Hibike! Euphonium: Ensemble Contest-hen

The long-awaited new work will be screened in theaters as a medium-length animation in the summer of 2023!

Along with the summer brass band competition, the ensemble contest, commonly known as "Ancon," is a place where exciting performances are held. The performance of several people in one group has a charm different from that of a competition.

In order to participate in the Kyoto prefectural tournament of Ancon, a representative team is selected in the school's preliminary round. However, with over 50 members, the Kitauji High School brass band is facing a variety of problems! Will Kumiko, the newly appointed head of the club, be able to make it through the preliminary rounds?

The days of struggle begin.

(Source: Official Website, Translated)

Oumae, Kumiko Main

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Kousaka, Reina Supporting

Anzai, Chika Japanese

Yoroizuka, Mizore Supporting

Tanezaki, Atsumi Japanese

Nakagawa, Natsuki Supporting

Fujimura, Konomi Japanese

Tsukamoto, Shuuichi Supporting

Ishiya, Haruki Japanese

Kasaki, Nozomi Supporting

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Hisaishi, Kanade Supporting

Amamiya, Sora Japanese

Yoshikawa, Yuuko Supporting

Yamaoka, Yuri Japanese

Katou, Hazuki Supporting

Asai, Ayaka Japanese

Taki, Noboru Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Ishihara, Tatsuya Director, Storyboard

Tsuruoka, Youta Sound Director

Karasawa, Miho Theme Song Performance

Hanada, Jukki Screenplay

Reviews

Dec 25, 2024

griddyweeb

Recommended

Significant improvement after the previous movie, which was a mess. This OVA proves that Hibike Euphonium can still be done right after Naoko Yamada's departure.

While it is an improvement to the last movie, there's still a tiny bit of pacing issue, or more like uneven content to timeframe ratio. Had it been for ~10 extra minutes, the ending would've been proper and more dramatic. This felt like the ending of Game of Thrones, we don't get to experience what happens at the auditions for the "AnCon", we are only given the end result. Thankfully it didn't try to get involved with too many storylines with ... limited screentime like the last movie.

That leads us to the other issue, there's barely any music being played. In an anime that heavily focuses on music, in an OVA with a storyline about preparations for an ensemble contest, there must be some music played...

Undeniably it's still good old Hibike Euphonium drama, but with some flaws. Honestly it's disappointing that KyoAni needs to have these steppings stones to get back to the level of the previous releases (not you, 3rd movie).

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 16, 2024

Justykanna

Mixed Feelings

Sound! Euphonium is one of my very favourite series, so when I heard it was getting an OVA ahead of it’s third and final season, I was ecstatic! I will assume you’ve seen the prequels for the purpose of this review. Liz and the Blue Bird is not a required watching for this though.

Story & Characters: Sound! Euphonium: Ensemble Contest Arc takes place after the conclusion of Sound! Euphonium: Our Promise: A Brand New Day, where, even though the band didn’t get invited to Nationals, the club activities still persists. Instead, they decide to take place in the Ensemble Competition for high ... school students, which basically has the same rules as Nationals, but instead, are for groups of two to eight students. Since only one group per school is allowed to participate in the qualifiers, it’s up to the students to select the best group amongst themselves to represent Kitaugi High School.

For the most part, storylines remain tame, ranging from how students will go about forming groups, to actually figuring out who gets selected amongst our favourite first and second year students. There still is some conflict without our groups, but none of the scale of either seasons or the movie. The group selections themselves are interesting enough, where students that we don’t know get to play together, and we focus more-so on Kumiko’s group. The group itself aren’t all familiar members either so watching as they rehearse was probably the high point of the story. What causes group members to struggle, what’s not working, and how do we fix them? These are strong ideas, and they don’t go quite as fast paced as the movie, which was welcomed here.

The third year students are basically out of the picture for this OVA, as they prepare for getting into post-secondary school, so end up focusing more on everyone in Kanade’s year and now-president Kumiko’s year. Mizore, Natsuki and Yuuko get some interesting scenes as we catch up with them though. Kumiko is obviously our focus, as she tries to ease into her new role as club president – which she basically picked up before starting her official third high school year, due to the club not participating in Nationals. We get to see some minor flaws she has, but her interactions with Reina, as brief as they were, are still really nice to see. Hazuki and Sapphire, who weren’t really involved in Season 2, get more screen time this time around and they were interesting this time around. I didn’t love them in the first season, but they were strong here. Kanade follows Kumiko around the school a gets some minor screen time, but nothing nearly as stark as how she acted in the movie. Taki is mostly uninvolved in this season.

As you get to the end of the season, you likely wish the season ended on more of a high note, pun intended, as it doesn’t feel like the story completely wraps up. They also don’t really show much in the final performances – which was equally disappointing. Still, this OVA likely only serves a warm-up of what’s to come in the third season. (Story: 7/10, Characters: 8/10)

Art: Kyoto Animation is still puts out a strong product, but due to the story, they don’t really have much of a chance to shine like they did in previous seasons. Scenes with characters further away also looked noticeably dull, though it mostly didn’t matter anyway. (8/10)

Sound: I’m still not sold at that finale should have been structured the way it did, so like the animation, the sound didn’t get much of a chance to show itself off. Still, instruments still sounded really nice in the context of the anime and the ending song and VA work were solid. (8/10)

Overall: Sound! Euphonium: Ensemble Contest Arc is a fine distraction for Sound! Euphonium watchers before Season 3 airs in a few months. Whether it's bringing characters together or playing music together, both both, we get to see that here and I love those little moments of when something cool happens. It’s still Sound! Euphonium and it still remains strong for what it aims to do – get characters together to play music. And it does that. (8/10)

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 13, 2025

Gippy

Not Recommended

Spoiler

This has to be the most elaborate troll by Kyoto Animation since Endless Eight. This was meant to be watched after Our Promise: A Brand New Day, the 3rd movie in the franchise, and covers the remainder of Kumiko's 2nd year at Kitauji High School.

So for the entirety of this movie, the band students needed to form ensemble groups. They would compete against each other, and the best one would represent the school at some external festival. The movie spent its sweet time on the planning and practice stages of this contest. You know what this movie didn't show? The actual contest itself. Instead, in ... the final minutes of the movie, it showed photos of the ensemble groups with the students' names, as well as the results. There were no actual performances heard other than a shortened cut of Kumiko's ensemble group piece.

So the title of the movie was a complete lie, and therefore the whole thing was a rude joke. Just skip it completely and move on to season 3. As of this review, Crunchyroll doesn't have this, but has everything else in the franchise. Don't worry, you're not missing anything.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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