Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

BLEACH SERIES 15 PART 2

Bleach Series 15 Part 2 gathers together episodes 330 to 342 for the climax of the Gotei 13 Invading Army arc, and while a marked improvement over the first half, there’s still so much padding, packed with flashbacks and reams of exposition. This is shounen after all.

For all its faults, Bleach is still a strikingly cool show with great characters and a soundtrack almost second to none, but the plot is really dragging its knuckles. The latest addition to the gang, the green haired, testy Nozomi, realises the full extent of her power and her fighting style is a unique addition to the action sequences. But it’s her back and forth with Kon that make for surprisingly tender scenes and stand out moment. It spins the character plates while Kon, strangely enough, ends up dominating the entirety of the series.

In amongst the narrative revelations, long running gags wearing thin at well over the 300 episode mark and the drawn out exposition, is a series about friendship verses solitude. The show persists with clear cut examples of both, but fascinating antagonist Kagerōza Inaba proves more complex than a simple stand in for solitude. While he fends off his inevitable comeuppance, there is room for moments of drama and moving subplots.

Episode 335, Hiding in the Dangai? Another Ichigo?!, is the most visually adventurous, while 341, Invading Army Arc, Final Conclusion!, is the highlight of the entire arc. The series closer, Thank You, isn’t without merit, and its bittersweet conclusion invites the viewer for the final series. Series 15 proves that Bleach still had a few interesting ideas in its penultimate outing. The essence might have been there, beneath all the padding, but it takes a lot of work on the viewer’s part to get the same thrill those first few series gave.

Special Features: Opening animation / Ending animation

INFO: BLEACH SERIES 15 PART 2 / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: NORIYUKI ABE / SCREENPLAY: MASASHI SOGO / STARRING: JOHNNY YONG BOSCH, STEPHANIE SHEH, DEREK STEPHEN PRINCE / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 29TH

 

THE CUTTING ROOM

If there’s one thing guaranteed to bring us out in hives more at STARBURST than the prospect of another bloody American found footage cheapo straight-to-DVD horror, it’s the prospect of a British found footage cheapo straight-to-DVD horror. Surely no good can come of enthusiastic, well-meaning British film-makers with no money dabbling with the genre our American friends have already bored us to death (and beyond) with? Think again – and allow us to welcome you to The Cutting Room ­– a found footage movie which confounds and bedevils our expectations and our bitter prejudices by being pretty damned good.

Three college students – Raz and his girlfriend Charlie and their friend Jess – are encouraged by their tutor to put together some ‘special features‘-type footage for their end-of-year Media Studies project. Raz, cheeky beggar, is dissuaded from studying the phenomenon of pornography and instead the trio decide to put together an expose of cyber-bullying, using  the mystery of  missing fellow students and bullying victims Rosie Clarke and Clara Jenkins as their subjects. Their investigations bring them into contact with some severely-weird individuals and, eventually, a rendezvous – at dead of night, idiots! – at a long-abandoned army barracks in some nearby forests. There, you won’t be surprised to discover, something nasty awaits…

The Cutting Room is a brisk, no-nonsense effort which initially presents as just an intriguing mystery story as the trio turn detective in the wake of apparent Police disinterest in the missing girls. But there’s an ever-present sense of growing ease as their investigations send them in ever more disquieting directions and the film‘s atmosphere becomes more stifling and uncomfortable. The unknown cast are all commendably competent (watch out for the gloriously-named Andromeda Godfrey as Charlie’s mother) and their banter and relationships are hugely warm and naturalistic with the snarky Raz (Glasspool) cast very much in the mould of Jay from The Inbetweeners with his one-track mind and inappropriate comments. Inevitably the film’s focus is lost towards the end as it can’t help blundering headfirst into the usual cliches of the genre with our heroes wandering around dark tunnels lit by a torch beam screaming and shouting “Oh My God!” at three-second intervals.

Just when it looks as if The Cutting Room has thrown away all the goodwill earned by its first hour with some confusing and simplistic conclusion, there’s a killer twist/reveal in the final scene which will leave you gasping and reaching for the rewind button.  It’s always a joy when a film which seems to offer little more than an absolute waste of seventy-odd minutes of your life turns into a little gem and The Cutting Room, found footage from a very English perspective, suggests that there can be more to the genre than yapping High School kids lost in the forest and numbskull teams of TV reporters exploring spooky abandoned buildings where nasty things have happened. Or to put it another way, The Cutting Room is a cut above the rest.

Special Features: None

INFO: THE CUTTING ROOM / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: WARREN DUDLEY / STARRING: PARRY GLASSPOOL, LUCY-JANE QUINLAN, LYDIA ORANGE, TJ HERBERT, JASON RHODES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

2009 saw the release of Gerard Johnson’s debut feature Tony. The gritty, low budget character study starring Peter Ferdinando was an impressive debut with some arresting scenes and a smattering of black comedy.

Following grittiness with more grittiness, Johnson’s second film, Hyena, sees the director and star reunite in a story of corrupt police, drugs, gangsters and human trafficking. Ferdinando plays Michael Logan, a dodgy copper who has his fingers firmly in the proverbial pies of the South London drug trade and doesn’t mind sampling the products himself.

Logan and his gaudy crew of police officers are introduced in a neon-drenched scene where they do their uttermost best to break as many of the laws they are meant to uphold as possible. The boys burst into a nightclub drug ring and proceed to beat the patrons, steal some class A and even let off a fire extinguisher without any sign of flames anywhere. Very naughty.

As the story progresses we quickly learn that Michael has invested 100 grand into a cocaine route run by a Turkish dealer. Just as quickly as we are introduced to this associate, two menacing Albanian brothers (Orli Shuka and Gjevat Kelmendi) then cut him up into tiny pieces, such is life in the seedy and illicit milieu that Johnson depicts. The combustible presence of the threatening and brutal Kabashi brothers sets the wheel in motion for a chaotic narrative that sees Michael trying to keep his decadent life in some sort of balance. Juggling issues with his police unit in the shape of his new supervisor (Stephen Graham) and an investigating officer (Richard Dormer) as well as trying to come to some agreement with the Kabashi brothers results in Michael’s world beginning to crumble around him and Ferdinando portrays this inner turmoil and pandemonium impeccably.

Perhaps the biggest triumph for Hyena is a stylistic one. The cinematography by Benjamin Kracun is visually striking, awash with incandescent neon and a melancholic, nocturnal nuance. This visual content is in turn complimented by Matt Johnson of The The, who provides an atmospheric and synth-laden soundtrack that encapsulates the brooding nature of the narrative. It is these factors that stop the film being an orthodox crime drama and add a degree of art house depth.

Hyena is an imposing second film from Johnson and he seems to have found a proven formula with Ferdinando as his gripping lead and Matt Johnson as his composer. By no means is it the most original of pieces, with clear influences from films like Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, but despite this Hyena still has many of its own merits by presenting us with a vision of a societal underbelly rife with moral ambiguity, unflinching violence and a bunch of people you certainly wouldn’t invite over for tea…

Special Features: None

INFO: HYENA / 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: GERARD JOHNSON / STARRING: PETER FERDINANDO, STEPHEN GRAHAM, NEIL MARSHALL, ORLI SHUKA, GJEVAT KELMENDI, RICHARD DORMER / RELEASE DATE: JULY 6TH

 

CHARLIE’S FARM

What do you get if you cross The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with the Foster’s Lager advert?

Charlie’s Farm might on paper look like a pretty standard slasher of the kind you’d find Tobe Hooper or Wes Craven churning out in the 1970s, but what distinguishes it from the likes of The Hills Have Eyes is its Australian sensibility. The grim tone of recent American horrors is here replaced by the breezy atmosphere of antipodean filmmaking, and makes for a refreshing angle on a familiar subject.

Looking for an alternative to yet another day spent at the beach, four friends embark upon a journey to the eponymous Charlie’s Farm, where – as we discover in flashback – the infamous Wilson family met their end at the hands of an angry mob some three decades previously. Legend has it that their son Charlie survived the slaughter, and is responsible for the recent disappearances of several backpackers in the area. Ignoring a number of warnings to steer clear, the four friends soon discover not just the farm itself but also its deadly occupant…

Director Chris Sun’s screenplay doesn’t avoid the genre’s clichés, and while it doesn’t make more than a passing nod at a postmodern deconstruction of those devices either, the upbeat characters and sun-drenched locations lend them an air of novelty, with an artlessness that propels the film along cheerily for its first two acts. A number of thoughtful touches help immensely, one example being the argument that resolves with the friends being given directions to the farm (an unexpectedly amusing twist after the generic “Nowt for the likes of you” scene it follows), while the introduction of two new characters towards the end allows for the consequences of the characters’ expedition to be felt before they are in any immediate danger.

