K-On The Movie: A Betrayal of its Series and Genre - Part 6 - Classroom Concert, Semi-Conflict Conclusion & Tenshi ni Fureta Yo Recreation

 

Okay, this is it. The final stretch. We are much closer to the end of K-On The Movie than we could have ever anticipated, enduring all of its unadulterated nonsense and blatant destruction of the series. And now, we only have 23 more minutes left to cover of this disaster. So let’s get this rollercoaster started again.

Yui is back home with Ui and Nodoka, showing off all the packs of tea bags that HTT bought in London.

sigh The London trip just ended, why is this the first thing we're reminded of as soon as they get back fr- Actually, hold up! You mean to tell me that HTT never tried looking for another cafe after that?! You’re never gonna get me to believe that every single cafe in London requires a reservation for tea, and I definitely do not believe that they’d give up so easily when experiencing what tea was like in London was one of the first things they mentioned wanting to do! Anyways, Ui brings up that Yui and the others did a performance at the cultural festival, and Nodoka says that she heard about it, wishing she could be there? Wait, literally how did you hear about this? HTT just got back from the London trip, where in the world did you get word that they performed there?! But then she reveals that everyone in Class 3-2 also heard about it?!? How the hell did that happen?!? I'm serious, the movie never gives any remote explanation for this. Not one line of dialogue that could subtly hint at how these Japanese fucks found out that the band from their class performed at a cultural festival in an entirely different country! It just wants us to accept that they heard about it, but that's not how anything works. One could give the heavy benefit of the doubt that Sawako texted a random student about it before they got on the airplane, but there's just one issue with that. The movie established that there was a 5 day school break after the final exams for the second years, and it's inexcusable to neglect this because if not for that 5 day break, Azusa never would have been able to join the rest of HTT on the London trip. So since no-one from Class 3-2 would have actually been in there, no matter who Sawako potentially texted, this wouldn't have spread until the very next day after HTT got back from London, yet here's Nodoka essentially saying that she and the rest of Class 3-2 had already heard about it by the time they returned! So the whole "Sawako texted a Class 3-2 student, so that's how the news spread" idea doesn't work here, not even mentioning how the movie itself doesn't do anything to hint towards that being the case.

Then we cut to the next day as the entirety of Class 3-2 shows intrigue about what HTT played there, and they're so amazed by the fact that HTT got to play in London that one of them mentiions that she'd like to hear them play one more time before they graduate. This gives HTT the idea to set up a concert in their classroom, and so they rush to the staff room to get Sawako's permission on that. She seems happily content with the idea as she remembers when she did one at this very school when she was a student, until...

 

...this guy enters the room. His name is Horigome, and we need to stop for a moment. because who the fuck actually is this guy? It’s something I’ve been trying to figure out for a while, but I’ve had conflicting results from the information available to me. According to the K-On wiki, Horigome made his first appearance in the episode Teacher in a flashback where Sawako turned in her application for the light music club to him when she was a student there, made another appearance in Yet Another School Festival on the left of Sawako when Yui decides to introduce her, and made his final one in the show in Graduation Ceremony where he was the announcer at the graduation ceremony. 

I, personally, would shoot down the third one because there’s no way he’d be the one announcing something as major as this when he’s meant to be a classical literature teacher, and the fact that we know from previous episodes that there was already a guy who is meant to be announcing this kind of stuff. But it’s not exactly out of the question to assume that his other two appearances are legitimately him. The confusion regarding his presence comes when we jump to K-On The Movie where Horigome looks like this. 

 

This had led some fans to believe that those other two appearances aren’t actually Horigome and that his VA voiced different characters. But that can’t be the case because his voice actor, Hideyuki Kanaya, has no other credits for K-On characters. And this isn’t something that would be completely unknown to anyone because Jun’s VA, Yoriko Nagata, has credits for voicing several background characters, on top of a few other VAs like Tomoko Nakamura and Mika Itou also being credited for similar voice roles. 

  

Yoriko's K-On roles

 Tomoko's K-On roles

 Mika's K-On roles

But no matter if Horigome appeared in the series before, or the movie is his only one, I have my issues either way. If it’s the former, then Horigome’s movie redesign is incredibly baffling. Like, come on. Are we meant to see these two as the same character? But if it’s the latter, then where the hell was he this whole time? The OP made it seem like he’s a frequent visitor at the staff room, but we’ve never seen him at all in any scenes that take place there, whether in the background or him arriving there at all. But now all of a sudden, he’s supposed to be a significant character at this point in the film? The worst part is that they’re gonna make it out like we’ve known this character for a long time at the classroom concert, but we’re not quite there yet. Just a little bit longer before we tear that scene to shreds. But first, we have a few more scenes we gotta run through.

Sawako acts like she’s not going to let the girls do a classroom concert to make sure that Horigome doesn’t get any more suspicious than he already is, but in actuality, she decides to let them do it tomorrow morning, and then we get some background on why she wants to cover up the classroom concert from Horigome. When she did one as Death Devil, it caused a lot of disruptance for both the school and Horigome, who scolded them for doing what they did. And that just confuses me further on why he never had a significant role prior to this. If he tied into Sawako’s past as Death Devil to this degree, then why did this never come up until now? But enough about him, let’s move on.

HTT make a dash to Class 2-1 as we see them being tasked with making corsages for the upcoming graduation ceremony. Jun asks Azusa for some scissors, but when she gets handed them, it turns out that Azusa forgot to take off the sticker that Yui put on them at the beginning of the movie. I’d question why Azusa didn’t take the sticker off immediately given how annoyed she’s previously been at Yui putting stickers on stuff and Yui wasn’t holding her at gunpoint to keep it on, but then I remember that this is the least stupid thing that Azusa’s done throughout this entire movie, so I’ll look past it. I'll also look past the sticker not even being remotely visible in the shot that shows them up close. 

