K-ON!

Synopsis

Hirasawa Yui, a young, carefree girl entering high school, has her imagination instantly captured when she sees a poster advertising the ‘Light Music Club’. Being the carefree girl that she is, she quickly signs up. However, Yui has a problem, she is unable to play an instrument.

When Yui goes to the clubroom to explain, she's greeted by the other members: Ritsu, Mio and Tsumugi. Although disheartened at Yui’s lack of musical know-how, they still try to convince her to stay to prevent the club’s disbandment. After playing Yui a short piece which re-ignites her imagination, they succeed in keeping their new member and guitarist.

Along with the tasks of school and homework, Yui begins to learn the guitar with the help of the other band members, experiencing many mishaps along the way. However, with the school-festival drawing near and Yui getting stuck with her practice, will the Light Music Club be ready in time for their debut?


Main Character

Mio Akiyama (秋山 澪)

Height: 168 cm
Weight: 54 kg
Blood Type: A
Sign: Capricorn
Birthday: January 15
Favorite Music: Jazz. Moody instrumental music.
Experience with playing musical instruments: Started playing bass in middle school after Ritsu suggested it to her. 3 years of experience.
Family structure: Family of three, both parents. Typical household of an officer worker.
Dwelling: Single family detached home.
Commute to school: Walking.
Preferences in clothing: Pants over skirts. In summertime she likes to wear sleeveless clothes, such as tank tops.
Her room: Clean and tidy. Chic room with simple door. Actually Mio wants to decorate her room with cute things, but she does not have any because she is self conscious about them not suiting her and because she does not want to be teased when Ritsu comes over.
Favourite food: Gateau au Chocolat (rich layered chocolate cake).
Subjects she is good at: All subjects. She is always in the top 10 among all students of her grade.
Subjects she is bad at: No subject is particular.
Physical activity: Good at sports.
Way to pass the time when alone: Studying.
Weaknesses and dislikes: Scary stories. Stories about pain.

Mio is a shy girl who is in the light music club. She plays a left-handed, 3-Color Sunburst Fender Jazz Bass with a tortoiseshell pickguard, though is shown playing a Fender Precision Bass in the first manga volume. She uses D'Addario EXL160M medium bass strings. Her bass is given the name Elizabeth later in the anime. While she originally intended to join the literary club, she was forced into the light music club by her childhood friend and the club's president/drummer, Ritsu. She gets excellent grades in school and is often mature and strict especially where Ritsu is involved; her weakness is the macabre and horrific, and she is often incapacitated with fear when stories involving ghosts, blood, injuries, haunted houses, barnacles or other disturbing topics come up. She also has a fear of being in the spotlight and gets embarrassed easily, and is often subject to teasing from Ritsu and Sawako, their club adviser and eventual third-year homeroom teacher. Mio has long, straight black hair and gray eyes (that are angled slightly more than the other characters). She cites that she chose bass since it is not the center of attention in the band, unlike the guitarist. Mio is more technical when it comes to music, and Yui often comes to her when she is in need of more guitar tutorials.

Along with Yui, Mio is one of the band's main vocalists, though given her dislike of being center stage, she tries to avoid taking the lead vocal if possible, generally singing if Yui is unable to. She writes most of the songs, although they usually feature some odd and overly girlish lyrics like "Light and Fluffy Time". As she is left-handed, she becomes entranced whenever she sees left-handed instruments, because of their rarity. After their first live performance, the attractive Mio gained a huge fan following (in no small part due to an unfortunate accident that occurred at the end of the show), led by an infatuated former student council president. Also resulting from her sudden popularity, most of her classmates voted that she portray Romeo in their class play.

Yui Hirasawa (平沢 唯)

Height: 156 cm
Weight: 50 kg
Blood Type: O
Sign: Sagittarius
Birthday: November 27
Favorite Music: Yui doesn't follow any particular style, and isn't picky. As long as she likes it, anything is OK.
Experience with musical instruments: None.
Family Structure: Family of four, both parents and younger sister (Ui). Father works for a trading company, gets a lot of overseas assignments and tends to be absent. Because the mother often travels overseas too (helping the father), the daughters have many opportunities to spend time alone together.
Dwelling: Single family detatched home.
Commute to school: Walking.
Preferences in clothing: Pants over skirts. Yui is relatively fashion conscious and likes styles featured in teen magazines. She also wears casual clothes such as shorts and T-shirts at home.
Her room: Clean, because Ui cleans it. Yui likes small cute things, and keeps stuffed toys and such in her room. The room is painted in girly pastel and pink tones.
Favorite food: Anything, as long as it's sweet and delicious.
Subjects she is good at: None.
Subjects she is bad at: All of them
Physical exercise: She can do it, but hates getting tired.
Way to pass time when alone: Lazing around at home.
Weaknesses and dislikes: Studying.

