Kanon - General Discussion

This isn’t to related to the game from a literary perspective, but the art grew on me. At first it looked kind of derpy and dumb but after getting used to it I love the cuteness of some of the sprites. Makoto’s pouty sprite and Nayuki’s disappointment face especially.

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Why is it that everyone comments on how cold it is in the town and yet the only one wearing anything remotely warm is Ayu

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We mostly see people in school uniforms.

Nayuki’s casual wear looks to be pretty cozy
Makoto is dumb enough to not notice it’s cold anyway, so she gets a pass…
Shiori is a badass and doesn’t need anything but that shawl.

You get the idea. Another good point is that most of the characters in the story are going to be acclimated to the weather. While they might say it’s cold; they’re used to it so they don’t bother wearing 4 layers of clothes.

(I’m still not convinced Ayu’s derpily large jacket isn’t just to add shock value when the reader finds out that she’s not some dumpy little kid when she takes it off.)

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Ratings comparison time! This time I took peoples feedback into consideration and made them into bar graphs. I also did two graphs: the first on an accurate scale, the second zoom in to highlight differences.


And… The differences are very minute. Seems like there’s only 3 scores showing up here, hahah. Either you’re not so good like Nayuki or Mai, you’re good like Makoto or Ayu, or you’re great like Shiori.

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Okay guys. For the final week of the Kanon Bookclub, I want to hear everyone’s final thoughts on What Kanon means to you. You can share a paragraph or two here, but for those who are willing, I would like to hear a recording summarising what Kanon means to you in under 3 minutes. These will be collated and incorporated into the Kanon Bookclub Anthology which I’m hoping to release at the end of the week.

We’re also doing a final callout for fanworks, so if you’ve been itching to do some fanart to celebrate Kanon as a whole, now’s the time!

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I’m not a one or two paragraph person for these things, but here we go!

Kanon didn’t have a huge emotional impact on me, perhaps since I had already read CLANNAD and Little Busters! It doesn’t have an action packed story. It’s just a person’s everyday life. Yuuichi goes to school and then home. Not much happens. He rediscovers his memories from his past days in the snow covered town, changing his way of living a bit. All this happens in this snow covered town. It feels like a hidden location and this contributes to a nostalgic feeling. Not many people will discover this story, but if you happen to read Kanon, you’ll feel like one of those people passing by the protagonist at the commercial district. Everything is hidden in the town, but they invite you to come and stay there for a while, to stay and look at what both happens now and 7 years ago.

It’s this relaxed mood what Kanon inspires me. It leaves me with a feeling of having read for a long time, and even not much had happened, I learnt something from Yuuichi’s boring life. We ought to confront our problems, not avoid them and forget them. Only this way we’ll be able to carry on being happy. Only this way, we’ll be able to create happier memories to recall.

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Kanon is a story that resonates with me in many of the same ways AIR would do some time later. It’s a quiet story with seemingly little ambition, filled with quirky characters and a sense of mystery behind each one of them. It’s a story about a town, a promise that was made in that town, and the wish made to fulfill the happiness of two people. Kanon’s winter theme sets all this up in a different way than AIR would later do, but nonetheless I feel drawn more to winter than I do summer. After all, I was born in a snowstorm. :stuck_out_tongue:

Kanon holds both a sense of nostalgia and timelessness that I think helps people relate to it even today. Some part of me yearns for the day when Key returns to its roots, whether it be a remake of Kanon or a story in the same vein as it and AIR. Perhaps that day may never come, but even so, Kanon is still a visual novel I wholeheartedly recommend to every Key fan. It’s a cold and slow winter, but it’s no less enjoyable than its successors. May the power of Uguu protect you all. :slight_smile:

Here’s the audio version of my thoughts: http://puu.sh/pKhhh/db2387fda1.mp3

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I think Kanon to me personally was how relaxed the atmosphere and the setting of the story based on the snowy town where everything feels reminiscent and memorable of how Key began its early days. The music is very nostalgic in that it takes you to a place where the snow is like a transient memory and as it falls it would remind you of the places that Yuuichi had found to be very precious to him when he was living with Nayuki and Akiko, and meeting with the other heroines that changed his way of thinking about the cold and the snow itself. It is a very interesting story as well as we can learn that our memories can sometimes make us regret our actions and forget about things that may hurt us but as I learned while rereading the VN that it is possible to overcome our regrets and be able to move forward in making the other person feel that they are needed and loved.

I really loved playing Kanon once again and I also would recommend anyone, whether a Key fan or not, that they will enjoy and experience for themselves how we view the snow and the relaxing atmosphere that is momentary and the memories that were created in the time Yuuichi had lived in the town had changed his view of the cold and the miracles that changed his life.

