This show ended this past Monday.

Talk shit about it all you want, I liked K-On!.

Dai Satou (writer for Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Ghost in the Shell: SAC, Wolf’s Rain) said at a panel this past July that anime would be dying in the next two decades and that a symptom of that which is killing it is that Japanese people would “rather watch a group of high school girls in a band asking, ‘How do I play this note?’” than (assumingly) his works [Source].

Clearly, he was referencing the two seasons of K-On!. Well I don’t think I agree with Mr. Dai. I don’t think that shows like K-On! are killing the anime industry. I think he’s simply blinded himself due to the fact that he sees the progression of the anime industry from the perspective of a writer who is famous for his storytelling ability.

Obviously, you need to give him some due respect. He’s written for some of the classics. The titans of anime when anime used to be grungy, unrefined at times, but still gave off wonderful flair.

You also have to admit that most anime is trash right now. Strike Witches, Mitsudomoe, Amagami, Seitokai Yakuindomo, etc. etc. deviate quite far from being quality programming. In fact, I have often stated that anime died in 2007 for me.

But K-On! was a show that I kept watching. It was so easy to dismiss it as a cutesy slice-of-life show that just panders with moe fan service at first, but after having watched it develop and mature over these past two years, I find that this is not the case.

If you compare the fan service of Strike Witches (little girls not wearing pants), the recent High School of the Dead (boobs that get bigger and bigger, shameless panty/wet shirt shots, etc), and even Seitokai Yakuindomo (girls with really dirty minds constantly relating everything to sex) to K-On!, you’ll notice that the latter has class. Depictions of nudity are not allowed on TV, and many shows simply try to stretch that barrier and those limits as far as they can. Perhaps they think this is edgy and iconoclastic, but it’s not. Saturating the screen with boobs, sex, and panties is simply crass and annoying (and this is coming from a guy!).

K-On! did nothing of the sort. Its fan service relied on cute voice acting, cute situational comedy, and humorous “camera work”/editing. It was, for lack of a better word, “classier.” Although you would be hard pressed to find four people (I’m not including Azusa because she seems pretty normal) similar to the characters of the show in real life, the show is not beyond the bounds of everyday life.

But isn’t that boring? If you just show what a club does on a day-to-day basis with no plot, what’s the point of the show? Well, it’s a character study. This is what Mr. Dai Satou doesn’t seem to understand. What happens in American Psycho? How about Castaway? These are not really plot-driven stories, and yet they are critically acclaimed because of the insight they provide into the main characters. Perhaps it’s not fair or appropriate to compare K-On! to these movies, but my point is that they are similar in that you take a person’s character traits (or multiple) and you create this story based on how those traits help that person adapt to his or her surroundings. This is also the basis of situational comedy, which seems to have been doing pretty well on TV.

But there are so many slice-of-life shows these days. What makes K-On! special? What differentiates it from, let’s say, Azumanga Daioh, Hidamari Sketch, Lucky Star, Minami-Ke, Genshiken, etc. etc. etc? Well I am personally a big fan of all these shows, but I think that K-On! was a little different. I’m not saying it was better or worse, but it was different. This is where I think Dai Satou needs to give it credit. K-On! did not only provide the viewer with a roster of characters and present a series of situations that they react to comically. K-On! was different in that it created this feeling that you belonged with the characters. You were not placed as a distant observer but as a member of the group. It accomplished this through the brilliant use of warm colors (compare K-On!’s use of environmental colors and shading to any of the other slice-of-life shows listed above) and through subtly close camera angles.

The close distances that K-On!’s camera angles depict also makes the viewer feel like they are within the frame because of the “sound stage” it produces. Shots like the one in Azumanga Daioh seen below (the above-desk shot of Chiyo talking) appear unnatural because you are hearing the characters’ voices loud and clear as if they are right next to you, while visually they are rather far away. K-On!’s camera angles makes the normally unnatural, microphone recorded sound seem real because it feels as if you’re visually AND aurally near the characters, experiencing life with them.

I want to give a few examples of this because I sincerely think that they did a good job.

K-On!:

Desk Shot – Notice how the viewer is placed in one of the seats and is watching what is happening. Notice also the proximity of the characters nearest the “camera.”

The viewer is placed at eye-level with the rest of the characters while we (the viewer and the characters in the frame) listen to Yui talk.

The viewer is inside a huddle with friends.

The viewer is being propositioned by the characters directly. At eye level. Notice once more the proximity to the characters

The viewer is again at eye level and has said something that has caught the other characters’ interest. Eye contact is established.

To compare, I want to show that this doesn’t really happen in any other slice-of-life shows. Furthermore, I want to show that the colors are much more natural and warm in K-On! than they are in the following examples.

Minami-Ke:

Notice that there’s a certain distance between the observer and the characters.

Notice how the viewer is “standing” and “looking-down” at the situation.

Azumanga Daioh:

Notice how the characters’ backs are facing the audience. Also take note of the distance between the observer and the characters.

More distance from the characters speaking.

Hidamari Sketch:

Again, distance. Also, everything looks 2 dimensional

The viewer is alone in the dark while the main characters have fun together

The viewer is standing in a corner by his/herself.

Lucky Star:

Although the observer is placed close to the characters, why would the viewer be in this position?

Same thing. Why is the viewer behind the booth? Also, distance.

These examples show that the feeling of togetherness that K-On! invokes is subtle but incredibly well executed. This is why at the end of K-On! season two (or K-On!!), I felt that I was going to miss these people I have grown to know over the past two years. They were going off to college and they were leaving me (and Azusa, who the viewer is supposed to relate to). Even though the show pretty much ended at episode 20, they kept it going for 4 more episodes and I didn’t mind. It didn’t drag at all. Why did they make it longer? My theory on this is that when you’re leaving friends, you don’t end it with a big concert. It’s not like there’s this big finale to your friendship and everyone parts ways afterwards (which is how the ending of Lucky Star felt to me). There’s really just this bittersweet period in which you have to come to terms with the fact that everyone’s leaving. That feeling is what they were trying to capture.

So don’t dismiss these shows as simply being trash, Mr. Dai Satou. Learn from them. They are good at creating feelings within the audience. This is their contribution to anime. You can’t possibly say that there is nothing that you can learn from this show. And hey, maybe later on, it’ll be possible to combine your story-telling narratives with the emotion-injecting abilities of the K-On! producers and revive this oh-so-dead anime industry that you refer to.