I love K-On. I know that seems obvious from viewing my profile for a few seconds or if you read my review of the show, but I think it's something I need to bring up beforehand. It's a series I've adored since I first watched it in 2021 and that adoration has only gotten better with every passing day since then. It's humour, vibes, pacing, storytelling, characters and emotional beats are all major factors for why I hold it so close to me, and while it's definitely not perfect, I am more than happy to unapologetically deem it as a masterpiece. But why did it take me 7 months to write a review on the movie if I'm this attached to the franchise? Well, that's because I've actually been working on a video essay about it, and I'll be a lot more comprehensive on how I feel there when I eventually finish it than I ever could be with this shorter review. And this time around, if you're someone who loves this movie with every fiber of your being, I want you to actually read what I have to say here instead of immediately scrolling down to the score and base everything I have to say off of that. Because I actually want to hear if you people have any reasonable counter-arguments or anything you want to add. I know I have no control if you decide to just scroll down anyways, but I want to encourage discussion if you want to say literally anything to me in messages, either on here or Discord (indigodrift666). With all that said, time for my proper review of K-On The Movie.

This time, I want to cover 5 categories; story, humour, animation/OST, characters and emotional core to see how these stand in their own right and in comparison to the original series.

STORY:

I only have two words to describe this movie's plot: fundamentally broken. I know that sounds like an insane thing to describe the story of a slice of life anime movie, but so much of the events that take place in the movie don't make any sense at all, and it's one of the factors that makes it really hard to just enjoy the funni CGDCT anime movie. It would take way too long for me to list every individual instance of the story breaking, but to name a few really baffling ones...

• Azusa somehow being able to hear a mid level cassette from a significant distance away from the light music club room and somehow interpeting that as a legitimate performance so the bait and switch stuff in the first 4 miuntes of the movie can play out.

• The entire London trip happening at all because they cheat with Ton-chan's placement between all these shots during the scene where they get him to vote for their graduation trip location by hoping he eventually touches a cup. He was nowhere near close enough to the London cup in the first two shots shown here, but they have them go by as fast as they do to make you think it makes any sense for his leg to be underneath the London cup handle when it just straight up doesn't.

• The rest of HTT getting an worthwhile gift for Azusa to prove that they really appreciate her before they graduate is the main emotional core of the film, and during an opportunity where they actually get to discuss it, going so far as to kick Sawako out to properly do so, it literally takes them until sunset to actually start a conversation about it when it was a really bright afternoon beforehand and there's literally nothing else they could have done in that timeframe.

• Mio's sudden fear of spinning things is a running thing throughout the entirety of the London trip, yet it's kicked off entirely because of a scenario where her luggage didn't show up on the spinning carousel at the London airport, but was instead placed by someone else to the left of them, and I'm expected to buy that none of them ever looked in any other direction until now?

• Approximately none of HTT knowing exactly where the location of their hotel was at, making them have to take a different route when they eventually get told where it is, leading to them ending up at a sushi bar. Were they not told about it when they were booking it? Because I don't see any other reason for why neither of them, especially Azusa who's supposedly meant to be the one keeping track of things and ensuring the trip goes well (I'm not just saying this, they literally use this as the crux of a sentimental moment later in the film).

• The entire sushi bar scene is an amalgamation of broken bullshit, like neither Mio or Mugi stepping in to explain anything to the manager despite both having semi-decent grasps of the English language, thus forcing them into a position where they have to play a song for them, but the most egregious thing that happens is the explanation given from Love Crysis after everything's said and done. which is that Kawakami set them up to perform there, which raises so many questions about the sushi bar manager not asking the name of the band and especially not questioning why the band they thought were Love Crysis arriving much earlier than expected.

• HTT not knowing that the cafe they went to for tea required a reservation, implying that this wasn't on their itinerary at all, which makes no sense because they seemed pretty excited to see what London tea is like before arriving. Not to mention the fact that they somehow never bothered to look for another cafe at any other point that didn't require a reservation.

• Azusa somehow seeing the candy trail Yui left flawlessly from the angle she was at while she's half asleep and her immediate course of action being to follow it despite wanting to keep her distance from Yui for the entre fucking day, leading to a tedious back and forth gag between her and Yui that acts like there was zero tension or discomfort between them prior to it only to bring that tension and discomfort back in the next scene that Yui and Azusa share together.

• Framing it as if HTT had a proper discussion about whether they should accept Kawakami's offer to perform at the cultural festival only to skip right through it with seemingly no justification for why they're reluctant to do so by the time they get out of the store, followed up with Azusa mentioning that they need to get their flight back home tomorrow at 5pm only after they accept Kawakami's offer as if that was somehow never mentioned at all while they were in the store despite it being the only real problem with accepting the offer in the first place meaning that no discussion was even had in the first place, making it more frustrating that Yui is shot down for sidelining the conversation.

