Anime: Kanon (2006)

I’ve always loved the concept of visual novels. Interactive and graphic novels accompanied by background music and voice acting… Sounds like a good way to create engaging stories! However, in practice, the vast majority of these “novels” are crappy dating simulators with a heckin lot of sexual content where a self-insert main character – who is in most of the cases a high school student, has to choose among several girls which one he wants to “have a baby” with by picking certain dialogue options and making certain choices. Indeed, most visual novels are nothing more than a “marketplace of anime girls” where the player picks the girl according to his fetishes and favourite archetypes. It doesn’t mean that good visual novels don’t exist. In fact, there are a quite a number of very interesting and original ones such as Steins;Gate, Chaos;Child, Umineko no Naku Koro ni and G-senjou no Maou to name a few. But Kanon isn’t one of them. It is yet another sappy romance story, though more dramatic than usual, but this time the anime adaptation is made by Kyoto Animation

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The eyes

Let’s begin this review by something that may seem like a mere detail, but is, in my opinion, of high importance. Female characters’ eyes in this anime are ridiculously big. Granted, eyes were always bigger in anime than in reality or than in your average western cartoon. Yes, I am aware that exaggerating the eyes’ size is a clever technique that makes it easier to convey the characters’ emotions, that this technique was made popular long ago by Osamu Tezuka and that it has been used in the medium for decades. Yes, it is good that the viewers’ attention is focused on the emotions of the characters rather than on their unrealistically big breasts. Yes, I know that it is a way to make the female characters cuter. However there is a difference between cuteness and the characters looking like goddamn insects. There is a difference between conveying emotions easily and the eyes looking like some of sort of portal to another dimension, like a black hole taking up more than 25% of the characters’ faces and that sucks your soul out of your body. The result of this weird eye design is that the mouth is way too close to the eyes, which makes most of the face designs very unsettling.

It starts out okay

The beginning was pretty fine. The main character discovers his new school and the show introduces you to the main girls. There are some comedy elements, which are really improved by the main character’s voice actor. But this anime is no comedy, and the show soon dives into each girl’s background, personal problems and traumas.

The story is standard visual novel stuff

The main problem with most visual novels is that they’re separated in several “routes” or chapters – one for each girl. In a visual novel it doesn’t feel weird at all to focus on only one girl, since it is the player / reader that triggers the beginning of a girl-specific chapter by making certain choices. Kanon tries to glue all the chapters together in the most boring, unoriginal and predictable way, and the result can be summed up by this: let’s make MC talk to this girl A, then girl B, then girl C, then girl D, then girl E, now focus on girl A, finish A’s story arc, then make MC talk to girl B, then C, then D, then E, then focus on girl B and finish her arc, then repeat the process until all of the girls’ problems have been solved by generic visual novel protagonist #214104. Once the shows enters a girl’s story arc, there is little interaction with the rest of the characters, and once the story arc is finished, the plot either conveniently makes the girl disappears or turns her into a useless secondary character.

For some unknown reason, all characters have amnesia

The main character and some of the girls have lost significant parts of their memory and the recovery of their forgotten memories justifies most of the plot progression. It is however never explained how and why these memory losses have occurred. The show does make significant use of supernatural elements, but the amnesia part is never explained. This also means that the entire show is plagued with useless flashbacks, where we see the main character and one of the girls when they were children. These flashbacks are probably the most irritating moments of the show, as they consist in children love stories, childhood promises, sappy dialogues delivered by high-pitched voices, children crying, and the like. Who the hell even enjoys watching these?

The female characters are utterly irritating

There are 5 main girls, and 3 of them act like 7 year old children. The noises these creatures produce are particularly infuriating: “Aguu~”, “Nyuu~”, “Auu~”, “Unyuu~”, “Uuu~”. They also end their sentences with exaggerated and high-pitched neeeee’s and yoooo’s. They are supposed to be high school students but are childish to such a point it becomes ridiculous, here’s a typical example:“OH MY GOD ITS FRICKIN SNOWING WOAAAAAAAAH MAMA!! *overly happy anime girl noises*” or the classic “WOAAAAAH THATS FOOD CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS??? ITS FRICKIN FOOD AAAAAAAH!!!!!”. Then you have the usual unoriginal anime tropes and cliches such as the bad cooking, the clumsy girl, the dumb girl, et cetera. Then you also have the supposedly cute elements like a girl sleeping, talking and eating at the same time, making weird noises when eating – because that’s very quirky and cute, apparently. Cuteness in an anime is like sugar, if you eat too much of it you get diabetes, and diabetes isn’t a very nice thing to have.

