Spring is here, and that means it’s time to go back to Japanese high school in the artificially nostalgic, beautiful way that KyoAni’s top staff delivers better than anyone.
What They Say:
Spring in the first year of high school. Kumiko, a member of the brass band in junior high school, visits the high school brass band club with classmates Hazuki and Sapphire. There, she comes across Reina, her former classmate from junior high. Hazuki and Sapphire decide to join the club, but Kumiko can’t make up her mind. She recollects her experience with Reina at a competition in junior high school.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Hayao Miyazaki is the greatest at everything he does. Choosing to begin a review of KyoAni’s new “cute high school girls playing music” show with that namedrop may seem a strange choice, and I’m sure the man would prefer not to be mentioned in such context. But the reason is that such an established understanding in the anime community can be spoken of a little differently since his retirement. The statement may be no less true, but now we can say things like, “The best active anime director is…” and not mention the obvious choice of Miyazaki as he no longer qualifies. My choice to complete that sentence is Tatsuya Ishihara, and I bring this up to begin looking at his first new project since 2012, before Miyazaki’s latest movie was even announced. Again, the two could hardly have less in common, but I feel like some sort of disclaimer is in order before I go throwing around the phrase “this is the first new thing directed by my favorite anime director since 2012.” At any rate, after helming the Clannad and Haruhi anime franchises, the masterpieces of Kyoto Animation, the studio he works exclusively for, as well as being involved in everything else the studio has done and taking people like K-ON! director Naoko Yamada under his wing, I feel he deserves the title, and while his last series wasn’t as stellar as most of his output, particularly in its second season, I don’t think he’s made a bad show yet, and so a fresh start after several years looks like a welcome opportunity to me.
Sure enough, the first things that are obvious when watching Hibike! Euphonium, known as Sound! Euphonium in English (which is indeed written in English alongside the Japanese text in the logo), are first Ishihara’s unparalleled directing style and second the beauty that encompasses it, KyoAni’s trademark and standard of quality. As with other recent series from KyoAni and even the last few from Ishihara specifically, as well as countless other major titles of recent years, most notably Steins;Gate, the series composition comes from Jukki Hanada, a worthy writing counterpart who also pens the premiere episode himself. Aforementioned K-ON! director Naoko Yamada is helping out Ishihara at every turn, very fitting considering the similarities in this series, going as far as the opening animation introducing the girls in exactly the same way. Fellow KyoAni veterans Shoko Ikeda and Mutsuo Shinohara provide the character designs and art direction as they did for the Haruhi and Clannad series respectively, while Yota Tsuruoka is of course brought on for sound direction as he has been for nearly every KyoAni production among countless others. With a team like this, whether or not it works really falls on the source material, which as far as I can tell doesn’t seem to have been read much up to now.
As a new high school life begins and we enter the season-appropriate ocean of beautiful cherry blossoms as we have so many times in the past, the attention to detail and polished perfectionism is wonderfully inviting and it’s no wonder why people would want to escape to this idealized world. The characters are all cute and likable in their own quirky ways, and there is at least one male in the cast, albeit one who is clearly a side character. So far their interactions are even almost entirely pleasant, although there’s inevitably a bit of potential conflict brewing between a couple of main characters, one of whom doesn’t yet realize that they’re at the same school. Beginning K-ON! I had similar thoughts; it looked like cute, pretty fluff that wasn’t likely to develop into much more, but thanks to the popularity of just that it spawned enough additional content to become something truly meaningful. With the hands this is in, I’d like to believe that it should make forward progress more quickly than that, but it remains dependent on the source material. At the very least I look forward to seeing the musical performances that are sure to be quite enjoyable.
In Summary:
The new KyoAni show is in the hands of my favorite active director Tatsuya Ishihara, and I try to keep my hopes from getting too high as I know how much the source material dictates the actual quality. Unsurprisingly, the direction and animation are as top-notch as I could hope for, and as a familiar but deftly executed setting introduces us to our latest cast of cute girls I hope that there’s enough interesting content to put a team of this caliber to good use. Until then, it’s unremarkable but pretty and nicely handled.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
HP Envy 14.
