’ve brought up prior to this, and every issue I’ll be mentioning later on in this video, it took a significant amount of time for me to realise how flawed or fundamentally broken 98% of this movie was. But this scene, this fucking scene that I’m about to talk about now, is one that I’ve hated ever since I first watched this film. So let me just run through everything that happens before I break down why it's an absolute disaster.
We cut to nighttime where the girls have headed back to the hotel, and when Ritsu, Mio and Mugi enter their room, Azusa tries to follow them, but Yui puts her hand on Azusa’s shoulder, prompting her to go inside with her. Then, deep breath, as the lights get turned on, Azusa turns back to Yui and sees her charging in for a kiss, and thinking said kiss is aimed at her, she fucking elbows Yui in the stomach, causing her to collapse on the floor, and then tells her that she’s not into that sort of thing. Then Yui brings up that she was trying to hug her guitar, causing Azusa to feel so guilty that she just runs to her bed and covers herself up inside before Yui goes up to her and falls asleep as she sings her a lullaby. What? In the actual fuck? Did I just see unfold on my screen? This is the point where I cannot believe that I am watching a movie based on motherfucking K-On right now.
First and foremost, Azusa spent an entire day sightseeing with the others, and she still hasn’t fucking let go of the bullshit idea that Yui has romantic feelings for her?! Literally why else would she be willing to leave Yui alone to join the others. And it’s really indicative of how much she’s wanted to avoid her throughout the entire day. Also, it's pretty clear that this scene was trying to be like those scenes from the show where Yui tried kissing Azusa, which leads me to my second point that I brought up earlier; When you look at both kiss scenes from the show, there's a detail between the two of them that I haven't seen mentioned by anyone else in the fandom. Azusa went from slapping Yui in Season 1, to just pushing her face away in Season 2. While most people will see these as just funny scenes where Azusa stops Yui from kissing her, and they are, the fact that she went for a less violent method the second time around is a great showcase of how much she and Yui have come to know each other over the years. Now compare that to K-On The Movie, where Azusa has now resorted to elbowing Yui in the stomach, which is significantly more painful than the slap from Season 1! This not only undoes the subtle development between the previous kiss scenes, but ends up being far more discomforting as a result.
Third, the justification for the kiss scenes happening in the first place is that they took place after heartwarming moments between Azusa and the others. With Season 1 having a rare moment where Azusa embraced Yui’s affection after being the most distraught over Yui being sick and her seemingly just coming back without a care in the world, and Season 2 being all the other light music club members reminding Azusa that they do care about the club and the upcoming school festival performance. Both of these moments were what drove Yui to want to take her affection with Azusa as far as she did. But don’t you remember? This movie has absolutely no confidence in being a K-On movie, so it decides to have a scene like this immediately after Azusa tried moving away from Yui because she clearly doesn’t want to be around her.
Fourth, the aftermath of the moments where Azusa reacted to Yui trying to kiss her didn’t last longer than 10 seconds, at most, because as I brought up earlier,, Azusa understood that Yui didn’t actually have romantic feelings for her and didn’t feel the need to think about it for long. Plus, it’s clear that those scenes were meant to be funny little moments that didn’t get dwelled on as serious things once they had passed. Not in this movie, though, because the aftermath and discomfort of Azusa elbowing Yui in the stomach lasts for the remaining 53 seconds of the scene. So, in all, this whole fucking scene is an atrocious recreation of the kiss scenes from this show, and if they were intentionally making a more discomforting version of them, it doesn't really matter, because the result is the same. And this is all without taking the reveal that Yui wasn't actually trying to kiss Azusa into consideration. Because it gets so much worse with that revelation!
Did Azusa just fucking go deaf when it was necessary for shit like this?! Because why would Yui say “I’m home” to her specifically when they spent the entire fucking day together?!?!? There is actually no logic behind that whatsoever! Now there's absolutely zero justification for Azusa elbowing Yui in the stomach, and that sentiment only serves to make this scene even more discomforting than it already was, and their attempt to lighten up the scene with Yui's lullaby sadly doesn't work because it focuses more on Azusa's guilt over it. Every bit of this scene just serves to make one feel bad, and isn't this supposed to be a K-On movie?
