#anime eupho

[yoro-shi]

黄前ちゃんは朝からまったり

まったりしてたら、、、、

[viinas]

special person

[animebw]

...SO APPARENTLY THE HIBIKE NOVELS HAVE AN EXPLICIT GAY LOVE CONFESSION FROM KAORI TO ASUKA?!?!?!?

HAS THIS SERIES BEEN ACTUAL YURI ALL ALONG?!

BRO?!?!?!?!

[audske]

band club president

[nijigasakilove]

So this is it folks. One last episode of Hibike Euphonium.. can you believe it.. everything we’ve built up to for a decade has led to this next episode.

Just a gut wrenching episode. It hurts so damn much just like my baby Kumiko said.. but I have to give credit to the author for not going the traditional route and having the heroine win in the end. This whole season was about establishing a meritocracy where the best players are playing.

If you want something you’ve never had before, you have to be prepared to do things you’ve never done before and sadly Kumiko was a casualty of that. If it’s what it takes for Kitauji to win gold, I think it’ll be worth it in the end, but man.. seeing Kumiko and Reina breakdown like that.. one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking scenes kyoani have ever made and a perfect callback to season 1 where they met in that same spot.

The Kanade scene broke me too 💔 fuck I wanted them to be able to play together so bad. Life is so cruel and sometimes we just don’t get the things we want or deserve..

I’m glad we at least finally got some sort of mutual understanding between Mayu and Kumiko. This should’ve put to bed any of the concerns people had about Mayu being vindictive or wanting to break Kumiko down. Having that fallout with her friend over the music club makes everything make more sense. She’s already been established as a person who doesn’t want to offend anyone at any costs as well, she didn’t even wanna choose a drink at the beach for fear of taking something someone else wanted, so her acting that way was in line with her character.

Just can’t believe it’s all over next week. Kumiko future, nationals.. all comes to a head.. fuck. OVA or something please

[lexiiii-vt]

and the next piece begins...

[arbitrarygreay]

I finished Hyouka since this. Was outside of its effective age range, but it was very good at its intent. Probably in Silent Voice tier, quality-wise, but between 6 and 7 in my personal liking. Meanwhile, there are some Fumoffu jokes that have aged poorly.

I would also probably replace Lucky Star with K-ON! at this point. It's just that K-ON! doesn't binge well.

A lot of people are talking about their favorite KyoAni works or how the studio impacted them, in honor of the deceased. 1. Liz and the Blue Bird This movie is a bona-fide masterpiece. I really have no words to do it justice. 2. Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya I have not seen most of S2. I have seen Disappearance. S1 was an absolute masterclass on adaptation and structure. A perfect season. So much so, that I found Disappearance to be basically a rehash of the finale arc. This show might have been responsible for a flood of inferior riffs on the concept, but that it was so influential in turning anime’s image away from mecha and genre other-worlds was because its own inherent craft was unimpeachable, so compelling that others wanted to try their own hand at the magic. This season proves that execution is everything, and KyoAni had the touch. 3. Hibike! Euphonium Classical music and empathetic examination of navigating artistic passion in the waters of popularity politics and social expectations. Performance in music illuminating behavioral performativity. My personal thematic catnip, while evoking some very close-to-home memories. 4. A Silent Voice Just, brutal. Go watch it on Netflix right now, y'all. 5. Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid Some of the strength of this was the manga author, whose other works I’ve liked, but this was still an excellent time. Just enough weight to it that it avoided feeling like empty calories. Bring on S2. 6. Fumoffu, Nichijou KyoAni’s impeccable sense of comedic timing is sadly rare in anime. Furthermore, they uniquely understand how comedy doesn’t need to mean diminished production value, that treating the animation dead seriously can only enhance the effect, transcend the traditional concept of the punchline. 7. Lucky Star The most uneven show on this list. Kobayashi is also uneven, but is more consistently higher quality than Lucky Star. But like Haruhi, Lucky Star paved the way for many, many inferior shows of its ilk by just acing the execution, and its highs are some damned good highs. Whoops, I never finished Hyouka. But wow, that build through the school festival arc. Wow. Arteeestic indie films wish they could be so precise and effective in their character work. There are lots of shows that I watch that I consider good, but being long term rewatchable is getting to be a rarer and rarer thing. KyoAni genuinely has the touch, though. Every show on this list is rewarding to rewatch, every time. No matter what happens from now on, KyoAni will rightfully be loved for what it has already done.

