K-On! Come With Me!!: A Review and Reflection of the 2011 Live Action Concert At the Ten Year Anniversary

Even if you fail, try to add it up
‘Cause a bigger answer will come to you
Whatever that happens to be
If we’re together, we’ve got nothing to fear!

–Come With Me

On a Sunday afternoon ten years earlier, Saitama Super Arena hosted the largest K-On! event the franchise had organised. Titled Come with Me!!, the event was a celebration of K-On!‘s successes, seeing live-action performances of the series’ most well-known works from members of Houkago Tea Time. Aki Toyosaki, Satomi Satō, Yōko Hisaka, Minako Kotobuki and Ayana Taketatsu stepped onto the stage to thunderous applause, welcoming the audience with GO! GO! Maniac before introducing themselves. Each of the cast then performed their lead character songs (Oh My Gitah!, Seishun Vibration, Drumming Shining My Life, Diary wa Fortessimo and Over the Starlight). After Taketatsu performed her song, director Naoko Yamada then made an appearance, announcing that K-On! The Movie would be premièring in theatres on December 3. Madoka Yonezawa (Ui), Chika Fujitō (Nodoka) and Yoriko Nagata (Jun) continued on with their performance before things transitioned over to a stage play, where Toyosaki, Satō, Hisaka and Kotobuki reprised their characters’ roles; because the clubroom at their school is undergoing maintenance work, the girls need a place to practise, and they find themselves in an unexplored area of school (Saitama Super Arena itself. After the initial shock wore off, Houkago Tea Time performed several new pieces (Ichigo Parfait ga Tomaranai, Tokimeki Sugar, Honey Sweet Tea Time), along with one of K-On!‘s most iconic songs (Gohan wa Okazu) on a central stage. As their performance draws to a close, members of Death Devil took to the stage and put on a different kind of show that mirrors the sort of music Sawako and her band would’ve played while they were in the light music club. When Houkago Tea Time return to the stage, they sat down to discuss differences in musicianship and how the different Japanese scripts can impact perceptions of whether or not something is cute: it turns out that the gentle curvature of Hiragana script gives the words a gentler feel, compared to the harsher, more angular appearance of Katanana script (for instance, “Keion” in Hiragana,けいおん, has a friendlier appearance than the Katakana ケイオン). The members of Death Devil suggested that Houkago Tea Time continue to work hard and do as they’ve always done – Houkago Tea Time returned to the stage and performed the centrepiece songs of K-On!‘s second season (Pure Pure Heart, U&I and Tenshi ni Furetta Yo!, along with an encore performance of Fuwa Fuwa Time). Come with Me!! entered its closing acts subsequently, with the cast reflecting on their incredible experiences as a part of the K-On! franchise. The audience is treated to a final performance of Come with Me!!, the song that lends itself to the concert’s name.

With a runtime of three hours and thirty-five minutes, Come with Me!! would hit the shelves on August 10, just shy of a half-year after the concert ended. Through this home release, the concert’s events would be immortalised. Even though there is no substitute for attending in-person, the home release edition captured the emotional tenour and vigour of the atmosphere at the concert. Throughout the concert, Toyosaki and her co-leads frequently allude to how much practise it took to prepare for the event: to ensure every song was memorable, the team would’ve rehearsed tirelessly to nail each and every song, step and line. The actresses even learned the fundamentals behind their respective characters’ chosen instruments so that they could put on a compelling performance (it is understandable that the actual instrumentation was done by professional guitarists, bassist, drummers and pianists). While Toyosaki, Hisaka et al. are no professional musicians, their efforts paid off: where they played with the instruments, it genuinely felt that Houkago Tea Time was on the stage. When they were purely singing, their songs absolutely conveyed the manner and style of their respective characters, bringing Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Mugi and Azusa to life. The energy and spunk everyone had was a major factor in keeping the viewer’s attention throughout the entire concert, and despite the runtime length, Come with Me!! never felt for a second that it was dragging on: there were surprises around every corner, and the combination of live music, a miniature stage play and a chance to listen to the voice actresses and staff share their experiences contributed to a very heartfelt and sincere presentation that unequivocally demonstrated the sort of impact that K-On! had during the height of its popularity. This love for K-On! was apparent: besides the cast’s powerhouse performance, the sell-out crowd also indicated what K-On! meant to many. Nowhere was this more apparent than towards the concert’s end – Satō was fighting back tears while singing Tenshi ni Furetta Yo!, and both she, and (Azusa) teared up during their final speech to the audience. Ironically, despite promising not to cry, Hisaka wound out breaking into full tears. The audience, in turn, cheered enthusiastically and could be heard shouting encouragement to everyone before, during and after performances. Through Come with Me!!, the mutual respect and love that everyone shares for the K-On! franchise, the staff working on it, was plainly visible.

