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

Yoroizuka, Mizore Supporting

Nakagawa, Natsuki Supporting

Fujimura, Konomi Japanese

Tsukamoto, Shuuichi Supporting

Ishiya, Haruki 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

Nov 23, 2024

griddyweeb

Recommended

I came in expecting more focus on music and less on drama, however it seems to be the other way around slightly. Despite that, it really outperformed my expectations, even with its popularity and ratings. I didn't expect to tear up at the ending scene, but I did.

It's hard to point out what exactly it is, but this anime does something really well when it comes to drama. You get drawn into the competitiveness of playing in an ensemble, you get invested in everyone's individual story: what they do, what they try to achieve, their challenges and achievements. The highs and lows of the band ... affect you like you're part of it.

However it's a bit disappointing that the musical part of a music centered anime is a bit neglected. Most performances are shortened or outright cut out, which sometimes makes you feel like the anime doesn't even focus on music and it's solely a drama that happens to have some music. For example YLIA didn't shy away from featuring full performances (that sometimes even took up half the episode) and it worked out so well. It all comes down to screentime, it's not just musical performances that are shortened/cut, there's a bit of rush in pacing, some tiny time skips and whatnot. This season should've been 23-24 episodes long or should've adapted less.

Apart from that there are no issues. There's some yuri bait that felt unnecessary, but not obnoxious so it's not that much of an issue.

It's a must watch for everyone I think. If you like music and/or drama it's pretty straightforward, if not then it's one of those animes that shine in their genre that you should try even if you're not a fan.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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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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	Poll: Hibike! Euphonium Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) Stark700 - Jun 2, 2015	215 replies	by Khashishi »» Dec 23, 2024 2:13 AM
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