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| 9. Avenant
It's based on a hentai dating sim game. Having heard that,
I expected very little of Kanon. Thankfully I was totally wrong. Kanon
is about a guy named Yuuichi who goes to live this his cousin and aunt because
of his parents moving to Africa. He's lived in the town 7 years before, but has
very few memories of it. As Yuuichi meets several
girls in the town his memories of them come back, bit by bit. As such, Kanon
is driven purely by it's characters and storyline - which is an exellent move.
The animation in the series is totally out of proportion, and while some may complain
about that, I loved it and I believe it suits the series very well. The music
works nicely, and is more to the emotional side. Kanon
is a realistic story, dealing more with real-life issues, and though the story
isn't 100% realism, the fantasy elements work amazingly well to aid in the storyline.
Since it's realistic, Kanon is quite a sad story - but it isn't all doom
and gloom - there are some genuinely funny moments, as well as joyful ones. In
other words, bittersweet. But perhaps "depressing"
isn't the right word to use here. "Moving" is more like it. And, dare
I say this, Kanon almost drove me to tears a few times - I give it credit for
doing this, and so well at that. There really are some great moments in this anime.
While it's true that not everyone can enjoy a (almost soppy) story like Kanon,
it made me feel just about every emotion known to man. And for that, I give this
superb show 5 stars. |
| 8. Qian
Wan  
You can easily see traces of a hentai game based plot in this
anime. The protagonist Yuichi moves into a town covered with snow, the place where
he grew up and abandoned. He meets a flock of girls who each have some relations
with him in his past. Yuichi begins to remember more of his past as the story
progresses. Sounds fair and simple? Since there
are around seven girls and one guy, don't expect a good development of romance
between Yuichi and any of the girls. The girls in Kanon all have different
attributes and each have a unique story to share and weave into the overall plot.
The character design of the Kanon is a little on the bad side. The characters
all have extremely exaggerated eyes even by anime standards. But after a few episodes,
I got used to the design and accepted it. What make this anime interesting is
the mysterious pasts that were embedded in each girl. There are some touching
scenes and some funny moments, but there really is nothing that makes this anime
stand out. In the hentai game you get to choose which girl you will end with,
but the anime took that liberty for you and presented a mini ending for each girl.
The story unfolds neatly and eventually leads to a satisfactory ending. It is
hard to say more about this anime without ruining it but if you are running out
of titles to buy, this one fits the shelf nicely. High:
Mysterious past of Yuichi keeps the story going.
Low: Character design
might disappoint some. Girls to guy ratio makes romantic development hard.
Bottom
Line: Nothing that special, but it's worth a look. |
| 7. Iodine
 
Teenaged Yuuichi comes to stay with his cousin Nayuki, and
runs into several girls who seem to know him. Having very convenient temporary
amnesia, he gets involved in their lives and their personal problems, many of
which he seems to be connected to. Much like Kokoro Library, this gentle,
quiet, and shamelessly sappy little series is looking to tug the heartstrings,
but unfortunately gets tripped up by its own good intentions. The problem is not
so much the story, that gets in its good moments despite the more extreme soap-opera
plot twists, but has more to do with the way that it is presented. The show's
hyper-cute style depicts the characters so bizarrely in both their appearance
and behavior, it's nearly impossible to reconcile them with the series' more dramatic
ambitions. Though Nayuki and the other girls are supposed to be in high school,
they frequently look and act very much like grade-school children. All of them
speak in a woozy high-pitched drawls and have monstrous eyes that take up half
of their faces. Animation is simple, as is appropriate
for a show that doesn't require any fancy pyrotechnics or action scenes. The designs
take cute beyond all reasonable limits and are completely inappropriate to the
subject matter. It's hard enough for the audience to suspend disbelief when dealing
with multiple romantic heroines who are dying, depressed, demented, or some combination
of all three, but to have them all look like warped Precious Moments figurines
on top of this is just plain silly. Kudos for a few good story ideas, but the
presentation is just too preposterous to truly enjoy. |
| 5. Olmanek
 
Based on a dating sim. no don't run away yet, it's actually
quite good. This is one of the more tragic and heart warming series out there,
the cute girls aren't actually there just to give Yuuichi (our well-intentioned
protagonist) someone, I mean something, to do, there are actual stories, yep,
stories, good ones too. A lot of the mystery of the series surrounds Yuuichi's
past life in the same town, which he slowly recalls as he interacts with the people
around him more and more. The tragic nature of the series is a lot to handle though,
the series doesn't go easy on your emotions, they're quite happy to rip you to
shreds just to make you appreciate the moment, still you'll be happy you watched
because these are some of the best most heart-warming, romantic and tragic stories
known to the anime world. |
| 4. Cross
Scars
Kanon is one of those anime that fits into the To Heart
style of things in that it's based upon a dating game and so has one guy surrounded
by lots of cute girls. However Kanon tackles things differently
from To Heart and as a result it was a lot more touching than
I expected it to be. The series focuses around Yuuichi who has returned to the
snowy town he grew up in seven years ago, strangely though Yuuichi has no memories
about the time he spent there. As Yuuichi settles back into his old town he encounters
people who help make up those missing memories but what those memories reveal
is rather startling. Any kind of anime series based
on a dating game is bound to be full of cute girls and Kanon
is no different. But Kanon makes these girls into much better
characters by using them repeatedly over the whole series. In To Heart
it generally focused upon one girl per episode and after that episode we hardly
saw the girl again. Kanon spends a lot more time showing us the
characters and it gradually develops them much better as a result. It's also nice
to see a cast which, for the most part, has original and interesting characterizations
rather than having just the stock characters you might expect from a series with
a dating sim background. In terms of story Kanon doesn't really
have much of a continuous plot running throughout the series although there are
certain threads which help maintain interest, for instance just what is it that
Ayu keeps mentioning that she has lost? So those threads are nice to keep the
series ticking over but the individual episodes themselves are good enough to
keep watching anyway. With its good set of characters
and with a tone which is at times quite downbeat Kanon makes
for a very touching series, with a couple of episodes sticking out as especially
sad ones. The last few episodes of Kanon are rather peculiar
in that the story goes off in a way which is totally unexpected and events occur
which seem far fetched when compared to all the other events of the series so
far, including even those with Mai whose real problem was an all too human one.
Although Kanon always has a charming magical aura about it the
final events did still seem a little out of place. Having said that, it didn't
at all detract from the touching nature of the events nor the quality of the series
either. |
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