[yukisubmarino]

It doesn’t matter what Kumiko wants.

(Minor Eupho finale spoilers ahead)

That’s the painful reality of Hibike! Euphonium’s third season, especially for the viewer who (presumably) aligns with our hero’s desires.

The third season does an excellent job in rehashing what we all loved about the first, but its biggest success is in twisting our expectations from the familiar to the uncharted. Kumiko becomes president, which means she can exercise greater control in getting what she wants right? Wrong.

As I’ve argued before, this (in part) is what makes Kumiko an excellent president. She realizes her place within the band is as a mediator, a punching bag, a soundboard, and—most importantly—a selfless decision-maker. It doesn’t come without pain, but it’s in learning to live with the disappointment that our hero grows to become the most effective (and successful) leader the Kitauji band has ever seen.

Kumiko isn’t the only one with unfulfilled desires, of course. Asuka doesn’t win gold, Nozomi can’t live out her dream, Shun doesn’t win Kumiko’s heart (yes i know what happens in the source material but let me have this one), Kanade doesn’t play at Nationals, Reina can’t…well…you know. And Kumiko doesn’t get the soli, even when getting the soli would be the most obvious thing in the world to happen for someone who deserves it.

But the thing is, someone else deserves it, too. Someone else will always deserve the thing that you want, and sometimes that means you won’t get it. It happens all the time! But in a medium filled with so much wish-fulfillment, it’s important to get these occasional reminders that disappointment is natural…and that it will all be okay in the end.

There are a lot of reasons why I think Hibike! Euphonium is the greatest televised anime ever made, many of which are technical and aesthetic and lean heavily towards personal taste. But perhaps the biggest reason is how a show about a high school band on the other side of the world—the most innocuous premise conceivable—manages to bring out some of the most important life lessons anyone of any age could possibly learn. Yes, I want what Kumiko wants, and it upset me so much that she doesn’t get it—just as much as it uplifts me to see the results of her growth born from that pain and frustration.

Hibike’s final act is the show’s greatest movement—a soaring testament to KyoAni’s storytelling power and the emotional height of what televised fiction can attain. Perhaps that’s a recency bias showing, but then again—how could I expect less from the greatest anime ever made?

[yuki-baskerville]

I was so busy crying while watching Eupho last episode that I didn't even realize about Kumiko having Shuuichi's hairpin again. I didn't even remember that scene in the movie where she told him to give the hairpin back if he was still interested in dating her. People are free to ship whatever they want, but is still so wild to me how they are "yeah my boy won" when they spoke for only like 2 min during the episode. The ship will never make sense to me. I can agree that they make sense in the LN, to some extent, but when KyoAni goes out of their way to not include their scenes in the anime you can't expect me to believe that they got together. Yeah, she has the hairpin back, but that doesn't mean they are a couple. Why would he keep the hairpin? he is not going to wear it, so of course he gave it back to her. He can't give it to another girl because he got it for Kumiko, thinking about Kumiko and that it would probably suit her. Maybe Shuuichi gave it back to her as some memento, but that's all. I'm not trying to hate on the ship, but they will NEVER have the same chemistry Reina and Kumiko have. Also, about Reina, I would like to believe that at some point while living in America she will realize that her feelings for Taki are not there anymore, finally she is free of that childish crush and understands that this love is impossible. And then, well, you know, KUMIREI FOREVER BEECHES.

It's been a while since the last time I talked about Kumirei here, I really missed this brainrot.

[x0401x]

No, but… that was a really good one, actually.

