spoilers ahead
Best Mother Ever.
↩[LWC 58]
Because (1) I enjoy lighthearted play on words and (2) have recently started watching the series at hand. I like it, the ‘slife element is very entertaining.
Ok I had to marathon it (two days later after the previous sentence). I was pretty thrilled by the experience, and am still wallowing in its afterglow, that being the main effect of my eminent fanboyism, always getting hyped up right after something ends, not being able to produce any objective comments. But while the title of this post is a meaningless play on words, there is some difference between my point of entry as compared to IKnight’s. Some comments on his post reveal that he perhaps went in with a specific mindset. I had that problem (well it was my fault entirely) with the recently completed Kannazuki no Miko. Weirdly enough, for the past month or so I’ve been stalking blogger’s MAL lists – specifically top five anime – to see some good shows, hopefully. Therefore, initial perceptions and biases develop depending on the blogger at hand. So I’ve been planning to watch Kanon for quite some time (the 2006 remake, that is), although those initial initial were that it was yet another Key work complete with redundant elements of X, Y & Z. That is correct, to an extent, though the execution and style of each cliché is so well done as it is to cast a strange spell that empowers me to fervently write about it.
Was this technically a harem? One guy, a boatload of girls: most likely it would qualify as such. Yet I’m hesitant to call it just a harem – or at least not in a Tenchi Muyo-esque fashion. At most, there were four girls living in the same household as Yuuichi. I don’t suppose that Akiko-san counted truly as a women, a subject of the harem. Surely the atmosphere would have been lost or degraded with the presence of a father in her place, yet there wasn’t an evident incestual relationship between herself and Yuuichi. In fact, in some cases, I’d say Yuuichi was more of a father or brother figure than the somewhat obligatory available bachelor.
While Shiori can function as the “double imouto”, (as to Kaori & Yuuichi) Makoto and Nayuki’s relationship with Yuuichi is debatable. Are they both classifiable as lovers? I’m no master in Freudian thinking, but there are a few sibling relationships that work out their kinks. Kaori and Shiori, Sayuri and her brother (I forgot his name already), of course Yuuichi and Nayuki. Actually, I don’t even know what “Freudian” implies …something about mothers? Anyway, Akiko-san remarked that the further degradation of Makoto’s sentience and her subsequent cuddliness with Yuuichi made them look like lovers, but was she correct? I don’t know…there was no kissing, for one. Not to say the kiss is the be-all-end-all of love symbols, but it was reserved seemingly for Ayu alone. Despite young Yuuichi’s crush on the older, less supernatural Makoto, did that subconscious memory carry on into his adolescence, promoting fox-spirit-Makoto to the spot of lover? – or just pseudo-sister? I don’t know, but it just didn’t feel like a lover’s relationship in comparison to, say, something like Ai Yori Aoshi. Maybe the reason is evident, as Makoto, being the fox spirit manifested only to see Yuuichi or return his care, wasn’t in it for that kind of love.
Distilled Moe: 200 Proof.
I’ve read that Key excels in illustrating human relationships. I don’t know if that’s true or not, I have no basis for critique there, though what was presented I enjoyed. Enjoyment reached several heights, specifically Shiori’s birthday party, where both Kaori’s character and her seiyuu Kawasumi Ayako did, in my opinion, a superb job of playing such a timid yet mountainous struggle. Perhaps that was my favorite scene of the entire show, or else leave it to the pimpness of the ballroom waltz – all ruining effects of demon hunting aside – to make you grin like a bastard.
While subtle nuances – if those are what you wish to call them – exceed in emotive motion, the division of the arcs bothered me quite a bit. Mai’s story begins as soon as Makoto dissipates, and with her hospitalization we proceed quickly into another sister sister act (no pun intended). Sister drama quickly unfolds into dreams, comas, memories and conveniently lost headbands. I mean, it was sitting right there for seven years in some uncut patch of weeds? Damn. Yuuichi is lucky. I guess they didn’t have time to relay the story any faster, seeing as though it happened in like, a minute or something in the last episode. But I had thought the brisk pace of the stories had some kind of effect on Yuichi’s character, or that it was indicative of an element of his character. Yuuichi could either be a really cold bastard (not really) for just “shirking” off each drama (and for a normal person’s standards something on the order of fox spirits and demon hunting would be quite dramatic) as if it were nothing, or he could be quite an emotionally hardy fellow (not really) for sustaining each traumatic event one after another. I don’t know if this is some characteristic paradox or if it’s an unpleasant side effect of the rushed story. For once, I think a filler or two between each arc would have been quite needed.
This brings up another facet of Yuuichi; he may be considered a brother, but was he quite the masochist? All men are going to have some variant degree of masochism, probably, but was Yuuichi truly and sincerely concerned for the wellbeing of people or was there some kind of subconscious social obligation he was under? There was that time Makoto dropped the cat onto the moving truck, and Yuuichi went all batshit crazy on her – that’s most likely an ethical problem, not answerable by one opinion, not that “answering” it was possible in the first place.