Come with Me!!! was a tour de force performance that served to emphasise the process behind K-On!.This concert served to highlight the sort of effort that went into the production of K-On!: the series’ incredible success during 2009 and 2010 had been the result of Kyoto Animation, Naoko Yamada and each of the voice actress’ diligence, persistence and skills, all of which came together to a polished and meaningful final product. Overseas viewers, however, are limited to what they see in the final product: we don’t see the people behind the work, and consequently, without having seen any of this, it would’ve been easy to dismiss K-On!‘s success as undeserved, warranting nothing more than a vitriol-filled blog post telling people not to watch this series. Come with Me!!, on the other hand, made it apparent as to what went into the creation of K-On! – when immersed in a crowd who shares the staff’s love of K-On!, it becomes impossible not to be appreciative of the effort each of Toyosaki, Hisaka, Satō, Kotobuki and Taketatsu put into making the series compelling. Everyone’s speeches really drove home the sort of passion that led everyone to put in their best for K-On!, whether it was voicing the different characters, singing or stepping out onto a stage in front of thirty-five thousand fans. That Come with Me!! was performed to a sold-out crowd at Saitama Super Arena speaks to the sheer scope of the impact K-On! had on its viewers: it is no easy feat to draw out thirty-five thousand people, including families, each of whom has found sufficient emotional impact in a series such that they would attend a concert and cheer on the staff that made a tangible impact in their lives. This is a thought that definitely crossed each of Toyosaki, Hisaka, Satō, Kotobuki and Taketatsu’s minds: looking out from the stage to a sea of applause and glow-sticks really would’ve it tangible as to how far-reaching K-On! had been.

Screenshots and Commentary

• Per the title card, Come With Me!! was held on February 20, 2011 at the Saitama Super Arena, a massive stadium and venue capable of housing 37 000 people. Doors to the event opened at 1400 JST, and the event formally began at 1600, running until 1900 on a Sunday. Tickets cost 7800 Yen (93.49 CAD in 2011) per person, and the event had been announced in October 2010, a month after K-On!‘s second season had finished airing. The BD released in August 2011, giving viewers a 1080i picture and Linear PCM 5.1 audio: while not possessing the same visual fidelity as progressive scanning (motion blur was a bit more noticeable), the final result is still more than watchable. Before K-On!‘s leads take to the stage, audiences would’ve seen a sakura tree adorning the projection screens.

• I believe that this post marks the first time a full discussion of Come With Me!! has been had anywhere since the BD released: live action events aren’t usually in the realm of things that anime bloggers typically write about, and while Come With Me!! was probably one of the largest anime events of its time, it was not large enough to make waves amongst the English-speaking blogging community. As such, no posts about Come With Me!! exist. At the ten year anniversary, the time has come to rectify this, and here, Toyosaki, Hisaka, Satō, Kotobuki and Taketatsu finally make an appearance to kick things off. The concert opened with a live performance of the opening song, Go! Go! Maniac, a high-intensity piece. The opening songs for K-On! have always been spirited pieces, energetic and at times, a little hard on the ears.

• Conversely, Hisaka is the lead singer for the ending songs, which have a more mature, rock-like feel to them. I’ve always been fond of Hisaka’s performance as Mio – there’s a certain sexiness about her delivery of Mio’s lyrics and lines. After Go! Go! Maniac, Listen!! is the next song viewers would’ve been treated to. Altogether, Come With Me!! features a total of twenty seven songs. The first two songs act as a bit of a precedence for the remainder of the concert, and it speaks to the voice actress’ stamina that they were able to sustain such an energetic manner for the whole of the 185-minute performance: even concerts with stars like Sam Hui and Alan Tam only ran for two-and-a-half hours.

