Quote:
Originally Posted by GMT
Besides, the end of episode 20 marks the end of Hokago Tea Time; it does not mark the end of the girls' friendship. The hand-holding scene emphasizes that these girls have fully made the transition from mere high school clubmates/bandmates to full-up, no-kidding friends whose bond transcends their high school light music club.
Besides that besides, Yui and Ritsu are going to try to get admitted to the sort of prestigious high-ranked university that their smarter/more diligent friends can get into with comparative ease. In spite of advice from their guidance counselor/advisor that, perhaps, a (really) careful review of their options is in order. Their success is far from guaranteed . . . you can see the "WTF? Yui, Ritsu . . . really?" sentiment lurking in Sawako's flat, curiously neutral, expression as she looks over their career plans.
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GMT has got it right. When the girls were crying at the end of episode 20, it wasn't for the end of their friendship, it was for the end of their highschool days together. Notice that all the things they were lamenting during the crying were things that they could only do while still in highschool (freshmen recruitment concert, school festival, etc). When Yui was thanking everything under the sun during the concert, she was thanking them for helping to make the previous three years of her life (and the rest of the HTT) the best she's ever had. I think Yui's seemingly incomprehensible line before the last song summed things up pretty well.
"After School Tea Time is forever and ever, after school!"
If you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. "After school" is basically a special time in the day which takes place, well, after school. Now with the girls leaving school they will never be able to recreate those days, but the memories will live on in their hearts. This doesn't mean that they can't still be friends, it just means that their beloved highschool days of sitting around in the clubroom and eating snacks are over. And as we saw, the reality of having to leave those days behind was just too much for them to handle.
K-ON!(!) has always been, first and foremost, a coming of age story, and episode 20 was pretty much its climax. But now with the revelation in episode 21 that they are trying to get into the same school together, we are shown that kyoani/kakifly are taking on a different slant than your typical coming of age. That slant being the idea that although you may grow up, you do not have to give up the things you loved as a child.
This was foreshadowed pretty early in the season in episode 7 (Tea Party episode) with Sokabe. We were shown that although she had become more sophisticated and had gone on to higher education (i.e. "grown up"), she was still able to enjoy the things she did back in highschool (when she would still be considered a "child"), which was being a
slightly obsessed big fan of Mio. Now with the girls of the HTT, were seeing something very similar. They may be forced to grow up, but they are still holding on to what they loved during their childhood, which is their friendship together.
I personally find it pretty sweet that they're attempting to fight conventional wisdom by staying together, and it's rather fitting for a happy and fun series like this. And I'd say say that them making it into the same uni isn't as far-fetched as it may seem. I did something similar myself going to the same university on the mainland with two of my closest friends despite it being thousands of miles away from where we lived (I'd say that obstacle is similar in difficulty as Yui and Ritsu getting into a prestigious university). And I'm sure it happens frequently all over the place as well.