Raving about how awesome Nayuki was is pointless, so I’ll just leave it by saying that I was never more pissed when watching an anime when Akiko-san got hit by that car.
11 Comments
I have to agree about Shiori’s birthday party – it’s my favourite scene too, I think, and probably for the same reason. Kawasumi Ayako’s performance there is one of the few pieces of voice-acting I can call to mind instantly.
This is the only anime that has actually caused me to cry. Stunningly beautiful work that keeps the viewer reeling. The ability to cause such a wide range of emotions in the viewer proves that anime is an art form.
Simply my favorite series.
IK: Yes the birthday party was pretty grand – hilarious on one hand and emotionally disturbing on the other, quite the mental triumph for Kaori.
Tenser: First Air, then Clannad, now Kanon. Air had me the closest to crying of any anime, Clannad was…..Kanon was up there, on par with Air. If not for my recent apathy (not in a good viewing mood?) then Kanon would probably have outdone Air by several orders of magnitude.
True, Yuichi himself was not particularly “pimpy”. Most of the girls are more like “I see u as a lover, but u see me as a sister” sort of thing (Probs Shiori, Mai)
Yuuichi? I could have sworn that I was watching KYON settle into a relatively relaxed lifestyle after escaping Haruhi… I kid, I kid. Kanon didn’t give the same ‘cry, darn it’ cues that AIR did, and there were some pacing issues (due to the fact that we literally went through each of the girls’ routes in one pass, barring the mutually exclusive Nayuki and Ayu routes), but it had enough going for it that, well, it worked. Worth the watch definitely, if one ignored the rough pacing of, oh, Makoto’s arc.
vin-nii: I think that a one sided romantic relation was possible, sort of evident, between Mai and Yuuichi. Maybe Yuuichi had more romantic tendencies with girls whom he had been involved with in his childhood, so Shiori is the only “new” girl. But that one definitely reeked of onii-chan instead of lover.
Myssa Rei: I was under the weird impression that Haruhi came after Kanon but it didn’t, apparently. I guess that was the order of things, considering Kyoani did both. As far as Yuuichi is the Lesser-Kyon, the origins of the characters, the Haruhi manga (was there one?) and the Key visual novel would probably be important to investigate before saying anything about the Key/Kyoani Continuum which probably does warrant future investigation…if I’m not too lazy. Strangely, I thought Makoto’s arc was the most enjoyable, probably because I wasn’t critical enough during that time, or that it consumed nearly half of the duration of the entire series.
Yuichi never really feel lover of Makoto, only friendship with pity and regrets in the final stage. These can be labeled like Pet’s love, the girl body was just an accident.
Most adaptations of eroge, dont use so many branchs in the anime version. Is just amazing how Key managed to put all togheter. It have some rough unions between histories, but more or less work.
Interestingly enough, I just watched this series a few weeks ago, because I had just finished Clannad and my friend recommended that I see Kanon. I did enjoy it, but I have to agree that the anime blazed through story arcs, and I’m not really convinced that Yuuichi goes through all these events unscathed. On the other hand, I was almost ecstatic that we didn’t have to watch Yuuichi “forget” Makoto, but she never really came back… so that was kinda pointless.
I also, wasn’t a huge fan of the girl that he chose in the end, because came off as too loli for me. Did it bother anyone else that if anything, she acted more mature as a kid? But I was a fan of Mai’s friend that went ah ha ha, and well, I guess that was too far fetched for her to win the Yuuichi sweepstakes.
When I saw the ‘spoilers ahead’ tag, I didn’t read any longer. I have no exposure whatsoever to Kanon. I think I’m going to watch it someday because …
Wait, I actually won’t. All I can say is that Kanon has cute girls, and you’re awesome, lelangir!
mareo: Perhaps the humanization of Makoto was a “mistake” or superfluous to the concept of pet love that probably wasn’t as marketable, but I was thinking that that very humanization and transformation opened up the gateway for some form of romantic love as opposed to a platonic pet love. Akiko thought so, though I think she was partly wrong, I was trying to say how Kanon (Kyoani and directors too) “tried” to “romanticize” the relationships simply for, oh, say, the “cry now!” cue? Maybe?
phil: I guess you could take each arc as its own autonomous story. If you stopped watching after Makoto disappeared, you wouldn’t really “lose” anything since its a complete story in itself.
I think Ayu was definitely “lolified”, maybe to promote Yuuichi as both lover and brother?
Sayuri’s ah ah ha’s were pretty great too, though I don’t know if she were to technically receive an arc (it’s like the exact same as Tomoyo’s [Clannad]).
Mike: You might like it, considering your H&C fetish. Don’t quote me on that after you waste 480 minutes of your life, though.
Sayuri is the true star of Kanon, dangit!
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