Watching K-On!! Episode 2 – “Clean-Up!”

While cleaning out their personal belongings from the club room, the members of the Light Music Club find an old guitar of Sawako’s – which turns out to be surprisingly valuable.

CD review: Watashi no Koi wa Hotchkiss – Hanauta Yui

Yes, I am really going to review this. As the new year approaches, so do the soon-to-be-broken New Year’s resolutions and I am reminded of the fact that I have yet to accomplish everything I set out to do with this blog. One of my main goals was to review every K-ON! CD out there, old releases as well as new. I finished the first season’s batch of CDs earlier this year, but never really got started on season 2 – so here I am, easing back into things with a short review of the shortest of all K-ON! CDs: Watashi no Koi wa Hotchkiss – Hanauta Yui.

Delivered in a clear slimline jewel case, this single was given away as the prize in a mail in contest in 2011 and was not sold in stores. Finding it on online auctions isn’t particularly hard, but unused copies will cost a tad more than one may usually want to pay for a CD – you’ll have to really want it. Personally, being the crazy completist that I am, I didn’t have too many misgivings about parting with a few thousand yen to acquire it – even with the rather limited runtime.

The CD features exactly one track: Watashi no Koi wa Hotchkiss: #1 “Kou san!” version. The song, of course, is the one first heard in the episode “School Festival!” and subsequently on the first season’s insert song album. The version heard here, as the track title indicates, is the one heard in the very first scene of the season 2 episode “Seniors!”, with Yui playing solo guitar while humming the melody.

Totaling 1 minute and 8 seconds – that is both the song and the CD – it’s pretty much the same as in the actual episode, but with a slightly different ending and with Yui’s voice more prominent in the mix. Hotchkiss is one of my favorite songs from the first season, so hearing it again – however briefly – is welcome, if expensive in this form.

Is it worth buying for the sake of the content? Probably not. Is it worth buying for collection purposes? Hell, I’m certainly not the person to say no to that.

New CD box set announced

Okay, I always kind of figured there’d probably be some sort of “best of K-ON!” album or something released at the end of the franchise’s run, but I never expected they’d release a 12 disc box set containing a whopping 258 tracks, which is what the official site announced today.

“K-ON! MUSIC HISTORY'S BOX” will be released on March 20^th, featuring the OST and opening/ending/insert songs from both TV seasons as well as the movie, plus character songs as well as – for the first time on CD – the versions from the “K-ON! Ho-kago Live!!” PSP/PS3 game.

Not included in the release are tracks from the Band Score CDs, the Radion! shows, or any of the instrumentals. Nevertheless, it seems this box set will cover the basics and then some, and at the relatively tolerable price tag of 19,800 yen it sounds like quite a good deal for any fan who has yet to break their wallet collecting every K-ON! CD in existence like a sucker (unlike me, who will of course happily throw money at this release regardless).

Thanks ultimatemegax for the heads-up.