Kanon 2006
Plot Summary: Yuichi Aizawa returns to this city after seven years. In his childhood, he often visited it, but something happend in the past which caused him to block out his memories of the events of seven years ago. On the day after he gets settled in, he meets a girl carrying a backpack with wings on it. Her name is Tsukimiya Ayu and he begins to recall the memories he had lost.
Now I’ll be honest here, when I first started watching Kanon there was nothing that smacked me as wow! I didn’t see what the majority of the hype was about and why people were raving about it. I thought the animation was ok, but then again what Kyoto product isn’t these days? The soundtrack I though was lackluster and somewhat boring, it just didn’t feel to me like it fitted. I did however enjoy the characters from the word go, while they may have had the generic backdrop their personalities were brilliant from the start.
As time went on and I started watching more episodes the things that I didn’t like at the beginning were slowly ironed out. The animation seemed more fluid in the later episodes than the start, the overall finish and quality of the series seemed to get better as time went on. That’s not to say that it wasn’t good looking to begin with, but it just didn’t seem to stand out in the beginning. In general though, the character designs were cute and well done, plus their movements were natural. The backgrounds were actually very well done, I’ve seen images comparing the bench area (you’ll know once you watch) to the ones in real life and the layout is uncanny. There is some use of CG use in Kanon, although it’s mostly used on the Cars and some of the other nasty stuff we see.
The story was decent enough, Yuichi slowly pieces his memory together as more and more characters are brought into the mix. Each new character has it’s own story arc and they are very entertaining to watch, I couldn’t pick a favourite as I really liked each and every one.
The funny thing about Kanon is while the story is above average the characters themselves are simply amazing. I can use every superlative in the book to describe how good these characters interact with each other but I would sound like a broken record. Each individual character on their own has their strengths but when another member of the cast joins in it is viewing nirvana, They could scrap every piece of credible story for all I care but as long as Yuichi and Ayu are on the screen I would still watch Kanon and love it. The amount of care and detail that has been put into each character is breathtaking, whether it be their design, their background, the interactions with other characters it all just fits together and works. I could go into each individual character, but I’ll save that for later.
The biggest change in my opinion was the soundtrack, in the beginning it didn’t strike me as anything amazing but oh boy was I wrong. The sheer detail in choosing and performing the right piece for the scene was just breathtaking. The Piano solos in some of the episodes were delightful and I found myself watching the same piece over and over just because of the music. Also in episodes 10 and the final episode the build up to the final song was just something I will never forget, coupled with the story and characters I will always treasure those endings. The same goes for the intro and ending themes, at first they were dull and seemed out of place but now they have grown on me and honestly I couldn’t see any other song in their place.
This is just a general overview of my opinion, I really could go on for pages. 2006 has produced some of the best series I’ve seen, Kanon is by far one of the best anime in the last 5 years. Each component of the show on it’s own is good and has it’s flaws but when you put them all together to get the final product it just has this certain feel to it. The characters are believable and everyone will have their favourites, the animation is easy on the eyes and a delight to watch, couple this with a fantastic soundtrack and you get something of such a high standard that Kyoto animation is giving itself even bigger boots to fill.
Kanon gets nothing short of an A+ from me, Superb!
Screenies (nicked from Levon);
