K-ON! 05: The Stupid Appeal

Posted: May 4, 2009 | Author: flomu | Filed under: Uncategorized |13 Comments »

This is why I like Ritsu.  She tells the truth and doesn’t afraid of anything.

In other news, this has got to be my first intelligent episodic post.  This shows that I actually do, in fact, have a working brain at times!

This episode was very funny and incredibly bad.
It’s like watching a shitty version of Dokuro-chan.

Basically, this episode was trying to be a slapstick parody with extremely cheap and stupid humor that just doesn’t match the humor from the previous four episodes and other KyoAni works.

Instead of bringing up billions of examples from this episode to make my point, I’m going to center my argument (that this episode sucked) around only a few.

First up is Mio shuddering in the corner.
Ritsu speaks for the audience when she tells Mio to “Snap out of it already!”

The first time this happened way back in episode …two (?), I had a feeling that it was going to become a recurring joke.  But to emphasize it so strongly and to show it three times in a single episode is crossing the line between funny and trying too hard (aka downright retarded).

Now K-ON! ain’t a realistic show (though it could have been one), so it’s not beyond the scope of the show to have Mio in a fetus position for that long.  However, K-ON! is a comedy.  And a comedy focuses on funny things to make the audience laugh.  Does Mio in a fetus position make the viewer laugh, or does it make you feel as if there’s a bead of sweat running down your hair cheek just like Ritsu and Mugi?

This isn’t funny.  Timed right, recurring jokes can be funny.  Timed wrong and/or shoved into the anime at random times just for fans to swoon over a character, recurring jokes are a pain in the ass, the ears, and the sockets that your eyes moved out of.  I don’t really care if Ed is short anymore.  Likewise, I don’t really care if Mio is “cute” and is scared of things that the most stereotypical picture of a girl you can find in the most patriarchal society you can imagine is scared of.

EEK, A SPIDER!
EEK, BLOOD!
EEK, BAD HUMOR! *faints*

Okay, so you’re probably either thinking “I agree” or “Why isn’t it funny to a faggot like you?  It’s funny to me and the other millions of K-ON! groupies.”

As mentioned above, it’s shoved into the anime solely for comedic effect.  That may be a good strategy to use when you’ve got a good joke, but when you’ve got something that pops up in every episode (RECURRING JOKE), not only is it out of place, but it’s also repulsive because it’s so god damn obvious that it’s forced comedy.  The girls start talking, and NON SEQUITUR TIME: “Where’s Mio?”  OH, SHE’S IN RECURRING JOKE MODE (again)

Here’s an analogy:

Nagisa: Tomoya… *kicks the bucket*
Tomoya: NAGISA!!!!!!!!
…
Tomoya: PIPIRUPIRUPIRUPIPIRUPI, BITCHES!
Nagisa: LOLOL GOTCHA, LOSERS

BRILLIANT.

So what makes a parody?  There’s the archetype breaking, the stereotype breaking, and the fourth-wall-breaking.
So what makes a K-ON!?  Not that.

K-ON! =/= parody = Saki.

Sure, almost all comedies have some elements of parody in them, but rarely do we see a series that suddenly switches to full-blown parody for an entire episode, diverging from previous forms of comedy (including moe/dojikko appeal)!

A parody overemphasizes a certain element of a genre/theme, thereby drawing attention to and making fun of it.  With this in mind, we can define practically everything in this episode as parody.  From the overshaded/overlighted Ritsu-as-a-detective scene to the yandere-teacher-jumps-through-random-obstacles sequence to the sudden spotlight-flashback mode in the picture above, each and every scene is over-the-top in something(s).

Now parodies are funny.  But if you take a look back at episode 4’s barnacle humor and episode 3’s chord-hand humor, you’ll notice that the previous episodes were steeped in a different type of funny.  Episodes one to four didn’t need to dramatize everything to get a chuckle out of the audience.  They kept things nice, simple, and UN-PARODIED.  Because K-ON! started walking down the path that Lucky Star, Haruhi, etc. trod on, I was expecting something of a “finer” type of comedy, but I guess this episode proved me wrong.  Poo.

But perhaps the biggest thing I’m annoyed with is how the comedy is presented.

The comedy comes at you like a charging rhino.  It’s big, bulky, looks dumb, has a horn, and is usually followed by more rhinos.

When the scene above came along, I laughed.
I laughed… not for the reason they were aiming for.  I laughed because it was so stupid.  Having Mio, Yui, and Mugi suddenly appear is basically saying “LAUGH NOW” and/or “THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY.”

A rhino looks dumb.  Seriously, look at one.
Likewise, this comedy felt dumb.  And it was.
Because the comedy was so obviously … well, comedy, it wasn’t hard for it to appear stupid.  Absurd situations with a bunch of nonsensical events going on is just asking (begging*) the audience to laugh.  There’s no rhyme or reason to this kind of comedy: it’s like Bo-bobo or Butt Attack Girl: nothing makes sense, and you’re laughing because it’s stupid and would never really happen in real life.

A rhino has a horn.  Yeah.

A rhino is followed by more rhinos.
The jokes came fast in this episode.  Very fast.  However, unlike Lucky Star or Zetsubou Sensei, K-ON! 05 opted only for quantity.

A rhino is big and bulky.
Likewise, the comedy here was big and bulky.  As mentioned above, the humor is stupid.  This makes it stand out in what is otherwise the pretty not-stupid show that K-ON! is.  Here’s a visual:

Yes, my horrible sense of humor knows no bounds.
And neither does K-ON!‘s!

Point A refers to the time when Miss Yandere shows her mug.

It’s pretty hard not to notice the elephant in the room rhino(s) on the screen when you’re watching this episode.  The comedy is stupid, comes fast, and travels in massive herds.

A pack of cheap, stupid humor goes in, and an easily-forgotten episode (possibly series) comes out!

---