K-On! Volume 3   Starring (voice): Aki Toyosaki, Satomi Sato and Yoko Hikasa Manga Entertainment RRP: £17.99 MANG5242 Certificate: PG Available 05 December 2011

Yui Hirasawa has just started high school, with its confusing number of extracurricular clubs, but which one to join? She joins the Light Music Club, a club with so few members that it is in danger of being disbanded. There is nothing light about the club, being essentially the start of a girl band. Now the girls have more experience they bring in a new member, Azusa...

K-On!: Volume 3 (2010) features the next three episodes of this thirteen episode series, so that only leaves two episodes and the OVA to complete the first season. The show was created by Naoko Yamada from a Reiko Yoshida script.

Whilst the overall presentation of the series has been particularly high, this hasn’t led to any great script explorations, what the show does, it does well and has no intention of moving away from a successful formula.

The following episodes sees the introduction of Azusa into the band, a girl with drive and the desire to plat, which means she is quickly at odds with the rest of the band, who are more interested in other pursuits. The move to another training camp does little to ease the tensions, nor does the arrival of the school festival and the chance for the girls to play. But as usual the paperwork has not been done and the band realise that they do not have a name.

That’s kind of it for these three episodes, interspersed with shopping trips and girly conversation. The series is not really anything to do with a real story, there is little progression, you get the feeling that the whole show was designed to make you feel as if you're hanging out with your own friends, rather than following some coherent narrative.

Set up is the same as the last discs with options for either English or Japanese DD 2.0, with subtitles.

Extras include My Love is a Stranger Music Video (1 min, 40 sec), which in reality is a very short music video set to previously seen bits of the show. A little more impressive is an Interview with Cassandra Lee - Ritsu (6 min, 28 sec) which has the American vocal artist talking about how she got the part and what she thought of the show, well obviously she loved it, otherwise it wouldn’t be on the disc.

So, no real surprises, the show does what it does well and has no intention of doing anything else.

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Charles Packer