kanon (2006)
they tried making the most moe anime possible and they frankly got a pretty damn good result, don't think it's the moest of all time but it's definitively VERY moe
kanon is a romance anime based on the visual novel of the same name, the scenario was made by some random named jun maeda idk probably not famous hope their career goes ok. The plot is about this guy who moves back into a town they used to live in, and then gets involved with many different girls, which all of them have something paranormal going on.
The anime happens almost exclusively in this extremely snowy winter, which I think gives this anime a fairly unique visual look even if the acutal artstyle isn't too different to the many other vn adaptations that were common around that same timeframe.
The anime is divided into arcs, each arcs pressumibly being one of the different routes of the vn, I have not played it myself so I can't hard confirm but i'm like 95% sure it's like this. During each arc one of the girls becomes the focus. This girl is of course, incredibly fucking cute and has one or more gimmick attached to them, be it the character design, be it the speech manerism, or the paranomal situation they find themselves in. All of these gimmicks are of course not exactly things that are very commonplace on our modern society, but that just makes each girl feel more unique, and frankly, cute, because everything in this anime works to make the girls cute, even the fact that's it's snowy, they use it to give this one girl gloves and it looks super mega cute. The whole concept of a girl that is slightly socially unadapted but still very clearly sane and pure hearted, just kind of clueless about how the world operates, that by itself is cute.
this arc structure is also probably IMO the biggest problem of this anime. Since each arc is focused on one and one girl alone, it means the rest of the cast loses relevance, in this anime, you wont be seeing much of a specific girl outside of it's specific arc. Thawt means you won't be seeing the different girls intearct with each other very much, or have their stories really be interconnected.
At the end of each arc, the girl that protagonizes that arc is written off the story one way or the other, and then it moves on to the next girl. In a VN setting this does make sense, you beat the game, then you restart, and do it all over again but following a different route. Time quite literally resets to the beginning, but in the anime this is NOT the case, after you finish one route you start the next one on the same timeline, on the same playthrough, this doesn't really make much sense
This makes most of the supporting cast and the protagonist feel very static. Despite having them live through experience that carries with them very, very strong emotions, they don't really grow, because if they were to change substantially as a person, then that would mean you would have to rewrite all of the other routes to really make it consistent with the current personality of the characters. They sidestep this issue by not making the characters grow, that way they can still do a very faithful adaptation of the vn, even if this harms the acutal end product.
I feel this becomes very apparent very quickly, since most arcs are quite similar, they tackle similar topics and themes and even end in a very similar fashion, and not seeing the protagonist outlooks torwards this scenario feels painful.
The actual arcs are good, each one is well written and very emotional, but they just don't really work that well in connection with each other
I will say, the ending does manage to tie everything up in a way that feels satisfactory, but it's just a shame to have to wait until the last episode to really see something change
in general I enjoyed this anime, but yeah, I think it could have been better, placed on B rank.
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playing blacksad, generally positive feeling so far but it has a shaky foundation.
Next: kpop demon hunters
they tried making the most moe anime possible and they frankly got a pretty damn good result, don't think it's the moest of all time but it's definitively VERY moe
kanon is a romance anime based on the visual novel of the same name, the scenario was made by some random named jun maeda idk probably not famous hope their career goes ok. The plot is about this guy who moves back into a town they used to live in, and then gets involved with many different girls, which all of them have something paranormal going on.
The anime happens almost exclusively in this extremely snowy winter, which I think gives this anime a fairly unique visual look even if the acutal artstyle isn't too different to the many other vn adaptations that were common around that same timeframe.
The anime is divided into arcs, each arcs pressumibly being one of the different routes of the vn, I have not played it myself so I can't hard confirm but i'm like 95% sure it's like this. During each arc one of the girls becomes the focus. This girl is of course, incredibly fucking cute and has one or more gimmick attached to them, be it the character design, be it the speech manerism, or the paranomal situation they find themselves in. All of these gimmicks are of course not exactly things that are very commonplace on our modern society, but that just makes each girl feel more unique, and frankly, cute, because everything in this anime works to make the girls cute, even the fact that's it's snowy, they use it to give this one girl gloves and it looks super mega cute. The whole concept of a girl that is slightly socially unadapted but still very clearly sane and pure hearted, just kind of clueless about how the world operates, that by itself is cute.
this arc structure is also probably IMO the biggest problem of this anime. Since each arc is focused on one and one girl alone, it means the rest of the cast loses relevance, in this anime, you wont be seeing much of a specific girl outside of it's specific arc. Thawt means you won't be seeing the different girls intearct with each other very much, or have their stories really be interconnected.
At the end of each arc, the girl that protagonizes that arc is written off the story one way or the other, and then it moves on to the next girl. In a VN setting this does make sense, you beat the game, then you restart, and do it all over again but following a different route. Time quite literally resets to the beginning, but in the anime this is NOT the case, after you finish one route you start the next one on the same timeline, on the same playthrough, this doesn't really make much sense
This makes most of the supporting cast and the protagonist feel very static. Despite having them live through experience that carries with them very, very strong emotions, they don't really grow, because if they were to change substantially as a person, then that would mean you would have to rewrite all of the other routes to really make it consistent with the current personality of the characters. They sidestep this issue by not making the characters grow, that way they can still do a very faithful adaptation of the vn, even if this harms the acutal end product.
I feel this becomes very apparent very quickly, since most arcs are quite similar, they tackle similar topics and themes and even end in a very similar fashion, and not seeing the protagonist outlooks torwards this scenario feels painful.
The actual arcs are good, each one is well written and very emotional, but they just don't really work that well in connection with each other
I will say, the ending does manage to tie everything up in a way that feels satisfactory, but it's just a shame to have to wait until the last episode to really see something change
in general I enjoyed this anime, but yeah, I think it could have been better, placed on B rank.
-------
playing blacksad, generally positive feeling so far but it has a shaky foundation.
Next: kpop demon hunters