This episode begins with the girls looking at, and talking about, Ton-Chan as she swims in her tank, but they’re soon distracted by Ritsu tearfully complaining that she’s sick of the drums. Well, when the other girls get to the heart of the matter, they pretty much agree with Ritsu’s conclusion that she’s invisible as the drummer, and now she’s talking about trying another instrument.
Yui casually offers up her guitar for Ritsu to give it a go and then complains about Gitah being unfaithful with her. Azusa and Yui try to help Ritsu with some quick guitar instruction but Ritsu quickly gives up saying it’s not for her. Later, as Ritsu is walking down the hallway, she notices that Sawako is very radiant today, and then after lunch Ritsu tells the girls she’s going to try the keyboard and she says she wants to be radiant like Sawako. After trying the keyboard for a while it’s suggested that Ritsu try the bass but Mio says no way, she’s the bassist, and she gives her emotional reasons why she loves the bass.
That night, after dinner, at Yui’s house, Ui notices her sister banging around on some glasses and saucers and asks what’s up, and Yui tells her that she’s working on operation Ritsu in the spotlight. The next day its class picture day, and Yui puts operation Ritsu in the spotlight into effect but none of her ideas really work out. On their way home from school, Yui tells Azusa that she’ll play drums if she has to but Azusa tells her that she needs her right where she is.
Later, in Ritsu’s bedroom, we see her think over her current drum situation, and we see how everything got started with her and the drums. Soon, Ritsu is doing some drumming with her sticks and some CD cases, and she seems to be enjoying herself. The next morning we see Ritsu and Mio running really late for school because Ritsu stayed up late watching a Who DVD. You like their drummer, Mio asks?
Ritsu and Mio get caught sneaking into class late thanks to Yui, and they notice Sawako with her lower face mostly covered. Later, Sawako shows Yui and Ritsu the damage, she tried something new to look even younger, and the girls tell her she over did it. Up in the clubroom, Ritsu is back to her normal self saying the drums are the only thing for her. Yui tells Ritsu that they’re all one part of a greater whole even though they have different roles. Well, Ritsu tells them why she loves the drums and she’s OK if she’s not really noticed. Mugi tells the other girls that she come up with a new song thanks to Ritsu.
Well, Mugi plays a few cords of the song with her keyboard for the girls and they like the melody. Mio is put in charge of the lyrics, and Mugi tells her that she’s already named the song, honey sweet tea time. While Azusa, Ritsu, and Yui dig into some tea and honey sweets that Mugi brought, Mio and Mugi try to work on the lyrics for the song. Well, that’s all for this radiant and sweet episode.
Sorry this review took so long, after watching this episode a few days ago I realized that I really liked the episode but I struggled trying to put it to words. So here it goes, and I hope it makes some sense. While I loved the first season of K-On! for all the reason that I covered in my previous reviews I always thought that the one thing that was the most unrealistic about the series was there no guys, or even interest in guys. Come on now, it’s highly unlikely that five heterosexual cute girls and one hot woman would not have boyfriends or at least some guys sniffing around them, I think most guys find rocker girls very intriguing and attractive. Well, since I guess this anime would never dare to introduce the idea of the girls getting boyfriends or let alone have the girls run into some guys their own age I think I’ll settle for having one of the girls (Ritsu) get a little dose of self awareness. What I mean by this last statement is that most “moe blobs” in these types of shows happily go about their “moe blob” existences without ever achieving any awareness of how the external world views them, so I think that Ritsu desire to be more radiant is a major step in the right direction. Ritsu wants the world to notice her and is thinking about ways to make it happen; after all don’t most of us want the world to take some notice of us. Go ahead Ritsu, shine, baby shine.
April 24, 2010 at 4:43 pm
April 26, 2010 at 3:20 pm
It’s not that I feel that they actually need to get boyfriends but it would be nice if the girls acknowledged the fact that they’re really female and might want to get laid someday. IRL, I think that those rocker girls would be uber popular with the guys.
There’s a 17 year old girl who plays the guitar at my local coffee shop, she’s really cute, and every guy wants in her pants including me.
April 24, 2010 at 4:44 pm
oops i fucked up the blockquotes
April 26, 2010 at 3:20 pm
No problem because I don’t no shit about using blockquotes and alike.
April 25, 2010 at 6:10 am
@ghostlightning: I assume you meant let the show take more risks by showing the face of the assumed boyfriend. Never mind this otaku pandering junk, if the powers that be want the show to take a stand and free itself from the otaku stranglehold then they won’t take any liberties. Anything else is sheer cowardice.
April 26, 2010 at 12:43 am
Coincidentally(?) Ritsu is the one with the pseudo-romantic side story in ep 13 of season one. Not sure if you were taking that episode into consideration. It was the whole “I like you with your bangs down” thing where Ritsu mistakes Mio’s lyrics for a love letter. They talk about marriage in the Christmas episode too (“now I’ll never get married…” – and Sawachan-sensei does the whole “I’m not marrieeedddd!” thing). The lyrics to Fuwa Fuwa Time also talk about romance.
It’s one thing to visibly remove guys from the show, although k-on barely addresses love interest at all. It’s not like Lucky Star where Kagami is always like “no one flirts with us…” yet Shiraishi and the doll guy are the only guys present in the whole show (?).
In a sense, making Ritsu the most non-moeblob one is the safest choice. Either her or Mio (the tsundere). Making Yui or Mugi less moeblobish would be very very risky, as ghost mentions. It would either be a fantastic turn in character development, or would really flop and ruin an entire episode.
I mean, I haven’t read the manga, but I really doubt any boys will show up. In a farfetched scenario, say Yui starts to flirt with a boy. The show wouldn’t make it serious…it’d be like a romcom relationship where one party is totally oblivious to the romantic interests of the other person, while the viewer is treated to the internal thoughts of the poor victim of Yui’s OMFGWTFBBQness. This wouldn’t really fit into the general scheme that k-on has built up, IMO.
April 26, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Yes, but the “love letter” was never real it was just a tease to worry Ritsu and the fans. It would be totally different story if the girls ever sat around the cafe checking out boys and flirting with them like normal girls do, or maybe having some nice boys coming up to them after a show and asking them out for coffee or karaoke, or having the girls get invited to a mixer for band boys and girls.
Yes, when I watched Lucky Star it was Kagami that only ever though of how strange it was that boys never came around them.
I don’t think the series has to go quite as far as having Yui or Azusa hit on a guy but they could at least show that they know guys, and penises exist. A good example of a show that had girls in it that had Moe qualities and one girl had a boyfriend and the other wanted the other girls older brother as a BF was Telepathy Shojo Ran. The lead girl, Ran, managed to have a BF and stay quite Moe and pure.
June 6, 2010 at 7:25 am
if ep09 is set for right after the finals then the girls’s high school days are almost done . . . with ep10 set to focus on sawa-chan’s love interest what do you think is in store for the girls???
yui got great grades in the finals which makes her a cinch to graduate along with the girls save for azunyan . . . the last three episodes are bound to be interesting . . .
June 11, 2011 at 8:33 am
great blog……..
October 31, 2011 at 2:13 pm
@Miss_Law_ 1 unfollowed you between 3PM and 4PM. See who: http://t.co/x75PnCiF
January 5, 2012 at 3:25 am
There are some interesting points in time in this article but I don’t know if I see all of them center to heart.There is some validity but I will take hold opinion until I look into it further.Good article , thanks and we want more! Added to FeedBurner as well