• With the two opening songs in the books, Toyosaki and the others introduce themselves to the audience, marvelling at the size of Saitama Super Arena’s audience. With over double the capacity of Yokohama Arena, which hosted Let’s Go! (the first K-On! concert), Saitama Super Arena would’ve been an impressive sight. Let’s Go! took place on December 30, 2009 to an audience of around 15000, and tickets to the two-and-a-half hour event went for around 6825 Yen (81.97 CAD). The BDs became available precisely six months later, on June 30, 2010. The big anime bloggers of the day did write about this one, praising the event as a fantastic opportunity for the voice actresses of K-On! to really show their viewers what they’ve got, and the event was also where the announcement for K-On!! was made.

• With the introductions done, Aki Toyosaki wastes no time in switching over to a red outfit for her live performance of Oh My Gitah!, Yui’s character song that acts as a love letter for her cherished Les Paul guitar. Throughout the whole of K-On!!, Yui treats her guitar as though it is sentient, and in Toyosaki’s performance of Yui’s song, it is clear as to how deep this love of music and her partner-in-arms is. I’m not an expert in music theory, style or history, so I can’t speak to the style of this song, but Yui’s character song uses a very similar instrumentation to the incidental pieces seen in Man v. Food, whenever Adam Richman is exploring the local eateries prior to his challenge. This creates a very personalised feeling, and I imagine that this is what the composers were going for when writing Oh my Gitah!.

• Since Mio’s instrument is a bass, it is fitting that her character song, Seishun Vibration, makes extensive use of the low notes of a bass guitar. Of everyone in Houkago Tea Time, it is a badly-kept secret that I’m most fond of Mio and her voice – Seishun Vibration is then, unsurprisingly, my favourite of the character songs. The lyrics are bold, reflective of the two sides to Mio: while Mio normally presents a very shy and reserved face for the world, she also has a more aggressive and forward personality that shows up when she’s in the presence of those she’s comfortable around. Seishun Vibration is purposeful, and the perfect song for driving along a highway through the mountains. During her performance, Hisaka brings back Mio’s infamous moe moe kyun move, a callback to the first season.

• Admittedly, while Satomi Satō is a highly skilled voice actress (evidenced by her numerous roles in a range of anime), her character song for Ritsu came across as being very bombastic and noisy. I’ve never really been a fan of her character song, Drumming Shining My Life. With this being said, of everyone, Satō definitely spent the most effort replicating Ritsu’s voice for Come With Me!!: of the characters in K-On!, she and Yui have the most unique voices. On her image album, Ritsu also has a second song, À la carte, Evening Sky, that is slower-paced and more relaxing in nature, speaking to another side of Ritsu’s character.

• Minako Kotobuki’s Diary wa Fortessimo is a fun-filled song, being my second favourite of the character songs. There’s always been an earnestness about the song I’ve enjoyed, and coupled with Kotobuki’s singing voice, I found this character song brings to life Tsumugi’s view of things around Houkago Tea Time. Bouncy, cheerful and whimsical, I really liked Kotobuki’s performance, and of everyone, she seems the most at ease with performing, dancing happily during the song’s instrumental interlude (her movement feels crisper and more purposeful than the others).

• Ayana Taketatsu’s performance of Azusa’s character song has a spunk to it, mirroring Azusa’s traits. Character songs are written to give insight into an individual’s defining attributes, and beyond the lyrics, the way a song sounds can speak volumes about a character well beyond what was seen in the anime. In K-On!, character songs allow listeners to peer into the minds of the characters and ascertain how they really feel about certain things: Azusa has always attempted to present herself as a beacon of reason and focus in a band whose senior members are prone to distraction, but despite the lax attitude Houkago Tea Time takes towards music, Azusa has come to appreciate them all the same and promises to support them as best as she can.