Where Charlie’s Farm stands or falls is in its final third, and once the murders begin the film doesn’t disappoint – with one character in particular learning that if you live by the metaphorical sword, then you’ll die by it too. Tara Reid as the token American makes for a convincing sceptic among the guileless optimists, and the photography has a tendency to wander into cutaways of road kill, in a foreshadowing reminiscent of the heritage it shares with Long Weekend and Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Sacrificing tension for affable geniality and substituting butt-clenching black humour for wholesale terror, Charlie’s Farm is the perfect antidote to some of the bleaker movies that tend to originate in the west. It isn’t as knowing as Scream or as funny as Final Destination, but it hits many of the same spots and the last twenty minutes more than make up for any earlier shortcomings. Terrific fun.

Extras: trailer

INFO: CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: CHRIS SUN / STARRING: TARA REID, NATHAN JONES, BILL MOSELEY, KANE HODDER, ALLIRA JAQUES / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 22ND

 THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO (1966) 

Box office expectations were understandably high for the first feature film spin-off from the legendary Thunderbirds TV series when it was released in a blaze of publicity in 1966. Producer/writer Gerry Anderson was left to ponder whether the film would simply gross as much as a typical Bond movie or possibly even more. In the end, audiences stayed away in droves – it’s suggested that 1960s TV audiences couldn’t see the point in paying good money to see a film version of something they could see on the television (the fools!) and the film played to largely-empty cinemas.

Yet over the years, Thunderbirds Are Go (the name’s so good they ‘borrowed’ it for the new CGI TV reboot) has been largely rehabilitated and warmly welcomed into the Anderson fold, albeit accepted as a curious misstep in the then ever-upward trajectory of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and Century 21 Productions. The film looks stunning on Blu-ray; the colour palette is beyond vivid and whilst the crystal clarity of the picture does the big-headed marionettes few favours, the gorgeously-detailed model work of Anderson regular Derek Meddings is still breath-taking and a reminder that, however big and clever CGI may be, it really ain’t as good as practical miniature effects and probably never will be.

But as a film, Thunderbirds Are Go is a little… well, dull. Of course, it ticks all the boxes that made the TV show’s fifty-minute episodes so thrilling and a bigger budget allows for bigger set-pieces – but the story moves at what can only generously be described as a snail’s pace and there are outrageous moments of padding – that’s you, Cliff Richard Junior (ahem) and the Shadows performing live at the ‘Shooting Star’ nightclub in a tortuous dream sequence – which must have utterly bored and bewildered 1960’s nippers. The story itself is suitably epic; the Zero X manned space mission to Mars is sabotaged by International Rescue’s old enemy The Hood (for reasons which are never explained). Two years later, a second mission is launched and another sabotage attempt is foiled by International Rescue who have pitched up to supervise the launch. After an encounter with spark-belching rock snakes on the surface of Mars (the film’s most exciting sequence), the exploration mission is aborted and Zero X heads for home. But disaster strikes as the massive craft prepares for landing; can International Rescue save the day, the astronauts and the hastily-evacuated town of Craigsville which lies directly in the plummeting craft’s path? What do you think? (Actually, Craigsville gets trashed…)

Fans of the new incarnation of Thunderbirds will find this desperately slow and humourless. The initial Zero X launch sequence, with the rocket being assembled, rolling out across the airfield, the astronauts moving into position, takes up the entire running time of one helter-skelter episode of the new TV series. The pace never really picks up across the film’s ninety minutes and the story is so linear you could use it as a runway. Yet despite its faults, Thunderbirds Are Go is still a charming period piece best appreciated by those who enjoyed the Thunderbirds phenomenon the first time around and who can forgive its thunderingly-lumbering story and naïve characterisation. Certainly, it’s never looked better than on this new Blu-ray and there’s a decent grab-bag of new and vintage special features (some ported over from earlier DVD releases) to guarantee a fully-superannuated supermarionation experience.

Special features: Sylvia Anderson/David Lane commentary, UK and US trailers, Countdown to Thunderbirds (new), Entertainment Is Go (new), Cliff Richard Jr. and the Shadows unseen test footage, History and Appeal, Factory of Dolls and Rockets, Epics in Miniature, Come With me To The Rushes, What Does FAB mean, gallery, isolated music track.

