As of this week I’m looking after my sister’s cat, which is one of the reasons why I’ve been too busy to post and reply to comments lately. Now I have three full weeks of paid leave I’m able to keep an eye on the kitteh, update here, catch up on animu and movies, visit friends, write songs, arrange my career change, etc., etc..
Classy
I’ve been following High School of the Dead and Shiki only a couple of eps behind people who’ve kept up with them properly but K-On!! is the one thing I’ve found time to watch every week. My earlier attempt at explaining my position only caused misunderstandings, although the resulting discussions made up for the disappointment I felt at the time. I just can’t bring myself around to the view of the hypothetical ‘haters’ for the simple reason that the series shouldn’t elicit a stronger negative reaction than a mere lack of interest…a view I can explain with my view on moe. And cats.
The idea of it being a moe show is in fact relevant to me. Because I don’t consider myself to be a fan of it, nor do I care for working out which of the contradictory working definitions is the ‘right’ one, it might seem strange that I’m enjoying the show partly because it’s a moe series. Incidentally I’m going on it being ‘a non-sexual appeal of cuteness that brings about feelings “Aww…~” from the viewer.’ If that really is what moe is all about, I don’t see why people make such a fuss (positive or negative) over it. Anyway.
K-On!! is well-made, no-brained feelgood TV. I don’t feel any sort of attraction towards a bunch of 16- and 17-year old adolescents either (except for Mio perhaps, since she often behaves like someone older than 17… re: two pics of her here). I couldn’t however put into words why I enjoy sitting down for twenty-five minutes every week watching this sort of thing. That is, until I stumbled on the awesomeness that is Maru.
Image taken from his official blog
Maru is an internet celebrity who’s achieved the feat of being a lolcat in a very literal sense; as opposed to being a meme/fictitious character invented by people with a pirate copy of Photoshop and too much time on their hands. When real-life cats aren’t asleep they provide endless hours of amusement just by being themselves, which is something you either appreciate or you don’t.
In the same way that K-On!! will either entertain you or bore you to death, some won’t see the appeal in the company of a cat as shown in Maru’s Youtube antics. Like K-On!!, there isn’t a planned storyline or underlying message; it’s merely Mugumogu’s photos and home videos of what her pet gets up to around the house. Most cats provide some degree of this entertainment value in addition to the companionship, although Maru is exceptional with his tricks involving the boxes.
Even so, it never fails to put a smile on my face…in pretty much the same way that watching each episode of K-On!! does. Maru is just a cat doing ordinary cute, dumb cat things for the amusement of the viewing public but the girls of K-On!! are doing ordinary, dumb, cute things…and I like both.
This is hardly a great leap for me: Azu-nyan==lolcat
We watch different shows for different reasons. Mock The Week is lowbrow satire on current affairs that makes me laugh, High School of the Dead is an edge-of-the-seat gore-fest, the BBC three-parter of Sherlock was a murder-mystery, Shiki is…well, I’m not sure what to make of it yet. Watch this space and all that. Both K-On!! and Maru are both about doing ordinary cute activities, or doing very little at all.
This is fairly similar to the iyashikei concept, except it’s cheering me up in a way that requires the smallest amount of conscious effort or thought, as opposed to giving the sense of serenity and introspection of Yokahama Shopping Trip or its upbeat spiritual sibling Aria (which coincidentally also features a cat that does very little apart from lazing around and being awesome). I do love iyashikei but I get a similar, yet distinctly different, kick out of K-On!!. Or indeed watching vids of Maru, or sitting around at home with my current houseguest.
I was hoping that the second season would feature more of the music now that Asuza is a full-time member of the band and when they’ve used some genuinely enjoyable songs for the end themes (I don’t care much for the OP Go! Go! Maniac!, although Utauyo! Miracle is an improvement). A personal highlight though was the Fujirock segment because it conveyed how live music events can be so inspiring and how that particular festival has something UK ones don’t: tidiness. Honestly, I’ve promised myself to go one year if only to enjoy the music festival experience with fellow fans who clean up after themselves.
I also love the attention to detail: Mio uses D’Addario bass strings, presumably to suit her student budget (our old bassist swears by Rotosounds), and AKG studio-quality headphones (I love my K-240s when monitoring for the clear sound and the comfort). for a show that seems to pride itself in simplicity and straightforwardness, there are those little things that I still appreciate – deep down, I want it to be more about the music, because that can still convey the message of friendship while taking things further than sitcom-style gags.
As someone who doesn’t usually care for moe, I don’t consider it to be an important factor when deciding whether I enjoy a series or not but I’m hardly offended or turned away by its presence either. My guess would be that there are those of us who are more concerned with it interfering with other elements that make a TV show or film entertaining and successful in what it sets out to do for the viewer.
Beautiful. That is all
So for heaven’s sake, don’t take this as another pointless attempt at rationalising or justifying the K-On!! lovers or haters, or a declaration of what I think moe ought to mean to the rest of you. I’ll save my energy for in-depth intelligent posts on Despera (when it airs) and Mouryou no Hako (when I get around to finishing it). And I’ll save the criticisms for the people who think that The Sky Crawlers sucks. Besides, the state of the Industry is a complex issue that has little, if anything, to do with the appeal of moe in of itself.
And if it starts to get on my nerves, I just sit back and watch a cat play with a box.
Tsk-tsk.
K-On!! is well-made, hare-brained feelgood TV.
