Naoko Yamada Spotlight: K-On!
Special edition of the Anime Spotlight series in the backdrop of upcoming release of "The Colors Within" movie!
This is part one of a five part series of retrospectives looking at anime industry legend Naoko Yamada's directorial career, in the lead-up to the Indian theatrical release of her latest work The Colours Within. One will be posted everyday; check back tomorrow for part two!
I have a go-to answer when I’m asked for my favourite sakuga scene in anime: moments of elevated animation quality that make you go “wow”. Or rather, I have two. One is Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s masterful but nightmarish cut of the A-bomb being dropped over Hiroshima in Barefoot Gen (no link posted here; watch at your own risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you).
The other is this clip from the K-On! movie, in which bass guitarist Mio heads towards the stage while strapping on her instrument. She adjusts it over her shoulder and back, quickly glances back at her long flowing hair caught behind the strap, and effortlessly flicks it free.
The Barefoot Gen scene is over five minutes long. This one doesn’t even last five seconds. Yet it is no less powerful than the former. The sheer realism of each motion in the build-up — the not-too-fast lifting of the strap that respects the guitar’s weight, the natural closing of the eyes as the strap passes over them, the subtle movements of the head and neck that follow the overall action — culminates in the graceful swish of the hair being freed. That final swish is certainly not realistic; hair doesn’t work like that. Yet it is an unrealism that is beautiful, and that you are completely sold on because it was ‘earned’, so to speak, by the careful realism of the build-up. The commitment to realism without sacrificing the anime-ness of it all, the restrained and measured approach that still makes full use of the freedom the medium affords you: this, to me, is anime. I can wax eloquent about it all day long. Yet to K-On!, and to its director Naoko Yamada, this is just another Tuesday afternoon.
K-On! — a show about high school girls who form a rock band to save their light music club from disbandment — is a watershed moment for TV anime. No mean feat, this, for a KyoAni show that immediately followed the cultural landmark that is Haruhi Suzumiya. It is testament to K-On!’s quality that even today, well over a decade after it was released, it is far more polished and pretty than the vast majority of TV anime coming out today, with the lighting and character animation the biggest standouts. This may sound like a subjective take but K-On!’s production staff is the sort of thing most anime can only admire from afar, in particular the all-woman dream team trio at the heart of the show: writer Reiko Yoshida, character designer Yukiko Horiguchi, and, of course, Naoko Yamada. The songs created for the anime (many of them composed by Tom-H@ck, now of MYTH & ROID fame) are their own bit of history: “Don’t Say Lazy” and “Fuwa Fuwa Time” are to this day staples of anison in Japan, while the second opening theme “Go! Go! Maniac” was the first anime song to top the Japanese charts, something even “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” hadn’t accomplished.
Quite stellar production values, one might think, for what is often described as a show about nothing. That is, however, a descriptor I dislike — not solely because I dislike that other TV show for whom this descriptor was originally used (you’re not funny, Jerry), but also because I feel like it is quite the opposite. K-On! is a show about everything. I do not mean that it broaches every topic imaginable. Rather, it is a show whose core message is that you have time for everything.
The oft-parroted criticism that the girls spend more time loafing around than actually playing music is in fact one facet of this. There is an impending overarching current of time, a constant reminder of the fact that the original members — Ritsu, Mio, Mugi, and Yui — will graduate high school, leaving their band life, and their younger fifth member Azunyan, behind. When your connections to everything and everyone around you are this fleeting and impermanent, it is important, no, imperative that you do them all justice. Years later, when they’re buried in the thick of college, their accomplishments in an after-school band aren’t going to matter as much as the relationships they formed as a result of it. They don’t want to regret not doing the latter, throwing away all their formative schoolkid experiences for a lofty ideal that is more effectively pursued in adulthood. K-On! shows that you do get to have it all: cake, tea, band, friends, everything. In fact, you have time for everything precisely because you have no time at all. In an era where we let work define and dictate our lives rather than support and enable it, it is nothing short of a timely message from an otherwise timeless show. No matter how hectic your schedule might be today, you have time for a little chai and chatter. Go pour one out. Take your time, for it truly is yours.
— Sakaido
Genre(s): slice-of-life, music, comedy
Length: 39 episodes + specials + 1 movie
Year: 2009
Studio: Kyoto Animation
Adapted from: K-On! by Kakifly (manga)
Music: Houkago Tea Time (theme songs and inserts) and Hajime Hyakkoku (soundtrack)
Script: Reiko Yoshida
Character design: Yukiko Horiguchi
Director: Naoko Yamada
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