A Serious Investigation Into Anime Guitar Prodigies: Real Or Fraud?

You ever watched anime shows like K-On!!, Bang Dream!! or Given and wondered “is it actually possible to learn Guitar that quickly?” Perhaps these shows inspired you to start playing. They make it look so fun and easy, but you’ll realize very very quickly that, it’s going to be quite a journey.

Many fans of these shows will take their growth at face value thinking that’s normal, or dismiss it by claiming they’re a musical prodigy. While I couldn’t play these songs in my first year, it did get me thinking, can anyone else? Is there any truth to this or should I just take it as fiction and needing to drive the plot forward? I figured, let’s do a thorough investigation into the timelines of these anime characters and compare them to some real musicians.

For this article, I will be focusing on Yui from K-ON!! and Mafuyu from Given.

What Makes Guitar Difficult?

For one, guitar is quite painful. When you first pick up guitar, you may say to yourself that you’ll practice everyday for an hour, but after your first minute, you’ll realize that’s not going to be possible. Our fingertips are soft and you need to press down on these thin sharp strings. You will need to endure the stinging pain for a few weeks until your calluses come in.

Next, you’ll have to learn about notes and the names of the strings as you will need to tune your guitar. There’s over 130 notes available on the instrument, and many overlap with the same pitch but with a different tone. Many have played for years but still don’t know where all the notes are on the fretboard. This is also why scales and chords can be played in various places across the neck.

Speaking of chords, even if you have memorized the shape in your head, it’s going to take a while for your hand to get used to contorting in these weird positions and it can actually be quite uncomfortable, causing a lot of cramping and wrist pain. To do chord changes quickly, it will require months of repeatition for muscle memory to kick in.

Holding a pick? It’s such a small, flat, glossy tool that is prone to slipping and falling. Just holding that right takes time. Then strumming, oh goodness. Getting your pick to glide across all these strings evenly will take some work. Because one will be so focused on just getting their chords down and having them ring out properly, strumming tends to be neglected by many early on. But one needs to get to the point where they can do up and down strokes quickly and in time with a beat.

Oh, and I haven’t even touched on barre chords, in which your whole index finger needs to lay across all 5 or 6 strings and press them down, acting like a secondary nut or a capo. Your finger is too soft and it’s not natural to keep it straight while your other 2 or 3 singers are still fretting other notes. This is one of the hardest things to learn that many beginners can’t do well within their first year….

So when I watch animes that have musicians, I like to keep an eye on their growth and technique to see if it’s realistic or not. (You can check out my ratings for musical animes in this article). If they were playing other instruments like clarinet, saxophone, or tuba, quick growth isn’t that surprising or unrealistic.

I took band class for many years in school, and many students can pick up a new instrument, produce a decent sound after a few weeks, and then start learning songs. Our books always started with beginner songs like Hot Cross Buns and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, then it would slowly increase in difficulty, covering more notes on the instrument, increasing speed, and maybe incorporating a technique or two.

But out of all the instruments I’ve picked and tried, which includes clarinet, viola, drums, harmonica, etc, the guitar is a whole different beast. It doesn’t matter how much musical background you have, because guitar is 70%+ technical.

Even if you had all the scales and chords memorized, you still won’t be able to play it well without months and months of practice…and even then, you’ll still sound unpolished. You need to be great at handling the guitar to sound good on guitar, and that itself can take years!

Look Into The Characters And Timelines

Yui From K-ON!!

In K-ON!!, Yui is a high schooler. She was pressured to join the light music club at the beginning of the school year (around March) since they needed another member and Yui had to join anything. Her only experience before this point was playing the castanets.

The band’s first performance was Fuwa Fuwa Time at the school’s festival, which tends to take place around October or November. Thus, Yui had about 6 months to learn rhythm, mostly barre chords, and a few licks to play Fuwa Fuwa Time. She did learn to sing initially, but became sick just prior to their performance.

Adding on, while Yui did come to enjoy playing guitar, she doesn’t have any strong personal motivations. She is quite ditzy and forgetful, and initially struggled to sing and play at the same time. Yui does not have a teacher nor another guitar player in the band to learn from. Mio plays the bass and can instruct her on how the guitar works, but she wouldn’t know chords or other techniques, so Yui is self learned. She may have had to create her own guitar parts too.

Mafuyu From Given

Unlike Yui, Mafuyu is very eager and driven to learn guitar as the one he possessed was given to him by a late romantic friend. He too didn’t know anything about music, but was inspired due to his friend who did play.

He too starts learning around the beginning of the school year in March, but in this case, he performs with a band before summer break, which would be early or mid June. Thus, Mafuyu had about 3 months to learn.

While he has half the time frame as Yui, he has an amazing guitarist beside him who teaches him daily, along with a very supportive band. Mafuyu is seen using guitar books, and often comes to practice with Band-Aids from playing so much.

Mafuyu does seem to have more natural talent as he sang/created the tune that became Fuyu no Hanashi. For him to play that song, he needed a good knowledge of 7th chords and barre chords, and has to play 16th beat strumming patterns at a fast speed.

