K-ON! (DVD VOLUME 2)
February 18th 2012 00:05
Original story base on the K-ON! Manga by kakifly
Director: Naoka Yamada
Writer: Reiko Yoshida
Starring: Stephanie Sheh (Yui Hirusawa), Cassandra Lee (Ritsu Tainaka), Cristina Valenzuela (Mio Akiyama), Shelby Lindley (Tsumugi Kotobuki), Xanthe Huynh (Ui Hirusawa), Karen Strassman (Sawako Yamanaka) & Laura Bailey (Nodoka Manabe)
Produced by: Sakura High Band & TBS
English Adaptation by: TBS, Bandai Entertainment Inc in assoc with Bang Zoom Entertainment
Released by: Madman Entertainment
Running Time: 100 minutes Rating: PG
In the first volume of this particular anime series we were introduced to four high school girls who have elected to use the Light Music Club of their particular school as a vehicle for their unique musical aspirations. Though it has to be said that at the start their musical aspirations are somewhat small scale for the moment, in fact they seem more to be focused on playing, practicing and enjoying afternoon tea in the music room, this later aspect of the club being the dominant one. Mio, Yui, Ritsu and Mugi are the four girls and though they all have a love of music (although in Yui’s case this is a rather dormant thing), that is the only similarity between the four; they’re as different from each other as chalk from cheese.
Every club needs to have an advisor, one of the teachers working at the school as well as the requisite minimum four members. The girls have the numbers but lack an advisor…so now they need to find one pronto or their hopes of playing at the school festival are rendered as nothing more than scattered petals upon the wind. So they decide to focus their attention on the one likely candidate, Sawako Yamanaka, the schools demure, likeable music teacher. Ms Yamanaka though whilst understanding of the predicament of the four girls informs them that her duties as the School Band’s advisor means she’s unable to be the Light Music Club’s advisor.
But inadvertently the girls have something in their favour, a piece of evidence that Ms Yamanaka has a slightly dark and bloody past that she does not want to ever come to light… What the heck could it be? What could a rather fairly affable teacher be hiding that she has no desire to see it come to light in the school? Earlier on Ritsu was looking through an old photo album that Mio found and had pictures of previous light music clubs and their respective members. One such music club formed what could be considered to be a death metal band known appropriately as Death Devil and featuring a rather cute but decidedly badass girl as lead guitar…that girl is none other than Ms Yamanaka. She’d mistakenly believed that all traces of the album and other pieces of evidence of her dark past had long since been dealt with…sadly though this wasn’t the case.
For me Ms Yamanaka steals the show in this particular volume, she’s a real card and her character his ably voiced by Karen Strassman of Bleach and Code Geass fame. She really seems to get into both the demure, ladylike side and then the hardcore, bad ass rock chick aspect, it’s a real treat to watch and highly amusing. The scene where Yui offer’s her her guitar to play is just pure gold, the merest touch is enough to transform her back into her ‘original’ character – a sort of Jekyll and Hyde transformation. All in all K-ON is a series well worth tracking down and getting your hands on, Light Music = Light Enjoyable Entertainment in my opinion…
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