 What I won't look past, on the other hand, is that there's absolutely nothing related to the London trip said from either of these characters. Was nothing about the trip even slightly noteworthy to Azusa? Is Jun not interested in hearing how it went for her? Really? Was there even a point to bringing her on the trip at all if it wasn't in any way enjoyable for her to want to talk about it? I'm not even content with what we actually get in this moment, because it just boils down to Azusa getting frustrated with not getting the chance to convince Jun that Yui was the one that put that sticker on her scissors as she's interrupted by Yui knocking on the window, and I can't squeeze a single ounce of entertainment or humour here. Moving on, though, Yui and the others inform Azusa about their planned classroom concert, and hint towards the idea of them playing without her since it’s their class as reverse psychology to get her to want to play with them, and when Azusa expresses how much she wants to join them, Yui gets so overjoyed that she goes over to try and hug Azusa only for her to push her away by the face! Are you kidding me?!? 

 

Look, you may think that this makes sense given how Azusa has previously acted towards Yui’s affection, but when you pile this on top of all the other scenes in this movie where Azusa has treated Yui like complete garbage, combined with the fact that she was content with letting said affection happen no matter how apathetic or annoyed she was from it, with the only times she didn’t let it happen, aside from the obvious instances where Yui tried to kiss her, being when she wanted to say that’ll she be more strict towards her at the end of Seniors (which didn’t even happen and didn’t even require her using physical force to stop her) and when she wanted to get straight to the schedule she set up for Yui when it was time to start studying for exams and practice for the talent show in Finals, doubly combined with the fact that Yui has only hugged Azusa once prior to this throughout the entire runtime of this film, it becomes much more frustrating and another sign that Yui and Azusa’s dynamic has been shattered beyond repair. And if anyone wants to tell me that this is meant to show Azusa's "growth" as she's becoming more strict with Yui as the years pass, then I would just calmly say; FUCKING WHAT?!?!?!? Are we at a point where Azusa becoming more distant from her friends is considered anything other than straight up character regression now, let alone character development?! 

 

Anyways, the day of the classroom concert arrives, with Sawako showing insane determination to ensure that Horigome doesn’t find out about it, and then we only get a brief listen of Samidare 20 Love. Why only one or two verses of the song? Like with Curry Nochi Rice, this is a song that we’ve never heard at all throughout the series. And unlike that song, we never even heard any brief instrumentals for it. Why not give us more of it? Oh wait, I know exactly why, but we're not there just yet. Just one more thing to show. We cut to the staff room where we see Horigome entering the staff room, and when he asks what the sound is, Sawako says that there’s construction going on, but he doesn’t believe it and immediately makes a beeline for whichever class the noise is coming from. And with that, we now see the classroom concert play out proper. As more students come to the classroom to witness the performance, Yui says that they're going to be performing their final song. Now let's see what song it is.

U.... &..... I........ Y-you seriously picked U&I as the highlight song of this classroom concert?!? I'd ask if my leg is being pulled here, but this is honestly so insulting that it's the equivalent to having my leg completely torn apart from my body!  Did you people forget what the entire point of U&I was, and how much it enhanced what the show was building up to? Or how having it played here, in this context, would absolutely defecate all over that build-up?!? Well, it seems like you have, so before I can break down why this doesn’t work, allow me to explain what No Club Room and Yet Another School Festival were all about, and what made the emotional weight between those two episodes work so well. 

The core theme of No Club Room is about not taking things for granted and learning to truly value the things you love. And this is something that Yui comes to realize when the light music club room is out of use for presumably a whole week due to a water leakage, and since the school festival is not too far away, HTT has to scramble to find a substitute area to practise, with varying results. But as it turns out, the construction for the club room managed to be fixed way ahead of schedule, and Yui’s appreciation for it really starts to shine through with how overjoyed she is to be back, saying that she and the others are lucky to have it, and even resisting the urge for tea to start practise instead. This is already a brilliant pay-off to Yui's character development as this is her first time ever initating practice over tea time, and it works wonders when put together with the events that happened prior to it. 

 

But it doesn’t just stop there, because a few minutes further into the episode, Ui ends up catching a cold, and yet she still pushes herself to serve tea when the rest of HTT arrives at the Hirasawa household. This is what brings Yui to a realization; she had been taking her younger sister for granted this entire time. The person who has taken care of Yui for several years, the one who’s been more than happy dealing with Yui’s quirks, the one who has stuck by Yui’s side her entire life and has been supporting her every step of the way through her high school years. It was more than apparent across all the scenes they shared together that Yui loved her sister to bits, but as presented in this episode, Ui was someone precious and irreplaceable that Yui thought she’d have her by her side forever. And when the realization of that not being the case hits her, she not only makes some food for Ui to eat, which is a funny combo of rice porridge with an egg on top, but also gets the inspiration to write a song based entirely around theme of appreciating the things she took for granted, titled U&I. And when Ui sees the lyrics, we can see that it’s nothing like the silly lyrics of the previous song Yui wrote, Gohan wa Okazu, and she wrote the entire thing without any assistance from anyone else, with the song being accepted by the others for the school festival performance.

 

And this is what leads into Yet Another School Festival. Halfway through the concert, Yui decides to give the spotlight to everyone she cares about by giving them introductions and a chance for them to say something before the other HTT members give an amazing description of Yui; she's airheaded and forgetful, but she always gives it everything she can, energizing the people around her, and being someone that you can depend on no matter what, even if it doesn't seem that way. And this is followed up with Yui giving her thanks to not only her bandmates, but also Sawako, Nodoka, Ui and her entire school to really showcase how much she appreciates the people she loves, eventually being capped off by U&I finally being played. We already got a glimpse of how heartfelt the lyrics seemed to be in No Club Room, but hearing them actually be sung by Yui on top of hearing more of the song is what leads to this emotional rollercoaster of a performance. Every single piece of how U&I is composed topped off with Yui’s singing being the most passionate and heartfelt we’ve ever heard it is the perfect indicator of just how much she really wants to show her appreciation to the person who’s been with her supporting her her entire life, all tied in with how close these two have been shown to be up until this point, culminating in what’s easily their best performance to date.

And the emotion doesn’t even stop there, because after the concert, we cut to HTT thinking about if their performance was great, with them later listing the later concerts they get to do after this, and then, the realization hits them. Once all those concerts are out of the way, the high school life is over for Yui, Ritsu, Mio and Mugi. And as a result, they all start breaking down into tears, with Azusa mentioning that it was an honour to get to play with them, ending off with all of them sleeping next to each other in the club room. It’s all phenomenally beautiful writing from every conceivable angle. The buildup to U&I’s creation, the song being used in the school festival concert and the final scene of episode 20, all serve as a culmination of Yui’s character growth, her connection with Ui and the friendship between the main group.

