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I've never thought I will be writing a review for something on MAL, but oh well, here we are. I'll keep it short as there aren't many things to discuss. Spoilers Ahead.

To preface all of this, IMO Hibike! Euphonium is a great anime... until the 2nd year of high-school because after that, it's just a downward spiral and 3rd season especially makes me question a lot of it's narrative decisions. And mind you, I wasn't against skipping 2nd year for them to finally experience the sweet victory in season 3. I pretty much expected it to happen from the get go (though in my head ... it was more of a gradual improvement: bronze - 1st year, silver - 2nd year, gold - 3rd year, but the current version works well too). The problem is "how" the characters got to it.

3rd season suffers a lot from very strange drama, Mayu existing and, ironically, lack of music. And I can give pass to strange drama as there were some even in 1st year (namely Yoroizuka and Nozomi). I can give a pass to lack of music, no matter how unfortunate it may be. But Mayu is one step too far. Creating such a shallow character just to... crush Kumiko without no apparent reason and deny her growth? Like, what exactly her character achieves by being in the show? Stir up drama in the ensemble? They were already making it without her. Making Kumiko a better person? yeah right, I'll believe. /s. I genuinely don't understand why this character was given so much for literally zero reason.

Also "press f" for Reina as she's been clearly lobotomized this season. All this yuri-bait talk about how "special" they're to each other, how she would know Kumiko is playing from the first notes, how bad she wants to play soli with her, well f*ck that, MerITocRACY is all we care about now (call me deaf but Kumiko's performance was just better and it was obvious what order they had). Furthermore, it seems that throwing your *almost* girlfriend under the bus does nothing to your mental state, cause we can just cry it off and pretend that nothing happened, and just play like we always did. yeah right, I'll believe. /s.

If you still want to watch it, just drop it after episode 11 and go read normal ending in the novel.