Something I've Read: K-On!

Slice of life, particularly comedy ones, often suffer because writing funny characters is actually rather hard, without making them overblown, unlikeable or really in need of help. This series falls into these traps a lot. And I mean a lot. But…I still love it.

Something I’ve read: K-on!

 

The title, K-on! is a shortening of the Japanese term keiongaku-bu , meaning pop music club. And that is what the story is about. Four, later five, high school girls form a music club and play songs. That’s about it.

Like other four panel high school slice of life series, such as Lucky Star or Azumanga Daioh, K-on relies on its characters to carry the story, and it uses a lot of the arch types of the genre. You have Yui, the spacey ditz, Mio, who fills both the shy, introverted role and the group’s (attempted) straight man, Ritzu, the hyperactive, insensitive member, and Mugi, the rich girl with a big heart.  Although we’ve seen things like this before, K-on tends to take these to disturbing lengths. Yui in particular is incredibly reliant on the care of her younger sister, even to do things like wake up in the morning or pack for trips. Mio is scared of a lot of things, gets stage fright very easily and doesn’t like being the centre of attention (traits which are severely exaggerated in the anime, to the point that losing her luggage at the airport makes her scared of spinning things because they remind her of the empty luggage carousal)…which makes both Ritzu and their teacher even more determined to tease her and get her into the spotlight, to the point where it can be hard to see why they are actually friends. It gets even more disturbing when a Mio fanclub forms, despite the girl’s objections. Mugi is probably the least over the top of the group, and she comes from a family so rich they make Chiyo-chan’s look poor, is incredibly naïve about the world and is incredibly excited about everyday things.

Later on, they get a new member, Azuna, who takes over Mio’s role as straight man of the group, determined to actually get them to practise instead of just sitting around drinking expensive tea and cakes that Mugi brings in. This actually really helps, since Azuna bounces off the other characters really well. This seems to be a running theme; I personally really enjoyed the bits of the manga set after graduation, where Azuna is now the head of the club at the high school and the older girls are at university together. The author seems to repeat the same jokes a lot in the strip if they have too few characters to play with, and broadening the cast tends to help.

Another issue with K-on is the pacing. The story goes by very quickly, with events that in most series would be included avoided. This makes it quite difficult to tell where you are timewise in the story sometimes. It actually came as a real surprise for me when I realised that nearly three years had gone by in story. It doesn’t help that the relaxed atmosphere of the manga makes it difficult to have really memorable incidents, and that the miniplot lines that make up the series have a habit of suddenly jerking to a stop.

And, of course, finally, the strip is trying to tell the story of a band…in a medium that doesn’t include audio. That’s always going to be difficult, although it tries to avoid it as much as possible by telling, not showing.

That being said…although the writing of the characters does have a lot of issues, and although even for a high school slice of life it goes nowhere, and although the jokes are often repeated…I actually enjoyed this manga. I wouldn’t call it a classic, and the slim volume 1 I brought wasn’t really worth the £8 I paid for it, it’s still a fun little piece that, if you’re a fan of other  four panel comics, like Azumanga Daioh, Sketchbook or Lucky Star, you’ll probably enjoy it. The jokes are often quite funny and there are genuinely sweet moments between the characters.

K-on is currently being translated by Yen Press, and several volumes of the manga are already available on shelves. There’s also an anime version, which, having watched it, is in my opinion a great improvement on the source material, partially because any manga about a band is up against the hard task of showing us how good they are at music…through a comic book medium, and partially because they make quite a lot up and produce some interesting character interactions that we didn’t really get to see that much of in the manga. What really helps are the little details that the manga doesn’t have due to lack of space. A supportive smile from Ritsu really helps solidify the fact that yes, she and Mio are actually very good friends. It’s worth checking out, at the very least, even just to see why it has gotten so popular.

Next time: Claymore