• With Houkago Tea Time done their character songs, Asami Sanada steps onto the stage to address the audience. Sanada’s been a longtime voice actress before beginning K-On!, starting her career in 1999, and has played a variety of roles. As Sawako, Sanada presents her with a sweet, gentle voice befitting of a teacher. Of course, when the chips are down, her voice takes on a much rougher tone, attesting to her skills. K-On!, both in its anime and manga incarnation, has Sawako change appearance depending on whether she’s the teacher everyone knows and loves, or the punk rocker with a fondness for metal: Sanada is able to present both sides of Sawako’s personality without skipping a beat.

• This was probably one of the major highlights of Come With Me!!: Naoko Yamada stepping onto the stage herself to greet the audience and drop the biggest bit of news since K-On!‘s second season. That a film had been in the works had been known for quite some time, but with director Yamada on stage to personally announce that the film was releasing on December 3, 2011, the audience went wild, especially with the revelation that this film would feature all-new content. The K-On! manga was still ongoing at the time, but the film had an original story set during the second season’s timeframe. Looking back, I would’ve liked to have seen K-On!‘s remaining manga volumes (College and High School) receive anime adaptations, but I imagine that Yamada had intended the second season to act as the decisive close on Houkago Tea Time’s journey.

• Once the big announcement was made, Madoka Yonezawa stepped onto the stage to perform Ui’s character song. Ui’s songs have always been a joy to listen to, and Yonezawa does a fantastic job as K-On!‘s Ui: the ever-dependable and reliable younger sister, Ui is only seen doting on Yui the way a loving grandparent might. Her character song suggests that, despite her own prodigious skills, the one thing she longs for most is to follow in Yui’s example and find something that she can totally immerse herself in. Ui does end up inheriting Yui’s role as a guitarist in the manga, joining the light music club and performing alongside Azusa, Jun and several new members.

• Jun’s character song falls into the same category as Ritsu’s and Azusa’s: of the character songs available, I never really got into her song quite to the same extent that I did for Mio, Tsumugi and Ui’s songs. As one of the secondary characters, Jun’s in Azusa’s year and is classmates with Ui, as well. Yoriko Nagata’s performance of Junjou Bomber is, in person, much livelier than it was as pure audio, and speaks to the fact that Jun admires Mio greatly. While joining the Jazz Band owing to poor first impressions of the light music club, Jun comes around and joins in their final year, longing to do the things that Azusa does.

• Rounding out the character song performances is Chika Fujitō’s Nodoka: Jump is an upbeat and optimistic-sounding song that mirrors Nodoka’s enjoyment of her time as a high school student, where, in the process of encouraging those around her to be their best (especially Ritsu and her propensity to forget important logistics, such as paperwork), she also found herself being pulled along by those around her into the future. Fujitō plays Nodoka with a calm sense of assuredness. Both mature and dependable, Nodoka handles most trouble by listening, although she can be stubborn in some cases, as well. Jump’s composition has a very warm, summer-like feel it it, with the instrumentation and tone conveying an image of a beautiful day of blue skies and sunshine.

• Once the character songs are done, the lights go out, and a small skit is presented for the viewers’ benefit: when their clubroom undergoes maintenance work, akin to a similar situation in the second season, Houkago Tea Time go in search of a new place to practise, coming across a strange portal in their school’s basement that seemingly leads straight to Saitama Super Arena. Come With Me!! thus enters its next phase, and as Toyosaki, Hisaka, Satō, Kotobuki and Taketatsu step onto a central stage in the arena, the lights come back on.

• For the next performance, Toyosaki, Hisaka, Satō, Kotobuki and Taketatsu pick up their instruments and, after spurring on their respective segments of the audience, step right into Houkago Tea Time’s new songs. Ichigo Parfait ga Tomaranai (Strawberry Parfaits are Unstoppable), Tokimeki Sugar (Heart-throbbing Sugar) and Honey Sweet time were released on a special album back in October 2010, having never been performed in K-On! proper. Each of these songs have a unique zeal to them, with Toyosaki, Hisaka and Kotobuki respectively leading the vocals.

• While these three songs were never seen in K-On!, it becomes apparent that they still have the distinct Houkago Tea Time sound and correspondingly saccharine lyrics. Reading through the lyrics’ English translations, the lyrics would probably be quite tricky to get into a good-sounding song owing to the way syllables work, although I imagine that even if successful, the songs could sound quite unusual. Having said this, the songs sound fine in Japanese, and I’ve long held that compared to contemporary pop music, K-On!‘s miles ahead of anything we currently have.

