>>>Yes indeed. I mean, I understand why Jun didn't join from the outset
>>>(and the subsequent slow redecision as stories filtered through from
>>>Azusa) but I never quite got why Ui didn't. Seems to me she'd be all
>>>over the excuse to hang out with her sister further. In either case,
>>>the original rather drags its heels on that front, and I like that
>>>we're not going to here.
>>
>>I suspect that Kakifly didn't go there for an out-of-story
>>equivalent of the same reason Ui and Jun sort of object - because he
>>didn't want to risk messing up the feng shui in the clubroom by
>>either expanding the band further or adding more club members who
>>weren't in it.
>
>It's a valid point, it just feels more like an out-of-story driven
>decision than an in-character one. Ui's predilection for following in
>Yui's footsteps leads me to think that joining would be the most
>natural response and not joining is....kinda weird. And mostly I guess
>jarring because there's not much on-screen decision made one way or
>the other, she just...doesn't join.

True. And it's not like Jun, where they established that she was in another club. If Ui is a member of any club at Sakuragaoka High her first two years, it's never mentioned, which is odd given how important Nodoka made extracurriculars sound when she was badgering Yui about it early in their freshman year. Ui's such a diligent and enterprising sort that it seems entirely out of character for her not to be involved in something, but there's never a word about it. She hangs out with Azusa and Jun but evidently belongs to neither club her classmates are in, nor any of the others. If she has any interests outside of school, we never hear about them.

Now, granted, she's not one of the main characters, and she's portrayed as so competent that the author might've been worried that if he made her one she'd just take the whole damn thing over, but still, that is pretty weird. Those two unnamed freshmen from the Jazz Club in "Staying Behind!" end up with more detailed school careers than Yui's little sister. (I would easily have accepted her as Nodoka's protégé in Student Government, for instance.)

>The two come across as the least contentious siblings I have ever seen
>(and yet without falling into the standard show-sibling trap of coming
>across as heavily unnatural about the entire affair, which is rare but
>nice)

Heh, as discussed elsewhere, there is a band of the K-On! fan artist population who see them very differently, recasting Ui in the "terrifying, hollow-eyed possessive psycho" (yandere, I am told) role. It's... amusing and disturbing at the same time. :)

>so I'll give that that would feel feel like the more usual
>sibling response, but not so much in this case?

Well, quite so, I'm just saying I can see why the manga author/TV writers might've been concerned about giving the impression, because it would be rather more the usual thing. Heck, on a lot of shows it would have explicitly been the hook for a Very Special Episode.

>The post-graduation manga pair don't hold up as well, yeah. The High
>School side I think fared better, probably because it didn't try to
>rebuild the supporting cast quite so extensively (and Sumire was
>actually a likable Mugi-alternative), though it did give Sawako the
>short end of the stick a bit.

It did, and yet it didn't develop the matter at all. I mean, Sawako's increasingly erratic behavior leading to problems with her job is a perfectly legitimate subplot on-ramp (one that ideally would lead to the club girls staging an intervention, because they don't want to lose their favorite teacher), but it's just sort of left there, as if Kakifly belatedly realized, "Hang on, this is way too srs bsns for this manga."

(I touched on (and short-circuited) it a little bit in Azalynn's field notes, in which she reports that Sawako worries her a little bit, because she's so clearly damaging her own personality by trying to keep it in the Respectable Faculty Member box.)

I agree about Sumire; I've considered moving her and Mugi a little closer together in age (more like Yui and Ui) so that she can have some part in TFLF. It's fairly apparent that the only reason they're so far apart in the canon is because Sumire wasn't actually thought of until after Mugi had graduated, and we don't have that problem here, so. :)

(Besides, Ui and Jun's band still needs a drummer. :)

>The College side suffered mostly by squandering the potential of the
>supporting cast it could have kept on (why even re-introduce Sokabe if
>you're not going to actually explore her otherwise offscreen-developed
>friendship with Ritsu and pretty clear crush on Mio? That just strikes
>me as wasted opportunity) and the new cast...well, being underwhelming
>mostly.

Yeah. Megumi would've been a lot more interesting than the college club president or, well, any of the members of Onna-Gumi, who all seem kind of phoned in - with the arguable exception of Akira, and her shtick gets old after a while. Yui is impervious to people disliking her. That's not something that requires repetition to establish. :)

And where the hell is Nodoka? She was one of the most important supporting cast members in the "proper" run of K-On!, and her only appearance after Yui graduates is that weird scene where she stops by for an awkward visit and never bothers to tell her best-friend-since-kindergarten that she's leaving the country and they'll probably never see each other again. What the hell was that?!

