7.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Azusa has just joined the Light Music Club and she is shocked that all they do is drink tea and eat snacks instead of practicing. The rest of the band reassures her that they will practice hard at their training camp, but despite Azusa's objections, the girls end up playing all day at the beach. Azusa soon learns that the reason why the band plays so well is because they have so much fun together. With the school festival right around the corner, the girls still have some hurdles to clear, like filling out the stage use application, doing maintenance on Yui's guitar, and coming up with a band name!
Starring: Aki Toyosaki, Yoko Hikasa, Satomi Sato, Minako Kotobuki, Ayana TaketatsuAnime | 100% |
Foreign | 96% |
Comedy | 23% |
Comic book | 22% |
Teen | 13% |
Music | 4% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The sweet girls of the Light Music Club are back for Volume 3 of their semi-exciting adventures in K-On!, a volume some might be expecting to finish the first season of the relatively short-lived series, a season which lasted for only thirteen episodes. Previous volumes have each had four episodes, but this third volume only contains episodes nine through eleven, meaning there will most likely be a Volume 4 consisting of the last two broadcast episodes of the first season as well as the OVA “Live House!” Reviews of the previous two volumes of K-On! can be found here:
K-On! Vol. 1 Blu-ray review
K-On! Vol. 2 Blu-ray review
I freely admit it took me a few episodes to fully get into the bizarrely enchanting world of K-On!, but I’m now a bona fide fan of this series’ odd combination of outré humor and its perhaps unintentional but meaningful message that music is a salve for the various afflictions which accost everyone, whether they be harried school students or harried Blu-ray reviewers. K-On! is simple, to be sure, but it’s an immensely enjoyable enterprise that manages to be both funny and touching, if perhaps a bit more of the former than the latter. It’s an odd little show that never really amounts to much, but is so unassuming that it grows on the viewer and becomes something akin to that comfy pair of slippers that may not look very glamorous but which you can’t quite bear to throw away.
As with the previous volumes of K-On!, Volume 3 is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. It takes a while to get used to the series' less than bombastic visual style, but ultimately this show's quieter ambience has its very own distinct pleasures. While the "real life" ("real life" being a decidedly relative term within the confines of the K-On! universe) sequences are fairly tame by any standards, they offer decent enough color and line detail, and an appealingly sharp image. When the series delves into fantasy elements, which happen quite a bit of the time, the color palette is decidedly more outré, and some of those robust hues pop magnificently in this volume. As always, the "live performance" sequences offer some great fluid motion and extremely bright and well saturated colors.
Once again K-On!, a series with music at its very core, arrives on Blu-ray with only lossy Dolby Digital soundtracks, one in the original Japanese and another with an English dub. While the DD 2.0 tracks aren't hideous by any stretch, inquiring minds will certainly want to know why a series that has music running through virtually every second of any given episode shouldn't be granted a lossless audio mix, even if it's not a surround mix. The Dolby tracks offer decent if not overwhelming fidelity, though again the added "oomph" of a lossless low end would have helped the music elements here considerably. Dialogue is well handled in both of these mixes, and all elements are prioritized artfully.
As I've mentioned in previous reviews of K-On!, it took me a while to settle in to this series' odd ambience, but by the first or second episode of the second volume, which is a third to halfway through the first season, I really started to get a kick out of K-On's decidedly goofy sense of humor. The musician in me always appreciated the fact that the show touts the benefits of playing and enjoying music, and that certainly continues on into this third volume. All of this said, this is probably not a series for any attention deficit disorder members of a potential audience, as truth be told, nothing much happens in any given episode, and this a much smaller scaled, character driven piece that doesn't have huge ambitions to be anything else. The show is gently humorous, painless and easy to take. Some may deride it for not having loftier ambitions. Others will learn to love K-On! for the simple pleasure it is. Count me among the latter group. Recommended.
2009
2009
2009-2010
けいおん!
2009-2010
けいおん!!
2010
けいおん!!
2010-2011
(Still not reliable for this title)
映画 けいおん!
2011
らき☆すた
2007-2008
Suzumiya Haruhi no shôshitsu / 涼宮ハルヒの消失
2010
2007-2008
Essentials / 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱
2006-2009
2013
Essentials / 日常
2011
2008-2009
2007
のんのんびより りぴーと
2015
2010
Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai! | 中二病でも恋がしたい! | Collector's Edition
2012-2013
ガールズ&パンツァー / Gâruzu ando Pantsâ
2012-2013
2009-2011
2008-2009
中二病でも恋がしたい! 戀 / Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren
2014
たまこまーけっと / Tamako Maketto
2013
2013
Standard Edition
2011
干物妹!うまるちゃん
2017