• Sawako also being able to call the exact hotel room that HTT were in despite the fact that there's no way she could have ever known since neither of them knew what room they'd even be in, nor would she have known that they were in an Ibis since it's also incredibly unlikely that they mentioned that to her, and knowing to find HTT at this exact location in the first place when there’s no way she could have gotten that info from anybody.

• Mio suspecting that Yui might have told Azusa about the fact that they're making a song for her despite the fact that everyone else would have been in earshot if Yui almost spilled the beans in front of Azusa and the fact that Yui was the one who came up with the idea to write a song for her in the first fucking place, neither of them ever preparing for Azusa suddenly arriving while they were thinking of song lyrics during the days that passed between them agreeing to Mugi's melody being amazing and them eventually finishing up the lyrics.

But even if we were to ignore every single nonsensical event and build up present throughout the entire runtime of this film, the story is still plagued with major issues that actively go against the main appeals of the slice of life genre and K-On as a whole. Did you want to see your favourite characters enjoying London and making wonderful new memories there? Well, too bad, because all of that is relegated to a montage that lasts under 2 minutes, despite the London trip as a whole taking up 37 minutes of the 105 minute runtime, and this does significant damage to other elements of the film such as the character dynamics being pretty much non-existent for the whole thing barring one, and the pacing because it feels like any scene that isn't broken flies by in a matter of seconds. But worse yet is how it heavily wastes the potential of these characters being in London through build-ups that are given pretty much no pay-off. The first instance is how they build up the idea of Ho-kago Tea Time having tea in London, a city that's best known for its tea, before they even arrive there, and when it gets to a point where they come across a cafe, they hype up that idea even more, only to shoot it down because they needed a reservation. And the second instance is when the band decides to attempt to translate Gohan wa Okazu into English for the cultural festival. They don't show the results of said translation, so it would be safe to assume that we would eventually get to see said results when they perform it, but no, they just stick to singing it in Japanese instead, with two internal lines of dialogue from Ritsu and Mio implying that they had completed the translation.

They don't even get to check out any history with any English bands like Mio wanted to. Stuff like this makes London being the location feel like more of an afterthought despite the potential of HTT visiting it being right there. And no, the cultural shenanigans that force the characters to use broken English do not count because they're all only during the first day of the trip and they only happened because the two characters who actually could use their implied English skills to make those situations easier just don't use them at all.

The amazing vibes that made the show such a comforting watch are also almost completely void from this movie because so many things here give off a sense of uneasiness. Between the bait and switch argument at the beginning of the movie, the sentiment that Azusa has never had any positive experiences with the light music club (which couldn't be further from the truth), both scenes where Azusa comes into the club room only for the others to freak the hell out over it, trying to make the sushi bar manager seem as scary as humanly possible during the sushi bar scene, the entire semi-conflict between Yui and Azusa (which we are going to talk about in just a moment), that scene where Azusa elbows Yui in the stomach, and both instances where Yui tries to give encouragement to her friends in situations where they have to play a song in front of other people, the movie consistently leans into stuff that are incredibly discomforting to the point where that's pretty much the established tone for the entire runtime.

"But the movie isn't about the London trip, though. It's about the characters coming up with a song for Azusa so that the final episode of the show is more impactful instead of just having Tenshi ni Fureta Yo come out of nowhere." Well, there's just one little problem with that. The amount of time the movie spends developing this is even less so than the time it spends on the characters enjoying the London trip. They bring up the concept of wanting to get a graduation gift for Azusa later transitioning into writing a song for her during the first third, but it’s pretty much forgotten about for almost the entirety of the London trip barring one brief discussion that boils down to them not having any inspiration. But it’s never discussed after that. There could have been an extra scene for that, but instead we got them all discussing Yui translating Gohan wa Okazu into English, which got nullified anyways as I mentioned earlier. The only character who puts any effort into making Azusa’s song a reality is Yui, but that doesn’t really factor into the film spending time developing that because her efforts get treated as if they meant nothing during the final third. It takes until the final 15 minutes of the movie for the characters to actually start properly working on the song, and even then, the entire process of it that takes days is completely and entirely skimmed over in a minute or so. This only ends up getting across the sentiment that they found some time before the events of S2E23 to write and compose the song, something that literally anyone could piece together. In fact, the series got this sentiment across better without even trying. If we just go off that, you can safely assume that even with all the stuff the characters did in preparation of their graduation, they sitil found some time in their day to write this song for Azusa. There might have been a point if any of the lyrics tied in to the London trip thematically, but they don’t, so once again, this barely adds anything.

And for the final thing I wanna cover regarding the story; the semi-conflict between Yui and Azusa. What is this semi-conflict, you may ask? Well, it's Azusa suspecting that Yui is going to hold herself back a year, and as a result of this suspicion, she acts colder and more distant towards her than she ever has n the show. And it's genuinely one of the worst written conflicts I've ever seen. It kicks off because of the bafflingly convenient timing of Azusa coming into the club room to hear Yui saying “staying back a year” with no context and not any other part of that conversation, but honestly, even with that, there’s no way it should have ever happened in the first place. Disregarding how Mugi successfully manages to cover it up, any suspicions that Yui could be hiding something from Azusa should have been dropped when she saw with her own eyes that Yui couldn’t hide the fact that she cheated the graduation trip lottery she did, and when Ui confirmed the fact that Yui sucks at hiding things later on at the library. And yet, even with all this evidence she has that actively goes against the idea of Yui hiding the fact that she’s staying back a year and not getting any further hints that she could be in the several days that pass while they’re preparing for their London trip, she still ends up having a nightmare about Yui staying back a year, repeating this same nightmare on every single night of the trip, implying that she’s been letting the idea of Yui staying back a year live rent free in her head this entire time as if she somehow caught onto a hint that confirms that idea, but she didn’t. And the brief instance where she believes Yui has romantic feelings for her because she saw Azu-nyan Love written in Yui's notepad makes things even more baffling. Yui's written affection is barely any different from the usual affection she's given Azusa over the course of the series, and yet even when there were two scenes in the show where Yui has literally tried to kiss her, this is what makes Azusa suspect she has romantic feelings towards her? Yeah, no, I don't believe that at all. And this semi-conflict is the driving force of all their scenes together in the movie, in which it reduces their character dynamic, which is the only one that's even remotely present in this movie, to Azusa being annoyed and discomforted by Yui's mere existence all the time. Also, it doesn't even make sense that Azusa would believe Yui staying back a year would be a bad thing even if she had every right to think it's true. Not only because of how close the two became throughout the series, but also because this movie takes place after S2E22, the episode where the upcoming graduation of the other HTT members was starting to emotionally affect Azusa. Like I mentioned earlier, this semi-conflict also adds to the discomforting vibes because K-On is a series that avoided major conflict almost entirely, so it's incredibly baffling to see this bullshit that only leads to more scenes that feel detached from the show's tone. It doesn’t even get a satisfactory conclusion because it ends with Azusa showing no relief from Ui confirming that Yui isn’t staying back a year, showing no positive interactions between the two before or after this resolution, following that up with Azusa taking Jun’s word on her not getting into a college despite the fact that she already knows Yui DID get into one!

HUMOUR:

Oh, if you thought the show's level of charm remained even remotely intact with the movie's comedy, think again, because the humour here is absolutely atrocious. A large chunk of it has already been surgically removed thanks to the poor handling or blatant disregard of the character dynamics, but whatever jokes it has in their place almost don't feel like legitimate attempts at comedy. When they’re not confusing the hell out of you with shit like the double entendre with Mio mentioning that she sleeps without socks being interpreted by the others as her sleeping without panties, which they felt the need to bring up a second time for some fucking reason, they show the most baffling shit imaginable on the screen in an attempt to be funny. Yui fumbling about trying to cover up the fact that she rigged the graduation trip roulette, and an insanely racist joke where Yui decides that they should play Curry Nochi Rice because she saw a fucking Indian man in the audience are only examples of this. And don’t even get me started on how it handles jokes and gags previously presented in the series. The running joke of Mio bonking Ritsu on the head has been heavily neutered here because they cut away during the impact, they don't show the comically large bump on Ritsu's head and there's no follow up remark or comment from Mio, the entire point of the joke regarding Sawako showing up in scenes randomly is destroyed because the director said they didn't want to make audiences go "Why'd she show up?", despite the fact that the entire reason that joke was funny is because it made absolutely no sense, and worst of all, the entire scene where Azusa elbows Yui in the stomach is, from beginning to end, a horrific recreation of the scenes where Yui tried to kiss Azusa in the show because it goes from lighthearted and short to discomforting and dragged out, topped off with the sidelining of the gag where Yui gives affection to her guitar with the reveal she wanted to hug that and not actually kiss Azusa. So, in all, It’s already baffling how unfunny the comedy throughout the film is with its original jokes, but the way they handle jokes previously presented in the series makes it almost insulting.

ANIMATION/OST:

The animation for this movie is an interesting case because on one hand, it's definitely an upgrade from the show in many areas. There are so many scenes so beautifully animated and detailed that it's jaw dropping, when you compare the character designs between the movie and the show, the upgrades they got are noticeable and they look cleaner than they ever have, certain shots are almost wallpaper worthy with how much detail went into every aspect, with several highlights being shown in the pics below, the slight camera shakes at certain points are mesmerizing, but never jarring, and everything about London from a visual standpoint is an absolute treat to look at, with all these qualities coming together in the best of ways with the sushi bar performance and the cultural festival performance.

But on the other hand, it lacks one major quality that made the show's animation so appealing; its expressiveness. The show was so much fun to look at visually because there was a lot of energy and expressiveness when it was needed for the comedic moments, which it had plenty of. That’s almost nowhere to be found in this film, which makes the animation feel empty in a sense, and it's another factor into why the movie's comedy fails. And sometimes the lighting can be full on terrible because it gets so fucking bright sometimes that it looks incredibly tacky, which can also be said for the movie's attempt to make the sushi bar manager as scary as possible by making the lighting on him so dark that it clashes horribly with how the rest of the scene is lit.

