When the anime K-On! first aired on Animax a couple of years ago here in the Philippines, I did somehow expected it to be one of those cutesy anime series with adorable girls in school uniforms forming a band until they realized their dreams and made a name for themselves. But what struck me the most about the entire series are the instruments and their "historical or factual relevance" (which is mentioned from time to time in several episodes) used by the girls of Ho-kago Tea Time (or After School Tea Time in the English-dubbed series), particularly the stringed instruments used by Yui Hirasawa (who's using the legendary Heritage Cherry Sunburst Gibson Les Paul), Mio Akiyama (Fender Precision Bass in the manga version and the Fender Jazz Bass in the anime version) and this cutey member I'm going to showcase today who's seen using a nifty Fender Mustang electric guitar... and yes she's no other than Azusa Nakano or fondly called by the moniker 'Azu-nyan' coined by Yui.
From what I can remember during the entire first series and if my memory serves me right, Azusa came only into the band several episodes later, making her someone like Ringo Starr who joined The Beatles a little bit later until he became, finally, a part of what was to become a timeless, legendary band in music history. Oftentimes I confuse her with Mio since both of them look almost alike and the two characters sport really long black hair, a little bit of getting used to has helped me train my eye in spotting who's Mio and who's Azusa. But in the level of cuteness in anime standards, I say Azusa tops them all maybe for her physical aspects in the anime spectrum... and since she's the youngest among the rest of the band members, no wonder Yui couldn't stop teasing her as 'Azu-meow' since she looks very cute and adorable like a cat or whenever Yui asks her to wear those Cat's Ears headpiece or tricks her to act like one eventually. Two season series and a movie on K-On! have passed and not even once did I get to have their toy figures, whether solo or in set... Maybe I was too preoccupied then in collecting other anime characters or for some strange reason I couldn't remember anymore. Anyways, I finally got my chance during the 6th Toy Fair held last December when I chanced upon this stall selling these gashapons of K-On! and luckily I got the last piece of Azusa Nakano's figure and bought it right away!
It would have been nice if I got the bigger, 12-inch version of Azusa but getting this gashapon of her is a start and hopefully I get to collect the rest of the K-On! characters sometime soon. I took some snapshots of the Azusa gashapon yesterday and I've uploaded some of those photos here and you can check the rest after the jump. Hope you guys like it and 'til next time, stay safe always!
(*Click on the images for larger view and more photos inside)