Also, THEY DID A HANDWAVE!!! AGAIN!!! One of Yui's quirks throughout the series was the affection she gave to her guitar, treating it as a romantic partner of sorts. It was actually a really cute thing that they had going with Yui, and yet, this movie makes the implication of having that be brought up again, but instead of actually going through with it, they felt that a scene like this would have been better, since Yui never gets the chance to give affection to her guitar in this scene or at any other point in this movie. It's almost like this movie is actively avoiding being like the series it's based on. It was pretty apparent when they baited an afternoon tea time scene earlier, and it’s clear as day here where a cute scene where Yui gives affection to her guitar is sidelined for a horrifically discomforting recreation of a joke from the series that only serves to ruin Azusa’s character more and drag Yui further through the dirt! And remember, the only reason this scene happened at all is because Azusa forgot who Yui was when she stumbled upon “Azu-nyan Love” being written in her notepad and kept the bullshit belief that she had romantic feelings for her throughout the entire day! "But Yui wasn't mentally affected by it, so it's completely fine." I'm sorry, exactly what is this supposed to change about this whole thing? The fact that she wasn't mentally affected does not mitigate her being attacked like that at all for essentially no reason, nor does it do anything to lighten up the tone at all!
What was this scene?! What did I just watch?! Who the hell wrote any part of this scene and thought it was good enough for the script?!? It's the culmination of every single problem I have with this movie. From the lack of logic behind why it's happening to the damage it does to the characters to the way it actively avoids being anything like the show in favour of discomforting nonsense, all brought to a huge low here!
Some time later, Mio is shown laughing at a picture that was taken of Yui being attacked by a dog, and… STOP! It’s literally only been 5 seconds since the last scene and things are already falling apart! Was there also a deleted scene where Yui stole a strawberry from Mio’s cake? Because I can’t see any other justification for why she’s treating Yui like garbage.
Here’s what I can assume happened from this picture: Mio ended up taking a picture of Yui at the exact moment she was attacked by the dog, and judging from the quality of the picture, she and others ran away from Yui immediately after the picture was taken. And you can’t fall back on the defense that they wouldn’t leave Yui behind in a situation like that when they had no issues running as far away from her as possible during the dog waste segment of the sightseeing montage. So with all this considered, it’s doubly frustrating that Mio is laughing at this picture right now.
Afterwards, Mio suddenly says that they're not here to look at pictures together, but what else do you need to be doing tonight that isn’t related to looking back on what you’ve done on the trip so far? Oh right, I almost forgot. They still need to come up with ideas for Azusa’s song. Silly me. They said they were gonna write the song in London before they prepared for it. How could I have forgotten something so important? But does this discussion go anywhere? Ehhhh, no. Because it pretty much boils down to them all sayng that they don't have any ideas at all as if they're just okay with that. I absolutely understand not being able to get the inspiration you would hope for, it's something I've gone through myself whenever I try to make songs, but aside from Yui expressing her desire to make it the biggest and grandest song they’ve ever written regardless, there are pretty much no other comments from anyone else that would even remotely imply they share that desire. But what do I know, maybe they will showcase it later in this movie. Moving on, Yui realises she forgot her room key, because of course she does, but Mio mentions that she can go through the back door. Then we cut to Azusa waking up and realizing that Yui is gone, later noticing a candy trail on the floor next to… NO! NO! NO! That did not fucking happen. We need to take a proper look at these two shots.
Look at the angle and height Azusa is at right now. She couldn’t have seen anything other than her bed sheets from where she was looking. But they cheat again by cutting from Azusa to the shot of the candy trails between the beds to make you think it makes any sense when it just doesn't! And furthermore, she’s clearly half asleep. Taking that into consideration, her vision would be heavily blurred, so even if she were able to see the sweets from the angle she was at, how was she able to see it when she’s half asleep in a pitch black room?! From my experience, you can barely see shit when you’re half asleep during the day. How is Azusa seeing anything properly right now Actually, scratch that, even if we accept both of these things as if they make any sense at all, Azusa’s first instinct upon seeing the candies is to follow the trail, and says...
…implying that she knows it’s Yui’s trail. Okay, first, what gave you the impression that Yui wasn’t intentionally leaving a trail of garbage earlier in the movie? When you picked up the trash, she brought up the fact that she thought she wouldn’t find her way back to the club room, and whined when you told her you had picked it all up. And second, why is your first instinct to follow the trail knowing that Yui’s gone? You spent the entire day up until this point trying to keep your distance from her, and actively wanted to go into the room with Ritsu and the others to avoid sleeping in the same room as her. Plus, the incoherent calamity that was you elbowing Yui in the stomach happened that you felt incredibly guilty over. I can’t exactly pinpoint if minutes or hours passed between then and Yui waking up and going to the other room, but there's no way that it was long enough for Azusa to suddenly be this concerned for Yui going missing. “But she’s half asleep, she’s clearly not thinking straight.” Well, she obviously can think clearly enough to recognise the candy trail when her vision would be blurred, and that Yui was the one who created this trail, but fine, let’s go by this argument. Why wouldn’t she fall right back to sleep knowing that she’s finally getting a breather from spending time with Yui that she’s wanted all day? But if you want to make the claim that Azusa’s following the trail because she’s suspicious of Yui, then the argument simply shifts from “Why does she care?” to WHAT THE FUCK?!? HOW CAN SHE STILL SUSPECT YUI?!? Minutes or hours ago, she was literally proven wrong about a suspicion she had about Yui throughout the entire day, but now she sees the candy trail, she goes back to suspecting her?!? And what could she even suspect Yui of here? If she has the capacity to conclude that Yui left a candy trail to the other room, then what could she possibly be doing that would initiate suspicion from her? For all she knows, she could have gone to the other room to enjoy sweets with the others, or gone to the bathroom there, or just wanted to spend some time with them without bothering her. All these options are on the table to think about, yet Azusa just goes with thinking Yui’s acting suspicious despite there being absolutely nothing to suspect her of in this specific instance.
Then we cut back to Yui going back into her room and leaving the candies she dropped for the others to eat, which leads Mio to say that she's... so random?!? WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE’S SO RANDOM?!? All Yui did before going back into her room was let you all have the candies she dropped because she’s kind and generous. How is this in any way random for her to do?! Do you even remember who Yui is?!? Why is this movie now taking a jab at her being kind to her friends?!? Hasn't she been shat on enough throughout these 8 minutes?!? And what follows this bullshit is a drawn out joke where after Yui heads into her room, Azusa appears in the other room, and when seeing that Yui isn’t there, she also enters the back door, making Yui think that Azusa’s gone missing, rinse and repeat a few times before Yui finds Azusa. It’s honestly the most tedious comedy in the movie with its mind numbing repetitiveness, but it’s also tonally at odds with what happened between Yui and Azusa earlier in the movie. We were subjected to a chain of discomforting events between the two that only happened due to bullshit that lacked any sort of coherency whatsoever, only to put them in a funny situation as if they never went through anything that could have potentially annihilated their friendship. Not that it isn’t already in tatters from a writing perspective, but still, how am I supposed to find this scene even remotely amusing when all the interactions between them prior to this have been incredibly discomforting, especially with the scene occurred less than 2 minutes ago? Unless this is how they want to resolve said tension, given how Azusa worries about Yui’s whereabouts when she properly wakes up. I really hope that’s the case because this semi-conflict has already made my brain explode.
Anyways, the phone suddenly rings, and after a few seconds of them all wondering who it could be, RItsu goes over to answer the phone, but it had already been hung up, so she takes the opportunity to make a joke about there being a murder, leading to Mio whacking her on the head and-
WHAT THE FUCK?!? Where is the comically large bump that Ritsu usually gets when Mio whacks her on the head? And if they had no intentions of showing the bump, why did they bother cutting away during the impact?! And why is there no comment or remark from Mio following this?! This is literally the most frequent running gag in the series and they just completely avoided every single element that made it effective in the first place! While not every instance had all of these, it had at least one of them and the level of exaggeration in both the animation or just seeing Mio's reaction afterwards always made this gag hilarious each time it was used. None of those are present here and it makes the gag feel insanely dry and lacking.
But before we move on from this scene, there’s one more thing I want to address. You guys probably never thought much about the combo of Ritsu, Mio and Mugi being in the same hotel room together. But we're going back to the interview now, because our beloved Naoko addressed it, alongside the combo of Yui and Azusa, and I still can’t believe what I ended up reading.
– The movie had a lot of scenes where Yui and Azusa were a combo, didn’t it?
Yamada: There were so many times where Yui wanted to head to Azusa during the training camp, vacation, etc, so I wonder if it’s just natural for her now. (laughs) Also I love the set of Ritsu/Mio/Tsumugi. The three initial members of the light music club are together. I could just hear Tsumugi asking Mio “How do you use this remote control?” That spontaneous mood is quite nice.
sigh First off, look, I’m not denying that Yui likes clinging onto Azusa and giving her affection a lot. But it’s not to the extent that Yui just goes up to hug her literally every single time she sees her. In fact, I can point out a few instances where Yui had the perfect opportunity to hug Azusa, but never did it at all. Like in Finals where Yui spends several days with just Azusa when studying for exams and practicing for the talent show, or Upperclassmen where Yui and Azusa spend a decent amount of time in the club room alone, or in Graduation Ceremont where she didn’t show any of her usual affection when Azusa was crying her eyes out over her and the others graduating. And she was the one who got up close to her when she noticed she hurt her head. Did you not look at these moments and see them as Yui slowly but surely learning to respect Azusa’s boundaries more? Heck, even if you just want to adhere to this movie, the only times where Yui ever thought about hugging Azusa were when that stupid back and forth hotel scene ended, and when Azusa wants to perform with the others for their classroom concert later on. So this idea that all Yui does is cling to Azusa every 10 seconds is absolute bullshit, and there’s even less of a justification for Azusa assuming that Yui has romantic feelings for her, which was already on straw as is.
Second, you love the combo of Ritsu, Mio and Mugi for them being the three initial members of the light music club, which is the main reason why you had them share a room together, yet didn’t you actually do anything with it? No really, there’s never a single moment in this scene, or the entire trip, for that matter, where the three share any interactions just by themselves. Like, come on, you even thought up a specific scenario in your head of what would happen between the three of them and mentioned how nice that spontaneous mood is, yet didn’t think about implementing a moment like that in the film. And if the justification for this is for the sake of pacing (again), then I would have more than happily been content with the semi-conflict being scrapped entirely because seeing a group dynamic that hardly got any focus in the series after the first episode would have been way more fulfilling than seeing one of the most prominent and best character dynamics get wasted and torn down due to a semi-conflict that lacked any logical reasons to happen at all. I’d say that this speaks volumes about how little confidence Naoko had in making a K-On movie.
And while I’m going on this tangent, it’s the same thing with the London trip. When I got to ask her about what making the movie was like in an interview that happened within the K-On community, she said that having the characters experience London was so great, and yet she relegated their day of sightseeing to a montage that didn’t even last two minutes, and didn’t even let them have a scene where they had afternoon tea during the trip.
Sorry, Yamada-san, that really doesn't show in the product you made.
And the lack of character dynamic utilisation doesn’t just end at the Ritsu/Mio/Mugi combo. The dynamics between the entire main group have felt almost non-existent up to this point in the film, with any interactions between them either being broken or not in line with what they were like in the series, which has also been a consequence of spending so little time on the characters actually enjoying the London trip. What made this the pinnacle of K-On, again? Okay, moving on, Yui is back in bed thinking about how she can come up with big lyrics for Azusa’s song when...
Well, it seems like the tension from the semi-conflict is still brewing, yet they still had that stupid back and forth scene less than a minute ago that concluded in a way that seemed like it would be squashed. As if we needed more time wasting scenes in a movie that already doesn't have any time to focus on what's important. And this is shortly after her suspicions about Yui having romantic feelings about her were proven wrong. How could she not think for a second that her other suspicion may also be false? This leads into the next scene where Azusa is fucking yawning, implying that this nightmare caused her to not sleep well at all, then she tells Yui, who is still thinking about a song for her, that she should blink every once in a while because she seems to be staring at her, and when she’s still doing that, she snaps at her telling her to stop staring at her. Okay, first off, you asked her to blink, and a second later, she did. A few times, actually, so why are you still annoyed? Second, where in the fuck else do you expect her to look? You act like it’s unnatural for Yui to be looking at you the way that she is, but have you considered that you’re sitting at the opposite side of her on the table? She’d literally be looking in your direction no matter what. And third, are we seriously at a point where of all things for Azusa to be this annoyed at Yui for, simply just looking at her is enough for her to be this pissed? Are we seriously doing this with the only character dynamic in the entire movie that has any sort of prominence throughout? laughs Okay, movie. Fuck off!
And to think that this scene is now iconic solely because of Azusa eating toast. :/
Yeah, since I've covered the entirety of the second day of the London trip, I think it's fitting to end this part here. The worst that this movie has to offer has really kicked in throughout HTT's second day in London, and sadly, it's only gonna prevail as they end up being part of a cultural festival performance, and deeper holes will be dug for the story and HTT's friendship as a whole before we reach the very end of this gruelling London trip.
Thanks once again for reading if you enjoyed this, and I'll see you all again for Part 5 of K-On The Movie: A Betrayal of its Series and Genre. Until then, I'll probably get back to finishing Sonic Battle, something that's actually good. Solaris/Indigo out. :)
This part really opened my eyes to some scenes
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