The Fall 2016 Anime Preview Guide

Sound! Euphonium 2

Kumiko and her teammates have won the Kyoto regional tournament! From now on, life will be getting a lot more hectic. With the national tournament fast approaching, Kumiko's band is doubling down on practice and discipline, leaving little time for sleep or other recreational activities. The redoubled practice schedule brings Kumiko and Reina closer together, but elsewhere in the band, it seems like drama threatens to tear the group's unity apart. The ghost of the prior year's mass band exodus still haunts many of Kumiko's classmates, and with former band member Nozomi Masumi now asking to return, it seems like the grudges of the past will soon be impossible to ignore. Sound! Euphonium 2 is based on a novel series and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Wednesdays at 1:00 PM EST.

Jacob Chapman

Rating: 4

I don't know if these double-length premieres are becoming a new trend or not, but Sound! Euphonium is high on the list of shows that absolutely did not need one. While it's one of the strongest narratives Kyoto Animation has ever adapted, Eupho season 1 was still an adaptation of one relatively short novel out of three, all pastoral psueudo-biographies about a young woman's years in high school concert band. Eupho season 2 kicks off by strengthening all the best things about the show: its sense of color and atmosphere, its minimalist editing, its more naturalistic voice acting, and the immersiveness and verisimilitude of its sound design and instrumentation. If you've missed the world of Kitauji High School and its talented musicians, it's become more beautiful and nostalgic than ever as the doldrums of summer take over the lackadaisical and even surprisingly somber 47 minutes to follow.

This mastery of tone and production aesthetic has always been enough to recommend the show on its own, but despite introducing a new plot element to up the tension heading into training camp, (the girl who quit band in season one came back!) Sound Euphonium 2's jumbo-size premiere struggles even harder to justify dragging out its narrative featherweight for the sake of its (admittedly impressive) atmosphere. Season one ran into this problem a few times, where it spent so much time languishing in the texture of a moment that by the time it followed up on the protracted story element waiting underneath all the saturated scenery, it was easy to forget why this trivial plot point was worth all this melodramatic build-up in the first place. This issue was usually eased with moments of humor, and Sound! Euphonium could definitely be funny when it wanted to be, but the dread specter of morose band drama and halfhearted shipping dominates this episode so hard, it mostly just dilutes the emotional substance the story is capable of having in its best moments. (Seriously why is this episode so dour? Bandmates quitting/rejoining at awkward times or not, these characters aren't going through much of emotional consequence, but the number of intense gestures and looks they trade makes this episode feel like a Madoka movie or something at points.)

Anyway, if you're not a fan of the whole half-assed Kumiko/Reina thing, this returning episode is out to waste a lot of your time with it. (No offense meant if you do enjoy it, I know it's more than most anime ever bother to do, but it's just not enough for me to work as an actual same-sex romance.) Watching two straight girls with their hearts set on boys pseudo-pine for each other voyeuristically gets on my nerves pretty quick, and I'm honestly kind of surprised that season two is doubling down on their not-romance so hard after basically revealing it as bait near the end of season one. Either way, this episode's last five minutes are devoted to giving them a yukata-clad fireworks snuggle, under a generic monologue about how "these precious high school days can't last forever." I'm not sure KyoAni has ever pulled off such a beautiful and immersive summer festival episode before, and you can practically feel the heat of the fireworks on your skin and smell the smoke in the air, but that's all it really amounts to. I hope the rest of the series loosens up on the pretentious protraction and refocuses on the strength of story and character that made Sound! Euphonium stand out more amongst KyoAni productions in the first place.

Theron Martin

Rating: 3.5

Unlike with Brave Witches, the first episode of Sound Euphonium 2 is not a jumping-on point. In fact, even for established fans, reviewing who's who in the first series before starting this one is highly recommended. That way you won't lose a good chunk of the episode just trying to keep all the names and faces straight.

That's because the series jumps in almost right where it left off and goes forward from there. The band has won Regionals, so what's up next? A stab at Nationals, of course! If you attend a school with a competitive music program (as I did) then the nature of the beast is that another level, another challenge, almost always awaits after one hill has been conquered, and the series’ storytelling stays very true to that. Even details like bringing in an alumnus as a consultant to help with the band ring true; when I was in marching band in high school, this happened all the time during our summer drills. The technical accuracy of the series was the single biggest factor in keeping my interest through the first season, and it doesn't look like that's going to change.

It also looks like the underlying drama of the band environment isn't going away, either. In the first season some of the strongest drama was over who would be the trumpet soloist, but this season seems to be shifting to focus on what has long been the unspoken elephant in the room: the departure of many second-year students from the band last year and why no one wants to talk about it. That one character wanting back in rattles some people so much just heightens speculation on what actually happened. Whether or not this is compelling enough to carry the season remains to be seen, but at least there seems to be another angle, too: Kumiko and Reina drawing closer together. How much Kumiko is actually cognizant of the direction this is pointing is debatable, but I think it's pretty clear at this point that Reina, at least, is edging across the “friends” line. In fact, setting that up as a prelude to the season seems to have been the entire point of making this a double-length episode.

Kyoto Animation's technical merits are a sharp as ever, but you'd expect nothing less. Overall, the first episode is a promising (though not necessarily wildly compelling) start to the new season.

Nick Creamer

Rating: 5

Sound! Euphonium is back, and it's clear the show has nothing to prove. Euphonium's first season stands as one of the most impressive feathers in Kyoto Animation's cap, a subdued drama that elevated humble but universal conflicts of talent and adolescence through the studio's reliably phenomenal direction and animation. The first episode of the second season seeds a handful of future conflicts, but doesn't seem truly about those conflicts in the manner of a more plot-driven narrative. Instead, Euphonium allows the drama of Kumiko's club and the pressure of nationals to speak for themselves, while it focuses on conveying the experience of a harried summer vacation with all the naturalism and grace it can muster.