• Seeing the camera pulled back really gives a sense of scale at Saitama Super Arena: there is a sea of people surrounding the stage. Moments like these really accentuate the fact that K-On! was an incredibly popular series in Japan, and the fact is that the show was able to draw thirty thousand plus people to a live event. While K-On! also became popular amongst foreign viewers, who similarly appreciated the warm themes and atmosphere taken by K-On!, after its run in 2009, there was a great deal of discussion on whether or not the series was great for storytelling or other technical reasons.

• K-On! excels not because of anything groundbreaking, but because of its sincerity about things like appreciation and friendship. The simple themes, coupled with Kyoto Animation’s technical excellence and amazing voice work from the cast meant that K-On! hit all of the right notes. Seeing something like Come With Me!! really makes tangible the amount of effort that went into making the series a success – behind every character is a human being, each with a story, and so, for viewers, a part of the enjoyment (both for K-On! and for Come With Me!!) comes from being able to see for myself the effort that goes into making something.

• The final song that Houkago Tea Time plays on this centre stage is Gohan wa Okazu, an iconic K-On! song that, despite its hokey lyrics about how rice is a staple that is essential for all meals, is so well composed and catchy that it is immediately recognisable, the same way classics like Staying Alive, Go Your Own Way, The Hustle, Baker Street and countless other songs are immediately recognisable just by listening to their opening riffs. Gohan wa Okazu typifies the sort of music that Houkago Tea Time perform: between Mio’s flowery and soppy lyrics, or the simple, direct approach Yui takes in her songs, Houkago Tea Time’s music is by no means complicated, but expert composition renders each song immensely enjoyable.

• Insofar, Toyosaki, Hisaka, Satō, Kotobuki and Taketatsu have been miming the act of playing their instruments; singing and playing instruments simultaneously is remarkably challenging, and these Houkago Tea Time songs still have decently complex instrumentation. To allow the cast to focus on singing, a part of their concert uses pre-recorded instrumentals. This is completely understandable, and from an enjoyment perspective, it never diminishes from the experience – having the instrumental tracks pre-recorded also leaves the cast free to interact with the audience and drive up engagement, as each of Toyosaki et al. do when they ask their respective sections to cheer them on.

• Once Houkago Tea Time wraps up their centre-stage presentation, Death Devil steps in to perform Maddy Candy and LOVE. Unlike Houkago Tea Time, Death Devil specialises in speed metal: Sawako is easily swayed by her heart, and took up an increasingly wild approach to music to impress a guy in her year. Their music is intense, sounding nothing like the kawaii style that Houkago Tea Time is known for. While I’ve never been quite as excited by their music as I am about Houkago Tea Time’s songs, Death Devil is technically more bold and creative: speed metal, after all, eventually gave rise to the power metal genre which I am fond of.

• Come With Me!! has the cast do a minor stage play of sorts, where they discuss the nature of musicianship and how image can be impacted by the type of script used. This was one of the topics that we covered in my introductory Japanese class – I took this course in my third year, after I’d finished watching K-On!, and my instructor remarked that the Hiragana script is the first script that children learn, being at the core of the Japanese language. Between this and the fact that Hiragana uses gentle curves, it creates a very cute looking script compared to the angular Katakana and intimidating kanji scripts. Recalling this brings back a great deal of memories: I had just come from a summer of building a renal flow model using the Bullet Physics engine in Objective-C, and this work was interspersed by me really getting back into anime, including Sora no Woto, Break Blade, Ika Musume! and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

• Lucky☆Star had jump-started my interest in Kyoto Animation’s works, which led me to K-On!, and this was the anime that brought me back from the brink of destruction. When Come With Me!! was performing, my semester would’ve been really kicking into high gear: in organic chemistry, I would’ve been covering alkene and alkyne reactions (halogenation, epoxidation, dihydroxylation and others), while data structures II would’ve seen the introduction of Red-Black trees and AVL trees, which are self-balancing and mitigate the problem of where worse-case data insertion creates a linked list, which slows down searches. Better minds than mine might fare better in the unique combination that was data structures and organic chemistry: I came to a razor’s edge of failing both, and it was ultimately K-On! that helped me to regroup and survive.

