MADDHouse of Anime: Hibike! Euphonium

I would like to start off by welcoming you once again, dear readers, to our cozy little blog. It’s our hope that we will be able to offer interesting insight (and definitely a few laughs) on the endless parade of series that manage to captivate our imaginations and deliver some damn fine entertainment week-after-week. I’ll be kicking off our more or less weekly reviews with this season’s KyoAni powerhouse-in-the-making: Hibike! Euphonium. Please note that this review will contain SPOILERS. Go ahead and watch the episode first. I can wait.

Who am I kidding? You're gonna read this regardless.

Let's start off with a bit of a disclaimer. I'm sure a good number of you may be coming into this series with notions of KyoAni's other muscial SoL, K-ON!, dancing through your heads. High school girls? Music? More moe goodness than one's heart can possibly withstand? It must be the second coming! Well, I won't purport to know whether or not this is true, since I...err...haven't had a chance to watch K-ON! yet (it's on my backlog, don't kill me!). To tell you the truth, I think this puts me in the interesting position of being able to judge the series on its own merits, rather than subconsciously comparing it element-by-element with its sort-of-predecessor. Does it hold up on its own? From what I've seen, we're off to a promising start.

Ms. KyoAni protagonist, Spring 2015, reporting for duty!

Meet Oumae Kumiko, the heroine of our story. The cold open reveals that, prior to entering high school, Kumiko's junior high concert band managed to score gold at the Kyoto Preliminary to the Kansai Concert Band competition, but failed to secure a representative spot in the next stage. Oh well. "Dud gold" is still gold, after all. Everyone is fairly happy with the result, Kumiko included. Almost everyone.


Junior high concert band is the pinnacle of my hopes and dreams and I will accept no less than perfection, baka~

Hibike! Euphonium is a musical SoL. It's also a drama. Thus, we need something, or in this case, someone to set us down the path towards those future feels. As far as I can gather, that person is Kosaka Reina, Kumiko's fellow bandmate. Their failure to get that representative spot drives Reina to tears and, after a terse exchange with our heroine, she storms off. This encounter, as we come to see later, had some sort of profound effect on Kumiko and her own passion for music.

Oh no, not this again.

Fast-forward to the present. Kumiko is now a newly-minted freshman at Kitauji High School, looking for a fresh start. However, she soon finds out that there is no escaping the band life, as she finds herself drawn back into the world of music by both old and new faces, as well as her lingering passion for the art. The only problem is that Kitauji's concert band sucks. Not exactly music to our heroine's ears. And to top it all off, our drama queen is here too. So much for a fresh start. Luckily, she has a couple of new friends taking the leap of faith with her: the happy-go-lucky, try-anything-once Katou Hazuki and the timid, yet quietly determined Kawashima Sapphire.

Our trio in a nutshell.

The characters in our main trio aren't particularly special or unique, but that's not to say they aren't entertaining. Although we've all seen their types before, there is still a charm in their familiarity. There's growth to be had here and I'll be waiting to see how our main trio evolves over the course of the season. Kumiko's still quite indecisive about who she wants to be in high school (to ponytail or not to ponytail?). Sapphire has her confidence to work on. Hazuki...well, she'll learn how to play an instrument. I'm personally a sucker for the high-energy types, so it's needless to say that Hazuki became a fast favorite for me. They all feel like real teenage girls should, especially Kumiko. Who can say that they haven't gone through what she's going through now? Those early high school years were always the least well-defined, and it's hard to give up on the things you love despite wanting to make a fresh start. There's good chemistry between our trio too. I can already see the friendship antics brewing. And from the looks of the ED, it would seem that the drama queen herself will round out the trio into a quartet sooner or later. It'll be satisfying to see her change from a sullen, serious character into one with a lighter, friendlier attitude.

