What Wikipedia says: "K-On!'s story revolves around four Japanese high school girls who join Sakuragaoka Girl's High School's light music club to try to save it from being disbanded. However, they are the only members of the club, and at first Yui Hirasawa, the main character, has no experience playing musical instruments or reading sheet music. Eventually, she learns how to be an excellent guitar player. Since then, Yui, bassist Mio Akiyama, drummer Ritsu Tainaka, and keyboardist Tsumugi Kotobuki spend their school days practicing, performing, or just hanging out together. The club is overseen by music teacher Sawako Yamanaka, who eventually becomes their homeroom teacher as well during their final year of high school. In their second year of high school, the club welcomes another guitarist, an underclassman named Azusa Nakano. After Azusa joins, they gain more structure and begin to practice more."
What tTPO says: The music is not the heart of this show, and if you go into this expecting this you will be disappointed. When I first saw the advertising for this show on Animax and it went something along the lines of "Do you want to know the secrets of Japan's hottest new all-girl rock band?" This alone caught my interest but it doesn't take too long to realise that this is rather misleading. "Do you want to see four schoolgirls slacking off and eating cake?" would have been much more accurate (though perhaps not quite as catchy) as it is very much the girls, their lives and their friendships that lie at the heart of this very well animated series. The band (After School Tea Time in English, Ho-kago Tea Time in Japanese or HTT for short), is a vehicle which provides the girls with common goals and the series with a focus (and a lot of merchandising) especially in the shorter season one which encapsulates the girls first 2 years of high school.
The pace slows significantly in the longer season two, which covers half the length of time of season one (i.e. the girl's senior year at school) in twice the number of episodes. This allows, for better or worse, several small story arcs that are not band related, and after the frenetic pace of the first season, this is notable. Importantly, it also adds the impossibly kawaii Azu-nyan to the band who is a year younger. Her introduction alters the band dynamic, and brings into focus the fact that not everything lasts forever (except Pokemon, Bleach and One Piece). And with this change, the series ever so gradually goes from being another schoolgirl slife-of-life series into something entirely unexpected - a coming-of-age series. And god it works so well.
How about the music?: The music for this show varied from unexpected and manic to just brilliant. If we just stick to the music that appeared in the anime itself (as opposed to the extra tracks available on the album and character CDs) there were 3 OPs (these just got loopier as they went on), 3 EDs, 3 songs in season one and 4 and a bit new songs in season 2 by HTT. And that doesn't include a couple by their teachers old death metal band Death Devil.
I don't think there were any bad songs (even the worst of the OP's sucked me in eventually) but favourites included Fude Pen Boru Pen, Pure Pure Heart, Don't Say Lazy (with an awesome cover of it here - better than the original??), No thank you and...(I came to realisation when writing this I was about to list all the songs so will just leave it at these.)
So how does it end? (Spoiler Free): For a slice-of-life series the last few episodes were surprisingly powerful and some tears were shed. And not just by the characters. The point of ending was natural for the series and satisfying, but is open enough that many more stories can be told. Which they are since the manga has continued the story forward from the end of the anime.
Overall Grade: Grade B+ (Near miss). This series is not for everyone, especially for those after something plot-driven, and the somewhat slower pacing of the longer second season means that I can't give this a top grade. But I fell in love with music and the characters and would not have missed an episode for love nor money. Mrs tTPO doesn't care about any of this and gave the series an A. Sadly I have not seen a K-ON! t-shirt I really like. But I can console myself with both the CDs.
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