Hibike! Euphonium

Now that Kumiko Oumae has enrolled in Kitauji High School, she hopes to forget about her past. Despite her desire for a fresh start, she gets dragged into the school's band club by her new friends—Sapphire Kawashima and Hazuki Katou—and is once again stuck playing the euphonium.

As the band currently stands, they won't be able to participate in the local festival, Sunfest, let alone compete at a national level. The band's new advisor, Noboru Taki, gives them a choice: they can relax and have fun, or practice hard and attempt to get into nationals. Not wanting to repeat her mistakes from middle school, Kumiko is doubtful as to whether they should try for nationals. Amidst the chaos, she learns that her old bandmate, Reina Kousaka (who she had a bitter relationship with) has joined Kitauji's band club. Under the pressure of Noboru's strict training, Kumiko and her bandmates must learn to overcome their struggles and find success together.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Oumae, Kumiko Main

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Kousaka, Reina Main

Anzai, Chika Japanese

Katou, Hazuki Main

Asai, Ayaka Japanese

Kawashima, Sapphire Main

Toyota, Moe Japanese

Tanaka, Asuka Supporting

Kotobuki, Minako Japanese

Tsukamoto, Shuuichi Supporting

Ishiya, Haruki Japanese

Yoroizuka, Mizore Supporting

Nakagawa, Natsuki Supporting

Fujimura, Konomi Japanese

Kasaki, Nozomi Supporting

Yoshikawa, Yuuko Supporting

Yamaoka, Yuri Japanese

Nakamura, Shinichi Producer

Saitou, Shigeru Producer

Senami, Riri Assistant Producer, Publicity

Yarimizu, Yoshifumi Assistant Producer

Reviews

Jun 6, 2024

lycoping

Recommended

This anime may not only be my favorite anime (if not, it's in the top five), but it may also be one of my favorite works of art of all time, in any medium. If this were classical music, it would be a work by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, or Rachmaninoff (I know Rachmaninoff isn't, strictly speaking, classical, but oh well). While I can't honestly say this anime has no flaws, I can say that it, in a very real way, changed my life.

I don't say that lightly because many people will claim that about anime because they found their favorite waifu, etc., but ... this is so much more than that. I barely have enough words, but I'll try.

This anime has a very simple premise: Oomae Kumiko, a first year high school student, joins Kitauji high school, and then the band. Along with her friends Reina, Safaia, and Hazuki, they work towards entering, and hopefully winning, the national championships. (This is not a spoiler. It's established very early that this is what they are trying to do, and it's news to no one. I will not say whether or not they succeed, *that* would be a spoiler).

This is, at its core, a sports anime about music. And the music is treated with at least the same passion with which a sports anime treats its chosen sport.

Let's start with the music. The music is *top notch*. Since this is an animation based around music, KyoAni pulled out all the stops and created music that not only pulls you into its world, but can stand on its own amongst serious compositions in the genre. In fact, "Crescent Moon Dance" *has* become a serious composition in the genre, and is played unironically amongst many other great compositions. As a musician, I can tell you it is an amazing piece and the composer did not phone it in. But the same care was taken with all the other music, and the background music as well. They took the music *seriously* in this anime, and it shows. They also take great care to animate the instruments *properly* - every instrument is animated perfectly, or nearly so. The OP is catchy, stands on its own as a work of art, and perfectly encapsulates the spirit of a high school or marching band. I'm not too big a fan of the ED, but can't win 'em all.

The characters are fleshed out, and in amazing detail. Every member of the band has a name, and a consistent character design - all sixty or so of them. While there are a few main characters, there are some band characters that you only see once or twice, you don't know their names, but they *have* one. They are human, too, with human motivations. As the anime progresses, you can see the growth in all the characters, including the teacher.

And the story is amazing. It's very emotional, and it's difficult to not get invested into the characters and their goal. When they perform, you find yourself on the edge of your seat along with everyone else in the anime, to see if they make it.

There is a small amount of fanservice, particularly in the second season, but it's handled well and isn't in any way excessive. That's not the point of this anime, and I think KyoAni was well aware of that.

Essentially, this is a work of art, and I believe everyone, but particularly people who are or have been in a band, should watch this anime, and would enjoy it.

Now, for the flaws. While this anime is amazing, there *are* a few flaws.

The first one is the "yuri-baiting". There are several scenes that could very easily tip over into yuri. They don't, and some people got upset about that. I don't really see it that way, personally - I see these scenes as a rather hamhanded attempt to display close female friendship while also trying to satisfy the yuri-lovers. It kinda falls flat at both. It would have been perfect if they'd dialed those scenes back just a smidge. Nonetheless, I wasn't really bothered all that much - I saw only close friends, who were a couple of adolescents trying to figure out what close friendship actually is. It's pretty realistic, actually. But they kinda didn't know their audience on this one, and made no one happy.

Also, it started kinda slow. As I was watching this, I didn't see what was so special about this show until episode 8 (if you know, you know), and then I fell in love with it. But I could easily have left it before then, and almost did. I'm glad I didn't, but my advice is to stick it through till at least episode 8, it starts getting really good right around then and doesn't stop even through the second season.

My third criticism is that the band was too good. Reina was a trumpeter on the level of a professional, and while they were believable as a high school band, it was on the higher end of believability, and I almost got knocked out of the suspension of disbelief a couple of times with how good Reina actually was. They could, and maybe should, have dialed that back a little as well.