To sum up, the show tries so hard to make the girls moe it’s infuriating.

Cuteness before personality

The show tries to make you get attached to the girls by making them overly cute, because it thinks cuteness is more important that the characters’ personality or background – that’s very wrong. Not only is it a mistake to concentrate all the effort on the moe side rather than on the personality, it is also a mistake to make them more moe than necessary because it makes the characters insufferable, which defeats the whole purpose of it (making the characters likeable). By the time the more serious part of the series starts the viewer is supposed to like the characters so that they can enjoy the drama, but since most of the characters were made unbearable by the first episodes, the viewer doesn’t give a shit about them and remains indifferent.

Romance between a child and a high school student and other creepy stuff

You read that right. The main character has a romance with a 10 year old child.

Don’t tell me it’s acceptable because she is in a coma, because that makes no sense as she would still grow up, and that doesn’t even excuse anything since she still looks like a child. So towards the end of the series you get to enjoy some “wholesome 100” moments like a 17 year old high school student kissing a little child on the lips. By the way, she also has a children’s backpack with fake little wings on it during that scene, which makes the whole thing even more creepy. If you enjoy watching this type of thing, you are a creep with pedophile tendencies and you need to see a doctor. Other less creepy (but still questionable) stuff involves the main character “marrying” a fox girl that kind of acts like a child.

Other annoying elements

Kanon includes one of the most exaggerated and dumb childhood traumas ever seen in the medium. The trauma boils down to this:

Main character is sad. Girl E (Minase Nayuki) tries to comfort him with a snow bunny she made. He gets angry and breaks it.

That’s it. That’s the trauma.

Towards the end of the series, the plot writers must have realized that the girl mentioned earlier didn’t had her very serious and dramatic chapter yet, so they had to come up with something. Here’s the result in a nutshell:

Girl E (aka Minase Nayuki) wants a cake. As a consequence, Girl E’s okaa-san (TL note: okaa-san means mum) leaves the house to buy a cake. Enters two CGI cars. CGI cars crash into each other and Girl E’s mother (aka Minase Nayuki’s okaa-san (TL note: aka means “also know as”)) is caught in the accident and gets hit by CGI car. She is sent to the hospital. Girl E (aka 水瀬名雪 (TL note: 水瀬名雪 means Minase Nayuki)) feels guilty because she is the one who asked for a cake. She locks herself in her room and stays in the corner in fetal position.

That’s the chapter. Oh, and by the way the mother is okay. It’s not like she got run over by a car going at full speed or anything. Oh, and she’s also a soulless doll whose only purpose in life is buying groceries and cooking food – and getting hit by a CGI car to help girl E’s character development. Did I also mention she and her daughter looks like clones of each other? They have almost the same hair color, the same haircut and the same face design.

Girl B

Mai’s chapter was easily the least bad, mostly because Mai doesn’t torture the viewer by making insufferable high-pitched noises every ten seconds. The chapter isn’t centered on her only, but also on her relationship with Sayuri, so the chapter is less boring than just “let’s focus on girl B”. The comical elements also made it more entertaining and easy to watch. There are some fight scenes which are incredibly well done for this type of anime.

Production-wise, it’s excellent

As expected from Kyoto Animation, the visuals are of high quality. Hard to think that this anime was made in 2006. It could be released today and still be one of the best in terms of animation. The backgrounds are extremely detailed, same for background characters. The school building, for example, has a very nice architecture, and I spent more time staring at it than paying attention to the story. Even the inside of the building is very detailed, it isn’t just your generic anime school building with basic colored walls and classrooms. The shading and lighting effects are particularly well done. Eyes excluded, the characters design are very nice and a lot of effort was put in the girls’ hair. However, the main character is generic and ugly. You have seen this character dozens of times, and only his voice-acting saves him from being utter shit. Sound-wise, the background music is pretty good and fulfills its purpose, and even if it sounds like your average visual novel BGM, it fits the atmosphere of the show. The voice-acting is well done if you forget about the god awful noises I mentioned earlier. The opening is good, both in terms of animation and music, and fits the mood of the anime. The ending song is good too, pretty catchy and more cheerful than the opening.

