Sound! Euphonium - Season 1

In the first half of this season, this show is mostly about the music and almost nothing else. There are no subplots, no complex relationships to deal with, no romantic storylines, and when there are, they are only very peripheral. However, in the second half of the season, it is as if the anime’s producers suddenly decided that it was time for a change, so they managed to shove a love triangle (or rather a love rectangle) into the narrative. They also put a ton of emotional, romantic, and other kinds of scenes into just a few episodes. This seemed to take the show’s attention away from the music for a while. While this change was quite unexpected, I personally found it made the show feel more human because as a musical philistine I am just not going to get too worked up over a narrative around what it is like to be in a band. Unfortunately, some of the storylines had a rather unsatisfactory outcome, and in the episodes after, the focus returned to music (and nothing but music) again, so there was just a flicker of emotion, like a summer breeze in the leaves and then it disappeared again... The animation is really nice, however, that is unsurprising really, since the Kyoto animation studio is behind it, and the show’s soundtrack is also pretty good, although I would have expected this aspect to have been a little better in case of a musical anime. Despite that, it is quite interesting to see how the band gradually improves over time. The finále is quite satisfying and on the whole the impression I got was pretty good. However, if I compare it to Nodame Cantabile, which I think is the perfect music anime series, Sound! Euphonium basically could not get near my imaginary "musical anime throne". So I think it is an inferior four stars, even though I would recommend it to aficionados of both music and musical anime. 7/10. (01/24/2020)