I might as well let this out. A lot of people are still losing their minds over episode 12, and I’m not even gonna try to pretend this isn’t to be expected. It’s not happening only on this side of the fandom—the Japanese one was also torn about it, although I’d argue they were much quicker to understand what KyoAni was going for with it.

Y’all know me. That goddamn studio owns my soul, but I’m not joining the “KyoAni did it again (even when they actually did not)” club in this lifetime or the next. If the changes made during the adaptation ruin the intention of the original work, no matter how good the animation is, a spade is still a spade and I address it at length when people ask my opinion. But that’s not what happened this time.

And guys, hear me out: it’s not as painful as everyone is making it to be. I’m dead-serious about that. Stick with me here.

Firstly, there’s a couple of conversations going on that we need to put to sleep. One of them, the one bothering me the most, is that Reina “chose Taki’s way of doing things over Kumiko”. Or worse, that she “chose winning at the nationals over Kumiko”. The episode itself debunks this in several ways, mainly by showing that flashback of S1. If Reina had chosen Kumiko despite thinking Mayu’s performance was better, Kumiko would’ve known, and it could very well have been the end of their friendship. She would’ve been outraged. In no universe would this scenario ever make her happy. More importantly, the flashback implies that Reina wants to choose Kumiko in spite of everything. What stops her from doing so is the fact that it would mean betraying Kumiko, which is worse than not being able to play with her on national stage one last time. Reina didn’t choose Kumiko… but she did.

None of this was about victory—it truly was a matter of meritocracy. Choosing the best members doesn’t guarantee they would win at the nationals, especially given that Mayu isn’t superior to Kumiko by a wide margin. They’re almost tied. And neither was any of it a Taki vs. Kumiko thing for Reina. She’s abrasive when it comes to defending his policies, but her belief in him isn’t blind. The fandom tends to underestimate Reina a lot because of her romantic feelings and mistakes her faith for stubbornness, even though both the novels and the anime are adamant about her good judgement. It’s not that she trusts him because she’s in love with him—she’s in love with him because he is worth her trust. Then again, this had nothing to do with him. It was all about Kumiko. She was the only thing in Reina’s mind the whole time. Taki wasn’t mentioned even in passing.

The other is that Kumiko’s loss was for shock value because the novel’s outcome was too obvious and KyoAni wanted to surprise the viewers. I’m not gonna lie, this decision was definitely meant to give the anime a so-called “plus alpha” in comparison to the original, but that’s not all there is to it. The main reason is obviously to have it be more grounded and mature, not so much your usual music anime, as well as make the whole debate about fairness actually convincing. The original is not only predictable, it’s also questionable. It’s easy for something to look like Deus Ex Machina even when that’s clearly not the intention, and KyoAni didn’t want Eupho to be that anime. By extension, they shot down every suspicion that could’ve possibly been raised about Kumiko’s win in the original work.

Of course Reina would’ve recognized Kumiko’s sound, so although most readers would know that she wouldn’t choose Kumiko for any reason other than her performance, it still leaves room for doubt. The anime slaps this doubt into outer space by constructing a situation where Reina deemed Mayu’s playing as superior, although by a hair’s breadth. It effectively answers the question of “what would she have done if that was the case?”. With the author having approved of this, it’s safe to say that, yes, that’s what Reina would have done in canon as well. And it would be the right choice, which then means that her choice in the original was also undebatably the right one. That Kumiko earned her win in the novel.

This may or may not have been intended, but either way, the anime has elevated the original work’s outcome by going for that route. After all, the original was predictable, sure, but that doesn’t mean it was unrealistic. These two things are being confused and conflated with one another a lot in many comments that I’ve been seeing out there. Realism doesn’t always have to be negative. Kumiko and Mayu had equal chances of winning. That’s what the audition was all about. The novel portrays what would’ve happened if Kumiko had won, while the anime portrays what would’ve happened if she had lost. Both are valid and the existence of one further validates the other, not the contrary.

