Kanon is… well, originally it was a porn game. But the company’d made one fatal flaw when they released it – the story was too good. So they have since made something like 4 or 5 “clean” releases of the game which have all done phenomenally well (of course, none has ever been commercially translated into English).

A few years back, they also did a 13 episode anime. It was decent enough, if fairly mediocre. I watched it, I liked it, but not enough to have watched it a second time.

The remake makes a lot more sense than the original anime did. I’m generally very impressed. I’m also very impressed with how they dealt with the ending. I don’t think that it could have been handled any better. I’m pleased.

I probably will watch this one over again. I’ll probably even buy the dvd’s when it gets commercially released in the States.

Review? Shrug. I don’t really want to review it. I’m too emotionally fluffy right now to be objective.

But I guess that’s the review right there. The show left me happy. It’s been a while since an anime’s impacted me so strongly. Idunno, it’s not like when I finished Ai Yori Aoshi… I feel more like I did after watching Spirited Away in the theater for the first time.

Animation: 7 | Art: 9 | Characters: 7 | Emotional Attachment: 10 | Humor: 7 | Music: 8
Story: 7 (10 if you’re a fan of the genre)

Overall, it is possible to chalk this up as just another dating sim adaptation. However, Kanon is the mother of all dating games. So a lot of elements that may seem cliche now were originally made popular by this story… so you’ve got to give them a bit of leeway in that regard

They improved dramatically on the art from the game and original anime series. The characters look good, they look much more human and consistent. I’m also pleased to report a complete lack of fan service. The raciest the art gets is the short skirts (which were part of the original eroge character design).

As far as animation goes, there’s a bit of reused footage, esp since the story dwells on past events, slowly replaying them in pieces until you have the whole image. The animation is average and acceptable. Nothing amazing, but I don’t ever remember anything offensively poor quality.

The choices of what to animate, however, were very well done. So the overall visual experience bumps my score up a bit.

I liked the music. I wouldn’t mind adding the soundtrack to my collection. The characters are standard dating sim characters, but again, they’re some of the original dating sim characters. This adaptation led me to appreciate several of the minor characters much more than I used to – they have more depth in this new 24 episode series than they ever came close to in the earlier version.

The story itself isn’t terribly amazing, but the way it is told is masterful. I like the way they interwove the different stories together into one much more cohesive whole than the previous version did. Episode 23 in particular was a wild ride when I watched it last week – I actually paused halfway through to talk to speculate on which direction they were going to take with the show’s ending.

And the ending, while it could have been a bit more straightforward… is happy, and I certainly liked it better than the ending of Air. It’s a good ending that resolves loose ends and ties the story together neatly… something that is all too rare in major anime releases these days.

Overall: 8 (10 if you’re a fan of the genre)

Will it fly off of the shelves if it ever gets licensed and translated commercially? Probably not. At least, not in any exceptional numbers. It’s still a niche interest show (hence my doubts of it ever being acquired). Thankfully, I belong quite happily to the section of the populace who is happy to watch a story about sad girls in snow remembering how to be happy again