Previous post in this round here.
Impressions
Kanon 4
- These random narration scenes are meant to be ethereal, but…if it’s just narration over snowy scenes, it can get boring after a while.
- Why does small!Yuichi remind me of…Syaoran from CCS…?
- Did Ayu become addicted to taiyaki like this…? (LOL, wut.)
- If Kanon got done over again, like how Higurashi was initially…I wonder if the characters’ eyes wouldn’t take up half their faces anymore…? (LOL)
- Did Yuichi seriously meet all of these girls in his youth? I’d believe you on the cousin, but not every one of these 5 girls…
- Konnyaku revenge! We need an auu counter, people…not just an uguu one.
- I…think Makoto and Yuichi’s comedy is starting to grow on me. The rest, however, stays fairly neutral.
- If there were a modern Kanon, I bet Yuichi would get bored after a while and then pull out his phone, leading to a sound smack on the cheek from Nayuki…LOL.
- One of the background characters looks like the girl from Clannad…(I forgot her name, but the one brunette with a bob). Update: Nagisa. That’s the one.
- Oh, it just occurred to me that it’s Akiko (autumn) and Nayuki (winter). Is there a summer and spring to match…?
- “Oh boy, you’ll get fat.” – I feel like people would be more offended by this throwaway comment these days more than they would have in 2006 (thinking about “body positivity” and all that)…
- Yuichi’s face kind of reminds me of Itsuki and Kyon (from Haruhi Suzumiya’s series).
Kanon 5
- These dream segments are starting to annoy me already…
- Is Mai a chuunibyou, well before Chuu2Koi (Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai) was animated by KyoAni…?
- *poorly attempts to wolf whistle* I’d drag myself through CGDCT hell if it meant being paid appropriately…in female-gazey shots like these.
- Onoma…wha? Update: The title of the episode is Mamonotachi no Sayokyoku ~serenade~, so I would assume the phrase is “mamonogari”. Also, this episode was partially brought to you by Yutaka Yamamoto…y’know, Yamakan, he who starts arguments.
- These 1st person shots betray Kanon’s origins as a visual novel…(Did I say that already…?) Update: I said one or two comments of that nature for episode 1.
- “…all the women in the world would be your wife.” – I know Sayuri is downplaying herself, but…what about women who can’t cook?
- I…guess the appeal of a girl like Mai is getting her to talk? I mean, that’s what people think about me when I don’t have anything to say.
- Wait, why are you asking a girl about sausages, Yuichi??? (Do you know exactly how much innuendo that implies???)
- I didn’t notice this until this episode, but Sayuri speaks in 3rd person (in the subs).
- “You can call me ‘Shiori’.” – Well, it’s not like Yuichi has much of a choice in the matter anyway… (snarking)
- “…do you want to make a snowman?” – I went “Oh f***” at this point, because I know at the time of Kanon’s airing, Frozen is still years away from existing in people’s consciousness as a meme.
- *Makoto mentions tofu* – I just remembered a weird quote from Boueibu: “I love tofu. You can kill a man with it!” (I love that quote. It’s so random out of context.)
- Were porn mags so unknown in 2006…? Why are you trusting a girl with your porn mags, Yuichi???
- Is there something in the-*Mai’s sword goes “clang!”* Makoto, you scared me…
- Mai’s too darn soft-spoken…
Kanon 6
- How could anyone forget such a weird response as “uguu”…?
- “Nothing tastes good when you’re crying.” – Doesn’t ice cream taste better when you’re crying…?
- “Do you love your mom?” – Oh dear. (Aside from the obvious Okaasan Online series jokes I could make about this question,) does this imply Ayu was impacted by divorce and had to live away from her mother…? Update: We do find out her mother died in this episode.
- That lone cloud…it might just be the presence of Ayu speaking, but it sort of looks like a taiyaki.
- *sees episode title* Diver-what now…?…Okay, divertimento. These are fancy music words I never saw in my days as a pianist.
- Who plays with fireworks in the middle of winter…? (…Makoto does, apparently.)
- Eh? Yuichi has a hobby? Blasphemy! (I’m joking, obviously.)
- Akiko is kinda evil at times…planning special things for Yuichi when he wants to stay home and work on his bonsai…
- To be honest with you…I’ve gotten used to skipping little atmospheric bits of Kanon already. Reading all the subs for these conversations is a bit boring, because it’s mostly the same at this point.
- “donguri” (on the rolled newspaper Yuichi holds) – LOL, an acorn? Why would you call your company “Acorn”?
- …jobs aren’t so easy to get as they are in anime…*sigh*
- Haruhi Suzumiya and Lucky Star were around this time, right? No wonder some of the expressions remind me of Mikuru from the one Mikuru OP/episode (you know the one – the “Mikuru beam” one that comes up in AMQ a lot) or Konata.
- Considering the demon hunting…could Shiori be a wandering ghost, perhaps…?
- “Uguu” is just “uguu”, no matter how you slice it…I guess the pronunciation of the sound is how it differs…Update: Went back and watched with volume (I sort of skimmed over it) and…that’s exactly how it works.
- Falling asleep during an interview? I thought that was Nayuki’s thing, not Makoto’s…
- Also, remember how I thought Major Fail Kitagawa reminded me of someone in the last post? I must’ve somehow crossed either the dad (Akio Furukawa) or Sunohara from Clannad over with the Persona Kitagawa in my head (or something like that)…I mean, the surnames are kinda similar.
- I like how Yuichi put Shiori and Mai’s comments into his own speech to Nayuki.
- So Makoto (inadvertently) admits she did the miso soup prank…Miso soup has a very strong smell, y’know.
…yeah, aside from the Makoto and Yuichi interactions growing on me a little, I already admitted to Zenith that this series is a bit of a drag. It’s starting to show signs of picking up in episode 6, but I don’t think it’s going to raise much goodwill from my end, really.
“If Kanon got done over again, like how Higurashi was initially…I wonder if the characters’ eyes wouldn’t take up half their faces anymore…? (LOL)”
Um, this is already try number two for the show…
“Konnyaku revenge! We need an auu counter, people…not just an uguu one.”
She doesn’t really do this in the dub. A few times, but not nearly to the extent of “Uguu”.
“I didn’t notice this until this episode, but Sayuri speaks in 3rd person (in the subs).”
No, that’s her character. Dub too. She does it with just the right frequency that it’s not actually annoying like it could be.
“Were porn mags so unknown in 2006…? Why are you trusting a girl with your porn mags, Yuichi???”
No? The point is that Makoto kind of lacks common sense and lacks the maturity she claims to have. That’s the whole point of the scene. It also has some other implications but I won’t touch those for now.
“*sees episode title* Diver-what now…?…Okay, divertimento. These are fancy music words I never saw in my days as a pianist.”
Every title is like that and they are thematically relevant to what the episode is about (for the most part, they have to try a bit on a few of them). One of the cool things about the show.
“Akiko is kinda evil at times…planning special things for Yuichi when he wants to stay home and work on his bonsai…”
Because this seems unclear to you, he was being facetious about the bonsai. He doesn’t have one.
“Um, this is already try number two for the show…” – I’m aware of that. I’m talking about a (purely hypothetical) 3rd time over.
“No, that’s her character. Dub too. She does it with just the right frequency that it’s not actually annoying like it could be.” – Hmm. I kind of suspected Sayuri was using 3rd person as a version of “I” (a legitimate thing, both in role language and English – apparently a person who does that is called an “illeist” – but the gap between anime and real life means you probably wouldn’t see real Japanese people doing the same thing), but I said “in the subs” just in case I was wrong. Notably, in Japanese there are ways to omit the subject of the sentence a lot of the time, especially when you’re speaking casually, which is probably why you didn’t find it annoying.
“Because this seems unclear to you, he was being facetious about the bonsai. He doesn’t have one.” – It’s hard to detect sarcasm when you don’t have a tone of voice for reference. I was trying to hurry a bit due to sudden streaming site maintenance, so I kept my volume off most of the time, including over this bit about bonsai.
A lot of folks didn’t realize this was round 2 for the show, so I was just making sure that was clear.
“These random narration scenes are meant to be ethereal, but…if it’s just narration over snowy scenes, it can get boring after a while.”
Yes. Yes and double yes. I realize that they’re trying to set a mood, but man, I get it. I got it when I realized that none of the girls could remember anything.
Also, who is Yamakan?
I put a link to his Anime News Network page and say it outright in the post right before I go “Yamakan”, but “Yamakan” is short for “Yamamoto-kantoku” (director [Yutaka] Yamamoto). Yamakan is known for doing some work (including the ol’ Hare Hare Yukai) but then getting fired by two separate studios (KyoAni and Ordet in that order, the latter of which he founded) which is why I…don’t have the highest opinion of him.