INFO: THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO / CERT U / DIRECTOR: DAVID LANE / SCREENPLAY: GERRY ANDERSON, SYLVIA ANDERSON / STARRING: SHANE RIMMER, PETER DYNELEY, MATT ZIMMERMAN, SYLVIA ANDERSON, JEREMY WILKIN, DAVID GRAHAM, CHARLES TINGWELL, BOB MONKHOUSE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It would probably be a good idea for this review to start with a quick disclaimer: this particularly writer has no idea what he’s just watched. I’m one of those people who had a brief flirtation with the world of anime in the mid-‘90s when everybody was raving about Akira, but apart from the odd series here and there it isn’t a genre that I’ve ever really kept up with. In all honesty I’m probably not the best person to be reviewing this, but the press release sold it to me pretty well so I thought I’d give it a watch.

It turns out that One Piece is a massively successful manga series, starting in 1999 and quickly expanding to encompass nearly 700 TV episodes and thirteen animated feature films. One Piece Film: Z is the twelfth of those films, but it doesn’t seem to matter too much if you haven’t seen any of the others. Z is a self-contained story following the heroes of the series, the Straw Hat Pirates, as they face their most powerful enemy so far…

Admittedly there were a fair few parts of the story went over my head, with many scenes seeming to refer to things that have happened in previous incarnations of the series. The meat of the story revolves around Z, the captain of the Neo Marines, and his general disdain for pirates. He wants to destroy three volcanoes known as End Points, resulting in a giant eruption which would cover the world’s oceans with lava and kill all the pirates. Monkey D. Luffy and his wacky band of sea-faring brothers are understandably not too keen on this idea, and set off to do battle with Z and the Neo Marines.

Clocking in at nearly two hours long, it’s a pretty long story but there’s enough action and drama going on that the time seems to fly by. After about an hour of general farting around, we suddenly get a really quite moving scene which explains Z’s back story, blowing your mind in the process and totally changing the way you watch the second half of the film. Being sucked into the story in such a way was completely unexpected, and what had started out as an enjoyable but slightly ridiculous tale ended up being one of the most gripping stories I’ve come across in a long time. Now it’s time to think about the mammoth task of working through the other twelve films and all those TV episodes…

INFO: ONE PIECE FILM: Z (ENGLISH VERSION) / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: TATSUYA NAGAMINE / SCREENPLAY: OSAMU SUZUKI / STARRING: COLLEEN CLINKENBEARD, CHRISTOPHER R. SABAT, JEREMY SCHWARTZ, LUCI CHRISTIAN, BRINA PALENCIA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
 

 THE FLYING DEUCES (1939)

Nowadays, Laurel and Hardy are cult. You used to be able to get Stan and Ollie action figures so let’s not having any arguments about it. Furthermore, they are also iconic and very funny. If you don’t think they’re funny then you’re a big sourpuss and we strongly expect that dogs bark at you and children give you funny looks. So reviewing the Network Blu-ray release of The Flying Deuces might be a bit tricky. It’s classic Laurel and Hardy, so what on earth are we supposed to say about it? Oh well, here goes…

Stan and Ollie are in France. Ollie falls in love with a local mademoiselle (Parker) but is heart-broken to discover she is already taken. So he and Stan hilariously attempt suicide (no, really) but are saved by a Foreign Legion officer (Gardiner), who persuades them to join the Legion in order to forget all about her. He also happens to be Ollie’s love rival but neither of them knows that yet. So they join up and have a series of slapstick misunderstandings with the usual slightly surreal edge. Oh, and they spend the last ten minutes of the film (after a rather good chase) in an out-of-control aeroplane just in case you’re rather reasonably wondering why a Foreign Legion flick should be called The Flying Deuces.

And it’s great! In fact, it’s essential. You might think that’s a bit of an extreme superlative for a Laurel and Hardy movie but bear with us. The Flying Deuces was one of the few of their films to fall into the public domain so if you’ve seen it, you’ve probably seen it in a pretty shoddy condition and it might have even been missing the shark routine. Yes, there’s a shark in it. It’s a bit incongruous we grant you, but it’s supposed to be there and this version has the fish restored to its former glory. In fact, Network has done a great job on the restoration and transfer – Stan and Ollie haven’t looked this good in a very long time. Not only do you get the shark, there’s also the classic laundry scene; Ollie giving a fine rendition of ‘Shine on, Harvest Moon’ (with Stan dancing); the usual exasperated performance from James Finlayson (the guy with the walrus moustache) and one of their weirdest endings ever. People forget the fact that they would occasionally stray into the bizarre at the denouement, but they did and this one’s a doozy. Let’s just say it involves a very unexpected horse. Just to top all that, the commandant is played by Charles Middleton, who you know better as Ming the Merciless in the old Flash Gordon serials.