/fixed
Fat cat! Longhair! Your sister has prime taste in cats! :D
As for the K-on component of this post:
This strikes me as a very mature way of seeing things (one which I am incapable of achieving on my own!) It’s easy to pick apart why a genre/episode/series is bad. It’s hard to say why it’s good, and it’s even harder to not take sides on things like this. K-on isn’t my cup of tea, but I appreciate that you’re able to remove the layers of “the industry” and “the moe debate”, as it were, and enjoy it simply for what it is.
Interestingly I’ve enjoyed K-ON more when I stopped caring about the girls playing music, and I think that is the direction the 2nd season has taken. The light music club is now only a small focus of their happy school day lives, what with episodes on class trips, the turtle, the outdoors music festival, practicing for Romeo and Juliet, etc. I guess it gives me less opportunity to find disappointment? It doesn’t sound that great when I put it that way, but I honestly think it’s more relaxing because of that.
Long live Maru! His diet pepsi box slide is my favorite. Those two back legs sticking out …
You touched on attention to detail. K-ON!! stands out from other “hare-brained” (thanks, Ghostlighting) shows for this reason. Okay, sometimes there are animated dead spots, but usually the girls are all interacting; their faces change, heads tilt this way and that, even when they’re not the scene’s focus. Take the first OP (I like it a little better than the new one. It had a frantic feel that I enjoyed): watch as Yui’s head tries to follow the camera as it circles around them, or the tiny camera bump when Ritsu bangs her drums. Hardly noticeable, but these little things cumulatively give K-ON!! an energy most shows lack.
The comparison of cats and k-on(or general moe shows) is pretty damn accurate for me. I have both a folder of k-on and cat pictures/animated gifs and will watch youtube clips of both as I find them amusing or “daww” inducing. However, I will never watch a full episode of k-on or own a cat. I can only give my undivided attention to things that are awesome, and dogs.
I think your view of K-on is very fair, when I used to watch it (before I dropped it at some episode) it was more of lack of interest opposed to strong hate. Cat analogy is a good one and I think for me, watching something like Minami-ke fits the anology better, such a great dawwwwww without requiring much attention to details etc. Watching k-on for me was more like, hmm…watching a hamster I guess (not as boring as watching paint dry but…yea still not that interesting). But I hear better things about K-on!!, so maybe I should skip first season and try that =D
There’s certainly something to be said for the whole ‘you just like it or you don’t’ aspect of this stuff, but as regards K-On!! I’ve got to say it seems a whole lot better than the first series to me.
So I suppose I’d disagree with you somewhat. I think that in contrast to, say, dumb action – where animation fluidity relates directly to enjoyment, the measures of fine moe are rather more difficult to assess. That said, one can’t rule out the possibility that it’s not really getting better after all and I’ve just slowly been converted to the moe cause by prolonged exposure. Still, I’d be inclined to say that ‘well-made’ is a big big factor and that some of us just need a comic piece of headwear or a caption before a cat becomes lol-worthy rather than simply companionable.
Comparing watching K-ON!! to watching the antics of Maru or other cute cats is a good way of showing why people enjoy shows like it – we simply like watching cute characters “doing ordinary, dumb, cute things.” There’s something relaxing and endearing about it – not all anime has to be intellectually or artistically stimulating after all, as many “moe-haters” seem to think. I wrote a post once that the term moe varies for everyone and that fans can be moe for different things, whether it’s cute cats, cute anime girls, or anything else.
@Ghostlightning: I stand corrected. orz
@Celeste: yeah, he’s a pretty epic cat (he behaves a bit strangely over certain things, but I’m learnign to get used to them). I always tread carefully when discussing K-On though, mainly because it always seems to hit a raw nerve with someone or other. Ignoring the popularity and the associated stuff, and it’s just good fun. Took me a while to get to that point though!
@kadian: the less a story tried to *be* a certain way, the fewer expectations you have and the more you enjoy it…that makes perfect sense to me! I do wish it was more about the music, but even so the second season has been even more enjoyable than the first.
@Peter S: people can complain about KyoAni all the want, but if nothing else a financially lucrative production is likely to have higher production values. You’re right that most of the time we wouldn’t notice those little things but every now and then you spot a moment where the animators have made the extra effort…and it’s more enjoyable for that. At times this series is of a quality that we’d normally expect from an OAV!
@Boneheimer: believe me, owning a cat involves quite a bit of time and effort (cleaning a litter box is probably as bad as it gets). There’s a gif somewhere with Azusa and a cake which gets me every time.
@gaguri: the second season is more of the same but I think it’s slightly more fun…although I recommend the OAV at the end of the first season when they do their first live gig. That was particularly fun for me. As others have said it is indeed less about the music and more about everyday things like other high school slice of life/comedy shows are.
@coburn: part of the reason why I’m enjoying K-On more now is perhaps because I’m used to what each episode achieves (or doesn’t achieve) so I’m not comparing each episode with the previous ones rather than other series. Moe has become a more nebulous term than most, but the general cosensus of what it means roughly explains why I’m enjoying this show. My appreciation of ‘dumb cat videos’ kinda helped me solidify that thought into something I’m able to explain properly, if that makes any sense!
@Yumeka: it’s taken a long time to get a handle on the moe thing, but I suspect a few people are getting it mixed up with the more typical sexual or sentimental attraction that comes with being a fan of a character…to me being ‘moe’ for a character is distinct from finding her attractive, but some fans blur the two together. Duly noted about your post though – I’ll have a look for it and give it a read.