So I've just randomly discovered that the same animation company that made K-On! is currently wrapping up airing another series called Hibike! Euphonium. When I heard the title, I made a joke to the effect of, "What is that, K-On! with concert band nerds instead of rock band nerds?"

So I downloaded the first episode.

It's K-On! with concert band nerds instead of rock band nerds.

This is weird, because it's like they went and specifically designed an anime show to resonate with what pass for my own high school glory days memories. Kumiko Ōmae, the protagonist of Hibike! Euphonium is - you may be unsurprised to learn, based on the title - a euphonist. In the first episode, she's just entered a high school with an undistinguished concert band club, having experienced the joys and disappointments of middling-level accomplishment at the junior high level (her junior high school's concert band won a gold medal in what appears to have been the Japanese equivalent of the state band festival, but didn't advance to the national competition). Now she's trying to decide whether she even wants to keep playing the euphonium, particularly given that her new school's band isn't very good, and she has some Historic Drama with the only one of her junior-high schoolmates who is also going to that high school (and who was way more upset than she was about not making the nationals, hence the drama).

The reason I say this resonates for me is because I was a high school concert band nerd, and, in fact, I played the euphonium. The parallels are not exact - the Stearns High School concert band was pretty good when I was in it, if I do say so, and I had no particular lingering trauma from middle school - but still, even in the mostly-setup first episode it does an eerily effective job of conveying the weirdly intense world of competitive intramural (as opposed to after-school recreational, as in K-On!) high school musicianship. The way the stakes always seem higher when you're on the inside. And if anyone had ever told me, "You will one day watch an anime series in which a group of cute girls have high school concert band adventures that remind you strangely of your own," I would have laughed.

But there it is, and though I stopped playing in college and sold my horn a year or two later, it's an important part of my background. It's the reason why Kaitlyn's always been a band geek (though her horizons are obviously way wider than mine). Kumiko even sort of looks like Kate might have looked as a high school anime character, though she wears her hair much shorter. It's... mildly uncanny, is what I'm getting at.

(Here's Kumiko with Yui from K-On!, so you see what I'm getting at.)

I have only seen the first episode, and since it seems like it's going to be a slice-of-life show like K-On!, I thus have no real idea yet whether the show is actually good or bad... but, dang. It's like they made an anime for me. Like if I had a jillion dollars and spoke Japanese, and I had gone to Pony Canyon and said, "I would like a show like K-On!, except about the kind of musicianship I was wrapped up in myself for most of high school," and they said, "Sure, come back in six months."

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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