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Conclusion

To conclude, Kanon is a cheesy romance story with average characters and a bad visual novel plot, with only Mai’s chapter being somewhat good. The animation, art, music and voice-acting couldn’t manage to make it enjoyable, despite their high-quality, as the show is plagued with awful mistakes like infuriating anime girl noises, children romance, moe overload and other stuff that makes you want to jump out of the window. Overall it’s not the worst visual novel adaptation I’ve seen, and the excellent animation made it less painful to watch, but it’s not a good show.

Kanon is about a mysterious town where a guy named Yuichi (not surprisingly with memory loss) meets lots of girls and eventually recovers what he lost when he last left the city.

Coming into this after Air, I had very high expectations for this show. And having finished it in three days, I must say that I'm very impressed. Kyoto Animation, Key, and the voice cast all did a superior job at making this show among the top in my list.

Animation:
The animation is gorgeous. For those who have seen Air TV, think that but now in a winter wonderland. The character drawings are similar to that in Air (really wide eyes) and backgrounds were given great detail and color. Almost realistic enough to make me want a jacket and a cup of hot chocolate.

Sound:
Personally, I found AIR's soundtrack better, but this is still top notch stuff. The sound effects (winter) combine with the animation flawlessly. The actual voice acting cast is outstanding in includes some notables. Yuichi (Tomokazu Sugita from the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Chobits) does an amazing job at livening up the show and you can't get enough of Ayu (Yui Horie from ... way too many good animes), Uguu!.

Story:
For those who have seen Air, think the same thing with more girls, more inter-relations, and more mysticism. There are many similar themes from Air including dreams, wings, and the importance of a family, oh and magic too. The plot is done in a similar fashion to Air with an introductory arc followed by each of the girls having their own arc building up to the "main" female character. There are many perplexing and unanswered questions at the beginning of the show (what dream?) and by the end a lot of those are resolved in a very satisfying way. However, certain questions (as in Air) are left unanswered for the user to ponder on. Yes, this show requires deep thinking to understand all the subtleties so avoid this if you just want a light, humorous harem anime. There are definitely moments of intense tension which typically occur at the end of an episode, which promotes a habit of chaining.

Character:
Each character is well developed and possesses unique traits (some of which are very cute). Yuichi has memory loss from the last time he visited the city (it becomes clear why by the end) and meets various girls who seem to remember him (and apparently like him). His cousin Nayuki is very cute in how she appears like " -_- " all the time due to sleeping. Yuichi's humor and wit work together with the elements of the plot to make this a truly outstanding work. If anything, I would have liked a bit more growth for the main character other than recovering memories.

Value:
There are many philosophical themes brought up by this show. This combined with a superb cast and crisp animation make for an unbeatable anime. All the themes are well integrated with the plot and by the end everything becomes clear. This series deserved a rewatch to pick up on more humor or subtleties, which Key is so good at hiding. Overall this is definitely one of my top picks.

Kanon (2006)

This is remake of Kanon from year 2002. It has more episodes than the previous version had, so it gives more time for each character’s story. I was looking forward to this for some time, because I heard many good comments on it.
After I watched it, I was so fascinated that I decided to write review about it.

Animation[/b]
There is nothing to complain about animation. Kyoto Animation did the work perfectly as expected of them. Every detail is drawn very well and with care. There is nothing like making it more simple to draw. Every place, every object, every building is done properly. I like Kyoto Animation style very much and I haven’t seen any anime from them which wouldn’t be drawn superbly.
The characters don’t look similar, except from blood relatives, but in that case, it should be like that. And big plus is that characters change their clothes.
None of the characters has extravagant color of hair. Three characters have blue hair, but I don’t count this color as extravagant.
I can’t give any less than 10/10 points for animation.

