Hibike! Euphonium

Now that Kumiko Oumae has enrolled in Kitauji High School, she hopes to forget about her past. Despite her desire for a fresh start, she gets dragged into the school's band club by her new friends—Sapphire Kawashima and Hazuki Katou—and is once again stuck playing the euphonium.

As the band currently stands, they won't be able to participate in the local festival, Sunfest, let alone compete at a national level. The band's new advisor, Noboru Taki, gives them a choice: they can relax and have fun, or practice hard and attempt to get into nationals. Not wanting to repeat her mistakes from middle school, Kumiko is doubtful as to whether they should try for nationals. Amidst the chaos, she learns that her old bandmate, Reina Kousaka (who she had a bitter relationship with) has ed Kitauji's band club. Under the pressure of Noboru's strict training, Kumiko and her bandmates must learn to overcome their struggles and find success together.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Oumae, Kumiko Main

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Kousaka, Reina Main

Anzai, Chika Japanese

Katou, Hazuki Main

Asai, Ayaka Japanese

Kawashima, Sapphire Main

Toyota, Moe Japanese

Tanaka, Asuka ing

Kotobuki, Minako Japanese

Yoroizuka, Mizore ing

Nakagawa, Natsuki ing

Fujimura, Konomi Japanese

Tsukamoto, Shuuichi ing

Ishiya, Haruki Japanese

Kasaki, Nozomi ing

Yoshikawa, Yuuko ing

Yamaoka, Yuri Japanese

Nakamura, Shinichi Producer

Saitou, Shigeru Producer

Senami, Riri Assistant Producer, Publicity

Yarimizu, Yoshifumi Assistant Producer

Reviews

Jan 23, 2025

rionji

Recommended

This work is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful pieces you can find in this genre, telling the story of a young high school girl who s the band, loves music, and learns to build connections with other of the group. You might expect it to be just another anime where characters are there merely to add variety, but what’s incredible is that everything has a purpose. From the moment you start Hibike Euphonium, you immediately sense the importance of the character development, the significance of the music, and the transformations that unfold. Each character brings something unique, endearing, and refreshing, and that’s probably ... what made me fall in love with this original work.

The themes explored in this first season are perhaps what leave the strongest impression: it’s not just about striving for self-improvement or pushing one’s limits, but also about the desire to give your best for the sake of your ion. It also highlights the power of human relationships—something that’s beautifully portrayed through the bond between Kumiko and Reina—as well as how each member of the orchestra makes an effort to understand one another, overcoming differences to better each other in the future. Friendship and the connections between everyone are undoubtedly part of what makes each episode so beautiful. However, the most important theme here is acceptance—accepting that it’s okay to fail and that it’s okay to have insecurities. Kumiko’s character perfectly embodies this perspective, teaching us that it’s essential to realize we don’t have to be perfect at everything to grow. And that’s what makes this so beautiful.

And beyond personal choices, beyond the band, there is music. The way everything in Hibike is used to move us is masterfully done, as we come to understand that all the characters share one thing that connects them: music. Even though each of them has a different perspective on this ion, and even different goals, the first thing that binds them together is the music, which drives them to externalize, verbalize, and express their emotions through it. This pays tribute to music and conveys the message that collective effort is just as important as personal growth.

Beyond the story, music is just as memorable, just as captivating as the stunning animation that Kyoto Animation delivered with this anime. Every scene is high-quality, every melody, opening, or OST is either uplifting or touching, and to this day, I can't find any flaw in the journey that Hibike Euphonium was for me. I think I would give anything to experience this work for the very first time again. And if that's the case for you, prepare yourself, because the emotional impact you feel while following Kumiko's adventures is incredibly powerful.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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May 9, 2021

Fishymonster_

Mixed Feelings

It's made by kyo-ani, so obviously the animation quality is some of the best I've ever seen in a tv-format anime. The show is mostly well done story-wise, but it some parts left a bad taste in my mouth. Also, the yuri-bait sucks, I think every one watching the show wanted you know who and also you know who to get together, and there was too much focus on the teacher and his relationships. The show dragged on at times, this was the first show I ever had to complete in chunks, watching different animes before I competed the next few episodes because of how ... boring it mostly was. Honestly I was going to give this a 7, but I can only really say not so good things about this show so I see no reason to give it that high of a rating. If you are an anime fan you probably won't like this, if you are a straight up drama fan you probably will. I can definitely see why it is rated high, but it's not my cup of tea (even though I love most slice of life animes) so do with that information what you will.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 23, 2021

Justicefornoone

Not Recommended

In my short life watching animated series, if there's something I learned through the years is that the best pieces of animation are those ones which can balance remarkable and original art, animation with a fascinating or at least compelling story with well written and rounded characters, and last but not least, making a good use of music to make the experience more delightful, memorable and even complement the atmosphere and characterization, especially if music is the central theme of the aforementioned series.