Aside from our main trio and the drama queen, we are given a few characters to watch out for. We have Kumiko's childhood friend/fellow bandmate/potential love interest, Tsukamoto Shuichi. Then there's her older sister, who seems to have inspired her love of band from an early age. Oh, and I can't forget the pretty prankster-in-glasses, Tanaka Asuka. Another favorite for sure. That's spontaneity to rival even Hazuki.

No one beats troll-senpai. No one.

There's also this guy:

Don't let the picture fool you. This guy just crashed a date at a shrine and accidentally revealed his obsession with junior high concert band performances.

His introduction, removed from any interaction with the rest of our cast, belies his importance later on. This guy is obviously way into concert band. In particular, he seems to be connected in some way to Kumiko's junior high band. I guess he's seen them play before? Our OP gives away some crucial information on what we can look forward to. He'll enter the picture and become involved in the Kitauji concert band soon enough.

The pacing in this first episode was spot on. We're given just enough information to decipher the backstory, as well as to make educated guesses about where the story will be headed. Character introductions felt absolutely natural (yes, even Hazuki's out-of-nowhere "nice to meet ya!"). The series doesn't go out of its way to make them important. There's no needless character bios internally monologued by our heroine. We meet them as Kumiko does, and that's that. We have a potentially large cast here, so it's nice that we haven't been inundated with names and faces right off the bat. It's also important to note how effectively the series has chosen to handle the matter of explaining the ins and outs of band: through our trio's sole musical novice, Hazuki. This is the girl who thought euphoniums were smaller than keychain plushies. As such, explanations for various musical terms and concepts will naturally find their way into the story through necessity, keeping both Hazuki and the viewer in the loop. It's a clever approach. Hopefully we don't end up with any unnecessary info-dumping down the road.

Visually speaking, this is a KyoAni production through and through. The art is colorful and vibrant, which lends itself nicely to the fluid animation and expressive characters. I especially like what was done with the focus in several of the scenes, mimicking great camerawork and going out of its way to draw our attention to where it's needed. And then there are parts like the one below, where the focus bleeds out at the edges, framing the scene in an almost magical, ethereal light. I'm crossing my fingers that KyoAni continues to deliver this level of quality for the remainder of the season. In my personal experience, this shouldn't be too much of a stretch. Consistency is one of their hallmarks.

Pink Gabriel, Pink Minister, Pink Devil, Pink Young CEO

Of course, I can't forget the music. This is a series about music, after all. Our soundtrack comes to us courtesy of Matsuda Akito, whose recent works include Chunibyo demo Koi ga Shitai! and the infamous Glasslip. For those of you who haven't watched those series (can't blame you for skipping out on the latter, though), at least give the OSTs a listen. They're absolutely gorgeous. Hibike! Euphonium is no exception here. The instrumental soundtrack is light, airy, and joyous. It comes in at just the right times to accent what's happening on screen and leaves quietly to give us moments of focused reflection or character interaction. Since we're dealing with a concert band here, we can also expect to get a lot of great renditions of classic pieces. I loved the lively insert of Offenbach's Infernal Galop from Orpheus in the Underworld (better known as the can-can song). The OP, "Dream Solister" by True, seems to capture the spirit behind the story: simple beginnings, rising action, drama and conflict, hope, and finally success. I like it, but it's nothing too special. You have to appreciate the band-flavoring to it, though. The ED, "Tutti!", by our main voice actresses, Kurosawa Tomoyo (Kumiko), Asai Ayaka (Hazuki), Toyota Moe (Sapphire), and Anzai Chiki (Reina), is an energetic, joyous piece and one of my favorite EDs this season. You seriously have to love the attitude they use to sing the lead-in and lead-out lyrics.

Dat brass (and dat contrabass too).

All in all, I have to say that I was quite impressed with this first episode. There's a lot of potential here and I'm hoping that it'll deliver. As of writing this, the second episode has come out (it's been a busy week for me and I'm a bit behind), so you can bet I'll be watching that as soon as possible so that I can bore you with another review. Until the next time!

Bonus screencaps!