But all of it, every substantial element that made these two episodes so amazing, everything that made U&I as impactful as it was, all of the build up that gave us an impactful scene between the cast of characters we’ve spent 34 episodes connecting with up until that point and the incredibly strong thematic messaging across both of them, it’s all nullified beyond comprehension thanks to this colossal waste of a movie!!! With everything I’ve just said, it would feel out of place and lazy to just slap U&I into this classroom concert. But honestly, that might have been less insulting than what they actually went with. Because what they do is recontexualize the song from “a huge thank you message to Ui from Yui” to “a farewell to everyone in Yui’s class”. And to put it simply, it doesn’t fucking work at all. Look at these song lyrics. 

 

 

These are lyrics that Yui put her heart and soul into writing for the sake of showing her appreciation to her younger sister for always being there for her, and are clearly very personal and sentimental, so it feels incredibly disingenuous for these people to throw the song into this movie and imply “Yeah, these lyrics and the entire point of the song can apply to literally everyone that Yui cares about.” Can you really tell me with a straight face that several of these verses perfectly apply to anyone that isn’t Ui? Because I don’t see how they can. “Come on, bro they played this song because it was well loved. What’s the big deal?” If you mean by the fandom, then I’d say this is a really poor usage of fanservice at best. No, not THAT kind of fanservice, you dirty fucks. But if you mean in-universe, then my answer would simply be; so what?!? It does not at all justify the recontextualization being at odds with the sentimentality of the lyrics! And they’re clearly trying to convey an emotional performance, otherwise they never would have played a song that has gotten several people who first saw it be played teary eyed, me included, so the justification of “it’s well liked, so that’s why they played it” holds even less weight. 

But if that wasn’t bad enough, Yui deciding to sing this song in particular to her classmates is telling me they also want me to think that Yui was taking the people she cared about for granted this entire fucking time. Absolutely not! Fuck off with this blatantly incorrect sentiment. Yui has done a lot for her friends throughout the series and has clearly valued them a lot ever since she joined the light music club. Like in Instruments where she didn’t want to take all of the money that the others earned to help her get the guitar she wanted, aiming to earn the rest of the money by herself, or in School Festival where she pushed herself to do the backing vocals for Fuwa Fuwa Time when her voice was still lost, or in Light Music where she tried and failed rushing herself to get over her cold so she could practise for the school festival concert, or in Finals where she not only wanted to juggle studying for exams and joining a talent show for Tomi, an old woman who has been taking care of her for years, but also decided to do it by herself to not get in the way of her friends’ studies, or any moments throughout Season 2 where she expressed a genuine desire to continue playing as a band with her friends even after graduation, or in Yet Another School Festival where, as I just mentioned, she gave all her friends the spotlight so she could give her thanks and appreciation to them!

There is no chance in the world you are ever gonna get me to buy that Yui was taking her friends for granted this entire fucking time when there are this many moments clearly contradicting that bullshit! And not only that, it’s even contradicted by what Yui has done in this movie! Remember all those instances throughout this series where I put emphasis on Yui’s efforts to write a song for Azusa? Well, now it's time for me to explain why I did that. Because throughout the entire runtime up to this point, she’s been dead set on trying to prove her worth as a senior to Azusa. She was the one who first came up with the idea to get a graduation gift. She was the one who decided that they should write a song for her. She was the one who felt that said song should be bigger in scale than anything they’ve ever written. And she’s the one who spends a good chunk of the London trip trying her hardest to come up with song lyrics, even during every single night of the trip and during the montage where she was laser focused on thinking of song lyrics while the others saw a guitar that was exactly like Yui’s, and when they were all running away from that weird fucker . Even putting all that aside, she was the one who first suggested going to a shop so they could get new shoes for Azusa even when it meant taking a complete detour from their way to their hotel. And yet, in spite of all that, I’m still expected to believe she was taking everyone she cared about for granted, not even mentioning how they made Yui out to be a colossal idiot for wanting to go bigger with Azusa’s song in the first place a few scenes ago! Do you see why this doesn't work?!?

But the cherry on top of this beyond incredibly insulting recontextualization is how Yui’s friends have been treating her throughout this movie. I've been tearing that apart heavily throughut the last two parts of this analysis, but I want to give a summary of everything Yui’s dealt with at the hands of her supposed friends. She was set up to be humiliated for the sake of a punishment, treated as a weirdo for being pumped up and passionate about performing at both the sushi bar and the cultural festival despite the fact that everyone praised her for that trait in Yet Another School Festival, and it was shown to be a consistent one throughout the series, abandoned in a situation that wouldn't have happened if one of the people involved in the situation actually spoke up about what was going on when they could read English, having to deal with one of her friends acting cold and distant towards her without being told why, elbowed in the stomach by that same friend, once again, without knowing why, presumably abandoned again when a dog jumped her with one of these friends laughing about it through a picture that was taken of the event, not given any sort of help, encouragement or anything other than being treated like an idiot when she was genuinely afraid of being electrocuted and was internally begging for someone to do something, and pushed in the face when trying to give affection to her friend that usually has little issue letting her do so. And yet, after all these scenes where Yui was being treated like a worthless piece of shit, this movie wants me to believe that she was the one taking her friends for granted, which only serves to glorify a flat out toxic friendship, and I am not exaggerating that to any degree! It’s basically saying that If your friends constantly put you in situations where they can make fun of you, treat you like a retard for the traits they've previously praised you for, abandon you when things get really bad, act cold and distant towards you for seemingly no reason, and refuse to help you when you need it, you're the motherfucker who has been taking your friends for granted, and you should go show them how much you appreciate them. 

 

FUCK!!!

 

OFF!!! 

 

All the other times where you’ve tried making Yui out to be a useless moron who can’t make any meaningful contributions or do anything for herself have been beyond baffling, but it's a huge insult that this shit is being done again for the sake of fitting with this recontexualization of U&I so you can have this emotionally moving concert for people to give their praises to! A concert that also shifts the thematic messaging of the song from poignant and sentimental to offensively toxic at that! “Yeah, Yui was taking her friends for granted this whole time. Please feel the same emotions that you did when U&I was first played as you see her finally coming to that realization!” Get out of here with this emotionally manipulative trite! "Well, what song would you have as the highlight of the classroom concert instead?" Don't you worry, I came prepared for that type of question, and after much consideration, there is a song I wholeheartedly believe they could have used in to get across the intended sentiment: Utauyo Miracle! Looking at the lyrics for that song, they fit the context of a farewell to everyone in Yui’s class way better, and it’s clearer that they’re meant for everyone in there. Especially the last verse. 

