True, though it's still generally not my thing. In K-On!'s case, the effect would be exaggerated a bit by the fact that I've mainly been watching with the English voice track turned on, because it's quite good. The performances are strong and the casting people did a nice job of matching - the English voices for Yui and Mio actually still sound like they could be singing those parts when the musical portions of the show come along. (They didn't dub the songs, praise Zarquon.) Mio's English voice, in particular, is just a genuine pleasure to listen to.

There are also some nice comedy bits, particularly in the movie, where they take the fact that the existing narrative has jokes about the girls' English not being very good and just run with it.

Spoilers for K-On! The Movie: One of the main plot threads in the movie is that the five members of Hōkago Tea Time take a graduation trip to London (Azusa isn't a senior, but they take her along anyway), and it's a running joke throughout that part of the film that none of them speaks very good English. (Well, Mio's is pretty good, but she's too shy to do any of the talking. Ritsu thinks she speaks English, but, in an inversion of the stereotypical way in which gaijin comport themselves in Japan, generally what she's really doing is shouting at people slowly in broken Japanese and Engrish. :)

Since they're speaking perfectly fine English in the dubbed track, this takes on a slightly surreal air, and the film confronts this by just playing it perfectly straight. There's a scene where, jet-lagged and hungry, they wander into a kaiten sushi place in London, and the manager mistakes them for another Japanese schoolgirl band who are actually booked to play there that night. After the others make failed attempts at protesting that they only came there to eat, Ritchan takes over:

"OK, let me handle this. Hey you!"

"I am bucho!"

"We are okyakusan."

"And so: not happening!"

(Notice, in the last two frames, that even Yui is aware that this isn't going to work. :)

Unsurprisingly to everyone but Ritsu, the manager hasn't a blind clue what she's on about. They end up playing the gig and then being shown out, to conclude that a) sushi restaurant patrons in England have to perform for their dinners and b) they must not've been good enough to actually get fed, the latter of which realizations is rather demoralizing, until the other band shows up and they realize what happened.

--G.
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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
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