Not much in the way of extras, but there is the German version on the disc if you fancy the slightly unsettling experience of watching Dick und Doof in der Fremdenlegion. We watched a bit but frankly it was too weird…

Extras: Image gallery and German version.

INFO: CERT: U / DIRECTOR: A. EDWARD SUTHERLAND / SCREENPLAY: RALPH SPENCE, CHARLEY ROGERS, FRED SCHILLER, HARRY LANGDON / STARRING: STAN LAUREL. OLIVER HARDY, JEAN PARKER, REGINALD GARDINER, CHARLES MIDDLETON, JAMES FINLAYSON / RELEASED: OUT NOW

 

THUNDERBIRD 6 (1968)

Sadly, this review will not spend a great deal of time considering the new extras or perks of this Blu-ray release because frankly, there aren’t any. It’s pretty much just like watching the DVD again. But for those who’ve not seen the film itself, read on…

What we found interesting about Thunderbird 6 is that it works as a dissection of the creative process. Take the first scene, in which a sweating Brains is about to begin his pitch for a new aircraft. When he presents his project they all laugh at him, prompting nightmarish close-ups of the faces of marionettes with rictus grins. There’s also the running gag of Brains losing his temper as his designs for a new Thunderbird 6 are rejected by an employer who has given him an open brief. Even the main plot figures into this reading, with the message of that being that you can’t plan for everything and sometimes you just have to improvise.

Where the previous film’s space-faring plot was a little out there, this one was more down to earth (inasmuch as Thunderbirds can be). The plot that the Hood comes up with was actually worthy of a spy thriller even if it doesn’t quite work out for him. Although we do have to give him shit for calling it ‘Operation Ambush’ (come on, what kind of Austin Powers-style name is that?).

Unfortunately, sometimes the finished film undermines what’s in the script. For instance, we burst out laughing when one of Barry Gray’s distinctive incidental tracks plays over a shot of the airship moving on a collision course towards a radio tower. This would be incredibly dramatic if the ship wasn’t moving at about -5mph. It might as well have been a still photograph.

There you have it, then; Thunderbird 6 is not a perfect film, but it does have lots of things going for it. Though this release doesn’t do it justice, it’s still a good film to put on during a gloomy Bank Holiday to let some vivid colour into the day.

INFO: CERT: U / DIRECTOR: DAVID LANE / SCREENPLAY: GERRY ANDERSON, SYLVIA ANDERSON / STARRING: SHANE RIMMER, PETER DYNELEY, JEREMY WILKIN, MATT ZIMMERMAN, DAVID GRAHAM / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

FORTY GUNS (1957)

Superficially just another cheap, quickly churned-out western typical of hundreds of similar efforts rolled out during Hollywood’s obsession with America’s Wild West, Forty Guns actually reveals itself as something slightly different and considerably more nuanced. The film is written and directed by Samuel Fuller, a sharp and individual talent who exploited the low budgets afforded to his projects by subverting studio expectations and creating brusque, often brutal and controversial movies. Here he uses the language and terminology of the western movie and his audience’s familiarity with them to subtly deconstruct the genre and the film is full of his trademark close-ups and oblique camera angles as well as one of the longest tracking shots ever filmed by Fox at the time. The result is a cult film which, in many ways, is a forerunner to the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s (which briefly reinvigorated a genre which was becoming increasingly unfashionable even as Forty Guns was being filmed) and there’s no mistaking the debt Clint Eastwood’s own Pale Rider (1985) owes to Fuller’s quirky and wilfully iconoclastic effort.