But if there's one element of the film that I have approximately zero criticisms with, it's the OST. The quality of each track is pretty much on par with the show's fantastic OST, and it's the only element of the film that feels like it perfectly carries over the vibes of the series, with the highlights being some of the softer and more melancholic tracks as per usual. And you can listen to all of them here.

CHARACTERS

It's finally time to cover the one element of this movie that could make or break it, as with any moe slice of life series or movie; the characters. K-On's cast was home to some of my most loved characters in any piece of media ever, and if you checked my favourite characters list here, you'll see that a signifcant chunk of that list consists of just K-On characters. So naturally, they would be the one thing that would help redeem this movie to some degree in spite of everything else it failed at, right?

MAN, DO I WISH THAT WERE THE CASE!!!!

For the characters that aren't really that important to the film, Ui and Jun have not been damaged in any way, so if you've seen what I've said about them in my review of the show, those things still apply here. I would say the same for Nodoka, because her character does remain intact for most of the movie, but then you have the end of the film where despite agreeing to walk home with Yui in S2E24, she decides to walk home with Azusa in the final shot we see.

As for Sawako, she was definitely a case of being poorly handled. She had one moment in the movie where she acted crazy with absolutely no justification or explanation at the beginning, which was not how her bursts of insanity played out in the series, and after that point, she shows up in London at a time where she gets absolutely nothing to contribute other than breaking the movie’s story some more, and with the addition of the director wanting to add logic to Sawako suddenly showing up as a justification for only giving her a minute of screen time during the London trip, the suspense of disbelief I would have had from her being able to track HTT at the cultural festival completely falls apart. It just makes me wonder why they even had her show up in London at all because her only meaningful
contribution of ensuring the classroom concert happens way after it’s over.

But when it comes to the band members of Ho-kago Tea Time, the characters we've spent 39 episodes and 2 OVAs connecting with, all 5 of them have been dealt significant damage in one way or another, ranging from neglected character traits to full on character assassination. And for this segment, I'll be comparing what I said about them in my review of the show in quotes to their portrayals in this film to really showcase how much they've all been dragged through the mud, in a relatively different order.

Ritsu Tainaka:

As one of the more comedic members of HTT, she doesn't get that much development compared to the other characters, but her high energy, tomboyish personality and her overall goofiness in several scenes are what carry a good chunk of this show's humour. And while it would be very easy to just make her the type of character who just fucks everything up for the people around her, they didn't take that route for her. Any moments where she dials back on her teasing towards Mio when she realises she's going overboard or where she shows genuine compassion to her friends are really what stop her from ever falling into the annoying territory. Plus, she actually showcases some moments of maturity and self-reflection, which gives her at least a bit of depth.

And in K-On The Movie, her high energy has been almost completely stripped. She feels so dry throughout most of the film, and since was one of the more comedic members of the band, that's another element of the show's humour gone. And her intelligence has been brought down to baffling levels. I know she was far from the smartest person in the band, but she was never so catastrophically brain dead that when Maki from Love Crysis calls out hers and Mio's names, she proceeds to speak in fucking English looking completely blind and deaf to the people right in front of her!

Tsumugi Kotobuki:

Mugi's just fucking adorable, man. Her desire to experience what common people do in their lives as someone who comes from a rich family will never not be one of the cutest things I've ever seen. And if Yui and Mio had cute quirks, Mugi is fucking loaded with them. Between literally any expression she makes, the fact that she can carry really heavy stuff with ease, her joyous curiosity that pretty much defines her character, her comically large eyebrows especially when they make jokes about them being pickles and her obsession with seeing girl on girl action, she's a really sweet character that almost ranks up to Yui's level of cuteness. Out of all the HTT members, she gets the least amount of development, but at this point, I don't even care.

And in K-On The Movie, her joyous curiosity is not present at all throughout the London trip and neither are any of her other adorable quirks listed here. On top of that, her IQ has been reduced to 0 in this film. The movie implies that she can understand English, yet when the taxi driver asks which Ibis they want to go to, she interprets it as him asking where the Ibis is despite “which one” being two of the most basic words in the English dictionary, which is made even more baffling by the fact that she, alongside all the other characters, for that matter, somehow didn’t know about the specific location of the Ibis they made a reservation for. And then in the very next scene, she claims that the desk woman was talking too fast for her to translate despite the fact that she was speaking slower than the average person. But her worst moment of stupidity is easily at the sushi bar, where upon realizing that HTT are being set up to play for the people there, and despite the others clearly not wanting to go through with it, Mugi’s first instinct is to ask the staff for a keyboard, which pretty much forces them into playing, and not even getting to eat at the sushi bar like they wanted. I don't understand why she's portrayed as an unreliable idiot in this movie when this show wouldn't have gone anywhere if the others didn't rely on her for the tea they drink in the club room or being able to provide for the training camps and summer fest.

