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This week on K-ON!!
We open the episode to find Yui being responsible. She's ironing clothes, trying to take down the name of a French bakery, all while singing about how she's a man (a manly man), a man in tights; who roams around the forest looking for fights. She's summoned to the school by Ritsu . . . where we find Ui just about to text Yui to remind her to do . . . what she's already done. Ahh, evil geniuses grow up so fast, don't they?
After the intro, we discover that, for the seniors, their school year is over. The only thing left to do is to walk down the aisle at graduation. So, really, the girls are there to hang out and screw around one last time.
This presents the first image of the girls moving on from their high school days. Everyone else is in class, so the girls don't really have anything to do. They head down to the classroom so Yui and Ritsu can clean out their desks while Mugi and Mio look at their old classroom and wonder at the strangeness of it. They're interrupted by Offdensen Nodoka, who's at school to clean up the student council room, and to make sure the graduation drops the way it's supposed to: Without a f<guitar chord>g hitch.
Nodoka goes back to the student council room and practices the calm behind-the-desk pose she will come to use when she orders Klokateers Tea-Timers to commit mayhem in defense of Dethklok HTT; all while negotiating sweet promotional deals with execs from Gibson and Fender.
She's interrupted by the girls, who find the latest student council yearbook and notice that Nodoka is pleased as punch at her accomplishments in it. This sets the gears turning in Yui's mind. Something's been on her mind since Episode 21, and today it comes to fruit . . . muwahahaha!
But being an evil genius requires lots of energy, so she and Ritsu hatch a scheme to make Azusa the punchline of one last fourth-wall breaking practical joke, and to score some free lunch off the underclass(wo)men. Yui tests her latest evil invention by making Azusa's bread talk to her.
Afterward, the girls drown their sorrows in a lot of booze . . . hey, is that straight vodka? Yui asks the others if they've got any last things they want to do. Mio . . . wants to feed the turtle. Ritsu disposes of the club's last five yen. Mugi bought a ShamWow and was itching to try it out. This convinces Mio that the thing she'd really like to do is clean out the clubroom.
Afterwards, the girls sit in utter silence, listening to the final bell with ambiguous little smiles on their faces, causing the bittersweet quotient of this episode to head for the stratosphere.
A light goes on in Yui's head . . . it's their last day ever . . . there's something that Hokago Tea Time needs to do before it disbands. They're musicians . . . so why haven't they ever recorded any music? In other words, Yui is in full legacy-building mode. With her last high school yearbook photo a complete disaster, it's time to fall back on that other thing she'll be remembered for. The band.
Here, we're reminded that, like all good things; Hokago Tea Time is coming to an end; that the girls are growing up and moving on to college and the professional world after that. They're recording a tape as a legacy to future light music clubs. To let them know that, once upon a time, there were these four chicks and their sixth fifth ranger; and they had this band. They had their fun, and then it was time for them to move on, but they're going to leave something behind for future music clubs to aspire to.
Future music clubs like the one Azusa is about to inherit, but that'll be another story. Right now, she's racing to the clubroom, hoping to see the girls one more time. In this episode, we see more, and more, hints that the suave ultra-mature stoicism with which she greeted the end of episode 20 . . . is an act. Azusa gets few lines in this episode, but heaps of character development as expressed in actions, expressions, and gestures.
Before they record, the girls must first come up with a setlist. Mio proposes an instrumental, as many albums start or end with one. The show comes full circle. The first performance that Yui sees of the proto-HTT in S1 E1 is an instrumental. The first performance of the second season is Yui's solo instrumental.
Mugi tries to record the process of deciding the songs . . . but the girls decide that is the sort of recording you don't ever want played on Where Are They Now . . . Now? and that HTT un-hingedplugged is best relegated to the dustbin of history.
They work into the late evening, but finally, their magnum opus is complete. In another bit of clever symbolism, the tape their recording resides on is identical to the one that we've seen as the eye-catch in every episode of the series.
This was an excellent episode, striking just the right balance of fun and melancholy as the girls of Hokago Tea Time prepare to graduate, and the series comes one episode closer to riding off into the sunset.
Nine golden chocolate breads out of ten.
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