My Initial Thoughts On Their Growth

YUI: Timeline isn’t too bad, but her personality makes it unbelievable

I had a few issues with both of them. In Yui’s case, she does have more time. If she was solely focused on rhythm since she started, 6 months is a decent amount of time to get a good handle on rhythm and barre chords. However, the songs can be quite fast and difficult, including string targetting and lot’s of muting, sometimes including riffs as well.

Because she is so forgetful, her growth still seems a bit fast. It does take a lot of practice to sing and play as well, so while 6 months isn’t bad, I’m also on edge. She doesn’t want to let her friend’s down but she can’t help but waste time as well.

She does seem to have perfect pitch though! If she focuses on the songs they are playing everyday, performing those songs won’t be too bad. And with the band being together for 2 years, her overall growth doesn’t seem that impossible.

MAFUYU: While he is dedicated, his song is impossible for 3 months

As for Mafuyu, 3 months really isn’t that much time at all, for anyone. As I said in my intro, it takes a good month to develop dependable calluses that allows you to play for more than 15 minutes. While Mafuyu practiced despite the pain due to his own reasons and pressure from the band, guitar still requires a lot of time to develop technique and really get those chords into muscle memory.

Many beginners stick to open chords for their first 4 or more months, and will struggle with barre chords for twice as long. The song also incorporates many barre chords, 7th chords, suspended chords that have quite a stretch. The song is also really fast and has 16th beat strumming patterns, which even I at 2 years still find too fast.

Not to mention, he sang for the first time while playing on stage. As we saw in Yui’s journey, it’s really hard to sing and play at the same time, and that alone requires months of practice. The audience did mention that his guitar playing was sloppy, but regardless, he made it through the song successfully which I don’t think anyone could do considering the complexity of the song he played. It’s not even about musical talent at that point, no one can handle a guitar that well so early into playing the instrument.

How About Other Beginners?

Of course I’m not just going to stop at my own experience and views. Everyone will learn guitar at a different pace! So I thought it would be fun to check out some guitar progress videos on Youtube and see if any of them show the same potential as Yui or Mafuyu at the 3 or 6 point mark.

Since these characters are rhythm guitarists, I decided to analyze both acoustic and electric guitarists. Do note though, that electric is a bit harder to play since muting and distortion are additional techniques required to play them well. I have checked out other videos, but they were either too short (1 month) or focused on fingerstyle.

Of course, I’m not just going to stop there. After researching Japanese music seriously the last couple years, it became very apparent that Western and Japanese music theory is quite different.

While western guitarists can survive with just basic open chords and a few keys, Japanese musicians will have to dig into barre, 7ths, and diminished chords early on if they ever want to play most of their favourite songs. For example, Lemon by Kenshi Yonezu was the #1 song in Japan for 85 weeks, the longest of any song ever. Here are the chords used in that song:

During my research, it was not uncommon at all to see chords with this many chords and even more due to secondary dominants, borrowed chords, modulation (key changes) and transition chords. Japanese music is just that complex and creative and beautiful, and that’s why I’m so intrigued with it!

Thus, it wouldn’t surprise me if Japanese music learners take on these kinds of chords early on. I used my limited Japanese skills to find a few progress videos from Japanese guitarists to analyze as well.

Conclusion

While anime definitely needs to pick up the pace due to plot, and while it may definitely have a lot of realistic factors, don’t always take their growth too seriously or think you can learn as quickly as them.

I did think their growth and timeline seemed impossible since I made my Musician Ranks Anime Musicians article months back, and I initially wrote this article in the direction that they were frauds. However, I had to take a step back and not just jump to conclusions based on my own experiences as a beginner guitarist. Just cause it seemed unrealistic for me, doesn’t mean it’s unrealistic for someone else…

However, after double checking some facts from the show and looking into other guitarist’s progress videos, I have yet to see anyone who I felt could take on Mafuyu or Yui’s song in their respective timelines. Even if one is a musical genius, just being able to play the guitar, build calluses, coordinate your hands, develop muscle memory, work on strumming and timing, it all takes months and months of training, years and years even.

But hey, I still think it’s possible. If someone was aiming to play these kinds of songs and were focused on mastering these chords and strumming at a faster pace, who knows! Heck, if you’re not a guitarist right now and want to prove that it’s possible, I definitely challenge you! I would even feature on my blog and socials because it would be really cool to see a real life person take on what they did in the same time. I’m not even being sarcastic right now.

Anyways, that’s all from Detective Nostalgia. I hope this article has answered some of your questions or gave you some insight into what guitar is really like and just how ‘talented’ these anime musicians have to be to play the way they do. And as a late disclaimer, I love these two characters. I’ve rewatched K-On! more than once and it’s what pushed me to try to bring my band dream to life. Given is also one of my top band animes, and I’m in love with the soundtrack. Excited for season 2!

Definitely check out my article where I rank music animes and maybe leave a comment if you have an idea for another musical analysis like this one ^_^

And if you’re interested in learning more vocabulary and kanji so you can watch anime and dramas, read manga, sing J-pop at karaoke, or play raw Japanese video games, definitely check out my Japanese Study Guide!