This episode begins with Yui waking from a weird dream about Mugi’s eyebrows, and we see that Yui has a very bad cold and her sister Ui is caring for her. Ui tells Yui that she’ll contact the school, Ui looks like she doesn’t want to leave her sister but Yui tells her she’ll be OK, so get to school. Then at school, Ui lets Azusa and the other girls know about Yui illness, they try to figure out whether she got her cold from Ritsu or from cosplaying a bunch of outfits that Sawako brought for them to try on. Mio tells Azusa to begin to practice lead guitar in case Yui is unable to perform at the cultural festival.
When Ui gets home she goes to check on her sister and sees that she’s in pretty bad shape, looking worse than before. The next day after class, Yui shows up for practice saying she feels better. They begin to rehearse and Yui’s guitar playing is perfect, but it’s not Yui playing, it’s her sister Ui. She almost pulled off a perfect impersonation of her sister but she was caught because she used the wrong nicknames for the girls, and Sawako says that Yui’s breast aren’t that big. After Ui explains how she learned to play the guitar and why she tried to replace her sister the real Yui walks through the door. Yui wants to practice with the band, but she’s as sick as ever and can’t really practice.
Yui tells Azusa that she’ll be counting on her for the guitar lead but Azusa says that she’d rather not play at all if they can’t play together. Before Azusa can leave the room Mio stops her, Mio tells Yui to go home and rest until the day of their performance, and then she tells Azusa to practice the lead not because of Yui’s absence, but for the future. Back at home, Yui says all that she can do now is rest and try to be ready for the concert. On the day of the performance, Azusa is looking out the window for Yui and Mugi tells her not to worry, Yui texted her and said she’d be there on time. Nodoka enters the room and doesn’t look a bit worried about Yui absence, Nodoka tells them a weird story from her and Yui’s childhood, the meaning being that when Yui has her heart set on something she’ll be there for it, so don’t worry.
Soon, Sawako shows up bringing Yui with her, Azusa gets upset at Yui for making them worry, and Yui has to give her the warm and fluffy treatment to get Azusa to forgive her. Just as they’re about to head downstairs Yui starts looking for her guitar, she left it in the music room the other day but can’t find it, Mio tells her that Ui took it home for her and Yui must have forgotten her sister told her about it because she was so sick.
Yui doesn’t know what to do, Sawako hands Yui her old guitar and says she should be able to use this instead, and after a few seconds thought Yui rushes out of the room and says she’ll be back. Ui enters the theater and sees that it’s getting pretty full, as the band is announced and they start playing, Ui notices that she sister isn’t on stage, Sawako is filling in for Yui as she rushes home to get her guitar.
As Yui is rushing back to school she thinks about how different she is now from her first day in high school, she was worried that she’d never do anything and had nothing to worry about then, and she thinks about how important the club and her friends are now. Yui makes it to the stage by the end of the first song and the thanks Sawako for filling in for her then she apologises to the girls for always being to one to cause them trouble.
Well, once Yui is ready to play, she gives a little talk about the K-On! club to the students and they begin playing light & fluffy with Yui doing lead guitar and vocals. After the song is over they do an encore performance of the same song and want to play another song for the students but Nodoka tells them that their time is up and the girls leave the stage to the applause of the students. Well, that’s all for this episode and this series, all that remains is a extra episode next week.
Well, I felt this episode ended? K-On! in a most enjoyable manner. While Mio might have been every ones moe moe princess this series was really about Yui (the heart and soul of the K-On! club) and her personal growth and how she affected the other girls. Without Yui the K-On! club would have never gotten enough members to stay alive, and her innocent and lively nature was the glue that enabled the girls to form their strong bonds of friendship with each-other. As Yui commented while running to the cultural festival, she was a girl who felt no purpose or had no goals, she just went along with no worries, but after joining the K-On! club it gave her a sense of purpose and something important to care about. It was a shame that the writers didn’t do more to flesh out Mio’s and Ritsu’s relationship, there was a good chance that they could have given their friendship a little more depth like Konata’s and Kagami’s friendship in Lucky Star. Also, poor Mugi, they gave her personality almost no depth other than she’s a rich girl who like sweet things, and likes to watch girly bonding stuff.
Overall, the final song, light & fluffy summed up K-On! perfectly. K-On! was a very nice dose of light entertainment, nothing to serious too stress my brain, it was just the right portion of fluffy moe to relax me after finishing my work week. In closing, all I have to say is “rock on, girls”, until next season, may all your tea & cake be sweet and filling.
June 22, 2009 at 5:49 am
Well said.
June 25, 2009 at 2:36 am
+1
K-ON! did what it intented to do, I think. Not a laugh-out-loud comedy, nor a story about an epic band in making. Just a light entertainment who like this kind of show.
June 23, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Does anyone know the name of the song that played while Yui went to get her guitar?
July 27, 2009 at 8:05 am
That would be the “Brush and Ballpoint pen – Fude Pen ~Booru Pen~”
Song xD
July 6, 2009 at 5:00 am
i think k on is not bad… but why just 12 ep?
December 13, 2009 at 2:43 am
To make an ill-advised application of character dynamics, Yui being the glue that binds the band together is similar to how Hikaru held the show together in Macross despite not being the best pilot, soldier, or romantic lead(!) in it.
Some characters also operate on the level of model, here in K-ON! about social dynamics — a collection of superstar talents don’t necessarily make the team work. It can be a happy accident of a unilaterally confounding character that everyone happens to be fond of that people rally around… just as Hikaru functions as a teetering balance of youth and maturity, fixation on past ideals vs. future possibility.
But perhaps, more importantly, more effectively, and more insidiously, moe is what keeps people together and makes dreams come true. That’s what Yui just told us.
December 13, 2009 at 9:33 am
Yes, I’ve seen this dynamic occur many times while I served in the Army. More often than not, it’s not the best that serves as the glue but a person that has a unique personality.