What the author wanted to show was that, although Kumiko can’t follow Reina or her more talented senpais, she’s still an excellent player, enough to perform the solo on national competitions, and she wouldn’t let this get the better of her. It also seems like there was an element of “be careful with what you wish” as one of the morals behind Mayu’s arc, where she finally accepts her true feelings through regret rather than joy. Meanwhile, what KyoAni wanted to show is that, even if Kumiko is surpassed, she’s still an exceptional leader and has the makings of a fine teacher. In a way, the anime affirms that both Kumiko and Mayu play a special role in guiding Kitauji through the final tournament. Above all, both routes assert that Reina wouldn’t lie under any circumstances and that Kumiko (as well as Mayu) would indeed accept either result with utmost grace and understanding, no matter how frustrating it might be.

Another thing that the anime elevated is Kumiko and Reina’s bond. In my honest opinion, KumiRei has become the best female relationship in animation and one of the absolute best female relationships in fiction thanks to this episode. It’s transcended friendship, transcended gay, transcended fucking everything.

Alternative endings aren’t dead and they don’t always suck. Eupho continues to be one of the most amazing slice-of-life franchises ever.

[just-pass-through]

Honestly I love how this season has a music anime on three different levels of rawness.

Jellyfish is the Disney Channel made for TV movie.

GBC is the primetime dramedy.

And Eupho is the prestige drama that you needed to pay the premiere cable package for to be able to watch it on HBO.

[yoro-shi]

葉月ちゃんほど自分の人生で見習わないといけない部分が多いキャラはいないと感じている♪ ハッピーバースデイ葉月ちゃん！

[animebw]

So, I've been getting almost all my hibike euphonium knowledge from osmosis from what you say. So I wanted to know how integral to the plot is that guy some people ship kumiko with (never learned his name), not only in this season, but in the previous ones too.

Because I don't think you mentioned him at all while talking about this season, other then kumiko being tired when people think they are dating, but I have seem some people say that they did end up together bc something something hair clip in the epilogue?

Also wanted to know if they dropped or dealt with the Reina crush on the teacher thing

You do seem to cherish this show a lot, so I do wanted to check it out myself, but these two things are the only things holding me back at this moment

So here's what actually happens: in the original novels, Kumiko and Shu get together at the end. Unambiguously. She confesses, he gives her the hairclip back, it's a whole big scene.

In the show, Shuichi has maybe twenty lines of dialogue across the entire final season, not a single of which has romantic implications or framing, he has a single line of dialogue in the entire final episode, and then we see Kumiko has the hairpin in the epilogue but it's not commented upon and Shuichi is never seen again.

Last week when episode 12 aired, the original author Ayano Takeda posted on Twitter that she was happy with the changes KyoAni made, and she encouraged fans to appreciate her novels and KyoAni's adaptation as equally valid interpretations of the same story. There was, however, a follow-up tweet where she further clarified that she had the final say on any changes the show made, and if Hanada or Ishihara or whoever proposed a change she wasn't fond of, it was ultimately her call whether to let it happen or not. So what this feels like to me? Is a compromise. A compromise between Takeda's original vision and KyoAni just very obviously not giving a single shit about Kumiko and Shuichi as a couple.

Now, KyoAni's been changing things in Eupho ever since the first season, and in fact, most of their shows diverge pretty heavily from the source material. And since I haven't read the original novels, I only have secondhand knowledge on what KyoAni added or took away. But what I have heard is that while all of Kumiko and Reina's subtext is still there in the novels, Shuichi has a far more visible role in Kumiko's life, with many more scenes dedicated to them as a romantic subplot. In fact, I've heard there were a few scenes in season one between Kumiko and Reina that were originally between Kumiko and Shuichi in the novels. I can't confirm if that's true or not, but frankly, it would not surprise me one bit.