The ‘forty guns’ of the title are, in fact, the hired hands who trail in the wake of formidable rancher Jessica Drummond (Stanwyck) and they’re introduced in dramatic fashion in the striking pre-credits sequence. US Marshall (and reluctant gunslinger) Griff Bonnell (Sullivan) arrives in town to arrest a mail robber who just happens to be in Jessica’s employ setting the scene for an edgy power struggle and a battle of wits which will force Griff to confront the man he once was. If it all sounds like the stuff of almost any western movie then it very probably is. But it’s the way Fuller unfurls the story which makes Forty Guns distinctive and more memorable than it really ought to be. Fuller’s Wild West is grimier and grimmer than we’re used to and he’s not afraid to confront and depict the casual violence and disregard for human life which characterised the real-world Wild West; one fatality, shot in the back, expires in foaming-mouthed agony which, unless we’re very much mistaken, rarely happened in John Wayne westerns or in episodes of TV’s Bonanza. Fuller presents his world in sweeping cinemascope and dramatic long shots and there’s a sense here that he’s determined to strip away the Hollywood glamour of the era and present it as it might have been, warts and all.

The chemistry between Barry Sullivan and Barbara Stanwyck, reunited in Forty Guns after appearing together in The Maverick Queen the year before, is palpable; they savour Fuller’s remarkably saucy, innuendo-heavy dialogue and if their burgeoning romance seems as rushed as that of Gene Barry’s Wes and Eve Brent’s blonde bombshell and gunsmith’s daughter Louvenia Spanger then the film’s tight eighty-minute running time is to blame. Fuller’s clearly happier putting his uncompromising vision of the Wild West on the screen to worry too much about the believability of his characters and their relationships.

In the final analysis, Forty Guns is surely more important for its treatment of its genre and the way it subtly changed those westerns which followed it than for what is, in the end, a fairly mundane box-ticking story. But it is unmistakably a landmark movie in the history of the western, a film which has rarely received proper credit for its importance but which deserves the reappraisal this new pin-sharp monochrome Masters of Cinema release from Eureka is likely to bring.

Special features: Collector’s booklet / 1969 audio interview with Sam Fuller / video interview with film critic Jean-Louis Leutrat / Trailer

INFO: CERT: PG / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SAMUEL FULLER / STARRING: BARBARA STANWYCK, BARRY SULLIVAN, GENE BARRY, ROBERT DIX / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 22ND

K-ON! SEASON 2: THE COMPLETE SERIES

Being the plotless misadventures of five high school girls, K-On! is refreshingly lifelike in its observational, journalistic approach to storytelling. The 24-episode run is a beautiful coming of age shoujo comedy, chronicling the day-to-day lives of its central characters as they grapple with their futures. Playing like the flipside to this year’s Sound Euphonium!, where the band members employ hard graft and gruelling practice to achieve their ends, the girls of the light music club end up procrastinating to the umpteenth degree, drinking tea and eating cake.

Reiko Yoshida’s writing is low on plot but rich on character, and the members of the light music club and the supporting roles orbiting prove the show’s greatest strength. Ritsu, club president, drummer and Keith Moon acolyte, is boisterous and frenetic, as mischievous as she is enthusiastic. Lead guitarist Yui is the spazzy lynchpin of the band, while bassist Mio is introspective and unassuming—she’s even the unwitting idol of a fan club. Mugi is the privileged keyboard player, two parts whimsy to one part odd. And Azusa is the baby of the group as the junior rhythm guitar player, desperately trying to get the band to practice.

Given that the entire show hinges on this careful balance of characters, the development pays off in spades. While each character retains her quirks, they evolve in a tangible way, learning from their mistakes and failings. This is testament to Yoshida’s writing and her flair for character, but the effortless comedy holds its own. There’s plenty of visuals gags and slapstick asides, plus the usual cultural suspects, but there’s a distinct western flavour to the humour and, coupled with the rest, makes for a hilarious yet inoffensive series.

The episodes are well articulated by director Naoko Yamada, and the exquisitely rendered animation matches up the crisp instrumentation of Yota Tsuruoka’s sound design almost note for note with character actions. Within the innocuous goings on of each episode, is a series of relatively benign incidents for the characters to interact in, from trying to cool down on a hot day to attending a music festival. But each further the cliché-smashing series, as the girls face down their future and move into adulthood.

The lack of plot or overt action may face some viewers with a boredom endurance test, but for fans of Lucky Star hungry for another character driven, slice of life series with tremendous voice acting, bouncy soundtrack and heaps of laughs, K-On! is the show for you.

Special Features: Textless opening and closing animation / Two extra episodes / 2011 OVA

INFO: K-ON! SEASON 2: THE COMPLETE SERIES / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: NAOKO YAMADA / SCREENPLAY: REIKO YOSHIDA / STARRING: AKI TOYOSAKI, ASAMI SANADA, AYANA TAKETATSU, CHIKA FUJITO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW