This post complements my Makoto’s route review in her topic.
Mishio Amano, a character that when first appears makes you go “Where have you come from? You don’t appear on the game cover!” to “I really don’t know why you are not in the game cover and why they didn’t make a route for you!”
We actually don’t know much about her, but that’s what makes her story appealing. She is introverted, extremely shy and always feels kind of gloomy. We are later told that she had an experience with a fox spirit who ended up disappearing. She was really pained by having to watch how that fox spirit had to disappear and she couldn’t do anything about it. She was left in despair. She felt so much pain that it radically changed her personality. Actually, I ended up feeling more for her than for Makoto or Yuuichi in this particular route.
But it is this whole “something horrible happened there, and we know what happened but no how happened” what makes you feel for her. She probably went through a lot, but probably never had anyone to help her nor anyone who would believe her story.
I’d instead say that she grew accustomed to not having any friends. During her first days after the trauma struck, she probably isolated herself from everyone and ended up loosing her friendship bonds. With time, she grew accustomed to that and thought that it wasn’t that bad to be alone and, therefore, she didn’t need friends.
However, when he meets Yuuichi and knows about the whole Makoto issue, she feels instantly connected to him. Of course, she still keeps her shy personality and doesn’t want to get too involved as this reminds her of her previous traumatic experience. However, she knows what Yuuichi is going through and tries to help, not Makoto, but rather Yuuichi, by “befriending” Makoto. When Yuuichi sees this, he feels really alleviated to see that he is not alone.
At the same time, Amano finds a new friend, a really close friend because they understand the main trauma of each other perfectly. This leads to what appears to be a close long term relationship as it is hinted after the credits.
All in all, Amano could have had her own route, where more about her backstory is explored and how Yuuichi helps her get over it, while he has to deal with his own pain from seeing Makoto disappear. That would have been a great improvement to Kanon overall, since it would imply a route in which the same events repeat after time (an ongoing theme along the VN), but not only this, but also they try to overcome the pain these events cause, one person in the present, and the other person, trying to overcome those same events that happened to her in the past, both helping each other out.