 

It’s not uncommon for anime to use OPs near the end of their runs for sentimental effect, so there’s no reason why it wouldn’t have worked here. But sadly, that’s not what we got. So as it stands, this recontextualizaton of such an emotionally powerful song is nothing more than a kick to the balls to what made the song hit so hard, everything that No Club Room and Yet Another School Festival stood for in general, and Yui’s character development across the series! Also, as a gentle reminder, the entire reason this classroom concert happened at all is because HTT got the idea from everyone in their class wanting to hear them perform again, which only happened because they somehow heard about them performing in London.

And to top it all off, when you compare the two performances of this show, the differences visually are like night and day. The movie’s rendition may look more smoothly animated, but the choreography and expressiveness is just not there, making it feel way more soulless than the performance in Yet Another School Festival when the song that’s being played is meant to be a passionate thank you message! Not to mention the fact that the lighting here is too fucking bright! Seriously, some shots just don’t look natural due to how bad the lighting can be in many of them, and I know for the fact that they can do amazing lighting. They’ve been consistently showing gorgeously lit shots throughout the entire movie up until this point, and this has even been consistent with the other performances, so what happened here?!? 

  

But as if ALL THIS wasn't insulting enough, at a certain part of the concert, Yui decides to turn to Azusa while singing, and her reaction to this is to have the most neutral, deadpan expression ever?! Are you kidding me?!? Yui doing this is her admitting that she values Azusa as much as she values Ui, and this is how she reacts to that sentiment?! Has ths movie not done enough to destroy everything that gave Azusa even an ounce of likeability?!? 

  

Then it’s revealed that Horigome doesn’t actually want to stop the classroom concert and we cut to a brief flashback of him scolding Sawako and the other Death Devil members, but who fucking cares at this point? Before the concert ends, the other students bring Horigome and Sawako into the class, and they’re clearly trying to double down on the sentimental value by having the former see this, but considering how little time we’ve actually known him, it just falls flat. But even if this minor sentiment worked, it would not matter. No Club Room, Yet Another School Festival, the thematic messaging those two episodes carried U&I,  and Yui’s development across the series now mean absolutely nothing thanks to this concert! sigh

Some time later, HTT are in their classroom looking like they’re in their own little world all by themselves before Yui brings up that Azusa's song is the last thing to take care of. But then Mio responds to that by sayng...

Oh my god, the lighting here actually hurts, what the fuck?!

 

STOP IT! STOP DOING THIS! What is it with this movie and bringing Yui down for literally everything?!? Why are you making it out as if Yui fucking forgot it was the most important thing to take care of when she’s literally been dead set on coming up with lyrics before and during the London trip? Yeah, they never saw her when she was deep in thought about it, but she was the one who brought up the idea in the first place and was the only one to actually bring it up as a point of discussion in several scenes, including this one! Like, what were you fuckers thnking about before Yui mentioned the fact that y’all needed to finish Azusa’s song? Also, wasn’t the entire point of the concert that we saw three minutes ago that Yui was supposedly taking her friends and school for granted and wanted to show her giving her appreciation to them by singing U&I? Are you still trying to imply that Yui’s taking her friends for granted seconds after that shit was over?! You gotta be kidding me! Also, also, if Azusa’s song really is as important as Mio is making it out to be, then how embarrassing is it that the rest of them spent almost no time actually thinking about the song at any point during the trip. Literally the only time they all discussed it was on the second night of the trip, and all that boiled down to was them having no inspiration for what to write! And it’s even more embarrassing how they tried to make it seem like Mio was always thinking about Azusa’s song from the beginning through the scene where she called out how much of a procrastinator Ritsu was, and during the aforementioned song “discussion” scene where she said…

...implying that they’re here for the sole purpose of trying to come up with something for Azusa’s song. And yet she’s more content doing anything but that throughout the entire London trip and leaving it until the last minute like she accused RItsu of potentially doing while bringing down the only one who actually has cared about Azusa’s graduation gift this entire fucking movie. And this issue extends beyond just doing further damage to these characters. The final song that was played in the series, Tenshi ni Fureta Yo, led to several people who watched this show in tears with how emotionally powerful it was. However, one problem that a few people may have had is that it seemingly came out of nowhere with how non-existent the build up is. And one of the biggest praises ths movie gets is showcasing how the senior HTT members came up with it, serving as the film’s emotional core. But here’s the problem. It’s had almost no focus throughout this movie, and by the time it finally starts getting worked on, there’s only 15 minutes of the film left, meaning that the film has no time to showcase any of the process the characters went through to put this song together. So wth all this in mind, the only thing this movie tells me is that they found some time in between the last two episodes to put the song together, a sentiment that didn’t require a 105 minute long film to get across. In fact, that exact sentiment can be taken from how the song is presented in the show. They don’t even have anything from the London trip tie into the lyrics, so what was the point of any of this if the main point of the movie is this underdeveloped? Especially when you take in how much this movie has torn down its characters, including the person that the song is aimed at in the first place? *sighs* So Mugi reveals that she came up with a melody between last afternoon and now and shows it to the others. They all love it and spend the next few days rehearsing it after sharing the lyrics they put together. And they manage to finish said rehearsal at least a day or two before their graduation. Okay, even with the incredibly small timeframe they have to actually show these characters working on the song, they still half ass it, because the full extent of the song's development being shown starts and ends with this one shot where HTT are showing the lyrics they wrote before cutting to HTT finishing the song.

There was pretty much no effort put into actually developing the origin of this song, and it really shows with what we actually see of it. Not that failing to focus on anythng isn't par for the course for this film, but you get my point.

