With the ending of K-ON! confirmed, speculation as to why it was dumped rages – and most seem to consider the problematic university setting as being at fault.
The ending being settled, the most significant remaining questions are over what will happen to the remaining manga and what Kyoto Animation’s plans are. For their part, the publishers have so far declined to comment on whether Azusa’s remaining manga will continue or not.
Although this announcement was followed by considerable upset online, it has also been noted that in comparison to previous K-ON! finales the fan reaction was positively blasé.
This has been put down to the entrenched fan sentiment that “K-ON! is a story about high-school girls” and the the university version “destroys this image.”
More practical objections have also been raised, most notably the problems of maintaining a realistic storyline about a circle of female students without any romantic developments.
Even more vexing is the issue of what creepy otaku would do should their favourite end up with a boyfriend, and what effect a bunch of “second-hand” moeblobs might have on the franchise.
Online there is a certain amount of agreement that university life may have been taking things too far in the first place:
“Having a story about a bunch of students who aren’t actually rutting like crazy with each other is pretty unrealistic, isn’t it?”
“They missed the proper end point, basically.”
“It’s like one of Jump’s artificially drawn out titles now.”
“It has too many characters now. Fans only care about the HTT 5. And they dumped Azusa.”
“The university clubs and excess of characters ruined it really.”
“They didn’t have many characters until uni. I think they just couldn’t work out how to end it.”
“This frankly feels more like the author asking them to let him end it as he’s out of ideas, as opposed to it just being canned for being unpopular. And there were all sorts of gaps in the serialisation too.”
“If they can just get together with KyoAni and secure enough material for a third season, I will be happy!”
I thought they went to an all girls university? unless that’s different in the manga? so how would there be boys in the picture?
Good riddance. K-ON sucked ass anyway.
I don’t see the problem university studies and celibacy. I never had sex during my 6 years at uni.
Six years? I envy you. Three years out of uni and I wished I never graduated.
Well, the government only pays us 500€/month, so it wasn’t very profitable.
Perfect news for trolling.
Considering K-on made me want to learn to play the drums and get into music, I’m sad to see it end like this. I understood it’s appeal perfectly but I don’t think it has the potential to become a classic like Haruhi. One thing I can guarantee though; they’ll never do this subject matter better than Kyoani has done.