About

K-On! (Japanese: けいおん!) is a Manga series written by Japanese author Kakifly, and later developed into an anime by Kyoto Animation. It details the lives of four high school girls who join Sakuragaoka Girl's High School's light music club to try to prevent it from being disbanded, and has grown a considerable online following both in Japan and in the west.

History

The original 4-panel manga series began serialization in the manga magazine Manga Time Kirara, and lasted between May 2007 and October 2010. The 13-episode anime series, created by Kyoto Animation, first aired on April 3rd, 2009 and lasted until June 26th of the same year. A 26-episode long second season began on April 7th 2010 and lasted until September 28th. The success of the show soon paved the way for a film adaptation, which was released on December 3rd, 2011 and a number of video games.

Reception

K-On! has received positive feedback from critics and fans alike, selling over 26,500 volumes between April 27th and May 3rd 2009, and the first and second manga volumes were the 19th and 20th highest-selling manga volumes in Japanin the following week. The anime series did equally well, with the first Japanese DVD volume of the anime series sold around 8,000 copies in the week of July 29th, 2009. The series has also received a number of awards, such as the Best TV Animation Award at the Tokyo International Anime Fair in 2010.

Online Relevance

K-On! has a large online following on sites such as Tumblr^[1], Fanpop^[2], deviantART^[3], 4chan’s /a/ anime and manga^[4] and /c/ anime/cute^[5] boards and reddit.^[6] Also, Anime News Network^[7] and TV Tropes^[8] offer information about the series, as does the K-On wiki^[9]. Fanfiction.net also has over 1,000 fanfictions in it’s archives.^[10] There are a number of videos on both YouTube^[11] and Nico Nico Douga^[12] relating to the anime, and the Facebook fan page for the series has over 140,000 likes^[13].

Notable Sub-memes

What Would X Do For Money? / Fistful Of Yen

What Would X Do For Money? (Also known as Fistful Of Yen) is an exploitable, showing a character being presented with a large sum of money, and then using the money afterwards. This meme originates from a scene in episode 2 of the second season, in which Ritsu waves 100,000 yen in front of Azusa while the girls discuss what they would do with the money.

Jaka Jan

Jaka Jan refers to a series of MAD videos based on a scene during the third episode of the second season of the anime, in which Yui tries to think of ideas to not make Ritsu feel lonely in the back, and imitates the noise an electric guitar would make in the process of presenting her ideas.

Untan

Untan refers to a series of MADs involving a scene from the first episode of the first season, in which Yui attempts to demonstrate her ability to play the clarinet, shouting Untan as a way to imitate the noise a clarinet would make.

K-On! Fans Are Racist

K-On! Fans Are Racist is a fandom generalization meme semi-ironically stating that fans of K-On!, and often other slice-of-life anime series and anime in general, are extremely racist. The meme was spawned by users with K-On! profile pictures being regularly caught posting racist and anti-semitic content on social media, and gained particular popularity in the /r/okbuddybaka subreddit.

Search Interest

External References