Mio Akiyama:

She serves as the more mature and reserved member of the light music club, constantly trying to ensure that the others don't goof off so much. But under that maturity is a nervous wreck who's easily scared by things and can let her shyness overtake her. But her efforts to push through her fears for the sake of people she cares about, whether it be through her own instincts or the encouragement and support she gets from others, is highly admirable, and her efforts to achieve this only get stronger as the series progresses, on top of learning to find a balance between ensuring her fellow band members put their all into song playing, and just taking in the moment and enjoying life. Plus, she also has a few cute quirks, like how she's the one who writes a lot of the silly song lyrics, and her immense joy when it comes to left handed bassists.

And in K-On The Movie, none of these endearing qualities can be found in her character. Her fear of spinning things that's built completely on straw is already bad enough as it only happens because nobody looked in any other direction while waiting for her luggage, but even then, she managed to leave the airport with it, so it makes no sense that this would make her believe that all spinning things are a sign of everything going wrong, and despite being repeatedly proven wrong about this sentiment, it's dragged out for the entire London trip. But furthermore, she’s also become a colossal moron because not only can she understand English, but translate it incredibly well, yet never uses that ability in situations where it would have benefitted her and her friends, especially at the sushi bar. I don’t get why she isn’t the first one to speak up against the sushi bar’s question about if HTT is the band performing for them today with the knowledge that she has the best grasp of the English language, and how she’s had zero problems expressing her reluctance to do something she doesn’t want to in previous episodes. But the worst part of her character is that she feels like she always needs to make a remark to anything Yui says or does, even if it doesn't make any sense at all. Not to mention the fact that they make it out as if she cares the most about getting a gift for Azusa during the beginning of the film, yet after that point. she pretty much forgets about it until the very end and then paints Yui as the one who forgot that the song for Azusa was even remotely important. This is far from the only instance of her treating Yui like garbage, but if there’s one instance of this that really cements her character assassination, it’s the scene where Yui is crying from embarrassment from a funny looking note being placed on her face, and Mio’s reaction is to take a picture of her like this before subsequently laughing. You are never going to get me to believe that Mio would ever, under any circumstances, treat anyone feeling any sort of embarrassment and shame like this when her mental state would absolutely be crushed if she were in a similar situation. What happened here? Mio went from relatable and endearing on top of being really well developed to a pathetic bitch with no intelligence whatsoever.

Azusa Nakano:

She is established as someone who is strict and serious, and also feels like an outcast alongside the other club members since the way she acts clashes with the carefree nature of the other members like Yui and Ritsu. She's passionate about music and feels disheartened that she's in a club that slacks off a lot, and at several points in the series, she tries to keep the others in line and not fall into the carefree boat of her fellow club members. However, in spite of all this, she admires all of them for their seemingly incredible music talent, and she especially looks up to Mio, who shares similar traits of wanting to push the other club members to be better. Plus, as she spends more time with her fellow bandmates, she learns that there are times where taking in the moment with them and enjoying the time they have is just as important as getting a lot of music practice done, slowly appreciating their little quirks and finding a solid balance between taking in the moment and asserting hard work and practice. It's similar to Mio's development, but to a bigger extent since unlike Mio, who knows who she is even when she comes to appreciate the sillier sides of being in the light music club, Azusa sometimes feels like she's losing herself being around them and has an entire episode dedicated to her trying her damnedest to assert a more serious demeaner. And as a result of said development, she forms a strong connection with each club member, which comes full circle near the end of the series where she's fully warmed up to them and wants to stay together with them in the coming years.

