K-ON!! 12

While her classmates attentively listen to their teacher’s advice on how to spend summer vacation diligently studying, Yui’s mind is set on one thing only, going on a summer trip with the light music club!

Yui’s suggestion quickly gains support from Ritsu, Tsumugi and Azusa while poor Mio’s meek protest fall on deaf ears.

Meeting at Yui’s house to plan their trip, the girls ponder where to go, once again to the beach like previous years or maybe to the mountains for a change? When Azusa reveals she’s always dreamed of attending 夏フェス, a summer music festival, the girls are enthusiastic about the idea.

Unsure if they’ll even be able to buy any tickets for the event on such short notice, the girls are surprised when Sawako appears with no less than six tickets for the music festival!

Getting Mio and the girls all fired up for the event, Sawako meets up with her students early in the morning for the bus ride to the festival. Although she usually runs late, Yui is the first one to arrive at the bus stop while Sawako barely makes it in time for the teacher suffers from a severe hangover.

Lamenting her nausea as she sits suffering through the bus ride, Sawako is joined by Yui whose motion sickness got the best of her. The aloof guitar player soon perks up though when the bus halts at a rest area for she can indulge on some soft ice which she enthusiastically shares with Azusa.

Thrilled at the prospect of arriving soon, Tsumugi looks forward to eating yakisoba while Mio makes hectic schedule of watching many bands perform on the different stages at the festival.

Dazzled by the enormous crowd and sheer size of the festival, the girls follow Sawako’s lea, setting up their tenth and taking note of the basic necessities their teacher advised them to bring.

Gazing at the stage for the first performance, the girls are swept away by the music and lively atmosphere, even the usually reserved and shy-to-a-fault Mio gets pulled in and can barely contain her glee.

Splitting up into smaller groups to visit different stages, the girls meet up again later for lunch, which alas turns out to be less fulfilling for Tsumugi and Yui when the girls see their favorite dishes are all sold out.

As night falls Yui sits on the hilltop overlooking the specious grounds, taking in the sounds of the faraway music, the guitar player is thrilled about what a wondrous experience the summer festival has been.

Soon joined by Azusa, Ritsu, Mio and Tsumugi, the girls lie down on the grass and dwell on their day. Enjoying what a great experience it has been, the girls have renewed courage and believe that one day too their band will play at such a festival.

Thoughts on this episode~

Was unexpectedly surprised by this excellent episode and initially did not realize how enjoyable it was to watch until it struck me when the ending tune started playing.

Although one could account a certain margin of how much an episode is liked or not to the mood in which one is while watching it, nonetheless feel that this was a terrific episode because it showed us quite a bit of the girls’ characters during their summer music festival in a perfectly balanced pace that was neither too slow or too fast.

While it alas suffers much undeserved scorn, “K-ON!!” often enough manages to put quite a bit of characterization into its otherwise light, fluffy stories, this all with characters that aren’t as shallow as one would think.

Ritsu solely being an energetic tomboy? Not so when one realizes that during the entire trip she was the most level-headed and kept Mio’s feet planted firmly on the ground while also being a supportive pillar too for the bass player to enjoy the festival without loosing track of herself.

Also liked the chemistry between Yui and Azusa which was nicely featured in this episode. Undoubtedly some may suggest I see too much into the interaction between Yui and Azusa due to my penchant to like yuri tales, yet still do think their friendship is not only well portrayed but the two play off well against each other.

This episode also continued on the more interesting portrayal of Sawako, whose relationship as a teacher with these youngsters is interesting to see as their interaction outside of school transcends that of mentor and students to that of friends.

Next week another summer episode but this time centered on Ui, Jun and Azusa, no doubt like the episode that featured how they spent their days while the third year girls were off to Kyoto.