>This portion of the thread appears to have veered back mostly into the
>source material side of things, so I'll leave it at that. There's more
>suitable places for this side of the discussion. :)

Such as here! :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That's one of those cultural dissonances I've always found interesting to watch. More than a few anime I've seen touch on how important after school activities are, and how not being a participant in some capacity is the exception moreso than the rule. I suspect English schools haven't changed enough in the past 15 years for my experiances to be particularly outdated, but there were really only two things you'd be at school after classes here; the inevitable token football or rugby club (which didn't even take root properly in my school, to my knowledge) or detention. Maybe there'd be somebody leveraging the music room for instrument lessons, but nothing in the way of clubs.

>Ui's such a
>diligent and enterprising sort that it seems entirely out of character
>for her not to be involved in something, but there's never a
>word about it. She hangs out with Azusa and Jun but evidently belongs
>to neither club her classmates are in, nor any of the others. If she
>has any interests outside of school, we never hear about them.

>Now, granted, she's not one of the main characters, and she's
>portrayed as so competent that the author might've been worried that
>if he made her one she'd just take the whole damn thing over,
>but still, that is pretty weird. Those two unnamed freshmen from the
>Jazz Club in "Staying Behind!" end up with more detailed school
>careers than Yui's little sister. (I would easily have accepted her
>as Nodoka's protégé in Student Government, for instance.)

That would've made a lot of sense, actually. The only justification I'd come up with to date was for Ui to want to be home early to prepare dinner and the like for when Yui got back, but that's venturing into Marvel No-Prize territory.

>
>>The two come across as the least contentious siblings I have ever seen
>>(and yet without falling into the standard show-sibling trap of coming
>>across as heavily unnatural about the entire affair, which is rare but
>>nice)
>
>Heh, as discussed elsewhere, there is a band of the K-On! fan
>artist population who see them very differently, recasting Ui in the
>"terrifying, hollow-eyed possessive psycho" (yandere, I am
>told) role. It's... amusing and disturbing at the same time. :)

Fandom's go weird places sometimes :) Though by unnatural, I was thinking more how lots of anime siblings tend to be so openly affectionate, protective or supportive in a way no set of siblings I know almost ever are, including my own. It makes me wonder if any of these people have ever thought to ask anybody with siblings what it's actually like. There's usually a pretty hefty layer of arguing and/or teasing instead of the openness, particularly before maturity sets in. (Katara and Sokka make a much more natural example of sibling behaviour, I think.)
Yui and Ui don't exactly escape that so much as transcend it, because they don't end up spouting all the really clunky dialogue and the like that tends to be so immersion breaking. They may be atypical of siblings in my experiance, but at least they feel genuine about it. :)

>>The post-graduation manga pair don't hold up as well, yeah. The High
>>School side I think fared better, probably because it didn't try to
>>rebuild the supporting cast quite so extensively (and Sumire was
>>actually a likable Mugi-alternative), though it did give Sawako the
>>short end of the stick a bit.
>
>It did, and yet it didn't develop the matter at all. I mean, Sawako's
>increasingly erratic behavior leading to problems with her job is a
>perfectly legitimate subplot on-ramp (one that ideally would lead to
>the club girls staging an intervention, because they don't want to
>lose their favorite teacher), but it's just sort of left there,
>as if Kakifly belatedly realized, "Hang on, this is way too srs
>bsns for this manga."

I suppose he may have wanted to not delve too deeply into a Sawako-based arc with only one high-school year's worth of book to play with, just in case, but it did feel like Sawako was almost forcibly reverted to her first-volume antics and non-homeroom teacher status by way of cheap gags, instead of being allowed to settle further into the way the movie ended with her starting to come to terms with the idea that she could be both her ex-metal band lead -and- a well liked, respectable teacher.

>I agree about Sumire; I've considered moving her and Mugi a little
>closer together in age (more like Yui and Ui) so that she can have
>some part in TFLF. It's fairly apparent that the only reason they're
>so far apart in the canon is because Sumire wasn't actually thought of
>until after Mugi had graduated, and we don't have that problem here,
>so. :)
>
>(Besides, Ui and Jun's band still needs a drummer. :)

I approve of this plan wholeheartedly. :)

>>The College side suffered mostly by squandering the potential of the
>>supporting cast it could have kept on (why even re-introduce Sokabe if
>>you're not going to actually explore her otherwise offscreen-developed
>>friendship with Ritsu and pretty clear crush on Mio? That just strikes
>>me as wasted opportunity) and the new cast...well, being underwhelming
>>mostly.
>
>Yeah. Megumi would've been a lot more interesting than the college
>club president or, well, any of the members of Onna-Gumi, who
>all seem kind of phoned in - with the arguable exception of Akira, and
>her shtick gets old after a while. Yui is impervious to people
>disliking her. That's not something that requires repetition to
>establish. :)