Obviously, I don't know the reasoning behind the decisions KyoAni made. But looking at Hibike as a whole, it feels like they looked at this story with a pretty standard het relationship subplot and realized there was actually a far more compelling love story lurking just underneath the surface, one that Takeda herself didn't seem to realize was as special as it was. So when they turned it into an anime, they made the conscious choice to downplay Shuichi's role as much as possible and cash all their chips on centering her relationship with Reina as the real heart and soul of the story. And over the course of nine years, they supported that story as much as they could, finding every way possible to prioritize them in the narrative and frame them with the cinematic language they've deployed for so many straight couples in the past, while simultaneously refusing to give Kumiko even a single moment where she appears romantically interested in Shuichi.

And I want to stress that last point in particular: outside of that one scene in the Year 2 movie where Shuichi almost kisses her, every single interaction Kumiko's had with the idea of being in a relationship with Shuichi has been "Oh HELL no." She's constantly avoiding him in their first year, she can barely work up the effort to be civil to him while they're actually dating, and it's only after they break up that they're able to be on good terms with each other as friends. Even in this final season, there hasn't been a single moment where it's felt like either of them were considering getting back together. Shuichi's just been happy to support her, and Kumiko feels comfortable around him for the first time ever, and that's the extent of it. It's only the comments from the first years that suggest anything about a romantic subplot still ongoing between them, but none of that is reflected in any of their onscreen moments.

Like, even putting Kumirei aside, there is just no romantic tension between them anymore. Not even in a "Wow, where did that romantic moment come from? That was so forced out of nowhere!" sort of situation- the love story between them is completely nonexistent at this point. The only evidence in this entire fucking season that they start dating again is Kumiko having the hairpin in the epilogue (which, side note, hasn't been brought up all season either), which, frankly, is so open to interpretation that Bandai's shareholders are salivating in jealousy. Sure, maybe it does mean Shuichi asked her again and she accepted, but it could just as easily mean he gave it to her free of charge and accepted she didn't think of him that way. Or it could even mean he gave it to her and said something like "Once Reina finally gets turned down by Taki-sensei, make sure you give this to her, I think it'll be put to far better use that way." And frankly, that last interpretation is way more supported by the show I just watched than simply them getting back together.

The point is, KyoAni does not care about Kumiko and Shuichi getting together. It has never cared about Kumiko and Shuichi getting together. Honestly, my crack theory is the reason they sped through Kumiko's second year in a movie is to get through her Dating Shuichi arc as fast as humanly possibly. But Takeda clearly does care about them getting together, considering that's what happened in the novels. And I suspect that's one thing she decided not to budge on when they were in conversations discussing the changes KyoAni wanted to make. So to compromise, KyoAni put in the barest minimum effort to suggest things technically played out like they did in the novels- "Look, she's got his hairpin! That means they got back together!"- while refusing to spend a single solitary second on it beyond that and removing any explicit confirmation so everyone who doesn't care about them as a couple- KyoAni included- can interpret it otherwise and be fully justified in doing so.

Because from start to finish, through the entirety of this season, the love story that stood at the center of everything was Kumirei. Every last plot beat, every last thematic throughline, every last bit of swelling music and romantic framing and effort spent making you root for two people to stay together, it was always them and no one else. Even the big change they made in episode 12 where Kumiko loses the soli only further cements their story as the story of this show, with Reina's utter devastation at losing her only confirming just how special Kumiko was to her in a way not even Taki-sensei truly measures up to. I've said it in the past, but even moreso now than ever, it is impossible to look at the arc of Hibike Euphonium and not see a love story between these two girls, a story about just how fucking much they mean to each other and all the reasons their connection was something unlike anything else on this earth.

And if you choose to see it as a story of Kumiko and Shuichi getting together instead? Then you are actively fighting against what the show is communicating to you every second of every episode. You are, in fact, the delusional shipper inventing a romantic subplot where none exists. You are everything that yuri shippers are accused of being when they choose to actively engage with the text as it exists and not as you imagine it to be. Because as open-ended as the ending is, as straight as it pretends to be, it is far easier to imagine a future where Kumiko and Reina reunite as lovers than a future where she somehow falls for the guy she's never shown any interest in before. Frankly, if I was a Shuichi truther I'd feel pretty insulted by this ending! "What do you mean their entire subplot is cut out and it's only half-assedly implied in the epilogue that it totally happened offscreen? What is this bullshit?!"