Sound[/b]
I’ll start with opening. When I heard it first time, I didn’t like it too much. It seemed far too simple to me. Nothing amazing. But as soon as I got dragged to the story, I realised that any other opening couldn’t suit more to it than this one does.
On the other hand, the ending doesn’t suit to Kanon too much. After you get emotionally drained off, you are withdrawn from that feeling by happy-sounding ending. I found it very unpleasent, but at least, the ending suits to the last episode.
Seiyuus were chosen excellently. Their voices really go well with the characters. Seiyuus are same as in the previous version of Kanon, but with one exception. Yuuichi, the male hero has different seiyuu and it is much better in my opinion.
The whole series is accompanied by nicely fitting music and Palchelbel’s Canon in D Dur is used few times.
Overall, sound is great, but I can’t give it 10 because of the ending. 9/10

Story[/b]
Kanon has very strong story. It starts when Yuuichi is coming to the hometown of his cousin after 7 years since his last visit. He’s going to attend the same school as she. He meets with some girls and befriends with them. There is something special about few of them and this is to be gradually revealed. The storylines of each girl blends together, so you don’t know about which girl are you going to learn something new next.
While Yuuichi is getting to know the girls better, he is trying to help every of them with their problems.
The stories of each girl differ from each other so you won’t get bored by the same stories. If you aren’t some kind of emotionless cold-hearted guy, you will be touched by it.
I like the story very much and I was very shocked few times when some unpredictable things happened. For me, it was very touching anime, that I enjoyed to the climax. I understand those people who shed tears on this and I’m one of them as well.
Kanon gets full points for the story from me. 10/10

Characters[/b]
The characters are amazing. Every one of them has own way of acting. You will definitely find a girl you’ll like, or you’ll just like every girl in Kanon. It definitely isn’t something hard. I shouldn’t forget on girls that are eagerly waiting for boys in this anime. Maybe you’ll be little disappointed, but there are only three boys that get to talk and one of them says about 10 sentences or so. Nevertheless, the male hero, Yuuichi, is a type of man you’d like to have as a friend, boyfriend or any other close relationship. He is someone you can definitely count on and from time to time he says some humorous things.
Some of the girls say cute things, like uguu~ , nyuu~ or auu~ so if you don’t like that kind of stuff, it will bother you a lot. I say lot, because you’ll hear it very often.
Almost every girl has some favorite thing or some habit. You could say it will pall after some time and become boring watching them do that things, but I don’t think so. It’s enjoyable every time.
I won’t say any more about the characters, because I don’t want to spoil too much. I’m giving 10/10

Value[/b]
Well, Kanon is definitely great anime. It isn’t just some stupid thing and it isn’t something that is far too common and similar to many other anime.
You can watch it again and again and you will still enjoy it. I would bet my own grandpa’s life on it (Actually, he’s already dead XD).
Value deserves 10/10

Enjoyment[/b]
As you have surely found out already, I enjoyed Kanon very much and I will definitely watch it again some day. I won’t waste any more words on saying how much I like it and I’ll just give it the highest points. 10/10

In summary, I strongly recommend you this anime, if you like drama, tragedy, romance anime or just excellent animation. I recommend this anime for everyone who has at least little warm in heart and can feel the pain and despair of others.

Kanon is possibly my favorite romance anime ever. It's also among the best comedies. By this, I mean that it is an excellent romance series that also has moments of of pure hilarity. They work well together.

Animation:
The animation quality is incredibly high. There are few series that even approach the beauty of this series. Most of them are also by Kyoto Animation. The character designs heavily tend toward moe, which works well.

Sound:
Excellent voice acting all around, and the music fits well.

Story:
The story is excellent. The only real problem is that a couple of the arcs go on a bit longer than is ideal.

Character:
The characters are all likable and relatively deep. There's a fair amount of variety in them, so it usually doesn't get boring.

Animation we can say 9.5
~ This is the strongest part of the series. Beautifully animated scenes, you can feel the effect of the animation, the nature, the snow and how it is falling, nicely animated characters and their respective movements are all nicely done... Very very realistic when it comes to BG's....



Sound - can say nicely done but not that epic 9/10

Let's divide it to several categories...

BGM
- Familiar w/ Air? you can hear some bgm's from that anime again. BGM's match the mood perfectly, when it's drama, action nor comedy their suited in every scenes they've shown.

OP/ED
- If you watched the 1st Kanon you will be familiar to these 2. The op is a dramatic theme song so for those who'll like catchy and energetic song this is not right for you instead you will most likely the ed song that is much better IMO and also catchy...

Seiyuu/VA
- uguu~ surely Ayu's voice is nicely done, the cute, little taiyaki lover is nicely done by it's seiyuu. Yuiichi that is voiced by the prankly seiyuu of Kyon is also nicely done just like how he did to Kyon in the anime Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. For the other characters they're all nicely done by their respective seiyuu and their suited based on what is the characters characteristics...



