K-On season three as another group of high school girls get bitten by the rock bug and start a band.
Really, this starts out as K-On, with a slightly ditzy girl going to her new high school for the first time. She even has a somewhat more reliable younger sister. She’s looking for something new and exciting and sees high school as the start of something new. Obviously that’s going to be music of some sort, but first she has to spent half the episode visiting every club in school to see if they suit her. Though in the process we do get a first look at those who are destined to join her band.
What I like is how the protagonist, Toyama Kasumi, is actually fairly social and outgoing, quick to be friendly with her classmates and actually fairly decent at the club activities she tries. What I don’t like is how she met her first friend: literally bumping into her while looking to see which class she was assigned to, the camera firmly at butt level. It’s one of those little indulgences that can put you right off a series.
The plot only kicks in roughly 2/3rds of the way through the episode, as Kasumi notices a trail of star stickers and follows it to its end point: a pawn shop. She looks into its storeroom, is caught by a girl working in the garden, then persuades her to look at the strange case in the corner, which turns out to contain the guitar she’s cradling in the first image above. For some reason she also persuades her to take her to a live house to play guitar, but instead she gets to hear the band the episode started with.
Stars are a recurrent theme here. Kasumi starts the episode by narrating how when she was little she once heart the rhythm of the star beat. When she introduces herself to her new class she talks about her dream of finding it once again and in an extended flashback she reminds her sister of how she took her stargazing one night and saw the Milky Wa and heard that star beat. Not surprising then that the band she saw that gives her the last push to make music herself wears stars on their outfits…
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