• It is for this reason that even a decade later, I still continue to watch anime of this sort: when times get difficult, losing myself in another world for 24 minutes helps me to regain perspective of things. Thus, when I watched Come With Me!!, I was immediately reminded of what K-On! meant to me personally. Towards the final act, Houkago Tea Time return to the main stage and pick up instruments, playing live in front of the audience. While perhaps without the same finesse as a professional musician, Toyosaki, Hisaka, Satō, Kotobuki and Taketatsu nonetheless put on an admirable showing, and the songs they perform remain faithful to the originals.

• Hisaka’s Pure Pure Heart first showed up in K-On!‘s second season in Tea Party. The band had no previous performance with this song, and a glance at the lyrics shows that it would’ve been Mio who wrote the lyrics. Mio’s lyrics are typically more wistful and poetic than Yui’s, more resembling those to a contemporary pop song, but there is a sincerity about them that most songs today lack. It is a little surprising that ten plus years have now elapsed since Houkago Tea Time’s songs were first written and performed – back then, I enjoyed them above the popular music of its time, and today, the music remains every bit as enjoyable as it was back then.

• During the performance, the camera pulls back and gives a glimpse of the venue, along with the folks in attendance. The cameras show happy concert-goers of all walks of life, and their enthusiasm could be felt even from behind a monitor. Prior to the concert, local media interviewed some of the attendees, but an unscrupulous anime blog, which I will only identify by its orange triangle logo, took selected clips from this broadcast to make the assertion that the attendees were “creepy”. This site has long held a reputation for misrepresenting things and taking information out of context, and their “article” on Come With Me!! comes across as being a sour grapes response to the concert above all else.

• Back in Come With Me!!, once Hisaka is done with Pure Pure Heart, the next song is U & I. This is probably one of my personal favourites in the series: Yui had written it after Ui had fallen ill while looking after her, and Yui quickly realised that appreciation became more pronounced when someone she’d taken for granted was (briefly) taken away. K-On! had, earlier that episode, also shown Houkago Tea Time realising how much their clubroom meant to them. When Yui sees the parallels, inspiration for her song comes almost immediately, and the result is a song that I found even more iconic than Fuwa Fuwa Time. U & I comes second only to Tenshi ni Fureta Yo!. This song was a graduation gift to Azusa, and of all the songs in K-On!, brims with three years’ worth of emotion.

• It is no joke when I remark that Tenshi ni Fureta Yo! is the culmination of everything that K-On! represents. This one song contains all of the themes throughout the series, and it is therefore unsurprising that many regard it as the opus magnum for all of Houkago Tea Time’s songs. During Come With Me!!, Houkago Tea Time’s performance of the song evidently brought back a great many memories amongst the cast: Toyosaki and Hisaka are able to keep it together, but for Satō, emotion threatens to overwhelm her, and she very nearly breaks out crying when singing one of Ritsu’s lines during the song. Her voice audibly breaks for a moment, and this little detail alone made clear what Tenshi ni Fureta Yo! meant to not just Satō, but everyone on the cast, staff and the entire audience.

• Tenshi ni Fureta Yo! is what ended up leading me to watch K-On!: the combination of Lucky☆Star driving my reignited interest in anime, and my happenstance coming across a K-On! parody of Gundam 00, and out of curiosity, I picked up all of the vocal songs. While I was unsuccessful in finding the song used in the parody, one song stood out far above the rest: Tenshi ni Fureta Yo!. After doing a search, I realised that it would be necessary to go through the whole of K-On! to see the proper context for this song, and so, in late March, after finishing Lucky☆Star, I began watching the series. I finished the series in early May, right as the summer research began, and during my days at the lab, I would build out my models while listening to K-On! music.

