Hello everyone, time for Bookclub. I’ll be posting my thoughts on Common as I play it, so I’ll be dumping these thought dumps in several parts for Common.
Prologue
This is good.
The very first line is ‘It’s Snowing’, the atmosphere of Kanon as a whole is IMMEDIATELY set. It’s calm, moody, and mysterious, Peeps used a good word, Somber, the drab atmosphere of Kanon is I feel one of it’s strongest points, and the prologue immediately dives into it. Yume no Ato is playing the soft notes of it’s people and you can see nothing but snow.
Nothing but snow and Yuichi bitching. In a time that, to my knowledge, the player character was just a penis for the player to pretend was their own and had no need for a personality, Yuichi shines as an absolutely asshole straight out of the gate, he comments sarcastically on his snowbound situation, he’s a bully to an extent that I can see people disagreeing with his words often, harder to self insert into and thus becomes something much better than a camera for the player, he becomes a character. The opening scene immediately establishes this with him fucking with Nayuki on her name to quite an extend.
But it also establishes the relationship between these two characters. How she can leave him in the snow for two hours, and he can fuck with her right out the gate immediately, but at the end of the scene, they’re just walking together with no problem.
Last of all, Kanon has a few recurring themes, key concepts if you would, Promises, Memories, Miracles. The opening scene puts a heavy emphasis on the Memories part of that collection.
Opening
Woooo, lets throw some concept art and CG’s into windows movie maker and se what happens.
The opening is not really impressive, and I feel one can blame the times for that. The CG’s shown are harmless and focus more on establishing the characters personalities than any part of their routes. Ayu gets to take up half the OP because even though Nayuki gets the first scene, this is Ayu’s VN. Visually, the OP is weak, but the music is spot on, Last Regrets is a good song and well suited to Kanon, it has the somber, slow, calm mood the entire VN has. However the quotes given for each girl I find are the biggest meat to bite into with the OP.
Nayuki: “Do you remember my name?”
Do you remember this quote? It’s up there in a screenshot, and has already appeared in the game and it helps drive in just how gooooood that opening scene is. It’s already got out what the OP considers one of the characters most important and defining quotes and I agree with that sentiment, it’s stressing the importance of memories to this VN once again. It’s an excellent and relevant quote on all fronts.
Shiori: “They’re called miracles because they don’t happen.”
This one needs it’s context to fully be appreciated as a quote, but it’s its a very good representation of Shiori’s character. Like Nayuki’s quote, it’s addressing one of the three key concepts of Kanon I mentioned, this one being miracles.
Makoto: “Spring will come, I wish it were always spring.”
What does that even have to do with anything Makoto jesus you have established yourself as a terrible character immediately. I mean it’s definitely appropriate to her character but it’s not really doing it for me like the last two quotes.
Mai: “I’m a demon hunter”
You might think this is the same case as Makoto, but not quite. Mai is supposed to come off across as this mysterious as all hell character at first, so this fits perfectly, because what the fuck, demons!? It is a self centered quote that doesn’t mean anything to Kanon as a whole, but it’s fitting for Mai.
Ayu: “It’s a Promise”
Hey look it’s one of those key concepts again, Promises finally makes it’s debut, this is extremely important to Ayu’s character, a quote that is endlessly repeated, nothing fits better.
Dream Sequence
A mysterious scene that clearly hints at future events, makes heavy reference to the sunset and crying child. The details are fuzzy beyond those things and the reason for the crying is left in the dark. It’s a great scene to build on the mysterious nature of Kanon. It once again calls back to the Key concepts, with the final quote mentioning Promise.
January 7th
Setting establishment and character introductions and interactions for this day, nothing groundbreaking, getting simple things out of the way and doing it in a pleasant manner. the main thing to note is some of that goooood old chemistry, Yuichi can barely open his mouth without a quip, but Nayuki will often retort with a straight answer, stuff like ‘fuck it’s cold’ ‘winter is supposed to be cold’, it’s true to the characters completely and I find it a joy to read.
And then Ayu crashes into this mellow scene, followed by Yuichi bullying the shit out of her, god damn, I love this asshole. I love THIS chemistry even more, Nayuki might casually retort something easy to Yuichi, but with Ayu he gets motivated to talk even more ridiculous bullshit to Uguu her further and I eat that shit up like jelly [SLURPING NOISES].