This review isn't about me, but I will say, as I mentioned earlier, this anime changed my life in a real way. It inspired me to write a concert band piece of my own (which I have completed and made available to the world, I don't think I can tell you here, but feel free to ask and I'll point you at it), and now I'm taking composition and piano lessons (I'm working on the Revolutionary Etude as I type this), and this anime was, in large part, my inspiration. Who knows where it will take me, but I don't think I would have done any of this if it weren't for this anime and "Bocchi the Rock". 'umaku naritai" (I want to become good) has become one of my personal mantras, right up there with "I refuse to let it end this way".

So is this "recommended"? This is not only "recommended", this is "Don't be baka and watch it already, you may not love it but you owe it to yourself to experience this absolute *awesomeness* at least once." This is an anime that sets the bar for other anime, and it's one of the few that earns a perfect ten from me.

And the next piece begins.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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May 9, 2021

Fishymonster_

Mixed Feelings

It's made by kyo-ani, so obviously the animation quality is some of the best I've ever seen in a tv-format anime. The show is mostly well done story-wise, but it some parts left a bad taste in my mouth. Also, the yuri-bait sucks, I think every one watching the show wanted you know who and also you know who to get together, and there was too much focus on the teacher and his relationships. The show dragged on at times, this was the first show I ever had to complete in chunks, watching different animes before I competed the next few episodes because of how ... boring it mostly was. Honestly I was going to give this a 7, but I can only really say not so good things about this show so I see no reason to give it that high of a rating. If you are an anime fan you probably won't like this, if you are a straight up drama fan you probably will. I can definitely see why it is rated high, but it's not my cup of tea (even though I love most slice of life animes) so do with that information what you will.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 23, 2021

Justicefornoone

Not Recommended

In my short life watching animated series, if there's something I learned through the years is that the best pieces of animation are those ones which can balance remarkable and original art, animation with a fascinating or at least compelling story with well written and rounded characters, and last but not least, making a good use of music to make the experience more delightful, memorable and even complement the atmosphere and characterization, especially if music is the central theme of the aforementioned series.

In this case I am reviewing one which art is kind of remarkable, with decent musical compositions, but appalling melodrama and cardboard characters: ... Sound! Euphonium.

Art & Animation:
I am, like everyone, a biased person, and I have to confess that I'm not a fan of how Kyoani confront their creations: they clearly are almost unbeatable in how they animate every detail and how fluid can look, only comparable with cinematographic works of Ghibli, CoMix Wave, or any film with high display of production values like Redline or Sword of the Stranger.

Of course, they lack of creativity in some aspects like character design in order to make them look as cute as possible ends up falling into the generic department, losing against other formidable pieces like Dennou Coil, Cowboy Bebop and FLCL. And don't make me start on how some animes with budget limits prove that your animation can have high standards like Haibane Renmei, Rakugo, Trust and Betrayal, Evangelion or Berserk '97.

Music:
In a series about music, someone may expect masterpieces that can give classical musicians a run for their money or at least if the staff are using non original soundtrack, to use it properly like Nodame Cantabile so you can mentally relate the music with the anime. And even though it's not bad music per se, it's unfortunate how average are such compositions and how wasted it feels at the end of the day (you can separate it almost completely from the anime and enjoy it more on your own!). I can forgive this if we weren't talking about a slice of life where the cast is in a school band. Fortunately, sound effects are extremely polished but that can be expected from Kyoani.

Story:
So far I haven't spoken about what is this all about. So, what's this all about?
Well, a group of Moe girls walking and talking nonsense most of the time, and supposedly focused on winning a place in the school band and rehearsing as hard as possible. This second part is, again, supposedly to be the main plot but Kyoani preferred to focus on their specialty: giving queerbaiting between cute innocent schoolgirls because yuri-bait helps a lot with merchandising. At least 30% of the camera is entirely focused on schoolgirl thighs just for the sake of having them somewhere rather than giving more space to actual characterization, so far we've been told rather than shown the motivation of the main cast to find the Euphonium, hence the pace of this series is also appalling in spite of having less than 15 chapters.

Characters:
And now the biggest offender: the characters. To be fair, Kyoani never was a studio that gave half a damn about good screenplay or writing, so the closest thing to decent writing that I've ever seen of them is the characterization of Haruhi suzumiya (instead of being a cute retarded cardboard, she's a full sentient girl with bad manners) and the comedy of Nichijou, that worked somehow in each chapter.

Nevertheless, do not be fooled by those who claim that the portrayal of these girls are totally realistic -whose names can be replaced by the main girls from K-ON due to how awfully similar they are-. There's nothing that helps people to point a single trait of personality of ANY of these girls. Why? Because it's not necessary to even try to give them a personality. On the other hand, checking other music-centered animes like Kids on the Slope, Beck or Kono oto Tomare, you can easily make a distinction between each one of their respective casts. Also, there's not character development at all, not saying that this is mandatory but at least the writer could make these moe dolls had some charisma and more traits to convince me to care about them. And before you ask, no, Liz and the Blue Bird is not realistic or even remotely good either, but wins against Euphonium due to the segments of the tale of Liz where animation and music actually merge with each other smoothly and they forget about the high school setting

Overall, it's only worthy if you are a hardcore fan of this overrated studio. Otherwise, I advise you to stay away from it and find the other examples of how great some anime music can be: Nodame Cantabile, Kids on the Slope, Beck, Kono oto Tomare, Forest of Piano.
If you really want to see how good Kyoani can be with their high production values, go check Violet Evergarden or Nichijou, which are so far their best works.
And if you wanted an actual GL story rather than dirty pandering, Revolutionary Girl Utena is always available, or Shinsekai Yori.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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