Literally all of this is completely undone in K-On The Movie. Her intelligence has also been reduced to 0 like the others, given how she somehow never knew the location of the hotel they booked despite the movie also establishing that she’s been going to great lengths to make sure the trip runs smoothly and doesn’t mention the fact that they have to catch their flight back home tomorrow during the scene where they’re contemplating on whether they should attend the cultural festival to perform until after they’ve agreed to go through with it, she has also been reduced to someone who’s cold, distant and irrational. Most of the movie has her with the most neutral expression imaginable that sometimes leans towards being completely done with life, and she rarely ever expresses any emotion throughout the movie even before she starts suspecting Yui of shit, which I don’t understand at all when she’s previously been way more expressive in the show, especially during sentimental moments about her specifically. And I know I’ve already torn the semi-conflict between her and Yui to shreds, but I cannot understate how much the inclusion of that garbage just annihilates her character! When she starts suspecting Yui of wanting to hold herself back a year, she heavily sticks by that suspicion, not once giving the benefit of the doubt that Yui isn’t actually gonna do it, even when there’s blatant evidence against it, only going off a single thing she said out of context without ever considering if she meant anything else. And not only that, she only sees Yui potentially staying back a year as the worst thing that could happen to her, repeating the exact same nightmare on every night of the London trip, which makes absolutely no sense for the reasons I've already given. And worse yet, she does this to the point where she doesn't enjoy herself at any point in the London trip. And her other suspicion adds salt to the wound, because in spite of all the affection she’s put up with from Yui without interpreting her as a creep she needs to keep her distance from, even when she’s had to deal with nearly being kissed twice, it takes said affection being written on a notepad for her to interpret it as Yui having romantic feelings for her and being horribly creeped out as a result, and wanting to avoid her as much as possible. She was not this irrational in the show. Don't even try to tell me that she was. But even putting the main issues of the semi-conflict aside, the way she treats Yui in general is frustrating. Getting pissed at her for looking in her direction when they’re sitting on opposite sides of the table, tearing her down for wanting to reassure the others that they’ll make it to their flight back home when they agree to attend the cultural festival concert and outright telling Yui that she had a strange dream about her and refuses to elaborate. And to top this off, all of Azusa’s development across the series and the close connections she formed with every member of the light music club have been completely undone. She has regressed to the way she was during the middle of S1E9, questioning why she ever joined the club in the first place, followed up by Ui implying that she has nothing positive to say about the light music club, and that sentiment is further driven by the fact that she is rarely ever happy or anything other than neutral or dead inside when around them. And by the end of the movie, she pretty much forgets who all of the members are since she takes Jun’s word regarding them being incredibly serious about hiding snacks from her, and her assumption that they didn’t actually get into college, which is cemented by the recreation of S2E24’s ending where she feels absolutely zero emotion from Tenshi ni Fureta Yo being played. Who in the hell is this character? It doesn't feel like Azusa to even a minor degree. This feels more like a fucking skinwalker who murdered Azusa in cold blood after S2E26.

Yui Hirasawa:

She is a character that, for over a year now, I've adored for her sweetness towards the people around her, relatable quirks like failing to focus on certain things and uncertainty on what she wants to do with her life at the beginning of the series, her overall adorableness with every thing she does, which is enhanced by Aki Toyosaki's amazing voice performance, and her pure innocence that is the embodiment of a soul who can do no wrong.

On top of this, the way she grows as a character throughout the series is incredible. She starts off as an airheaded girl who has no focus in her life whatsoever. But upon joining the light music club and forming a connection with her new friends, she finds a new purpose in her life as she now has something to focus on and a goal to achieve. And as a result, she starts putting more effort into things, becoming more emotionally aware of the people around her, and actually somewhat maturing. This served as the emotional core of S1E12, but this development was pushed further in Season 2 as we see Yui coming to things early when we previously saw her as a late sleeper, pushing herself as much as possible when focusing on several things at once, and realising how much the people she's come to love mean to her. I don't think I even have the words to properly express how much I adore Yui's character growth. I became so attached to her that seeing her develop was like seeing my own child grow into someone even more amazing.

But now, in K-On The Movie, all of her beautiful development throughout the series means absolutely nothing now! Outside of her being the one who wanted to fuck with Azusa the most during the bait and switch argument at the beginning of the movie, being uncharacteristically forceful with her and suffering the same issue as all the other characters of her IQ being reduced to levels that become irritating even for her, Yui is the one character in the movie that hasn't been completely destroyed, because her determination and dedication when it comes to the people she cares about has been entirely untouched. She's the one who comes up with the idea to get Azusa a graduation gift, she's the one who decides that they should write a song for her on a bigger scale than ever, and she spends the entire London trip trying her damnedest to come up with the best lyrics imaginable before settling on just going with the vibes of HTT usual songs. But in spite of this, she is treated as a useless waste by the other characters. And there is an incredibly long list of this bullshit occurring throughout the entire runtime:

• Everyone laughing at her when she gets a funny piece of paper stuck onto her face when she's crying from embarrassment, and Mio taking a fucking picture of her while she's like this.

• Being treated as a weirdo for being pumped up to perform at the sushi bar despite the fact that not even she wanted to be in that situation.

• Mio taking pictures of her putting her hand in a bin literally labelled "Dog Waste" when it was implied earlier that Mio could read English, only for her to be the most scared when running away from her.

• Everyone abandoning her in that situation for that matter.

• Azusa being cold and distant towards her for a good chunk of the runtime without her even knowing why.

• Being elbowed in the stomach by Azusa.

• Mio later taking a picture of Yui being jumped on by a dog and laughing about it.

• Her efforts to reassure the others that they’ll make it in time for their flight home after their performance at the cultural festival being shot down by Azusa and everyone agreeing with that bullshit as if she’s unreliable with no justification.

• Nobody doing a goddamn thing when she is hesitant to plug her guitar in at the cultural festival when there are so many quick solutions to easily deal with this situation, topped off by Azusa only treating her like an idiot instead of fucking helping in any way whatsoever.

• Being pushed in the face by Azusa when she tries to hug her before the classroom concert.

• Azusa giving a deadpan expression to her singing a part of U&I directly to her during the classroom concert.

• Being made out as if she's the only one who forgot that Azusa's song was ever important despite the fact that she's the only one who's been thinking about it ever since she came up with the idea in the first place.

