Kanade is becoming a very strange phenomenon because of how the AB! franchise is developing. As pointed out plenty of times already, the anime version is almost completely devoid of emotions. She gets a personality in Heaven’s Door, but because the early SSS only interact with her when they break school rules we mostly only see the serious part. The interesting bit comes when Otonashi enters the picture in the VN. The VN clearly displays that Kanade is actually dumb as a sack of bricks. She also has her weird Chuuni tendencies. It’s very cute in a pitiful way. Probably the best example is how she tries to restore Otonashi’s memories by pushing him down a staircase and he has to tell her that only works in movies. Despite all that, Kanade is the one to draw the most sensible conclusions about the after life. Though at the same time, her assuming everyone has drawn the same conclusions is basically the cause of the whole conflict between her and the SSS. Otonashi says that Kanade is awkward, and she agrees, but that’s like the understatement of the century. She’s completely incapable of interacting with people, yet she has helped a shitton of people graduate. So the multiple depictions of Kanade can be taken really differently; it’s pretty funny comparing them. Thankfully there is a lot of consistency between HD and the VN, so I can only assume Maeda has a plan of some kind.
A lot of things surrounding Kanade seems to revolve around not overthinking things. In order to clear Next Beat, you need several pieces of information, and Kanade tells Otonashi most of them. Among them are Kanade being human and that everyone reincarnates into humans. These are just misconceptions that Yurippe plants in Otonashi’s brain when he first gets to the afterlife. When talking to Kanade, she makes it all seem so obvious. Of course I can’t say where this “theme” is going, but 'tis probably a silly place, and I’m strapped in for the ride.
I still won’t let go of it until I have solid proof though!
