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 joined 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 Supporting

Kotobuki, Minako Japanese

Yoroizuka, Mizore Supporting

Nakagawa, Natsuki Supporting

Fujimura, Konomi Japanese

Tsukamoto, Shuuichi Supporting

Ishiya, Haruki Japanese

Kasaki, Nozomi Supporting

Yoshikawa, Yuuko Supporting

Yamaoka, Yuri Japanese

Nakamura, Shinichi Producer

Saitou, Shigeru Producer

Senami, Riri Assistant Producer, Publicity

Yarimizu, Yoshifumi Assistant Producer

Reviews

Jan 19, 2026

Marco_Yooo

Recommended

THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

Since bursting on to the scene back in 2005 with “Full Metal Panic – The Second Raid”, Kyoto Animation has become one of the most legendary anime studios of the 21st century. Their success is mostly contributed to by their different approach to a lot of standards established in the anime industry over the years. They place a higher emphasis on actual employment instead of freelancing, they work less hours and most of the people in the studio tend to finish one anime before hopping on to the next. This approach resulted in absolutely stunning artwork, consistency and of course, their ... signature character designs. They absolutely dominated the late 2000s and early 2010s with standout titles like “Suzumya Haruhi”, “Clannad”, “Hyouka” and many more.
But going into 2015, a lot of people in the wider anime community began to criticize the studios recent output: Shows like “Chuunibyou”, “Tamako Market” or “Kyoukai no Kanata” did not really get the same praise as their previous shows, and a lot of people in the fandom thought that Kyoto Animation was in a serious decline.
When “Hibike: Euphonium” came out that year, many people were hoping for another masterclass that would revive the studio and put them on the top of the anime world once again.

Story – 7/10

The story is actually pretty simple but at the same time very effective. Personally, it was really refreshing to see an anime about a high school orchestra, because i also played in one back when i went to school. Seeing all the different instruments, practice sessions and, of course, the performances was absolutely nostalgic for me. I know how hard it is to play in an orchestra, or how embarrassing it was when the conductor singles you out because you threw off the entire band. The show mostly focuses on the heavy brass section (Euphonium, Tuba etc.) but the show introduces so many characters, that in the end, the whole band is involved.
The show is quite the genre hybrid actually, switching from Sports/Music to Slice-of-life, to romance to drama really quickly. I thought they managed to pull it off, even though I think i would have preferred this to be more music centered than it really was in the end. The drama i thought worked really well. What this show did really good is showing how the way you feel in your life directly reflects in the way you play. An orchestra is only as good as it´s worst player so if one characters goes through something harsh, it really shows. The romance aspect has some potential but it was definitely the weakest part of the show and it would have been better to cut it out completely.
The overall pacing was pretty damn fast in my opinion. Pretty unusual for a novel adaptation, but I think it made everything flow seamlessly. Another thing i noticed is how consistent the slice-of-life elements were. Kyoto Animation really did their homework here and managed to accurately portray the city of Uji in a realistic way. At the end of the season, i knew every characters path to school, the train stations they got on and off, where their favorite restaurants are and so on. You can actually find a lot of the locations on google maps and follow your favorite characters routine.
All in all, i think this season was a great setup for future story developments i am eager to see where it is going next.

Art – 9/10

While many people began to criticize Kyoto Animation for their stories and characters, no one, absolutely NO ONE questioned their ability to animate beautifully. This is another fantastic adaptation with animation that elevates every scene, every moment and every character. If i would have to compare this show to another in terms of animation, it would most definitely be “Hyouka” (one of my absolute favorite shows of all time). Both are novel adaptations, which of course means that Kyoto Animation pretty much could do whatever they wanted with them. And even though “Sound: Euphonium” is a bit more grounded and realistic than “Hyouka” the similarites are very apparent. Beautiful character designs that make everyone stand out, realistic backgrounds with real-life locations and an overall emphasis on small, little movements that makes everyone feel more alive and expressive. The concert scenes are beautifully done. You can actually see the characters play every single note and the 3D instruments look great.
This is another Kyoto Animation masterclass in animation and delivers consistent movie quality in every single episode.

Sound – 9/10

I mean, this is an anime about an orchestra, so the music HAD to be good for this to work. Thankfully, it is. The orchestra scenes are absolutely stunning to hear. So many different instruments get their time to shine, Euphonium, Tuba, Trombone and, most of all, the trumpet. You can actually hear characters improving over time, falling behind in tempo and picking it back up and so much more. Everything gets covered, solos, duets, full orchestras etc.. The standouts are definitely Kousakas trumpet solo, her duet with Kimiko in episode 8 and the final performance. Even the BGM was great, especially some of the piano tracks. Also, the OP is an absolute banger.

Characters – 7/10

There is a lot to talk about here. This season introduced A LOT of characters. There are over 50(!) band members. And even though the show does not focus on every single one, it still spends a huge chunk of it´s runtime introducing and developing different characters. Everyone gets at least a little arc to himself. Kimiko started out as pretty aloof and indifferent towards the band and her instrument, but grew to love it more and more as the show goes on. Her relationship with Kousaka is the backbone of this category and is the most interesting out of them all. Other standout characters were Asuka, Tsukamoto and, my personal favorite, Nakagawa, who is probably the most grounded and relatable character in the show. There are some missteps here, like a pretty underdeveloped love triangle, some yuri-bait (was this actually in the novels?) and some annoying characters (looking at you, Yoshikawa), but all in all, this was a solid category. There is still a lot of room for development for so many characters, but for a 12 episode season, this was already a lot.

Enjoyment – 7/10

This was a very consistently enjoyable show. Not a single episode felt out of place and the ending felt very emotional and earned. This is only the first season, so don´t expect this to be a complete package, but the setup is there and I will absolutely watch the next seasons!

- Marco_Yooo

FINAL SCORE - 7/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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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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	Poll: Hibike! Euphonium Episode 2 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Apr 14, 2015	194 replies	by l0okatme »» Feb 7, 9:19 PM
	Poll: Hibike! Euphonium Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Apr 7, 2015	342 replies	by l0okatme »» Feb 7, 2:55 AM
	Poll: Hibike! Euphonium Episode 11 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Jun 16, 2015	378 replies	by divlyfein »» Jan 30, 8:52 PM
	Poll: Hibike! Euphonium Episode 8 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - May 26, 2015	456 replies	by divlyfein »» Jan 18, 7:44 PM
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