• Nodoka deciding to walk with Azusa instead of her despite her agreeing to walk with Yui in S2E24.

The way she is treated throughout this movie is by far one of the absolute worst things about it, and it only further adds onto the discomforting vibes of this dumpster fire!

Not even mentioning how the character dynamics and friendship between all 5 of these characters are just not there at all, and, in the case of Yui and Azusa's dynamic, completely and utterly ruined, So make that the nail in the coffin for everything this movie has destroyed about the series.

EMOTIONAL CORE

There are two major emotional scenes in this movie that are built up to; the classroom concert and the recreation of S2E24's ending, both of which take place near the end of the movie. But when it came down to these, they arguably did the most amount of damage to the series because they affect the show's most emotional scenes in the worst way imaginable. And I won't be holding back on spoilers this time because they are very crucial ~~and for some reason, quoted text doesn't register through spoiler text, so there's that too.~~

When the light music club room is not available to use due to pipe leakage, Yui and the others have to find someplace else to practice for the school festival that's coming up soon. After trying and failing to find any suitable places to practice, a few days later, the club room is back in use. This brings Yui to the realization that she had been taking it for granted. She loved being in it, but didn't realise exactly how much she valued it until it was gone for a brief moment. And this comes back up again when later in the episode, Ui comes down with a cold. Throughout the series, we've seen the incredibly close relationship that Yui has with her sister. And we've also seen how much Ui has taken care of her and looked out for her. It was very clear that Yui loved Ui to bits, but seeing Ui come down with a cold brought her to a realization that she may not have her beloved younger sister with her forever. And this is what gives her the inspiration to write a song about appreciating the things she took for granted, with the huge sentimental value coming from the title name: U&I. And this leads to the school festival concert in S2E20. During said concert, Yui interacts with the audience a lot while giving out introductions to her fellow bandmates. Some hilarity ensues as a result, but she also wants to shine the spotlight on all of her friends. This even spreads to Sawako and Nodoka, which was doubly sweet. And then, she starts giving her thanks to not only her fellow bandmates, but also her entire class and school before capping off the concert with U&I. The origin of the song was already fantastic, but the emotions that come with actually hearing the lyrics makes it even better, perfectly encapsulating the lengths Yui is going to for a huge thank you to the person who's been there with her for her entire life. Everything about this performance definitely had me tearing up the first time I heard it, and it served as a exceptionally phenomenal culmination of Yui and Ui's relationship, with U&I still standing as my favourite song in the series. But the emotions didn't even stop there, because after the concert, we cut to HTT thinking about if their performance was great, with them later listing the later concerts they get to do after this, and then, the realization hits them. Once all those concerts are out of the way, the high school life is over for Yui, Ritsu, Mio and Mugi. And as a result, they all start breaking down into tears, with Azusa mentioning that it was an honour to get to play with them, ending off with all of them sleeping next to each other in the club room. If the school festival concert didn't get me crying, then this final moment definitely did. An emotionally moving culmination of the powerful friendship between the main cast that grew over the course of the series. All of this made S2E20 my absolute favourite episode of the series.

And now, we come to K-On The Movie, which has a classroom concert take place so HTT can give a proper farewell to their class, and U&I is the song they play for that! And this recontextualization doesn't work at all for two reasons.

1. If you look at U&I's lyrics, you can see that they were very sentimental lyrics that couldn't properly be put in any other context other than being a heartfelt thank you to Ui from Yui. So recontextualizing it as if these lyrics can fit literally everyone Yui knows is beyond disingenuous to the entire point of that song's existence.

1. There’s one other thing that this recontextualization implies. Yui deciding to sing this song in particular to her classmates means that they also want you to think that Yui was taking the people she cared about for granted this entire fucking time. Absolutely not! Fuck off with this blatantly incorrect sentiment. Yui has done a lot for her friends throughout the series and has clearly valued them a lot ever since she joined the light music club, both in the show and in this movie. And yet here's this fucking concert invalidating all of her efforts and development for the sake of this bullshit that almost feels emotionally manipulative.

1. The wholesome vibes of the show are now nuked beyond repair because this recontextualization is pretty much glorifying a toxic frendship between Yui and the rest of HTT, because she's been treated like complete garbage by her supposed friends throughout the movie, and yet I'm still expected to buy that Yui was the one taking the people she cared about for granted? Are you fucking kidding me?!

