K-ON! 6

The day of the school festival and the keion-bu’s first live performance has arrived!
Hoping to practice as much as possible before they have to head on stage that afternoon, Mio swiftly heads to the club room only to find it empty.

Going through the school in search of her fellow club members she finds Yui hard at work in her class’ yakisoba restaurant. Even though Mio pleads with her and Yui would like to practice as well, she has to help her class.

Continuing her search, Mio finds Ritsu working as a clerk for their class’ haunted house. Ritsu too feels she cannot abandon her task just yet, especially since she’s the one who had suggested doing a haunted house.
Asking after Tsumugi’s whereabouts, Mio learns Tsumugi is working inside the haunted house and she hesitantly heads inside.

Frightened by the ominous darkness, Mio calls out Tsumugi’s name, but when the girl appears sporting special effect ghost make up, an utterly terrorized Mio lets out a scream so loud it’s heard throughout the entire school.

A bit later, Nodoka gives Yui leave to go practice for the keion-bu performance, saying she’ll manage to find someone to fill in at the yakisoba stand.
When Ritsu sees Yui head to the club room, she inquires about Yui’s voice which still seems quite hoarse. However, this does make a perfect opportunity to have Yui imitate a sumo wrestler, which both girls indulge in causing them a lot of laughter and odd looks from bystanders.

Ritsu and Tsumugi quickly wrap up their shifts as well, when the two girls arrive at the club room, they see Yui still standing outside, intently staring through the door’s stained glass window at Mio who’s practicing her vocals.

Finally barging in, the three girls join Mio and the light music club is able to practice their performance until satisfaction, relieving some of Mio’s stress.
Alas Mio’s levels of anxiousness quickly soar again when their teacher Sawako appears, bringing them cute and fluffy dresses with a slight gothic inspiration to wear during their performance.

With Yui and Tsumugi excited about the cute outfits, Mio has little choice to concede but her nerves are once again wreaking havoc.

To divert the embarrassed bass player’s attention, Ritsu says they should have band member introductions and starts to play them out, of course embellishing her own introduction while making fun of the others. Whacking Ritsu over the head in protest, it looks like Mio calmed down thanks to the humorous intermezzo.

Setting up their equipment in the school theater building, the girls are excited about bringing their first live performance, though Mio is still quite nervous.
The curtain rises and their hearts are pounding, when it seems Mio will loose her nerve altogether as she observes the large crowd, Yui lifts her spirit by saying she’ll do fine since everyone saw how hard she practiced for this all day.

With Mio regaining her composure, the keion-bu girls play their song and it’s a real success, the public loves it and bursts out in applause.

Thrilled their first live was such a success, Yui, Mio, Tsumugi and Ritsu thank the audience and head offstage.
Hoping this may finally have cured her from her shyness in front of crowds, Mio trips over her bass guitar’s amplifier cord and falls flat on her face.
To make matters worse, she gets up with her back turned to the audience, giving them a full view of her blue striped panties. Beet red with embarrassment, Mio lets out a scream that resonates far and beyond.

Another great “K-ON!” episode. Loved seeing all the girls and their regular antics at the school festival.

While I must duly object to Kyoto Animation for not showing us Mio’s pantsu but replacing that scene with an image of a blue striped rice bowl and demand they offer us an unforgettable scene of Mio’s angelic blue striped pantsu clad tushie, in a way I think they made an excellent move by doing that as well.
Surely they’ve offered plenty of fanservice already with the many moe scenes and showing the girls in bikini, they also make a stand this way not to offer such cheap all too often seen pantsu driven fanservice. A welcome change.

As for Mio’s pantsu, with the plethora of illustrations made by artists and fans alike of Mio in maid outfit and bikini, we will no doubt see incarnations of that scene showing us what if may have looked like had they show us Mio’s pantsu after all.

In fact it looks like overzealous fans have already come to the rescue by offering such a speculative image and further stating the 16:9 DVD format may offer us a pantsu view compared to the 4:3 broadcast size, as you can see below.

I can only eagerly await such a DVD version~

One thing I must say is that I was sorely disappointed that they did not make the effort to animate the entire performance but rather cut to some sort of interlude showing what it may look like if the song was turned into a music video.
I suspect budgetary reasons as such a music performance with all those intricate hand movements is simply expensive and time consuming to animate.

Next to Mio’s incredibly dere dere scenes, I was also taken in by Nodoka again, she’s quite well voiced. Or maybe seeing her in that police hat awakened some uniform fetish?