Kanon 2006 (*SPOILERS*)

There will be SPOILERS in this, so you are warned. ^_^

Stretch said:

As funny as it is at times, I'm getting impatient for something major to happen. Mai continues to be on the lookout for demons, but none appear; what's-her-name continues to hang around the school, even though she's supposed to be sick; and so on. Should I be on the lookout for subtle clues? Surely this will be a 26-episode series, otherwise how can it afford to move along so slowly? The audio/subtitle synchronization problem of the fansub seems to have been fixed.

Based on my experience with the original Kanon, I remember the first half of that 13-episode series being rather slow and it almost had me quit. But then the 2nd-half of the series was a real kick in the teeth and was absolutely worth the slowness of the begining. So you are experiencing some of that, but I do admit that episode 6 of K6 was mostly worthless except for seeing Ayu and Yuuichi date.

As to clues, I think Devil Doll will agree with me in that we fans of K2 cannot point out the clues to any great extent lest we spoil it for you. Seriously, the amazing thing about the original was all these things that didn't seem like much turned out to be clues.

SO, I will tell you to pay attention to little things. Remember that everything starts with Yuuichi having spent time in the town as a kid but doesn't remember much about that time. The characters that have the most clues given about them are Makoto and Ayu (if that helps). ^_^;;;

I agree too! Keep the mystery going.... NO SPOILERS or hints...

Well I put SPOILERS in the topic in case anyone wants to discussed the episodes that have aired. ^_^

KICK! .. KICK! .. BAD ANB!! Now pls go to your corner!

I fully agree with ANB about the second half of Kanon being a rollercoaster - I like animes of this style very much, be that Video Girl Ai, Haibane Renmei, Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu or Lamune. The schema of setting up the characters and their relations, then revealing who they actually are and/or which issues they have may be generic but if it's done well it will be thrilling every time again.

I will keep my episode reviews as cryptic as possible but I'd actually like to discuss certain aspects of the series in detail (which would then spoil a lot of the forthcoming surprises), thus I consider this thread being tagged as "SPOILERISH" a good idea. Which means that Stretch should rather read the episode reviews than this thread... as for the clues in K6: Try taking as many lines as possible in a literal sense, and you'll be surprised where that might lead you.




Now onto the SPOILERS: (close your eyes NOW, Stretch ;-):

As for the issue of Amano (let's continue the episode 7 discussion here), AFAIR she didn't have a direct connection with that very Makoto, she only experienced something similar to what Yuuichi will have to go through, so she knows what's ahead of the boy. (Unfortunately the manga is a lot less specific than even K2.)

It is very likely that Yuuichi's eyes about Mai are going to be opened later (after all we missed the whole background story of Mai in K2 while it is explained in the game IIRC) but I considered the K2 version of Mai's appearance (with the BANG! effect of the very first cliffhanger, Yuuichi's first nightly visit at school) outstanding, it was one of the reasons that made me love K2 so much. And they wasted this wonderful effect in K6, which is kind of sad IMHO.

Mai knowing where to find Makoto is indeed different than in K2. The question is which attitude Mai has to that issue. Does she automatically treat it as her own problem (which she did in K2), then knowing about Makoto would be strange (it means that Mai must have read some literature about the subject, i. e. made systematic research like Amano did) on top of knowing who Makoto is (and I then wondered why we need two characters in K6 who both have done this specific reseach). The K6 version looks more like Mai accepts her issue in a broader sense, i. e. tries to protect others during the process; she's more like a Miko in K6 which is a new idea compared to K2.

I'd forgotten that Amano, being a kitsune as well, only watched Makoto knowing they were "kin" if you will.

You're point about Mai being like a miko in K6 is well taken. However, I see her more like Motoko from Love Hina or Se-chan from Negima! rather than a true miko. Both of those characters were swordwomen who also have the power to exorcise evil spirits (one would assume everything from youkai to yuurei). I looked for the Japanese term for this type of character, but I didn't come up with one at the moment (I'm sure I could given more time).

Anyway, Mai does appear to recognize Makoto as kitsune. However, since Mai seems to be on guard for other threats, she may see Makoto as a non-evil entity and as such not a threat. She may also see that Yuuichi is not just a normal human and that is what leads her to put him "on the path" if you will.

Well, that's just me allowing my mind to wander. I'm REALLY hoping that once the Makoto story is resolved (though I hope she's not forgotten after her story is resolved) that we'll get to see the things Mai is fighting.

IIRC Amano isn't a kitsune (if she were one why wouldn't she have the same problem as Makoto?) but she knew a kitsune and had the same relation to 'it' as Yuuichi to Makoto.

Yes, Motoko is an excellent comparison for K6-Mai. Pondering about what she knows and what she doesn't is so crucial for K6 because we have to take into consideration how much Mai knows about the origin of her own issue, and about her own connection with Yuuichi. In K2 it is clear that Mai doesn't know the origin of her issue until Yuuichi intervenes, but it is never resolved how much she remembers about her own childhood (other than feeling sabishii), which is exactly what I hope to be more clear in K6.

Man, it has been a while since I've seen K2. For some reason, I was thinking the fox Yuuichi and Makoto ran into on the way home from the hill was Amano. Anyway, forgive my memory lapses. I wonder why I thought she was a kitsune. I think the K2 Special where Amano is sitting on the hill and Makoto mysteriously appeared and sat by her made me think that Amano was in fact a kitsune.

Episode 8: The most striking change compared to K2 was the use of kiseki at this early stage, and in a different situation - looks like we'll get some more connections between the different cases this time (there'll be at least three of these in this series now).