I'll be honest, I'd almost forgotten there -was- a club president, given how badly she failed to differentiate herself from OG's drummer. Not as badly as her friend the bassist/guitarist/whatever she was, who I legitimately did forget was supposed to be a differant person from OG's bassist until the end of the book, and yes I don't remember any of their names. Akira did at least manage to be different enough to stand out, even if she was, as you say, a little bit one-note. :) Her band, on the other hand, only seemed to exist as accesory to her apperance, which might have been fine if there'd been more of Megumi or Nodoka on-hand to balance out the new cast, but they weren't. And speaking of Nodoka;

>And where the hell is Nodoka? She was one of the most important
>supporting cast members in the "proper" run of K-On!, and her
>only appearance after Yui graduates is that weird scene where she
>stops by for an awkward visit and never bothers to tell her
>best-friend-since-kindergarten that she's leaving the country and
>they'll probably never see each other again. What the hell was that?!

I know, right? Like some kind of weird, token appearance solely designed to put her on the metaphorical bus. Granted it might have been a bit of a stretch to have her in the same college as well, but y'know. Phones exist, and it's not like it's impossible to visit people. Relatedly, as I understand it the two arcs were run concurrently in different issues so I guess Kakifly wanted to keep crossover to a minimum, but even so I find it hard to believe that Yui wouldn't have tried to visit Azusa. Given how reluctant they were to have to leave her behind, that just felt kinda wrong.

>>This portion of the thread appears to have veered back mostly into the
>>source material side of things, so I'll leave it at that. There's more
>>suitable places for this side of the discussion. :)
>
>Such as here! :)

It was this or PM, but this makes more sense. :)

~Silv'

I came across this today and thought some here might find it interesting. A guy visited the school K-On is based on and posted a number of pictures from his trip.

http://imgur.com/a/QBAGN

-----
It would have been an accidental shooting, had he not reloaded... twice.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Anyway, mostly I bring it up because it's interesting to note a couple things. Such as, in the game's mix of "Don't Say Lazy" not only does Azusa finally have a part to play, but she gets the lead part and the solo to boot. Makes me wonder at which point Yui decided to offer that, because Azusa may make demands of her bandmates to practice, but she's never asked for the lead part. Outright refused it before, even.

~Silv'

So now I'm considering the members of Hōkago Tea Time as their Elder Tale characters. Yui's a Bard, obviously, because she can only have one interest at a time, so if someone (presumably Ritsu, who plays RPGs canonically) got her into Elder Tale she'd have to play as herself to prevent damage to her real-life skill set. Which would make the transition especially easy for her after the Apocalypse, one has to admit.

The obvious assumption would be that Mio's probably the team's healer, because she doesn't like to fight, but if she actually took the thing seriously as opposed to just rolling a character to humor Ritsu, I could see her mastering the complexities of one of the more esoteric support classes (for instance, as an Enchanter like Shiroe).

Ritsu's all about the DPS, so she'd be a Sorcerer or a Monk. Probably the latter, because she likes to hit things. This is simplistic, but then so, very often, is Ritsu's approach to recreation. :)

Mugi's slightly spacey demeanor and deceptive strength would make her a hilariously convention-breaking Assassin. She seems all nice and ditzy and cheerful, like Marielle, and you assume she's probably a Cleric like her or some other largely-non-combat class, and then you get out of line and she whips out Extermination on your ass.

Similarly, there is no question in my mind that Azusa would make the most pleasantly improbable Guardian in the game. Tiny but indestructible (particularly with Yui and Mio buffing her), and capable of making it so that you can't look away.

The maximum party size in Elder Tale is six, but I'm going to stretch a point and bump it to City of Heroes' eight so that I can get all of the "provisional members" in.

Ui's natural tendency would also be toward one of the healing/logistics classes (either Cleric or Druid, or maybe... whatever Minori's character class is, is it actually Miko or is that just a roleplaying thing, like Akatsuki being a ninja?), though, being Ui, I could see her taking an incongruous subclass (Berserker, perhaps) and making it work somehow. :)

Jun is obviously a Swashbuckler and loving it, with a full suite of Witty Quips to go along with her dual wielding and fancy light armor. The only other class in the game that would sufficiently appeal to her fondness for the dramatic gesture would be Sorcerer, and that's reserved for...

Nodoka, who would have had to be talked into playing more diligently than anybody else because she really doesn't have time for it, but who, as a Person Who Knows What She's Doing, would (once engaged) set herself the task of designing the most efficient character possible. She does this not in the spirit of petty stat-chasing, but because she has a seventh-level computer brain and that kind of thing comes naturally to her. The result, by the time they reach the level cap, is a Sorcerer build whose sheer destructive power beggars belief. Sure, she's a bit weak after the alpha, she can't do anything without a plan, and she's massively dependent on the support network provided by the others, but then Nodoka never does anything without a plan anyway, and Sorcerers were never intended to solo (right, Rudy?).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.