This premiere's first two scenes offer a convenient sample of what's to follow. The show opens in the dead of winter, with shots establishing Kumiko as standing alone before an unlit school. The stillness of the air and indistinct drops of snow convey the chill Kumiko is experiencing, before Reina arrives to bring warmth to the scene. After the opening song, we experience an abrupt shift, the air now bright and heavy with heat. Soft focus on a plane overhead conveys the sensation of looking up at a hot sun, and Kumiko's relative discomfort is clear through close shots highlighting her perspiring and flushed pallor.

Those scenes don't really convey much narrative information outside of “it's winter and cold” or “it's summer and hot,” but they are critical to drawing the audience into both Euphonium's larger mood and Kumiko's specific headspace. As the episode proceeds, this primacy of lived experience continues to guide every element of the production. Shots are consistently framed either from Kumiko's own view or to emphasize her own priorities, while the minimalist sound design highlights the natural noises of the school and shifts in voice relative to environment over incidental music.

Even the vocal deliveries of the characters seem uniquely charged here - or perhaps the opposite. While anime vocal takes often lean towards the performative and melodramatic, Euphonium's characters speak as if they're actually just exchanging empty conversations between practice sessions. But instead of lessening the emotional impact, this ultimately heightens the engrossing, almost documentarian tone of the premiere. And by leveling the impact of their standard deliveries, sequences like Kumiko's half-asleep morning mumblings or Reina's defiant declarations of strength come through that much more clearly.

Euphonium's sound design is distinctive and terrific and still possibly the least noteworthy element of this premiere. As Kumiko settles into the post-regionals rhythm and gets used to spending more time with Reina, lengthy scenes of awkward band drama convey a web of charged relationships guiding the conversations between all the characters. Reina gets a great deal of strong material this week, demonstrating her caustic complexity through brittle pride, awkward conversations with Kumiko's friends, and more confident, playful lines when the two of them are alone. Asuka retains her self-assured fire, flipping easily from playful taunts about love advice to harsh assessments of her former bandmates. Even Yuko has gained texture at this point, with her grudge against Reina now far less important than her involvement in the drama that once threatened the band's future.

But in the end, it all comes down to this show's astonishing mastery of lived moments. No one character monologues the failure of Minami middle school several years back - instead, we get a poignant extended sequence from the perspective of Mizore Yoroizuki, as her defeated band suffer through the long drive back to the school. Our perspective shifts from the spinning wheels of the bus to the distant skyline, light flute music and defensive body language conveying Mizore's thoughts more effectively than any outright dialogue could. Other scenes rumble forward at the pace of Kumiko and her friends’ after-school life, the ephemeral nature of their adolescence conveyed through the contrast of fears about nationals and beautiful isolated moments of watching the rain or sharing ice cream with friends.

Nothing is truly “answered” in this episode, though it certainly poses questions. Instead, this premiere's attitude towards its emotional and dramatic threads mirrors its method of conveying them - let the world proceed at its own pace, and finding meaning in the world as it is presented. Former bandmate Nozomi's anguish at being left behind affects Kumiko, but Reina only sees Nozomi's quitting as “running away.” It is like Kumiko to be touched by someone left behind, given what we've seen of her relationship with her sister, and it is equally like Reina to bristle at anything that denies the primacy of personal strength. Their disagreement does not impact their bond; staring up at the fireworks in this episode's gorgeous finale, their friendship is framed as emblematic of the passion of youth.

I could unpack this one episode for hours, and it's only the first episode of the series. Sound! Euphonium's second season actually feels more confident than its first - more self-assured in its naturalistic, arthouse storytelling, less obligated to include gags and cliffhangers, more fully dedicated to its own tonal style. There's great beauty and understated layers in a work like this, where the absence of easy questions and answers makes divining some emotional truth a richer and more personal experience. Sound! Euphonium is back, and I couldn't be happier.

Paul Jensen

Rating:

It feels like we've been seeing extended first episodes more often lately, and I can understand the appeal from a production standpoint. Having an extra twenty minutes or so to get the plot up and running can make all the difference in the world, and that doubled running time is just enough to tell a self-contained story from start to finish. Not every series is able to make good use of that extra time, but the return of Sound Euphonium is a solid example of the potential benefits of running long.

This episode eases the audience back into the story of the band's quest to compete at Nationals, with the local competition cleared and the regional stage looming on the horizon. There's a tangible feeling of excitement as the characters throw themselves into their practice schedules, but it's tempered by a nagging feeling that all is not well within the club. The ever-mysterious incident from the previous year comes back into frame, and it looks like the second-year students' emotional baggage will be front and center in the coming weeks. The show does a good job of balancing the excitement and concern, but this conflict could do with some snappier pacing. You can only drop vague hints about past events for so long before it stops feeling ominous and starts getting annoying.

Of course, that occasionally sluggish pacing is much easier to tolerate when a series looks as good as Sound Euphonium does. Between the strong production values and artful visual direction, this show is almost annoyingly pretty. Whether it's the details on the instruments or the staging of the fireworks scene, there's almost always something impressive happening on the screen. That strength is best put to use in this episode's smaller, less obviously important moments, where the little details in the characters' movements can convey a lot of information about their emotions.

While newcomers to the series would be well advised to start from the beginning, returning fans will find that the strengths of the first season are alive and well here. This episode frustrated me at times with its slow-burn approach to setting up conflicts between characters, but that's nothing new in this genre. Even if you've never played a musical instrument, Sound Euphonium offers an artful enough take on the high school experience to be well worth watching.