After 29 episodes of forming a meaningful connection with the other light music club members, the thought of their graduation hits Azusa insanely hard when it gets closer and closer to that day. But in spite of everything, she spends the last few episodes keeping her emotions in check for the sake of her friends. But then, at the point where the others have officially graduated (with the added emotional bonus of Class 3-2 giving their thanks to Sawako in the best way possible), and the realization that this'll be her last day with them at high school, Azusa begs them not to graduate, despite knowing that they already have, and breaks down into tears. This is already emotionally powerful as is, but the tears start forming even more when Yui and the others start handing her sentimental graduation gifts before deciding to play one final song for her to send her off. And the lyrics of the song, alongside the message it sends, and Azusa trying and failing to hold back more tears, all add up to the most emotional song performance in the entire series, and while it may be the end for what we see for these characters in high school, the main driving force of the ending is, "Graduation is not the end." And the knowledge that Azusa will be joining her fellow bandmates in college a year from now is the cherry on top of this emotional rollercoaster. And on top of all this, the way it uses the first episode as a reference for this ending is the best use of a bookend I can think of. The lighting and angles are very similar to what we saw when Ritsu, Mio and Mugi played a piece of music to convince Yui to join the light music club in the first episode, and we can see how much they've improved as a band between then and now, and the way Azusa claps, followed up with her saying "You guys aren't very good, are you?" are exactly like how Yui reacted to seeing the performance the others did all those years ago.

It's an absolutely phenomenal ending to a fantastic series that uses all of its strengths to its best advantages to conclude it in a way that couldn't possibly have been better.

But now, in K-On The Movie, all of this emotional weight has been completely undone, and it took none other than neutering Azusa's reaction to the song during the recreation of this scene to the point where she doesn't feel even remotely emotionally moved by it anymore. It's already bad enough that almost no time was spent actually developing the origin of Tenshi ni Fureta Yo, and that the friendship between the cast is barely here and that Azusa's character has been destroyed beyond repair, but why in the world was it recreated like this? This completely and utterly invalidates any of the emotional weight that could have come with seeing Yui and the others going through the process of composing the song that is presented in this very recreation! And there are two factors that make this even worse! The first being that they recontextualize the purpose of the scene from signifying just how close Azusa had become with her bandmates, and giving a delightful payoff to her keeping in her emotions about them graduating to her realizing why her friends acted weird during the times she entered the club room and they acted awkwardly. Because they throw in a line of dialogue for Azusa that wasn't in the original ending, which is "I see" while the song is playing, and when you combine that with her lack of an emotional reaction to the rest of it, the intent here becomes pretty damn clear. And the second one is the existence of the semi-conflict, because believe it or not, that does even more damage to S2E24's ending. A sentiment implied near the beginning of the movie is that Azusa never said anything positive about her experiences with the light music club despite the fact that there were moments in the series where she voiced her praises about it and her friends? I would have assumed that they would use this opportunity to actually give Azusa a positive memory with them through the London trip. But that clearly didn’t end up being the case because Azusa spent most of it being annoyed or discomforted by Yui and losing sleep in the process, on top of some other things like the sushi bar situation and having to rush back to the airport, and she didn’t seem to show any enjoyment during the sightseeing montage. None of this sounds like she would have enjoyed the London trip to even a minor degree, further driven by the fact that she doesn’t even seem to talk about her time in London with either Ui or Jun when we cut to their next day of school after it’s over. Most of these would not have happened if not for the semi-conflict because Azusa’s constant annoyance and discomfort is entirely because of the broken beliefs of Yui holding herself back a year and having romantic feelings for her. And combining this with Azusa’s lack of emotional investment in the song that the others made specifically for her, making it seem like she’ll just forget about this performance the next day, that means that the movie is rolling with the sentiment that throughout the 2 years Azusa spent with Yui, Ritsu, Mio and Mugi, she has not had a single positive memory to note about her time with them. This is an absolutely atrocious sentiment that serves to annihilate the entire point of the show’s ending! And it doesn’t stop there, because even the emotional weight of Azusa’s breakdown in S2E24 is nuked into oblivion by the semi-conflict! The build up to that breakdown was Azusa telling the others not to graduate after they had already pretty much done that, but she looks like a hypocritical bitch if you factor the movie into the timeline. She genuinely believed that Yui holding herself back a year would be a terrible thing for her, to the point where she treated Yui like complete garbage and lost sleep because of it! Why would I feel anything other than rage over Azusa begging her friends not to graduate after seeing how she treats one of them because she thought she was gonna do that exact thing?!

So, in all, I think K-On The Movie is an absolute disaster on all fronts. Between its broken story that heavily lacks the vibes and fun that made the series so amazing, jokes that don't fit with the series' tone at all alongside recreations of previous jokes that fail to understand what made them funny in the first place, the character dynamics and friendship between the cast either not being there or being abysmally handled, the lack of expressiveness in the animation, the characters themselves being either poorly handled or full on character assassinated, and nuking all of the emotional impact of previous episodes while failing to properly develop its own emotional core that it tries to push forward, there's almost nothing this movie does well as either a standalone slice of life or an addition to the K-On franchise. If you've read all the way here, I just want to say thanks for hearing me out, and like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, if you have any counter-arguments against any of my points, don't hesitate to message me on either here or Discord. (indigodriftt666)

~~Also if you haven't seen this movie at all and still want to, do not watch the dub under any circumstances. Just fucking don't. You won't get the luxury of Ritsu saying "I love sushi" in broken English or Yui and Azusa having funny English interactions on the airplane. Not to mention some terrible workarounds for the language barrier and some worse dialogue.~~