Eh, correction: Four kiseki this time (Makoto, Shiori, Akiko, and Nayuki's discovery in the final episode, although the latter may not be called like that).

By kiseki, I'm guessing you mean "miracle, wonder, marvel" right? I hope you are right about the linkage between cases because that will keep the girls from being completely forgotten when their stories are resolved as happened in K2.

I'm guessing that Mai's knowing about Amano shows that she does have the special ability to see "beyond" the surface of people, even if she doesn't actually know how she sees these things.

Since Makoto's box didn't show up in her introduction, I'm guessing that the blanket will be used instead at the end of her story-arc.

As for episode 8, maybe it was knowing what was coming down the road, but I found myself on the fringe of emotion as the episode came to an end. I wasn't sure I liked Yuuichi's acceptance of whom Makoto really is, but I re-watched the episode and on 2nd view, I realized that he most likely knew from the first flashback but from then until his last meeting with Amano, he really tried to deny the truth. That's understandable in a logical world. Now I hope that this revelation combined with the resolution of the Makoto arc not only opens Yuuichi's eyes, but makes him a better character to deal with the other girls. I feel confident that this will be the case.

I'm not quite sure whether the wonders are to be used for connecting the stories. Then again there was this line "I wonder what it is that so many people in this town have forgotten their past" (or something like this), which gave us hope for one common explanation of all these miracles. Wouldn't it be nice to learn at the end that all the events weren't just random but this "town of snow" has something magic in itself, just like Hinata-sou (as explained during Love Hina Again)?

Mai's knowing about Makoto's nature is exactly what makes her more of a miko this time. Note how different the nature of the kitsune and Mai's demons were in K2: They had practically nothing in common (being a mystic/cultural element vs. a psychological issue - or should we assume that Mai isn't human because of that ability or hers?), that's why it took Yuuichi so long to notice where these demons came from. And K6, not letting the demons be visible to Yuuichi (and the audience) in the first place and thus even more indicating they're just Mai's imagination (making her a freak instead of a miko - more like she was treated by her fellows at school in K2, she's much less of an outcast in K6 so far), gives us even less reason to assume they have anything in common with Makoto. I'm not too happy with how Mai's case is being handled here - it lacks consistency in my eyes. The more Mai knows about Makoto, the more should Makoto be like those demons - which is impossible given the nature of these demons as we know from Mai's story. Thus letting Mai know about Makoto probably was a bad idea to begin with.

As for Yuuichi, I haven't seen him do or even understand a lot so far. Maybe the next episode when he finally has to face the truth in full detail will be the first one to see what kind of a character he is in K6. Yuuichi's conversations with Mai when Sayuri is present are quite funny, yet he lacks motivation to change anything around him. This was different in K2, probably because Mai was the outcast there which Yuuichi considered unfair, thus motivating him to protect Mai (just like Sayuri does). His relation with Mai in K6 is more like a game "can I make her talk to me?", thus lacking some depth. Add this to him being not at all interested in having a girlfriend or even friends at school (with no particular reason - we don't even know how long he will live in this town in the K6 scenario! In K2 we knew he was there just until his parents returned from an overseas job assignment) makes him a very different guy this time. Same goes for Nayuki who doesn't appear as interested in her cousin as she was in K2; while Yuuichi was able to hurt her badly in K2 (by not understanding her feelings) his only job in K6 is to keep her away from cats! We didn't see Nayuki having any problem with Yuuichi's never eating bento together with her (and instead running around day and night).

Maybe I'll be repeating myself now but this is the most important aspect of the series for me: In K2 Yuuichi was able to see Mai's demons (while other people at school were not, during the Butou ceremony), thus making her his top priority from early on. Mai not (yet) being an outcast in K6 may be due to the more sequential turn of events: Being the slower story, the issues seem to be handled one after another this time (that's perhaps why Yuuichi must not be able to see the demons yet). But the parallelity of events, Yuuichi having to fight on many fronts at the same time day and night (and having to find out which issue is the most important one at a certain moment, not having it easy by Mai telling him "I'm okay for the time being, please handle the Makoto case first") up to his own physical limit (and Nayuki silently watching over him, such as accompanying him to the school ground in the wild dog scene of K2), was one of the strongest elements of K2 (and the one where the series' name actually came from IMHO). I now expect that Mai will cause more damage (thus forcing Yuuichi to engage in solving her issue) only after Makoto's issue has been resolved completely (i. e. episode 10 ff.) - thus making the girls disappear even more one after another once their story arc is over.

Writing these reviews in parallel with ANB makes me aware of how much about my own expectations are part of my attitude towards a series. Just compare our reviews for Kanon 2006 and Aa! Megami-sama TV. With Kanon (2006) I was hoping for something that whould beat Kanon (which already made it into my personal anime Top 10), thus setting an exceptionally high standard; with Aa! Megami-sama! TV Aa! Megami-sama TV I was hoping for something that only had to beat Aa! Megami-sama! OVA which was easy to achieve, so I was hard to disappoint there.

Then again, there are some changes in K6 that cause additional problems, and unnecessarily so IMHO. One of these changes is Ayu moving in at the Minase residence. Wouldn't the inhabitants of this house expect Ayu to go home and bring along fresh clothes at some point? (Even more so as we saw Kitagawa and Yuuichi joking about that exact subject at school during episode 11!) K2 didn't have this problem, and Ayu just appearing every now and then helped a lot to keep her being special a secret in a plausible way compared to now requiring her to be compatible to everyday life (with Nayuki wondering about Ayu's school on the first occasion already). Given the way K6 is progressing, it seems way too early to push the Ayu substory forward, but that seems hard to avoid given the recent events.