Then Mio says she really hopes that Yui didn't tell Azusa about the song at any point, to which Yui says she hasn’t. Why would you need to ask Yui about this at all? How would she ever get the opportunity to spill this out to Azusa even if she wanted to? You all would have been together when you started working on the song outside of school. She would not get the opportunity to be alone with Azusa during the last couple of days. And we learn later that all four girls were acting weird, similar to how they acted earlier in the movie, meaning that they must have been discussing the song right before Azusa came into the club room. And if Yui somehow almost let any hints slip out while Azusa was in there, wouldn’t any of the others make sure to shut her up before that happens and then awkwardly try to cover it up? And even if they didn’t, there’s no way they wouldn’t have known about said slip ups because they would have been in the same room as her while that happened. Unless you’re assuming that Yui might have given Azusa a phone call while she was at home and told her about it somehow, which in that case, how little faith do you have in Yui keeping the song a secret when she was the one who suggested the idea to get her a graduation gift in the first fucking place?! 

Whatever, moving on, we cut to Azusa and Jun having a game of table tennis while Ui keeps track of the points, where Azusa talks to Jun about how the other HTT members have been acting weird lately, dropping whatever they’re doing whenever she shows up. Since we know that a couple of days have passed, if this happened enough for Azusa to mention it at all, why wouldn’t the others have tried to keep track of the exact time she arrives in the club room? Including the moments we did see of this happening, this has happened a total of 4 times, and not one of these girls thought to do something to stop these awkward situations from being a frequent thing? Pretty sure this could have been avoided in one way or another. Anyways, there is one thing I can praise this scene for, and it’s Jun’s contributions. Not only do I like how she manages to whack the ball from that distance away from the court and get in a win, but her suggestions about what could be the reason for the rest of HTT acting strangely line up perfectly with her character. Unfortunately, they completely neglected a pretty important part of her dynamic with Azusa, because while Azusa shoots down Jun’s suggestion about them communicating with aliens, when she suggests they could be eating sweets behind her back, she says…

 

…and this is the point where she pretty much forgets everything about her fellow bandmates. How does it make sense for any of them to act this serious over fucking sweets? What are you talking about? Let’s start with Yui, since you clearly hate her now given how you’ve interacted with her throughout this film. It wouldn’t be in character for her to want to hide sweets to the point where she acts strange over them every single day. In fact, she would most likely be eating said sweets by the time you came into the room because she loves them so much. As for Mugi, if she were the one to come up with this plan, she’d be the type of person to flat out tell you about it before realizing who she’s meant to be hiding it from, and she probably wouldn’t be that serious over it. And in what insane dimension do you believe that Mio would ever act this serious over fucking sweets? She would literally never come up with a plan to hide sweets from you specifically, and she definitely wouldn’t go through with it if either Yui or Mugi ever suggested such an idea. Meaning that the only character who could possibly have that idea and go through with it is RItsu. But even then, she’s more likely to hide a stash of sweets from all of her friends, not just you specifically. And the plan would either not happen or be exposed almost immediately because Mio would most definitely scold Ritsu for doing something so silly. And even if that didn’t happen and she just let Ritsu go along with this plan, she’d be the only one acting so seriously, but you mention that all 4 of them are acting strange, so this doesn’t hold up at all.

Then Azusa asks Ui if Yui is holding herself back a year, to which she says nah, mentioning that Yui bought tights for graduation. And that puts a wrap on the semi-conflict between Yui and Azusa. What an absolutely pathetic resolution! Listen to how Azusa reacts to her incredibly stupid suspicions being deconfirmed by Ui.

 

After elbowing Yui in the stomach, after not being able to sleep well on every single night of the London trip, after said suspicions caused her to keep her distance from Yui on their second day and didn’t want to be around her at all on the following days of the trip, after a whole fucking week of her believing that Yui staying back a year would be hell for her, Azusa feels zero relief from getting a proper confirmation that Yui is not doing something that she feared she would do for this long. What the fuck?!? This gives off a heavy implication that she still doesn’t trust Yui after this, and is probably going to have trust issues for life. This should be the best case scenario for her after how she’s acted throughout this movie, and yet it somehow isn’t? Why? She couldn’t have just asked Yui about this? In fact, she most likely would have told you by now if she did since the day of graduation is tomorrow. I could have forgiven all this if we actually saw any interactions between Yui and Azusa after this point, but we don’t. The last two interactions they had where when Azusa was pushing Yui’s face away when she tried to hug her and when she had pretty much no expression to Yui singing a part of U&I directly to her, and we get no moments that show Azusa treating Yui like a friend again since every other scene in between this and the playing of Tenshi focuses entirely on Yui and/or the others. 

And how does this even work as a resolution, anyways? Remember that scene in the bookstore where Azusa and Ui had a similar conversation about Yui potentially hiding something? On all accounts, that should have solidified this semi conflict not happenng in the first place, but no, after being told by the person who knows Yui better than anyone that she couldn’t be hiding something, Azusa still believed that Yui was hiding the fact that she was gonna hold herself back a year for a whole week. If that wasn’t enough to convince Azusa that Yui wasn’t doing that, then why is this? What makes the conversation at the bookstore any different from this one for her to not believe Ui in the former, but absolutely buy what she’s saying in the latter? So yeah, not only is this resolution so pathetic that it can barely even count as one, making no effort to show Yui and Azusa even interacting as friends afterwards, not only is it also fundamentally broken in the sense that it shouldn’t have worked given an earlier scene in the movie, but it’s all made even worse by the next interaction Azusa and Jun have!

 

What is this shit?! Azusa genuinely took Jun’s word for a second that Yui didn’t make it into college? Actually, yeah, it’s not like Azusa has any proper confirmations that Yui ever got into a college or anything. OH WAIT! THERE IS! She literally got a text at the end of Entramce Exams, which I have to reiterate, the episode that this movie fucking takes place after, that Yui and the others got accepted into college, and there are two scenes IN THIS VERY MOVIE THAT BRING ATTENTION TO THIS! Yui mentioned it at the beginning...

…and Azusa herself brings this up after the scene where Ton-chan picks their graduation trip location!