Okay guys, I’m giving you until Saturday the 2nd to get your recording in. Don’t delay!

This speech includes vague spoilers.

What Kanon means to me.mp3

To me, Kanon is a fairy tale, best told on a sunny winter day.
Mood-wise, it encompasses all facettes of the season, be it the simple happiness of riding a sleigh down a slope or the dread of getting lost in the middle a snowstorm. It’s a fairy tale I want to be told to children as they’re growing up, for it is a story of initiation, the story of a young boy and many young girls, each of them facing their greatest trial yet. Seeing as death is part of every route, those trials could hardly be harsher.

And yet, they must not falter or run away. For sad memories can only be turned into happy ones if you face those trials, the likes of which may repeat themselves again and again for as long as we live.

But the best part of Kanon, to me, is that there’s always hope. Just like how the harsh winter is followed by the gentle spring, you should know that the next miracle might be waiting just around the corner to reward you for your bravery.

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As we grow and move forward with our lives, we make countless connections that we ultimately leave behind. So many childhood friends that shape us, but are destined never to meet again. Yet Kanon is not a story about how our childhood makes us who we are. Rather, it is a story about how the little things we do make others who they are. It is a story about the tiny ripples that we set into motion, and how those can become great waves.

We might be the unknowing object of a childhood crush, giving another the first taste of rejection and unrequited love. We might be the giver of a kindness that seems small to us, but is life-changing to another. We might be another person’s everything, their only friend in a world that rejects them, and ultimately the source of rejection that causes them to reject themselves. Or we could be the catalyst for a tragedy that, while it affects us deeply, is felt ever more keenly by another. In Kanon, we see all of these stories unfold: stories that might star us, if we only knew about them.

Ultimately, Kanon makes me look back on all the friends I’ve had in my life and wonder how they remember me. It makes me hope that my impact on their lives was a positive one, and it makes wish that I could reach out to those that I might have hurt.

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Not sure where to put this but im currently playing mai route and the voices cut out at 1/26, does anyone know a fix for this bug? It also happened in Shiori’s route at 1/28.

During the bookclub it happened to all of us in the Shiori route. It fixes automatically after 2 days. For Mai, I didn’t have that problem, I don’t recall anyone else having such problem too though.

I fixed shiori’s route but right now im not getting any voices for mai in 1/26. Do you think you can send me your files for kanon and see if i can fix it?

Hmm, do you have a folder named 0007 in the KOE folder? There should be files named all the way up to Z000707999.

If that’s not the problem, it might be the seen file. This is what mine looks like.

I have all the KOE files, it probably might be cause of the seen file. It’s playing all right now thanks to Mogaoscar since i got his replacement files.

This seems the most appropriate location to inquire,

Has anyone heard anything on the possibility of Kanon (2006) getting a BD release in the U.S.? I own it on DVD, but the series looks amazing in 1080.

Funi (if you are in the US) has been releasing classics more on blu-ray recently (Haruhi, Ergo Proxy) but I must say I don’t feel confident they will do this with Kanon.

…And so I’ve rewatched Kanon (2006) for the… 3rd time?
Its been almost ten years since I’ve seen it for the first time yet I couldn’t stop watching.
I know that this is considered to be a common opinion, but Kanon (2006) anime is beyond great. It intoxifies you with character, with the story. Even though it is composed out of different heroine routes it still manages to feel like a single story.
Funny thing, I absolutely disliked an original VN and dropped it really fast… yet I wholeheartedly love this anime. Its there, on the very top of the list of titles I adore the most. Even rewatching it again I was so absorbed into the story, that now I consider to give yet another chance to the visual novel. Who know, maybe I will like it somewhat now? After all those years.
This is not something unique to Kanon, but characters look alive. I can understand how their relations proceed, why do they do one thing and ignore another. Personally, I find Shiori, Nayuki, and Sayuri to be the absolute best figures in this story. But I can’t not mention Kitagawa. What a good friend he is. What a good man he is. Though, he is probably one of the most underdeveloped characters in the story.
Seiyuu’s work is another thing I have to especially mention here.
Quite a few big names appear in this show. Sugita Tomokazu, Horie Yui, Sakamoto Maaya, Tamura Yukari, Seki Tomokazu… And they do their work perfectly.
I won’t say a word about character routes… I don’t want to spoil it. And I don’t really want to write anything on them unless I’ve read an original novel till the very end… But. As far as anime goes Makoto, Shiori, and Nayuki gave me the most satisfaction.

And once again, I won’t say goodbye to this show. I will hide that “goodbye” deep inside of myself.

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