Story is rated as 9.5/10 ...Very well storyline, the timeline is nicely divided for each character so that their own arc/story will be told and shown nicely.

~ The second strength of the series.. The story's genre is drama/romance/ and fantasy...

Drama ~ Nice and sad... you can relate to the characters who is in a sad situation meaning that is well done...

Romance ~ revolving around the other characters you can basically find romance on the 2 main chars. Ayu and Yuuichi in terms of romance you can say it's nice and memorable and after finishing it you'll just say whew that was a superb story...

in Fantasy ~ the mixture of drama/romance/school-life and fantasy are all done well adding the effect of animation you'll say that this is a nice fantasy anime.



Character rated as 9/10
Each character had their own unique characteristics...

From the lively Ayu... to the silent and deadly Mai... to the... cute and crazy Makoto... to the kind and charming Shiori... and to the sleepyhead Nayuki

All are nicely shown and develop to their most realistic self. The characters can be compare to yourself in terms of realistically done.

Characters are all likeable, cute, funny, charming and beautiful you can choose from several characters whom you like most since they're significance is different from each other meaning they're not the same and have different attitudes and characteristics.

Even minor characters are also likeable ^_^



Value 8/10 since almost all anime can be weakened as time goes on...

Collectors wise you must achieve this anime. In terms of storyline, animation and other aspects this one is surely a collector's choice... Some scenes are unforgettable and surely memorable...



Enjoyment 10/10 yeah I surely enjoyed it a lot after watching it. You can feel happy and relax based on the different views and scenes, you can feel sad and dramatic when the mood of the scenes goes sad and some scenes are lightly comedic but nicely done all in all it's surely enjoyable...

I had to write this review, because I started watching this anime based on other reviews. I'd like state that I mostly watch action anime, but I have no trouble dealing with other genres. And I watched other romance and drama animes and liked them. But watching this anime proved to be a suffering experience. This also motivated me to write this review.

Animation:
Animation of this anime is pretty decent. Good graphics and detail. Effects are also good. More or less graphics fits the story. Charachters are also drawn good. This is one of the best points of this anime.

Sound:
Music and sounds are also decent. Maybe the characters voices are a little high pitched. Some of the voices bothered me soo much that I had to stop watching anime for a while. Especially the girls voices with their constant "Nyuu", "Auuu", "Uguu" expressions which didn't fit in a drama anime at all. Really got on my nerves.

Story:
Story has a good base and at first it sucks you in. But then it just looses itself at the first 10 episodes or so. At times it seemed the creators threw in tragedies just to keep the story somewhat interesting and avoid the main plot. Ok tragedies aren't logical, but in this case they just seem to be there to avoid developing the story further. And side stories are also illogical. Like the story of Sawari Makoto. I couldn't make out what the story was about anyway. And again I had the feeling that side stories were there just because the creators were searching for some idea what to do next. The side stories don't have an ending, they just go away like they came. In the end creators tried to connect all the stories or at least the characters into one, but failed miserably. Somehow authors also tried to do a comic reliefs, which are funny sometimes, but those moments are rare. And also they try to make the setting cute by making girl character say stuff like "Auuu" or putting cute cats into anime. This was really the most suffering part for me...putting cute cats into anime for no reason whatsoever.

Characters:
There is basically just the main character Yuuichi, all other charachters don't develop and more or less stay the same. In the anime there are mostly girl characters. And they are showed as these crying creatures which Yuuichi tries to save or comfort. Also they try to be cute at times by doing something totaly girly.

Value:
This anime has no value for me. I would never watch it again, even at gunpoint. I barely made it out alive by watching it once, I'd never repeat the same mistake again.

Enjoyment:
Like I stated in the beginning I suffered watching this anime. Until now I didn't think there can be too much drama, but this anime proved me wrong.

Final notes:
Unless you're a real tragedy/drama fanatic, I would suggest to stay away from this anime. It has its funny moments but they are seldom. And the cute stuff (girl saying "Auuu" or "Nyuu" and cute little cats) just doesn't go well with drama...really. Although the anime has ending, the story just looses itself in other pointless side stories. The best description for this anime would be japanese expression mendokusai(bothersome).