Anyone else watching this?
K-On looks much more entertaining than either Clannad or Kannagi. Perhaps this is because K-On stars the first female character in forever who can compete alongside Kanon's Ayu and Sayuri for super adorableness in my book. I didn't care for any of the girls in Clannad except for Kyou (who got minimal airtime) and Fuuko (who was cute but not nearly as cute as Ayu or Sayuri were). In Kannagi, I was torn between Tsugumi and Zange, not really liking any of the girls' personalities and always feeling dirty for watching a show about sophomores in high school and thinking about which girl was my favorite. >_> But K-On gives us Yui, the adorable dojikko whose voice actress reminds me so very, very much of a hybrid between Kanon's Sayuri and Azumanga Daioh's Osaka. (I looked her up: seems like she's fairly new to the business, but she provided the voice of Yoshino in Minami-ke. I loved Yoshino's voice!) So for the first time since Fall 2007 with the first season of Minami-ke, I've finally got a new cute girl to root for.
It's hard to believe that Kyoto Animation is behind this project. The animation looks fairly crude in many places. It reminds me a good deal of Kannagi's animation, ESPECIALLY how the girls' teeth are drawn. Every time Yui smiles, it immediately makes me think of Tsugumi and Zange from Kannagi! In K-On, the girls' hands and feet are drawn super-tiny, no doubt meant to appeal to the lolikons in the audience, and the way in which these are drawn reminds me of Lucky Star or other tiny-handed-girls shows. As for the voices, it's a bizarre hybrid between Azumanga Daioh and Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu for me. On the one hand, Yui reminds me of Osaka half of the time, and Mio reminds me of Azumanga's Yumi, with Ritsu providing the Kana to go along with. However, Ritsu is much less AzuDai's Kana than she is Suzumiya Haruhi's Haruhi: rambunctious, bossy, good-natured, and born-to-lead. (Kana's not exactly what you'd call leader material, lol.) In fact, it is Ritsu's voice and Ritsu's eyes which together made me think of Haruhi in several places of K-On's first episode. Finally, there's the quiet blonde girl -- whose name I forget! ^^; -- who visually reminds me of robotx's avatar but whose personality is pretty much a boring blank slate to me. Well, not completely blank: she's the token rich-girl-who-is-ignorant-of-the-commoners'-world character. *YAAAAAWN* Then again, I guess people are yawning at the adorable dojikko too, so meh. ^^;