The Cast of Kanon
Well, now that I’m finally done watching Kanon, I can give a review of the whole series. Just to warn you, spoilers are ahead.
Story
17-year old Yuuichi Aizawa has just returned to a town he used to visit in his childhood to stay with his cousin and his aunt. However, Yuuichi has completely forgotten anything that happened in this town after his seven year absence. His memories begin to return as he mets five girls, four of which he knew seven years ago — his cousin, Nayuki, the childish Makoto, the stoic Mai, and Ayu. Oh, and Shiori too.
Of course, the plot is a lot more complex than that, so I’ll talk about each arc individually here.
The first arc, not counting the introduction, was Makoto’s arc. Personally, I think this was the strongest of the five arcs. Shortly after the story begins, Makoto runs into Yuuichi, claiming to be angry at him for something he did in the past. Having no memories or family to speak of, Makoto stays with Yuuichi and his family. She becomes ill, though, and Yuuichi realizes who she is — the spirit of a fox he rescued years ago. He had saved the fox when it broke its leg, and had named Makoto after an older girl he had a crush on. (As a side note, here’s my interpretation of things: I think Makoto’s human form was based off of the girl Yuuichi named her after, not the other way around. It’s because he gave her the name Makoto that she looked like the other Makoto. Names have a certain power, don’t they? Anyway, I don’t think there was any circular reincarnation going on here, like I’ve heard elsewhere) Anyhow, Makoto begins to lose her ability to speak, and basically begins acting like a fox, as a price to pay for becoming human, but shortly before her death, Yuuichi is able to grant her last wish: to marry him. He gets her a bridal veil, and they go to the hill where the fox spirits live, and they pretend to get married. Right after that, she dies. As I said, I think this is the best of the five arcs. In a way, it’s basically just the story of a boy and his dog. Foxes are canines as well, and something about that basic story being presented so differently just really struck a chord with me. A/9.7
Next is Mai’s arc. This arc was pretty good for most of it, but I think it got weaker at the end when Mai was revealed to have tears that could heal injuries. I was OK with her fighting demons. I was OK with her fighting inner demons. But couldn’t they have given her a better motive? OK, her mother was sick, and then she healed her, and people thought she was a freak and they out her on TV, and she had no friends. The thing is, the whole “magic tears” thing had no lead-up or foreshadowing of any kind, and it was never mentioned again later, so it seemed kind of tacked on. Later on, when Akiko had been hit by a car, why couldn’t Mai have healed her? I know, it’s because, in the visual novel, Mai wouldn’t have been there on Nayuki’s route, but it still bothers me. C/7.3
Third was Shiori’s arc. Maybe it was because Shiori was the one girl Yuuichi had no previous connection to, but I think this arc was the weakest. I know it’s probably unreasonable of me to say this, but why can’t an ill girl have an actual illness for once, with actual effects? What, is she allergic to school? She can go stand outside in the snow and eat ice cream, but she can’t go to school? She doesn’t even cough for [insert deity here]’s sake! Don’t get me wrong, personality-wise, I like Shiori just fine. She even shows a bit of genre savvy. But her arc was problematic for me. And even though she was “sick” and her family acted like she was going to drop dead any second, she didn’t die. At the end of her arc, I thought she was going to die when she was hospitalized, but apparently she had lasted however long it was until the end of the series, when she was healed by Ayu’s wish. It’s not like I wanted her to die, but what I thought was her death didn’t feel very emotional, and I can’t figure out for the life of me why she didn’t die if she was as sick as everyone said. D+/6.9
The final arc was a combination of Nayuki’s arc, which involved her mother, Akiko, getting hit by a car, and Ayu’s arc. Unfortunately (or fortunately) Nayuki kind of gets shafted here, even with her mother in the hospital. Nayuki always was kind of boring, and it didn’t help that she didn’t really get that much screentime in the last few episodes. She does get a little bit of character development, though, which is nice. The last few episodes are really about Ayu, though, who disappears for a while and is then revealed to have fallen out of a tree seven years ago, and had been in the hospital with a coma for the past seven years. It’s unclear as to whether the series was in part a dream or hallucination on Yuuichi’s part, or if Yuuichi was with Ayu the whole time, telling Ayu about his life, as she tries to imagine it. It’s left open to interpretation, but somehow the trinket Yuuichi gave Ayu seven years ago allowed Ayu one wish. She wishes for Yuuichi’s happiness, and all of the characters who were in the hospital recover. Eventually, Ayu herself comes out of her coma, and we assume they lived happily ever after. A/9.3
On the whole, most of my complaints about Kanon are just me being anal, and I enjoyed the series a lot. Overall, I’d give it an B/8.3 for story.
Animation
What can I say, the animation was gorgeous, with lots of well painted backgrounds and no off-model animation that I noticed. Some people don’t like the art style, but eh, your milage will vary. This is as good as it gets. A+/10.0
Sound
Sound-wise, Kanon’s kind of a mixed bag. I love the opening, like the ending, and find most of the music fairly unobtrusive. At the beginning, there was a song that played when Nayuki was running that sounded like something out of a Pokemon game, and during an emotional scene near the end, synthesized music played, which I found kind inappropriate. Overall, I’d give the music a B/8.2.
The English dub of Kanon, isn’t awful, but it’s not the best dub I’ve ever heard either. I mostly listened to the Japanese dub, though, which I liked for the most part. Since, I more used to the japanese version, I think that’s why I prefer it, but there were no cringe-worthy performances in the English version. Kitagawa sounded lind of like Naruto, but I think that kind of fits his personality. The voices I didn’t like much were Ayu and Nayuki, but overall the voices were pretty good. Japanese: A-/9.0 English: B+/8.9
Overall
Overall, I enjoyed Kanon a lot, and its shortcomings are more than made up for. I’d give it a 8.9 out of 10, or an B+.