• Towards the end of the concert, encore pieces are performed along with the second season’s opening and ending songs (Utauyo!! MIRACLE and No Thank You!): Fuwa Fuwa Time, Cagayake! GIRLS and Don’t Say Lazy make a return. Fuwa Fuwa Time is Houkago Tea Time’s first song, and for this, the cast play their instruments along with singing. For the remainder of the songs, it’s back to using a pre-recorded instrument track. The preparations that went into this would’ve been gruelling; while I’ve not touched an instrument for over a decade now, I still have memories of what it took to put on a performance as a member of the concert and jazz bands back in middle school. Come With Me!! is the culmination of Toyosaki, Hisaka, Satō, Kotobuki, Taketatsu, Sanada, Yonezawa, Nagata and Fujitō’s combined efforts, along with the musicians, choreographers and support staff.

• For audiences, seeing iconic songs from their favourite show brought to life would’ve certainly been an incredible experience: for three hours and thirty-five minutes, it’s a full immersion into the world of K-On!, and while the home release is able to convey these feelings to viewers, there is no substitute for being there in person. For Japanese attendees, a drive, few train rides or perhaps accommodations at the hotels near Saitama Super Arena would’ve been all that was necessary to see this concert, but for overseas viewers, the only way to check this one out would’ve been to await the home release, which was six months later (in August 2011). I believe that by this time, I would’ve been well into my renal flow model and had begun investigating tricks for using collision masks to mimic semi-permeable membranes.

• With all of the encore songs finished, everyone returns once more to sing the Sakura High School song – it does feel a bit like a graduation ceremony, even though the song was originally used to welcome new students during the opening of the second season. The way Come With Me!! is structured is logical and flows well, combining the different aspects of K-On! into a part concert, part stage play: it is a true-to-life K-On! experience, and fully brings the second season to a proper end. K-On! The Movie would not have gotten the same treatment, and despite overwhelmingly positive reception, would also mark the end of the animated series. The manga, on the other hand, continued running for an extra year as Yui and the others become university students, while Azusa inherits the light music club’s presidency and strives to make it as memorable for her juniors as Yui and the others had done for her.

• Come With Me!! is the last song in the concert: everyone returns to the stage once more to sing together. While not exactly the strongest of the songs in K-On!, its lyrics do speak to the sort of carefree and inquisitive nature of everyone in K-On!. Once the final song comes to a close, everyone shares their final thoughts and thank yous with the thirty thousand plus viewers. It is an emotional close to the concert, and during the closing speeches, Taketatsu, Satō and Hisaka openly weep as they thank everyone for their continued support.

• It is not lost on me that, three years after this concert took place, I would actually have the chance to participate in a similar event (albeit on a much smaller scale). This event was The Giant Walkthrough Brain, and my involvement here was leading the implementation of the Unity 3D visualisations that would accompany the project. In this way, my role in The Giant Walkthrough Brain would’ve been equivalent to the team that built the set and managed the audio-visual component of this performance. A part of The Giant Walkthrough Brain involved us developers walking out onto the stage as the credits rolled, and there was definitely a sense of pride to know that I helped to build something that hundreds of people would enjoy.

• This is, at least for me, why I chose the path of iOS developer despite the fact that it’s fraught with difficulties and challenges (least of all, the fact that Swift itself changes every year, and things become deprecated all the time). To be able to work on products that hundreds to thousands of people use is a humbling thing, and in this sense, being able to gather all of my users into a one room and know that I helped make something easier for every single person I can see would be moving. Taketatsu begins crying during her speech: the cast had jokingly remarked that they’d do their best to keep it together, and while Toyosaki and Kotobuki are able to do keep smiling as they speak, Hisaka, Taketatsu and Satō’s emotions cause them to struggle in expressing how deep their gratitude is.

• For me, seeing their tears was as effective of a thank you as any well-given speech, and I found myself feeling these same emotions. In a bit of irony, how each of Toyosaki, Hisaka, Satō, Kotobuki and Taketatsu ended up giving their thank yous mirrors their characters. Yui is someone who lives in the moment and is able to have fun without being distracted, while Tsumugi is ever composed and similarly lives in the moment, albeit with a sort of grace that Yui lacks. Ritsu would be more similar to Yui and Tsumugi in this regard, but she’s been known to have a more emotional side to her, as well. For Mio and Azusa, the most serious of the group, these two are always mindful of those around them.