In this case I am reviewing one which art is kind of remarkable, with decent musical compositions, but appalling melodrama and cardboard characters: ... Sound! Euphonium.

Art & Animation:
I am, like everyone, a biased person, and I have to confess that I'm not a fan of how Kyoani confront their creations: they clearly are almost unbeatable in how they animate every detail and how fluid can look, only comparable with cinematographic works of Ghibli, CoMix Wave, or any film with high display of production values like Redline or Sword of the Stranger.

Of course, they lack of creativity in some aspects like character design in order to make them look as cute as possible ends up falling into the generic department, losing against other formidable pieces like Dennou Coil, Cowboy Bebop and FLCL. And don't make me start on how some animes with budget limits prove that your animation can have high standards like Haibane Renmei, Rakugo, Trust and Betrayal, Evangelion or Berserk '97.

Music:
In a series about music, someone may expect masterpieces that can give classical musicians a run for their money or at least if the staff are using non original soundtrack, to use it properly like Nodame Cantabile so you can mentally relate the music with the anime. And even though it's not bad music per se, it's unfortunate how average are such compositions and how wasted it feels at the end of the day (you can separate it almost completely from the anime and enjoy it more on your own!). I can forgive this if we weren't talking about a slice of life where the cast is in a school band. Fortunately, sound effects are extremely polished but that can be expected from Kyoani.

Story:
So far I haven't spoken about what is this all about. So, what's this all about?
Well, a group of Moe girls walking and talking nonsense most of the time, and supposedly focused on winning a place in the school band and rehearsing as hard as possible. This second part is, again, supposedly to be the main plot but Kyoani preferred to focus on their specialty: giving queerbaiting between cute innocent schoolgirls because yuri-bait helps a lot with merchandising. At least 30% of the camera is entirely focused on schoolgirl thighs just for the sake of having them somewhere rather than giving more space to actual characterization, so far we've been told rather than shown the motivation of the main cast to find the Euphonium, hence the pace of this series is also appalling in spite of having less than 15 chapters.

Characters:
And now the biggest offender: the characters. To be fair, Kyoani never was a studio that gave half a damn about good screenplay or writing, so the closest thing to decent writing that I've ever seen of them is the characterization of Haruhi suzumiya (instead of being a cute retarded cardboard, she's a full sentient girl with bad manners) and the comedy of Nichijou, that worked somehow in each chapter.

Nevertheless, do not be fooled by those who claim that the portrayal of these girls are totally realistic -whose names can be replaced by the main girls from K-ON due to how awfully similar they are-. There's nothing that helps people to point a single trait of personality of ANY of these girls. Why? Because it's not necessary to even try to give them a personality. On the other hand, checking other music-centered animes like Kids on the Slope, Beck or Kono oto Tomare, you can easily make a distinction between each one of their respective casts. Also, there's not character development at all, not saying that this is mandatory but at least the writer could make these moe dolls had some charisma and more traits to convince me to care about them. And before you ask, no, Liz and the Blue Bird is not realistic or even remotely good either, but wins against Euphonium due to the segments of the tale of Liz where animation and music actually merge with each other smoothly and they forget about the high school setting

Overall, it's only worthy if you are a hardcore fan of this overrated studio. Otherwise, I advise you to stay away from it and find the other examples of how great some anime music can be: Nodame Cantabile, Kids on the Slope, Beck, Kono oto Tomare, Forest of Piano.
If you really want to see how good Kyoani can be with their high production values, go check Violet Evergarden or Nichijou, which are so far their best works.
And if you wanted an actual GL story rather than dirty pandering, Revolutionary Girl Utena is always available, or Shinsekai Yori.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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