 

To put it bluntly, AZUSA DOESN’T FUCKING NEED UI TO CONFIRM THIS! AND TO THINK THAT SHE’S STILL DOUBTING ANYTHING POSITIVE ABOUT YUI A SECOND AFTER THE RESOLUTION OF THIS STUPID SEMI-CONFLICT THAT DIDN’T ADD ANYTHING TO THE FILM OTHER THAN CHARACTER ASSASSINATION! Also, do you remember Azusa and Jun’s dynamic in the show? Whenever Jun made an insane assumption about HTT, Azusa quickly deconfirmed the stuff she knew was false, two heavily notable instances being when Jun assumed that they liked playing “Kick the Can” in S2E5, or that they’d believe a chocolate box is a bomb in S2E22. That is not present in the K-On Movie. Azusa might as well have seen those as believable assumptions if she’s willing to buy that the others would be so serious over hiding sweets from her and that they didn’t get into a college, even though she has clear evidence debunking the latter! In all, Screw this semi-conflict, screw the damage it has done to Azusa’s character and her friendship with Yui, and screw this broken, nonsensical resolution that doesn’t even feel like one! 

We then cut to Yui practising Azusa’s song at home, where she feels like the lyrics are lacking to some degree, but don’t think you’re getting this past me. You want me to buy that this is the moment where Yui is finally seeing Azusa’s song as something important. Well, I got bad news for you guys. I didn't forget any of the moments where Yui went to the lengths that she had to make a song that would stick with Azusa for life, and your attempts to make me believe that she’s a useless waste who hasn’t done anything meaningful until now haven’t worked. But perhaps I can look past that for now because, believe it or not, we’re now about to get a scene that I really, really liked. No, I’m not fucking with you, I’m not being sarcastic in any way, after 94 minutes of broken stupidity, no confidence in being a K-On movie, and horrible mishandling of the characters I’ve come to adore, we now get a scene that is legitimately amazing. So let’s break it down. Ui knocks on Yui’s bedroom door wanting to come in, but before Yui lets her in, she hides the song lyrics under her table and then comically pretends to sleep with her guitar.because she’s Yui. And then, after Ui tells her to go to bed early tonight, Yui thanks her, saying that she's able to graduate tomorrow thanks to her, followed up with her asking if she and her friends will be able to drink tea in college, to which Ui says that she doesn't see the problem with that before going to bed.

I genuinely had the U&I effect with this scene in particular. I’ll admit that when I first saw it, I was like, “Bruh, that’s their final interaction? It felt so empty, man.” Please don’t ask me what I was thinking at the time, because I don’t know either. But now, I’ve come to appreciate how heartfelt this scene really is. These final interactions between the Hirasawa sisters are loaded wth casual sentimental value. Ui played a pretty significant role in helping Yui get as far as she has, and seeing Yui thank her saying that she wouldn’t be graduating if not for her genuinely makes me smile. Now, you may say, “Wait, the emotional impact of U&I was nullified by the classroom concert. Isn’t this scene only impactful because of the entire purpose of the song being destroyed?” Well, after much consideration, I can safely say that it’s not. Even if everything that was accomplished between No Club Room and Yet Another School Festival wasn’t annihilated beyond repair, I believe that this scene would still hold a lot of weight, because you want to know one of the few things about the series that this movie didn’t destroy? Yui and Ui’s relationship. 

“But they’ve only shared 3 or 4 scenes together. There’s no way their sweet relationship could be damaged in any way.” I’d like you to shelve that thought for later, not that it’ll be important by the end of this film or anything, but just roll with me here. Their relationship and dynamic not being messed with at all plays a major part in this scene being as sweet as it is, on top of something else I’d like to bring attention to. The emotional scale of Yui singing U&I in Yet Another School Festival was huge, offering a performance that brought out a lot of emotions through its sheer sentimentality and scope. And I’d say that this adorable talk between the two reaches the same level of sentimental sweetness while not going as big on it, and that’s the perfect way to go about the final scene where they share screen time. Now, do I think this scene even holds a candle to the U&I performance? No, not even close. But in terms of heartwarming goodness that made K-On so smileworthy, I highly appreciate how close this gets to reaching that. It’s a great scene. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that the movie was actually about to start getting good by this point.


Which would have been further solidified by what comes up next. After a shot where Ui sends Azusa a text about how everything’s fine because she saw Yui’s song lyrics under the table, (with her still feeling no fucking relief from it), you wanna know why Yui was late to meet up with her friends to walk to school together at the beginning of Graduation Ceremony? Well, as it turns out, she was practicing Azusa’s song as soon as she got ready. Yep, she is that dedicated to making sure this song is the best thing ever.

Afterwards, she rushes to join her friends on the aforementioned walk to school lining up with Graduation Ceremony, and a few shots later, Yui is about to head into the club room, only for Ritsu to call her name out to reveal that the door to the rooftop was left open. So they all start running out and yelling with joy before huddling up with immense nervousness about if Azusa will like the song they’ve written for her, and this would also be an effective scene that greatly showcases the friendship between these characters, except for one small problem. The friendship between the main cast has either been non-existent or heavily mishandled throughout pretty much the entire runtime, whether it be character dynamics being either misunderstood or ruined, or not showcasing anything of the sort throughout the majority of the London trip. If this movie had no connections to a series I love, I’d have absolutely no reason to feel anything watching this particular scene. Heck, even as it is, I’d say there’s minimal reason for me to care. But even with all this, I cannot bring myself to dislike this scene to even a minor degree. All this happening combined with the particularly amazing music leads to a scene that almost makes me feel emotional. And I’ll take any positive qualities I can get out of this film.

 

After huddling for a bit, the girls start reminiscing on when Yui and Azusa joined the club, opening up another opportunity for them to praise the latter some more, and I genuinely hate that I am unable to feel anything from this. Yui and the others going to these lengths to prove how much Azusa means to them should have a slam dunk for a heartwarming sentiment, but it’s rendered completely meaningless when you factor in the retconning of Azusa’s positive experiences with the light music club and how the movie still makes it seem like she hasn’t warmed up to it at all. It’s a baffling contrast that really shatters this film’s emotional core, which is a huge problem given how these last few minutes have been tying into the two final episodes of the show. Anyways, Yui finally realises what was missing from Azusa’s song after she says that she’s their little angel who gave them wings (damn, I didn’t know Azusa was HTT’s Red Bull), and they all agree that they should have that line in the song.