This is why I chafe so strongly against the queerbaiting label. I watched three seasons of BBC Sherlock, I know full well what queerbaiting looks like. But a love story like this does not happen out of malice. It only happens because every single person involved, from animators to voice actors to directors and everyone in between, believes in it so strongly that they're willing to push as hard as they can to make it as real as physically possible within the limitations at their disposal. Kumirei is Hibike. Their story is Hibike. And if KyoAni can't convince Takeda to let them embrace it fully, well, they can at least wrestle her to a stalemate that allows that interpretation to still be possible- and, even, more plausible than the direction she initially took it down.

Adaptation is an art of making changes. It requires a text to stand on its own, fully apart from whatever source it sprang from. And KyoAni in particular has always embraced the philosophy of treating adaptation not as a one-to-one copy machine like so many of its contemporaries, but an opportunity to build something entirely new. All of its shows are, first and foremost, shows before they're translations of their source material, works of art designed to be taken as wholly complete experiences however much they resemble their inspirations or not. In Hibike! Euphonium the novel series, Kumiko and Shuichi are canon. In Hibike! Euphonium the TV show? It's flat out impossible to come to that same conclusion unless you're dead-set on believing what you want to believe, evidence be damned. And if you're so obsessed with this mid het ship that you choose to ignore the single greatest love story of all time to pretend it's more plausible, then you're simply an idiot who's opinions aren't worth engaging with.

[studentofetherium]

over time I've come around to the opinion that the Eupho school uniform is in fact one of the best in anime

[nijigasakilove]

Perfect capstone to a decade long journey. Kyoani thank you for this magical experience. I had my doubts about whether or not everything could be wrapped in one episode, but they were unfounded. This took me on an emotional roller coaster and by the end I was crying tears of joy.

First of all, so good to see Mayu and Kumiko finally on good terms. Only took a few months but the two of them practicing with Kanade was so sweet. Everyone needed to be on the same page going into nationals and after Kumiko speech last week the mood was noticeably better.

Love that every single club member got their name and face showed on screen during the final speech from Kumiko. We only focused on a few students for the sake of the show, but there’s so many people whose hard work and dedication made this possible and they deserve to be recognised. They all had their own stories and paths here and I wish we could’ve got more of them. Our final “Kitauji fight!” Gave me pure chills.

I’d been critical about them having almost no musical performances in this season. They saved the performance for last and WOWZA it was worth it. I’m always a fan of flashbacks during climaxes and seeing all of the highlights of the first two seasons again was chef’s kiss. Goosebumps. The club’s performance truly carried their hearts and souls and the totality of all the hard work and sacrifices they’ve made. The determined looks on their faces.. yea they refused to lose this one and were deservedly rewarded at the end.

We all knew that Kitauji High Gold announcement was coming, but that didn’t make it any less emotional. So much work, so many tears, so many people who contributed to this victory that didn’t get to be on that stage.. it means something to all of us fans who’ve been here since 2015 and ofc to the club members in the show. Seeing Reina and the others cry out of pure elation was incredible.“I’m so happy I’m going to die” is how we’re all feeling after that. I just wish all the senpai could’ve been there to see! Sucks that Natsuki got turned away :/

😭 timeskip Kumiko is so beautiful omg. The animation during her walk to class was so good too as you’d expect from Kyoani. But, cmon, was there ever any place you’d expect her to be than in that classroom as the advisor? She was born for it. As Occam’s razor dictates, oftentimes the best choice is the easiest one.

And the clip?? She an Shuuichi are married!!? Perfect ending. I would love an OVA to see what Reina is getting up to in the states and Mayu and the other girls. Mayu especially lol. But if they leave it here, I’m satisfied as well because this was mission accomplished. What a ride, been a pleasure sharing it with all of you.

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