• How I came upon Come With Me!! is a bit of a simple story: shortly after finishing K-On!, I fell in love with the musical style and sincerity that the series’ music embodied, and took an interest to the character songs. Each album had the characters’ respective voice actress singing their songs, plus a version of Come With Me!!. While looking this up for Mio, I stumbled across the segment of Hisaka performing this song live in the Come With Me!! event, and ended up reading more about the concert. However, the three-hour-and-thirty-five-minute long runtime was admittedly daunting, and I never did get around to watching the concert in full until earlier this year. K-On! returned back into my life when I decided to revisit the K-On! mod for Left 4 Dead 2,, which led me to fall in love with Houkago Tea Time’s music anew. Realising that the ten-year anniversary to Come With Me!! was near, I decided to bite the bullet, buckle down and watch the concert in full.

• The end result was a rediscovery of why K-On! had been so enjoyable for me, as well as what the series had done for getting me through a very difficult segment of my life as an undergraduate student. K-On! might have finished for the present, but its impact on slice-of-life anime cannot be overstated – 2014’s Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu Ka? carries a very similar aesthetic and style, a love of sweets and life lessons, and similarly found immense popularity after its run. The series has hosted several concerts with music from the series, in the form of Tea Party Events. During the second season, the character song albums all featured the song Welcome!, which, similarly to Come With Me!!, features the characters singing a common song. In this way, GochiUsa is today’s K-On!, but unlike K-On!, whose popularity divided the community, GochiUsa is nearly universally acclaimed: once people acclimatised to the fact that K-On!-like shows were not here to dominate the market, but instead, complement it, reception to the genre and aesthetic thawed considerably.

• Overall, Come With Me!! represents the apex of what is possible with K-On!, being an essential experience for anyone who counts themselves to be a fan of K-On!. Ten years after the live event at Saitama Super Arena, the memories continue to live on in the hearts of fans, and it is saying something that even now, K-On! still positively impacts fans and writers alike: messages of appreciation and gratitude make K-On! a particularly warm series, and Come With Me!! makes it abundantly clear that a considerable amount of effort went into making K-On! a success. This concert is something that I hope fans of the series will have a chance to check out, as it provides a different view of what this effort entails, and what the rewards for this effort are.

While Toyosaki and her K-On! co-stars were speaking about the impact K-On! had on each of their lives, I was sleeping and awaiting that day’s training at the karate club I’m a part of. At the time, I was deep into the winter term of my second undergraduate year: this term would prove to be the most difficult time I had faced in university, and I had been losing resolve. My peers fared little better, dropping out of data structures outright and resolving to take it again later. As organic chemistry and data structures became increasingly involved, I ended up dropping another course – because I had been intent on trying to maintain satisfactory performance in these programme requirements, I ended up neglecting one of my options entirely and wound up on the edge of failing. K-On! had been on my watch list for quite some time, and serendipitously, I had begun watching it right as April began, when it seemed that I would be suspended from my degree for unsatisfactory performance. The easygoing, heart-warming events of K-On! thus became something to look forwards to as each day drew to a close, and I ended up putting in my fullest efforts to stave off annihilation by day, watching K-On! every evening before turning in. Seeing the camaraderie in K-On! led me to accept a group-study invite from my friends in the health science programme, and I ended up helping to organise a study session for data structures so we could pass the exams together. By the time I finished K-On!, it was early May: thanks to the group study sessions, I ended up doing well enough on my exams to stay in satisfactory standing, and further learnt that I was offered an undergraduate scholarship to conduct summer research. I subsequently developed a keen enjoyment of the music in K-On!, and listened to the songs from all of their albums while implementing and testing my model of renal fluid flow in Objective-C. During Come with Me!!, the voice actresses spoke of people whose lives were transformed by their series. While Toyosaki and the others are highly unlikely to ever hear my own story of how K-On! changed my life, sharing this with readers is to demonstrate that K-On! did indeed have a tangible, positive impact on many people, including myself. The Come with Me!! concert served to reiterate this, and beyond being an indisputable success, also paved the way for K-On! The Movie, which acts as a sentimental, heart-warming and sincere finale to a series that would ultimately influence how slice-of-life shows of the present are adapted and presented to viewers.