Kanon 2006

2021.07.25 Out of all the things to review from 2006, somehow I haven't chosen Sonic 06 (this time). That's 'cause life is full of surprises. It was also, at some point, full of sad anime about sad girls (sourced from likely dubious games). So here I am reviewing the first in that genre I've watched -- Kanon 2006. And there's your faux em dash.

Putting a caption here makes this look like a real review, but it's not.

It's at this point that I take the remote like Adam Sandler in Click and completely skip the summary because (fanfiction.net voice) I suck at summaries. Here are the ANN and MAL entries if you're aching for context.

Sad Girls in the Snow

Do you like tables? Of course you do, it's 1999 somewhere. This one exhibits how I felt about the characters when Kanon 2006 first aired and how that's changed today. This is mostly in arc order, except I'm not sure if Nayuki actually had an arc.

chara	2006	Rewatch
Makoto	funniest girl, saddest arc	mostly annoying
Mai	best girl, cool and edgy	mostly frustrating
Shiori	i hate her	well she's not annoying. outfit is very cute.
Nayuki	i hate her	shes ok. hair and color scheme are cute. her crush on her cousin is not for me tho.
Ayu	also best girl	shes fine

The Arcs

Despite the girls being mostly annoying, frustrating, or both...

• Makoto still the saddest arc
• Mai there's gotta be a way to turn up the sadness here. i don't think the healing powers were even necessary x:
• Shiori her arc did not definitively end compared to the first two. please let us see her awful yuuichi fanart.
• Nayuki how could you be so arcless
• Ayu first kiss scene apropos of nothing. i like how fantastical it was that she wore the headband yuuichi pretended he gave her to fucking cope. the magic.

Amnesia

I propose we rename Kanon to Amnesia, because there's a whole lot of it. Thematically, I get it, but I'm also allowed to feel kinda tired of the trope. This would change the story a lot, but I wonder if in another world it would have been possible to keep the amnesia trope to only Ayu's arc. I'm asking a lot, I know.

The Jams

• I like this soundtrack. I'm going to download it and cry to it every day. Going right on my winter playlist with the likes of Fall Out Boy's Yule Shoot Your Eye Out.
• Why did they use the least hype cut of Last Regrets as the OP? Sure, listening to the full version, the less intense beginning makes you appreciate when it picks up.
• I remember a time when the fans disowned the rap sample (Female Rap 2 from Masterbits' Rhapsody sample pack) in the ED, Kaze no Tadori Tsuku Basho. I'm here to say 15 years later that you are all wrong. DDR fans know (this rap is used in at least 5 songs.)

The lyrical genius of "Funky sister girl!"

So who is best girl?

• Tomokazu Sugita, of course. Yuuichi is an actual saint for extending his kindness to these annoying girls. Imagine being a nice person. Imagine the importance of platonic relationships.
• No qualms with Yuuichi ending up with Ayu (aside from a rushed confession scene). My favorite as a character, not as who Yuuichi should end up with, might be Shiori now because she was the least annoying.

2002?

There's a 2002 anime. I've seen a few eps now. Those chins... I don't like Yuuichi in this. Shitty, whiny boy. 2006 was a glow up for him. We'll see if I go through with watching it all.

I could fit all the lyrics to the theme song on that chin.

The Anti-Conclusion

Really these are final thoughts and things that didn't fit anywhere else.

• I actually didn't hate my rewatch of Kanon 2006, I just have fun nitpicking things and thinking about how they can be improved. It's not the best but I still enjoyed it. For a few days I got to pretend it was the winter of 2006 when I gave no fucks and the only things I cared about were oekaki boards and making cute Gaia avatars. Thank you, Kanon.
• This was probably the first anime where I remember being impressed by the dramatic lighting.
• Since it's the first in its genre I saw, Kanon set some sort of expectations for it. AIR was boring; Clannad made me cry for real, and was my favorite at the time (maybe a rewatch is in order...); Angel Beats was awful (to everyone who made us watch this in anime club back in like 2013... I voted for Bebop); I never bothered with the rest.
• Check out this anime if you want to feel sad for a little bit and can overlook the uguu's and auuu's. I know you were waiting for that.

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