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On the surface the original K-On is about a group of girls who start a band together. But anyone who has ever read or watched it, knows that the musical aspect is just set dressing. The true focus is on the characters. While the anime leans more into a coming-of-age story and the manga focuses more on the jokes, it’s essentially a story about friendship rather than music.


This couldn’t be further from the truth with regards to K-On Shuffle, where the entire focus is on the music. Completely sacrificing the fun characters and entertaining conversations in exchange for lots of dialog about music. At least ... it can be safely said that K-On Shuffle doesn’t needlessly retread the original.


Thankfully, despite these shortcomings, the artwork is just as good as the original. It’s nothing special, but it more than gets the job done.


But let’s talk about the characters instead. To those that have read or watched the original K-On, the best way to describe this new group is that they’re all just copy-and-pasted versions of Azusa with a unique extra quirk or two thrown in. That is not an exaggeration, Azusa was characterized for having a lot of respect for her upperclassmen, always wanting to hunker down and practice, and having a lack of confidence despite a lot of drive. These characteristics perfectly encapsulate all five main characters in the first volume of K-On Shuffle, especially Yukari, Kaede, and Maho (the main trio).


This lack of character variety results in the group not being able to bounce off of each other effectively, therefore ruining the banter and causing the punchlines for the 4-koma strips to usually be nothing more than a surprised expression. This inevitably causes the entire manga to completely fall flat both in the comedy and the likeability of the characters.


The story itself doesn’t fair much better. There are hooks for weaving a much more interesting narrative sprinkled throughout, such as why Shinano (one of the club’s original members) left and came back, as well as Maho’s personal anxieties. But they not only seem out of place in a K-On story, they also frequently fall to the wayside due to everyone’s utter obsession with music. If they’re not practicing music, they’re learning about it, and when they’re not learning about it, they’re talking about it. Everything in the story is done in service of the music, which is a far cry from the original K-On where aside from a few occasions, the music theme was more or less usually in the background.


As an example, in the original K-On, the girls ate cake, drank tea, talked, joked, played dress up, teased, studied, spent time together, and so on, most of which usually didn’t involve playing music (in fact a running gag was how much they avoided the topic). They sometimes practiced, but it’s important to note that they never fretted about not being good enough or coming along fast enough, because it was never what was important. Azusa may have occasionally brought it up every now and again, but the story more or less showed how her way of looking at things was incorrect, which led to her character growth. This aspect can’t be stressed enough, as the music was never the focus in the original K-On, neither the anime nor the manga. The girls clearly spent more time eating cake and drinking tea than they ever did playing those instruments. But in K-On Shuffle, music is the only focus. This in turn forces the story to sacrifice the aspects that made the original K-On so memorable for the people who enjoyed it.


Overall, K-On Shuffle is a disappointment that completely misses the mark of what made the original K-On so entertaining to begin with. Instead becoming the very thing that the original K-On was usually seen poking fun at.