When I started re-watching Hibike! Euphonium in preparation for Series II, I had big plans. I was going to make detailed notes with ten insightful observations for every episode, do a deep dive into character and theme like I did for A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door, and create a poetically written critical analysis for this masterpiece of a show. What actually happened is that I only did notes twice, once after Episode 1 and once at the mid-season, after Episode 7. I only made it to seven points on the mid-season notes, and two of them were about how hot Asuka is (god, she is so hot).
As I was forced to admit when I did the mid-season notes, this show is not actually deep enough for that kind of analysis to be necessary or rewarding. But even though I was burned out on anime when I started re-watching this, the show still drew me in with the strength of its animation and characters. When I say Hibike! Euphonium isn’t deep, I don’t mean relative to other anime. It is actually rather deep relative to other anime, which admittedly do not set the bar very high. I mean it’s not terribly deep as a work of fiction in the entire sea of fiction that includes James Joyce, C.S. Lewis, Margaret Atwood, and famed political philosopher Ted Kaczynski. If you’re into slice of life, cute girls doing cute things, iyashikei, drama, or school life even a little, Hibike! Euphonium is well worth seeing. Even if you don’t think Asuka is as hot as I do. I saw it described on Crunchyroll by other viewers as “K-On with the concert band”, but while its style is reminiscent, its goals are vastly different. And if you haven’t seen it, be warned that, as always, I make no attempt to avoid spoilers.
It’s hard to really say what makes this show so good without summarizing all the character arcs and major scenes and contrasting them with other similar shows. Hibike! Euphonium eschews the bogus situational drama and stereotypical characters that plague a lot of school life anime. (My notes from the first time I watched the series contain a lot of comparisons to Hanayamata, which I’d seen and been disappointed by around the same time.) While the characters have enough of the usual traits to seem familiar, no one fits straight into a mold.
Again, it’s hard to really describe what makes this show so special without examining specific examples, so let’s go through a few. My three favorite characters of the show were Kumiko, Reina, and Asuka (and not just because she’s hot). Kumiko, the main character, actually conforms a bit to a male character archetype: she’s the disinterested outsider who gets drawn into a group that we often see as the main character of light novel-derived harem (e.g. Kyon of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyousuke of Ore Imo, Kodaka of Haganai, Hachiman of Oregairu). But where the guys all capitulate pretty easily to the charms of a cute girl, proving that they weren’t really distinerested, just lonely and a bit cynical, Kumiko actually has a smug apathy to her even when she’s superficially getting involved with her people. Her reaction to realizing she might be involved in a brewing love triangle is priceless: “What a pain”. Even after she capitulates to the charms of a cute girl and becomes emotionally involved later in the series, she retains a smugness to her, a vague sense of self-alienation, due to the particular way that this cute girl charms her.
The cute girl is Reina. It’s interesting that even though she and Kumiko are both girls, the narrative treats Reina with the otherness usually reserved for romantic love interests. It gives their relationship a romantic subtext from the very beginning, which later becomes more explicit. Kumiko said something insensitive to Reina when they were in middle school, and spends the first several episodes being awkward around her, avoiding her, and trying to figure out what to say. Reina eventually resolves this situation without meaning to by casually saying something to Kumiko and absolving her of the burden of clearing the air between them, but their relationship doesn’t really get going until they end up spending a romantic festival night together due to a misunderstanding. Kumiko, trying to get out of spending the festival with her childhood friend Shuichi because she knows that her friend Hazuki has a crush on him and intends to ask him, grabs the first person who passes by, which happens to be Reina, and claims to have plans to spend the festival with her. The two of them end up climbing to the top of a hill and playing their instruments together. During the walk, Reina lays all her cards on the table. She’s noticed that Kumiko is distant, apathetic, distinterested, that she pretends to be normal while holding herself apart from the rest. Reina says she was intrigued by this because she does the same thing in a more obvious way. Reina has devoted herself so fully to becoming a great trumpet player that she has no time for anything else, including politics, humility, or the feelings of others. She inspires Kumiko to do the same and strive as she does to be a great musician, and Kumiko ends up supporting her emotionally through a confrontation with her section leader over who will get to play the trumpet solo in the big competition.
While I liked Asuka and I have high hopes for her full arc in Series II, the real third star of Series I is Kumiko’s friend Hazuki, the bright spot in the whole mess. While Hazuki is energetic and innocent, we also see her down in the dumps, first because she can’t play as well as she wants to and then because of her thwarted crush on Kumiko’s childhood friend Shuichi. The love triangle subplot is subtle and natural, yet also unexpected: no one responds how other anime have trained us to think they should. Kumiko, whose interest in Shuichi is still very much unknown, thinks the whole thing is a huge pain. Shuichi decides that it’s best to be honest and lets Hazuki know very early on that he likes someone else, instead of trying to spare her feelings. Hazuki handles the letdown very maturely; you can tell in the last few episodes, and even more so in the OVA episode focusing on her, that Hazuki hasn’t gotten over him. Yet she is doing her best to move on.
Other supporting characters like Haruka, Kaori, and Yuko have interesting and unexpected arcs fit in around the main sweep of Kumiko and Reina. Even when the subject matter borders on melodramatic, the restraint that the voice actors, animators, and writers show is very effective. A well chosen line, a well drawn expression, or an emotional subtext can cut even deeper than seeing a character cry or yell, and when we do see someone cry it always seems earned and in-character. (Only Haruka’s crying scene in an early episode seems too intemperate, but it also feels in-character for Haruka, and leads to a scene where we learn about Asuka’s darker side that first clues us in to the kind of person Asuka really is.)
I suppose the real revelation here is that characters’ motives and emotions are never simple and obvious like in many anime. No one ever just feels angry or frustrated because of something angry or frustrating. Whenever we get an emotional scene, the character is always feeling three different emotions for five different reasons. Emotions don’t lead neatly to motivations which lead neatly into actions; characters do things that only sort of make sense, in response to emotions they only sort of understand. Kumiko’s description of her newfound desire to strive for greatness, to take one example, is muddled and confusing. That’s because Kumiko is muddled and confused about it. All she knows is that she wants to be like Reina, to “become special”, to try and be the best at playing her euphonium. She can’t really explain why she suddenly feels that way. She can try to get at it, she can cite incidents from her past that contrast it, but she can’t draw a clear line of causation from her talk with Reina to her drive to improve. Characters’ emotions and motivations are complex and subtle.
This emotional payoff, known to some as “the feels”, is the main thing you’ll get out of Hibike! Euphonium. If that sounds boring to you and you’d prefer a show about ninjas shooting magic beams at each other, this probably isn’t your kind of show. If you’d prefer a show about cute girls, they’re here, but don’t expect them to shoot magical clothes-stripping beams at each other.