They then start preparing tea before Azusa comes into the room, and I genuinely do not understand why they felt the need to have her tone of voice so different here. In the original scene, she showed disappointment over not being able to make tea for them, and it matches her expression, but that’s not the case at all here. But they cover that fact up by not showing her face at all in the recreation of this moment. Why put in the extra effort to re-record the line in this instance?  Also, it’s quite evident that they overworte what HTT were saying before Azusa came into the clubroom, as in Graduation Ceremony, we only saw Mugi saying “Here you go” while giving Yui her tea, compared to what Mugi says in the movie’s recreation of this, on top of delaying her response after Azusa comes in, but whatever.

With all that, we’re finally at what this movie has been building up to. The final moment where Yui, Ritsu, Mio and Mugi play Tenshi ni Fureta Yo for Azusa. The ultimate payoff for the movie’s attempts to make this scene more emotionally impactful than it was when viewers first got hit in the gut with this song as a complete surprise. This film has already nuked all its chances of that ever being the case with how absolutely awful everything has been so far, but especially with how much damage has been dealt to Azusa’s character. How do you expect me to feel any kind of emotions seeing this band sing an emotionally charged song to someone who’s been a colossal bitch throughout a majority of this movie, especially regarding how she’s treated the person who’s put in the most effort to make this song happen? Not to mention the fact that the build up to -showing how the song came to be is incredibly half hearted and underdeveloped thanks to it only getting proper focus for a few seconds. But even with all this, the main elements that made this scene so beautiful before can still be kept intact. Let’s break it down.

After 29 episodes of forming a meaningful connection with the other light music club members, the thought of their graduation hits Azusa insanely hard when it gets closer and closer to that day. But in spite of everything, she spends the last few episodes keeping her emotions in check for the sake of her friends. But then, at the point where the others have officially graduated (with the added emotional bonus of Class 3-2 giving their thanks to Sawako in the best way possible), and the realization that this'll be her last day with them at high school, Azusa continues to keep her emotions bottled up as she spends one final day with her friends in the club room, but then, it gets to a point where she can no longer do that, and asks the others not to graduate before breaking down into tears. She knows that the graduation ceremony is already over, and she knows that they can’t reverse their graduation, but her emotions regarding her abandonment issues and desire to stick by her friends has gotten to her and are taking hold of her better judgement, later apologising and saying she’ll keep the light music going as she tries to stop tears from forming. This is what leads Yui to give her a bunch of gifts that would hopefully stick with her, and then, shortly after that, Yui, Ritsu, Mio and Mugi start tuning their instruments and proceed to play Tenshi ni Fureta Yo as the best send off they can give to Azusa. 

 

And this send off ends up being arguably the most emotionally charged moment in the entire show. The lyrics of the song hold a lot of sentimentality that, much like U&I was for Ui, is a song that could only be played for Azusa, with all 4 of them contributing to the vocals, and the main theme of the song is a message that Azusa absolutely needed to hear: graduation is not the end. It may be the end of the road for what we’ll see of these characters, and it’s a road we don’t want to reach the end of much like how Azusa is feeling after spending this long with them, but the sentiment that they’ll all still be together soon puts us at a level of ease and comfort that the series has been consistently and amazingly delivering with almost every episode. But there are two things here that really cement the impact of this scene. The first being Azusa’s reaction. Azusa is so emotionally moved by the song that by the time they only get a minute into it, she’s trying and failing to hold back more tears, heavily showcasing that this will stick with her for a long time. And the second thing is the multitude of ways it calls back to the very first episode of the series. From the smaller elements like the lighting and angles, to the major elements like Azusa clapping after the song is over and saying that they're not very good, just like how Yui did when Ritsu, Mio and Mugi played a song for Yui that convinced her to join the club all those years ago. 

 

All these elements serve to make this ending a fantastic bookend to the first episode, on top of beautifully showing how far these characters have come as a band and as a friend group. There is absolutely no understating the raw beauty of this ending, and it serves as a perfect conclusion to the series, using all of its strengths that has made it as fantastic as it is for all these episodes to its best advantages to provide a truly emotionally impactful payoff for all of these characters.

Now, let’s see if this movie’s recreation of this ending can even hold a quarter of that emotional weight. Because obviously it can’t be a full on repeat, so what does this do different? Well, it shows shots of Yui and the others practicing singing the song and the differences here do remove the bookend elements, but also understandable, and I can imagine seeing them practising the song while it’s being played holding a decent amount of sentimental value. 

   

 

Then after a few random shots of HTT and Azusa in school, we cut back to them actually playing it, showing shots of each character singing before cutting to Azusa who’s… not in tears over the song right now?!? I.. Wh… WHY?!? WHY DID YOU NEUTER AZUSA’S REACTION LIKE THIS?!?

 

What reason could there be for Azusa to not be anywhere near as emotionally moved by the song as she was in the original ending?! “Oh, come on, they have to make it different from the original ending, somehow.” NO! THAT DOES NOT HOLD ANY WEIGHT WHATSOEVER BECAUSE THERE ARE ALREADY ENOUGH DIFFERENCES FROM THE ORIGINAL ENDING FOR IT TO STAND ON ITS OWN! There is no reason at all to neuter Azusa’s reaction like this when then entire fucking point of the movie was to make the show’s ending more impactful by showing how Tenshi ni Fureta Yo came to be. I mean, yeah, the build up colossally failed, but that doesn’t detract from the intended purpose. If we pretended that the build up to this worked perfectly, why nuke the impact of the payoff like this? Yui and the others went to this level to create this song specifically for Azusa over the last few days, and their efforts mean absolutely nothing now because Azusa doesn’t seem to feel anything from this song! Oh, and remember those moments where the others acted awkwardly whenever Azusa came into the club room? Well, apparently that needed a payoff on Azusa’s end, so they have her say this…

…despite the fact that she didn’t say anything in the original ending while the song was being played. I probably would have let it slide if it was something she said in her head, but no, you can clearly see her mouth moving when she says this. The show’s ending was meant to signify just how close Azusa had become with her bandmates, and giving a delightful payoff to her keeping in her emotions about them graduating, but now this movie recontexualizes that to her realizing why her friends acted weird, which is highly implied by that line and the lack of emotional investment she has towards the song. Yeah, that’s totally a better payoff than what the show gave us. Piss off! Oh, and this isn't even mentioning how trying to recreate the emotional impact of this scene was already destined to fail long before the TNFY origin idea even came into fruition. The movie ended up dong everything it could to distance Azusa from the rest of HTT, from having her question why she joined the light music in the first place 8 minutes in, to  the sentment of her having never said anything positive about her experiences with the light music club, implying that she hasn’t actually had any positive experiences with them period despite the fact that there were moments in the series where she voiced her praises about it and her friends, to her insane hesitance to join HTT on the London trip in the first place and thinking she has to stay level headed throughout, to having no faith in her frends helping her with planning out th trip while also turning down Mio's offer to give her the hep she seemingly wanted.   

I would have assumed that they would use this opportunity to actually give Azusa a positive memory with them through the London trip. But that clearly didn’t end up being the case because Azusa spent most of it being annoyed or discomforted by Yui and losing sleep in the process, on top of some other things like the sushi bar situation and having to rush back to the airport, and she didn’t seem to show any enjoyment during the sightseeing montage. None of this sounds like she would have enjoyed the London trip to even a minor degree, further driven by the fact that she doesn’t even seem to talk about her time in London with either Ui or Jun when we cut to their next day of school after it’s over. Most of these would not have happened if not for the semi-conflict that the movie decided to force in because Azusa’s constant annoyance and discomfort is entirely because of the broken beliefs of Yui holding herself back a year and having romantic feelings for her. And combining this with Azusa’s lack of emotional investment in the song that the others made specifically for her, making it seem like she’ll just forget about this performance the next day, that means that the movie is rolling with the sentiment that throughout the 2 years Azusa spent with Yui, Ritsu, Mio and Mugi, she has not had a single positive memory to note about her time with them. This is an absolutely atrocious sentiment that serves to annihilate the entire point of the show’s ending!

And it doesn’t stop there, because even the emotional weight of Azusa’s breakdown in Graduation Ceremony is nuked into oblivion by the semi-conflict! The build up to that breakdown was Azusa telling the others not to graduate after they had already pretty much done that, but she looks like a hypocritical bitch if you factor the movie into the timeline. She genuinely believed that Yui holding herself back a year would be a terrible thing for her, to the point where she treated Yui like complete garbage and lost sleep because of it! Why would I feel anything other than rage over Azusa begging her friends not to graduate after seeing how she treated one of them because she thought she was gonna do that exact thing?!

  ^ Same person who lost sleep over the idea of Yui holding herself back a year.

This is nothing more than a saucer sized decimation of the ending that this film is recreating, and, in turn, everything that the show had been building up in regards to Azusa’s connections with the other characters. And since it can’t go for the shot of Azusa’s tears landing on a picture of her friends that she was holding while the final guitar riff was played, thanks to Azusa having no emotional reaction to it, what does this movie go for instead? Azusa running towards the others as they pan up to the night sky. Because that definitely holds more emotional weight, doesn’t it?! And this final shot of Azusa’s empty feeling face before she claps is a perfect indicator of how I feel watching my favourite conclusion to any show get destroyed like this. Empty to the core with hints of unfiltered frustration.

 

 sigh There’s only a minute left of this movie to go. Let’s finally get this over with.

Yui, Ritsu, Mio and Mugi are walking home as Yui brings up if Azusa was happy with the song they performed for her, which I would have believed if not for the fact that they fucking neutered her reaction to it. We saw her just having a blank expression to it, simply saying that she didn't isn't rectifying that. They also bring up stuff that they want to do when they're at college, such as having more adult-like sweets with their tea, and Mio mentions that she heard the Death Devil song they pretended to play at the beginning of the movie was also done as a sendoff for an underclassman. Questioning of exactly where you heard about that aside, this bookend to the start of the movie really isn't as sweet as it tries to be given that HTT used that song to emotionally fuck with Azusa through a bait and switch argument, so it just comes off as an arbitrary bookend. 

Then Yui asks where they'll go next year for Azusa’s graduation trip before running along the bridge to catch up with Azusa and Nodoka who are walking together so she can tackle hug before this movie finally fucking en… 

   

NODOKA’S FUCKING WALKING WITH AZUSA?!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? You can’t even keep the small sentiments intact?! Nodoka agreed to walk home with Yui in Graduation Ceremonybecause it would be the last time they’d ever get the chance to before they both went off to college. 

  

But I guess that means fuck all now because even Nodoka screws Yui over by deciding to walk home with fucking Azusa instead, a character whom she only had one proper interaction with in the Season 2 OVA. And it’s not like they were waiting for the others, because they’re already walking in the shot we see of them before stopping to see Yui running up to them for a tackle hug. And to think that this is how the movie ends. Yui being screwed over by her only other friend who hadn’t done so yet. And why are these two so surprised by Yui’s tackle hug?!? They were looking in her direction for 3 seconds! Unless they’re acting like this is surprising coming from her, which in that case, HOW?!? Azusa’s been the biggest target of Yui’s affection ever since she met her, and Nodoka has known Yui since fucking kindergarten! How is Yui being affectionate towards others a surprise for these two?!? Nodoka has only had 2-3 scenes in this entire movie, how the fuck do you manage to make her hateable during the last 5 seconds?!

After that, we get an admittedly phenomenal ending sequence with an amazing aesthetic that’s on par with the other ending sequences made for the show backed up by one of the best songs in the series that really deserves to be played in a better movie, and that marks the end of K-On The Movie.  

OH! MY! FUCKING! GOD! That was just disastrous! How is it even possible to have the exact same team behind such an incredible series all return to work on this movie, and still have this be the end result? This is actually one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life! But it's finally done. After so long, I have fully broken down every single bit of this film. However, while I may be done with that, there's still one more thing I have to do before I can put a capstone to this analysis; go over each individual element of the movie, summarise my thoughts on each of them, and thoroughly explain why this movie damaged everything that the series stood for. All of this will be covered in the next and final part of this analysis, as I'll hopefully be able to put into perspective why I believe K-On The Movie is a betrayal of its series and genre. 

Whether you want to stop here or read my summaresed thoughts, thanks so much for reading to this point if you enjoyed this little analysis, and if you're wanting to see my summarised thoughts, it'll be around the corner soon. Until then, stay tuned, stay safe and stay healthy. Solaris/Indigo out. :)

<<< Part 5                                                                              Part 7 >>>