Introducing…

Hello! I’m Piggy, and I’ve decided to start a K-On! fan blog. My aim is to provide information and opinion on the anime K-On! and related media.

But before I get started on that, I suppose I should say a few words about myself and why I’m doing this. Now – I’ve never really been much of an otaku or anything like that. There are certain manga and anime that I’d call myself a fan of, but I usually haven’t kept up with what’s new, or followed Japanese pop culture, or made a habit out of buying expensive anime figures.

K-On! would have passed under my radar completely, were it not for my more anime-interested friend who kept talking about this series after it first came out in 2009. At one point, he was going to come by for a visit, and he asked me if he should bring along a copy of some K-On! episodes for us to watch. “Oh great,” I thought, “another cutesy moe anime about cutesy moe girls doing cutesy moe things and being all cutesy and moe”. To my friend; I said “You know, I don’t really think it’s my thing… but sure, I’ll check out an episode or two”. I had no intention of watching the entire first season that week, but that is what ended up happening.

Long story short, the K-On! bug bit me. Hard. I somehow found myself enjoying this anime immensely, and at the time I couldn’t quite put my finger on why that was. It was fun, sure, but most of the time it made me smile rather than laugh out loud (although it made me do a fair amount of that as well). It was when the series was nearing its end, with the second season coming to a close; that I realized how much I actually loved the characters in the show. And not in the semi-pervy underwear-obsessed way certain people mean when they claim to “love” their favorite anime character. Not like that at all. The characters in K-On!, despite maybe resembling certain clichés and archetypes, somehow feel like real people, and very likeable people. Maybe this is due in part to the fact that K-On! features almost no drama or conflict, and simply lets the viewer take part in the day-to-day life of these fun individuals. When those days were coming to an end, and the final episodes of K-On!! came and went, it actually felt sad.

“But Piggy! K-On! didn’t end, there’s a movie coming out and the manga has started back up again…”

Sure, we know that now. But you’ve got to think about what it was like as a K-On! fan in the fall of 2010. While you’d obviously encounter the occasional know-it-all telling you “there’s no way they’ll kill this cash-cow”, it sure seemed like they were. The anime was ending and spending a great deal of time emphasizing that fact within the story. The original manga concluded the same week the final episode aired on TV. The characters grew up and left High School (a definite end to an anime if there ever was one). It was over. I knew then I was actually going to miss these people. Some crazy Japanese fans even swore to commit suicide upon seeing the series end. Hopefully, they stuck around to after the credits of the final episode, when the K-On! movie was announced and a worldwide otakugasm occurred. Personally, I would have gone on with my life just fine without K-On!, but I’m glad I don’t have to. It just somehow brightens my day a little.

And there you have it. This blog is the result of my geekdom and obsessive nature… My goal is to provide information and reviews of various K-On! media. Hopefully, if there are K-On! fans out there as obsessive as myself, they might find this blog useful once it gets going. If not – hey, at least I’ve found something to do with my time here.