Main character, guitarist, lead vocalist. Having misunderstood that "light music" equals "easy music" (like whistling), she joined the Light Music Club and picked up guitar with absolutely no prior experience. She cannot do more than one thing at a time, but to make up for that she can be highly focused on a particular subject and once started, can advance quite substantially. However, whenever she learns something, she forgets something else. Yui is the type of person who doesn't read manuals and relies on her own intuition and self taught approaches. She also does not remember any of the musical terminology. She possesses perfect pitch and is able to tune without a tuner, but she does not appear to make the best use of her ability. Yui is relatively determined and competitive, but at the same time she feels comfortable depending on the help of a few good people like Mio, Nodoka and Ui.

Yui is fearless, anxiety and stage fright are unknown to her. During the new student welcoming concert she demonstrated that she can easily handle emceeing. She likes everything cute and makes a lot of physical contact like holding hands or hugging. She also loves everything sweet. Sweets that Mugi brings are Yui's power source. Her physical constitution is such that she does not gain weight no matter how much she eats. She can't stand being hot or cold, so she spends the winter under the kotatsu and rolls around on the floor in the summer. Her grades are always on the verge of failing, sometimes she is the only person in her class who needs to retake the test, the other times she manages to avoid failing all subjects by a one point margin. She has an average figure, her bust is a bit on small side. Yui lives in a family of four with her younger sister Ui and both parents. Her parents are a "lovey dovey" couple and often go on trips together, leaving both daughters behind.

Tsumugi Kotobuki (琴吹 紬)

Birthday: July 2
Sign: Cancer
Height: 157cm
Weigh: 53kg
Blood type: O

Favorite Music: Classical music.
Experience with playing musical instruments: Started playing piano at age four. Picked up keyboard upon joining the Light Music Club.
Family structure: Family of three, both parents. Father is a president of a company. There is a butler at the house. She is being treasured as the only daughter.
Dwelling: Single-family home, a rather stately mansion.
Commute to school: By train (she lives two train stops away from the school). Because being driven to and from school by car is embarrassing for her, she avoids it.
Preferences in clothing: Skirts over pants. High society lady styles, such as elegant one piece dresses.
Her room: Canopy bed, antique furniture and such, as expected of a rich girl's room. The room is decorated mostly according to her parents' tastes.
Favorite food: She prefers traditional sweets such as daifuku (rice cakes with red bean jam filling) because she worries about calories and because western sweets are brought to her house all the time and she is tired of them.
Subjects she is good at: If anything, humanities, though she is also above average at science and math. While she is a little weaker than Mio when it comes to math, her math skills are certainly above her grade level.
Subjects she is bad at: No subject is particular.
Physical activity: Tsumugi is gentle and quiet and as result she is not good at ball games and track-and-field athletics. However, she has a lot of arm strength and amazing hand grip. She is a very strong girl.
Way to pass the time when alone: Elegant teatime
Weaknesses and dislikes: She is a little worried about her predisposition to gain weight easily.

Tsumugi, also known as Mugi, is a wealthy girl with a gentle and sweet personality. She is the third member of the light music club and plays the keyboard. Tsumugi has been playing the piano since she was four and has won various piano contests. She is the daughter of a company president, and her family has several villas in various places around Japan. When Yui goes to buy her guitar, Tsumugi is successfully able to drive down the price. She brings sweets and tea frequently and keeps a tea set at the club room. She originally intends to join the choir club, but joins the light music club instead since she would rather be "friends with fun people that you don't meet often".

Azusa Nakano (中野 梓)

Birthday: November 11
Sign: Scorpio
Height: 150cm
Weight: 46kg
Blood type: AB

Azusa is a new student who joins the light music club and plays a Fender Mustang electric guitar but she is also in possession of a Gibson Les Paul Custom 50th Anniversary Gold Top (as seen in episode 13). A self-proclaimed novice guitarist who has been playing the guitar since the fourth grade and whose parents are working in a jazz band. She is in the same year and class as Ui and has quite a mysterious demeanor. She often finds herself bewildered by the tea parties and cosplaying aspects of the club, when she would rather just practice and is curious on how the club is able to play so well despite their problems and lack of practice. However, she has a certain weakness for cakes and can be calmed down rather easily, sometimes by just being petted. She could be described in part as a tsundere. She is constantly hugged by Yui and is nicknamed Azu-nyan after trying on a pair of cat ears and meowing. In the band, she looks up to Mio the most due to her maturity and the fact that she is an experienced bassist. Since joining, Yui comes to her for advice on playing guitar, as well as maintenance.