K-ON! is a series that I heard a lot about early last year. People were raving about it then, and I don't have an exact recollection of what they said, but I'm sure there were more than a few of those "this is the best thing ever" people. There still are. I never understood it. I've tried on three separate occasions to watch all 13 episodes of this show, all of which but one met with horrific, seething, rage-filled failure.

Back when the show began, I gave K-ON! a try. I remember it was airing while Eden of the East was airing-- a show I was absolutely excited for every week and loved every bit of, a show that I'm glad has been licensed here and I eagerly await US release news, and two movies I can't wait to watch. K-ON!, I picked up an episode or two late, hoping it'd be a decent compliment to my weekly Eden watching and for a few weeks there, everything was sort of smooth sailing. I watched, I felt fairly indifferent about the characters, and overall, the show was just sort of... there. I watched it, I didn't care either way, I paid little attention to the episode, and I moved on. I ended up dropping it at around episode 6 or 7. Something like that. I know it was before Azusa came along because I have no fucking idea what that character even sounds like. The rage didn't start until much later.

My second and third attempts were exactly the same. I remember my third more, though, so I guess I'll go off of that-- I was on winter break. Not too long ago. Early January, since I had no classes until the end of the month, I began watching anime series that I'd heard good things about and picking up some various shows just because. During that month, I ran through To Aru Majutsu no Index (which was a fantastic series), whatever Railgun episodes were out at the time, and both seasons of Shakugan no Shana. I was pretty much out of things to watch so I thought, "hey, I'm never ever ever ever ever [...] ever going to stop hearing about K-ON!, unless I make myself a time machine and travel back in time and stop it from ever being created so let's try it again". 

I made it about four episodes in before I got so frustrated at the trash on my screen that I just turned it off and put some music on to cool off. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. K-ON! is one of the worst things out there. One of the worst things to ever happen to anime. It's awful.

Yui is absolutely irritating. Everything about her is equally rage-inducing. Let's start with her voice. Granted, this voice is perfect for the character-- I do applaud her seiyuu for that. She's perfect for the dumb-as-a-doorknob guitar player, and that's good, and good on her. But it was like nails on a fucking chalkboard, listening to Yui Hirasawa speak. And the flashback to her childhood, you all know the one, the castanets, the "untan" scene-- this is one of, if not the most irritating thing to come out of anime, ever. How Yui acts is your general stupid-girl bullshit. She's clumsy, she's stupid. That's honestly not too much of the hate for me. One big thing that always irks me about her is that she looks like a damn rodent. Seriously, look at her. She's a chipmunk.

I'm also sick of hearing about Mio. But I don't have a whole lot to say about her.

These characters are the literal definition of "moeblob". They're these little blobby, humanesque monstrosities, attempting to be cute. 

I'm not going to complain about there being no story because I know what slice of life is. It's this. I know. I've watched Lucky Star, and honestly, I liked it. That was years ago, but I did-- I'd probably hate it for the most part now. And I will say that there's a good idea there somewhere. I like the idea of a club of people getting together to make a band. But I feel they've gone about this the wrong way. I feel that this whole thing is just one big moe-pandering crapfest, and that the could've done so much more, but did what they did. They made one of the worst anime series that could ever be made.

One big gripe I have about the show is that it's enforcing stereotypes about anime that I see amongst people who don't actually watch anime. This is one of the shows around now that are pretty much making people say "all anime is moe shit now, there's nothing but moe now, there's no such thing as a good anime series anymore, it's all the same". 

No, this show isn't alone in that, there are a good handful of shows nowadays that are like this. But K-ON! is pretty much the most popular of the bunch, the most talked about. People cite this show as being the downturn of anime.

And while I can't completely agree that it will destroy anime as a whole, I do think that shit like this is diminishing the quality and image of anime as a whole. The people that read and use this site watch anime, we know, and we know damn well, that there are shows like Durarara!! and the upcoming Senko no Night Raid and all these other series that are nowhere near slice-of-life, moe pandering, seemingly-made-for-marketing bull. 

And that's also one big thing that sort of bothers me about the show, although not an incredible amount. K-ON! seems a bit like it was made to be marketed. Like how we have all of the action shows for kids here on Cartoon Network and all that are pretty much made to sell toys (the legendary example, Transformers). This seems like one of those, except not exactly aimed at kids-- more at just a general Japanese otaku crowd, one which will seemingly buy anything if their waifu is plastered on it. After everything, it does seem like, maybe, they made it to sell shit, and they definitely did that successfully.

But the problem there is that if this works, it'll work again. It'll keep happening. And when that happens, the quality of shows goes down. And what do we get stuck with? Moe-pandering bullshit rehashing the same blobby thing over and over. The good stuff stops coming because companies see what works, see what sells, want a cut of that, and stick to it. Because it's all a business and that's how shit works.

K-ON! isn't going to destroy anime entirely, it's impossible for one show to kill an entire form of entertainment alone. But I feel it can fuck something up pretty bad.

I'm sick of it. I wish it never came to be. I'm sick of hearing about it, I'm sick of seeing it.

But there's one thing I will commend the show for. And that's giving j-core artists shit to play with. Quite especially USAO's Red and Deep: