Kanon

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This article is about the Japanese series. For other uses, see Kanon (disambiguation).
Kanon
This is the logo for Kanon
カノン
(Kanon)
Genre Drama, Fantasy, Harem, Romance
Game
Developer Key
Publisher Key
Genre Renai, Visual novel
Rating 18+ (Original PC version)
Platform PC, Sega Dreamcast, PlayStation 2
Released June 26, 1999 (Original PC version)
January 7, 2000 (PC All Ages version)
September 14, 2000 (Dreamcast)
February 28, 2002 (PS2)
November 26, 2004 (PC Standard Edition)
January 28, 2005 (PC Standard Edition All Ages version)
Manga
Authored by Key (story)
Petit Morishima (art)
Publisher Japan Media Works
Serialized in
Original run 2000 – 2001
No. of volumes 2
TV anime
Directed by Takamichi Ito
Studio Toei Animation
Network Fuji TV, Kansai TV
Original run January 30, 2002 – March 27, 2002
No. of episodes 13
OVA: Kanon Kazahana
Directed by Takamichi Ito
Studio Toei Animation
No. of episodes 1
Released May 3, 2003
Runtime 20 minutes
TV anime
Directed by Tatsuya Ishihara
Studio Kyoto Animation
Network BS-i
Original run October 5, 2006 –
No. of episodes 24

Kanon (カノン?) is a Japanese visual novel which was published by Key on June 26, 1999. The original version, available only on the PC, contained adult-only content of a sexual nature though an all-ages version was released also for the PC on January 7, 2000. On September 14, 2000, a version intended for all ages was released and ported to the Dreamcast and then on February 28, 2002 for the PlayStation 2. The PC versions were re-released with added support for Windows 2000/XP on November 26, 2004 (adult) and January 28, 2005 (all-ages), under the name Kanon Standard Edition.[1]

Kanon is not celebrated for its gameplay, which (like most games in its genre) is highly linear, but rather for its intense atmosphere, relatively intricate plot, and cute characters. The title is generally believed to be derived from the musical term canon; the second TV adaptation plays on this association by using of Pachelbel's Kanon D-dur, or Canon in D, as a background piece for some of its scenes.

As with many popular games, Kanon has made the transition to other media. This first includes two anime adaptations with the first as a 13-episode TV series first aired on January 30, 2002 plus one episode of an OVA, Kazahana, released on May 3, 2003, both by the animation studio Toei Animation. The second anime adaption, created by Kyoto Animation, first began airing in Japan on October 5, 2006 and will contain 24 episodes in total. There have also been manga, drama CDs, and novels based on the series and has even inspired a vast corpus of dōjin works, including unofficial music CDs, manga, and dōjin games such as Kanon RPG and the parody Kanoso. Characters from Kanon appear in many works not directly based on the game, such as the anime adaptation of another one of Key's visual novels, Air, and the fighting games Eternal Fighter ZERO and Glove on Fight.

The work's relative popularity in Japan has led to a considerable amount of interest from Japanophile communities in other countries. Unofficial fan translations of the game have been released in Chinese and Korean.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Kanon revolves around a group of girls in the middle of winter who all share the common ground of being in some way connected back to the main protagonist, Yūichi Aizawa, who had visited the city where the story takes place seven years ago. Yūichi doesn't have a very strong connection with this city and the people that reside within, or so he thought. When he finally returns, it is decided that he is to live with his cousin Nayuki Minase and her mother Akiko Minase. However, after being gone for so long, Yūichi has forgotten all but a few details of what happened seven years before and is in need of being reminded of all that he left behind seven years previous.

The day after he returns, Nayuki is out with Yūichi showing him around town and remembers that she has to buy things for their dinner tonight, though Yūichi is reluctant to go in with her, giving the reason that he's worried of getting lost. Moments after Nayuki leaves him out on the sidewalk to wait, a strange girl named Ayu Tsukimiya barges into him with almost no warning. Upon recovering, she drags him away to a local café and confesses to inadvertantly stealing some taiyaki after being accidentally scared away by the salesman before she had a chance to pay. It is now Yūichi's turn to drag Ayu back to the salesman and they both apologize for the trouble, and Ayu is forgiven. Ultimately, they decide to meet up again another day, and Ayu scampers off.

Yūichi isn't aware at first, but a number of other girls he's forgotten are all familiar with him. Little by little, as he learns about the supernatural undertones of the town, Yūichi is reminded of each girl and the events of seven years ago in the city covered in snow.

[edit] Characters

All of the seiyū given are from the anime adaptations, unless otherwise specified.

[edit] Main characters

Yūichi Aizawa (相沢 祐一 Aizawa Yūichi)?, (Seiyū - Atsushi Kisaichi (2002 anime/drama CD), Tomokazu Sugita (2006 anime)
The main protagonist of Kanon is Yūichi Aizawa. Yūichi is friendly and outgoing, and though as nice as of a person he is, he has yet to learn the sensitivity of women. He constantly teases several of the girls throughout the story which varies in severity depending on the girl. Despite this, he does have a soft side that likens him to an older brother as noted by Shiori.[2]He used to visit the town in which the story takes place, but all his memories of that time are gone, slowly coming back to him as he interacts with the people he met in the past.
Ayu Tsukimiya (月宮 あゆ Tsukimiya Ayu)?, (Seiyū - Yui Horie)
Ayu is a strange, mysterious girl that bumped into Yūichi early in the story. She is immediately recognizable by her winged backpack, red headband, and tendency to refer to herself with masculine pronouns, such as boku (僕?), meaning "I". They soon become fast friends after she meets him a few more times, although she does seem a bit strange, always tackling him and yelling "Yūichi-kun~!". Ayu is constantly searching for something she's lost, and even she does not know what it is. In the first anime version, Yūichi finds a headband identical to Ayu's while unpacking from his move - the question is, why? Ayu has a fondness for taiyaki and is left-handed.
One of her defining features is that she constantly says the expression Ugū, used as an exclamation of frustration, or sadness, though it has no real meaning. This is much like the lead character from Air, Misuzu Kamio, who constantly says Gao.
Conversation with Nayuki Minase.
Enlarge
Conversation with Nayuki Minase.
Nayuki Minase (水瀬 名雪 Minase Nayuki)?, (Seiyū - Mariko Kōda)
Nayuki is Yūichi's cousin, with whom he moves in. She has always been in love with him (in Japan, such relationships between first cousins are not only acceptable but common) and must learn how to deal with these feelings, especially with the threat that he may fall for one of the other girls. She adores strawberry sundaes, but the mere mention of her mother's homemade jam makes her sick. Nayuki is a heavy sleeper, which has led her to collect dozens of alarm clocks; they do not work on her, but instead wake Yūichi every morning. Since she has such trouble waking up, she is always running for school and is in fact the school's star runner because of this. She is the captain of the school's female track team.
Nayuki has a fondness for animals and never misses an opportunity to try to pet one, even wild animals. However, she is allergic to cats. One of her defining features is that she tends to talk slower than the rest of the characters.
Shiori Misaka (美坂 栞 Misaka Shiori)?, (Seiyū - Hiroko Konishi (Dreamcast and Playstation 2), Akemi Satō)
Shiori is a first-year student who has suffered from an illness since birth. Her affliction has caused her to become very physically weak, and is constantly absent from school because of it. She loves drama and is always inventing reasons for things that happen in her life, but the real-life drama of a sister who denies her and a life threatened by illness is encroaching on her. Strangely enough, sick as she is, Shiori thinks nothing of sitting outside the school for hours on end every day eating ice cream in the middle of winter.
Makoto Sawatari (沢渡 真琴 Sawatari Makoto)?, (Seiyū - Mayumi Iizuka)
Makoto attacked Yūichi out-of-the-blue in the middle of town. She was then carried back to Yūichi and Nayuki's house, where she lives as a guest there for the remainder of her story. Though she has lost her memory and cannot remember much about herself, the one thing that Makoto is sure of is that she holds a grudge against Yūichi from the past when he lived there. Makoto's amnesia is much more severe than Yūichi's or Ayu's, but from an entirely different source. She loves cats and gets her own in the middle of the story, but feels sad that pets are abandoned when their owners cannot take care of them. Her constant pranks on Yūichi range from amusing to downright mean, but she honestly grows to like him.
Makoto wears bells around her wrist and likes the sound of them. She can be clueless about things that people her age should know, such as the fact that she can buy her own meat buns and manga. Like Ayu, she too has an idiosyncratic expression that she says when she is frustrated or sad - Aū.
Mai Kawasumi (川澄 舞 Kawasumi Mai)?, (Seiyū - Yukari Tamura)
Mai is a third-year student of the same high school that Yūichi goes to. He met her standing alone in the school building at night, with a sword in her hand. She apparently takes it upon herself to fight and defeat demons at night while the school is deserted. Due to this, she is constantly blamed for accidents because she never denies them, being too sincere to say anything and knowing that no one will believe that there are demons in the school. Her best friend is Sayuri Kurata, the only person besides Yūichi that does not believe that Mai is a dangerous delinquent. Yūichi eventually starts bringing her dinner at the school while she is fighting.

[edit] Supporting characters

Akiko Minase (水瀬 秋子 Minase Akiko)?, (Seiyū - Yūko Minaguchi)
Akiko is Nayuki's mother and Yūichi's aunt. Her main role is in Nayuki's story. She works and takes care of the house, cooking all sorts of food, most of which is good except for her infamous homemade jam. She appears to not realize exactly what is going on, taking in strays such as Makoto and assuming lame excuses for her behavior. However, she may just realize that Makoto is a good person and can be cured of her anger, all of which is true. Akiko certainly exhibits more knowledge of the situation than Yūichi as far as the origins of Ayu and Makoto are concerned, hinting that she is familiar with the supernatural goings-on in the town and how they apply to Yūichi. Akiko is very important to Nayuki since she does not have a father.
Kaori Misaka (美坂 香里 Misaka Kaori)?, (Seiyū - Ayako Kawasumi)
Mainly in Shiori's story, Kaori is also Nayuki's best friend and Yūichi's and Nayuki's classmate. She is very smart and knows a lot about the schoolmates and townspeople, but doesn't appear to be aware of any of the supernatural things that happen, even after Yūichi's caring saves someone close to her. Her surname and appearance indicate that she is Shiori's sister, and Shiori affirms this, but Kaori vehemently denies it.
Mishio Amano (天野 美汐 Amano Mishio)?, (Seiyū - Maaya Sakamoto)
A key player in Makoto's plot thread, Mishio is not so much in this story as the other characters in this section, and in fact only appears near the end. She mysteriously warns Yūichi to stay away from Makoto when Makoto's health begins to fail. Why? Mishio knows the mysterious and magical workings of the town, and she has experienced the loss that comes from asking for a miracle. She can immediately tell when someone is not normal or not even human.
Sayuri Kurata (倉田 佐祐理 Kurata Sayuri)?, (Seiyū - Tomoko Kawakami)
Sayuri is Mai's only friend before she meets Yūichi, and thus her biggest part is in Mai's story. She is the daughter of a wealthy family, and always tries to smile and help others. She uses more formal Japanese honorifics for Yūichi when she addresses him, even when they become close friends. Sayuri cares very deeply about Mai, even though she does not know about the demons. Monsters begin to target her near the end of Mai's story, but she stubbornly stays with Mai.

[edit] Other characters

Piro (ピロ?)
A stray cat that Nayuki finds, and despite her allergies, adores. Makoto, after an incident where she feels that keeping a pet is cruel because the pet always gets abandoned, loses the cat and then searches until she finds it, takes the cat home to the Minase house. After Yūichi jokes about calling it "Nikuman" because of Makoto's fondness for meat buns, Nayuki decides that a food name is a great idea, and Yūichi suggests "Piroshiki", a transliteration of the Russian word for meat bun. Makoto calls the cat "Piro" for short.
Jun Kitagawa (北川 潤 Kitagawa Jun)?, (Seiyū - Tomokazu Seki)
A friend of Yūichi's who sits behind him at high school. Viewers do not see a lot of him in the first anime adaptation. Jun has a crush on Kaori. He is seemingly there for little more than character development, as well being one of the few other male characters with a name.
Spoilers end here.

[edit] Setting

A few important locations featured in the Kanon story are based on the city of Moriguchi, Japan.[3] This is consistent with Key using real world locations as inspiration for their game settings which also occurred with their game Air. Although the location names are almost never mentioned explicitly in their works.

The time of year the story takes place is in the winter, which is why the city is always covered in a layer of snow. This often helps to develop the mysterious mood that the story flows through. The Kanon girls are often referred to by fans as "the original sad girls in snow".

[edit] Themes

There are several recurring themes that appear throughout the story. For instance, one of the most obvious is a theme on music as the name of the series itself is based off of a classical composition named Canon in D. Also, the episode titles from the 2006 anime remake all have parts in their titles related to music. Another theme is the presence of snow around the entire city which, as noted above, often helps to develop a mysterious mood coupled with a supernatural theme which the story revolves around. Another of the main themes in the story is amnesia, as three of the main characters, Yūichi, Ayu and Makoto, all seem to have a form of it in varying degrees.

[edit] Media

Kanon first began as a video game but before long, its popularity grew leading to several other different types of media including a manga series, two anime series, drama CDs and novels. There have also been a range of dōjin works based on the series of several languages.

[edit] Video game

Kanon was first introduced to the public in Japan on June 26, 1999 as a visual novel type game with adult elements for the PC. Less than a year later, on January 7, 2000, an all-ages version of the game was released, also for the PC with all hentai content removed. That same year, on September 14, 2000, a Dreamcast version was also released. Finally, it was ported for the PS2 on February 28, 2002. Only the original version contained hentai.

Kanon manga volume 1 cover
Enlarge
Kanon manga volume 1 cover

[edit] Manga

A Kanon manga was first created in the year 2000 and later the individual chapters were collected into two separate tankōbon published by Media Works. The story came from the video game version that preceeded it and the manga was illustrated by Petit Morishima. There were only six chapters in all, three in each volume. Aside from the prologue in volume one and the epilogue in volume two, the other four chapters center around four of the main heroines. From chapters two through four, the main heroines presented are: Shiori Misaka, Makoto Sawatari, Mai Kawasumi and Ayu Tsukimiya.

[edit] Anime

Kanon was first adapted into an anime in 2002, and a separate adaption was created in 2006.

[edit] Original anime

The first Kanon anime was made by the Japanese animation studio Toei Animation and first aired in Japan on January 30, 2002, spanning a total of 13 episodes. Later, a single OVA was released on May 3, 2003 called Kanon Kazahana.

[edit] 2006 Kyoto Animation anime

Kyoto Animation, the high quality animators of another Key game-turned-anime, Air, also decided to animate their version of Kanon. This new 2006 version began airing on October 5, 2006 on BS-i in Japan.

In a magazine published interview, studio producers state that the primary reason for considering a Kanon remake was largely in part due to Kyoto's Air anime being well-received by viewers. In the second episode of Air, in fact, the studio even procured the rights and the original voice actors to give Ayu, Nayuki and Makoto a cameo as Kano Kirishima's school friends. Consequently, Kyoto Animation also received numerous phone calls from viewers expressing their desire for the studio to animate Kanon.

The 2006 Kanon animation features the same seiyū (with the exception of Yūichi, who is voiced by Tomokazu Sugita) cast as the original version released in 2002. The new animation will also be longer, 24 episodes instead of the previous 13. Unlike the original anime, the actual theme songs from the Kanon game are used for the new anime's intro, ending and soundtracks.

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Kanon episodes

[edit] Theme songs

Main article: Kanon soundtracks

[edit] Game and 2006 anime

Opening theme
  • Last regrets
    • Composer: Jun Maeda
    • Lyrics: Jun Maeda
    • Arrangement: Takase Kazuya (I've)
    • Vocals: Ayana
Ending theme
  • Kaze no Tadoritsuku Basho (風の辿り着く場所 lit. Where the Wind Arrives at?)
    • Composer: Shinji Orito
    • Lyrics: Jun Maeda
    • Arrangement: Takase Kazuya (I've)
    • Vocals: Ayana

[edit] First anime

Opening theme
  • florescence
    • Composer: Kōji Ueno
    • Lyrics: Naomi Kosaka
    • Arrangement: Hiroyuki Kōzu
    • Vocals: Miho Fujiwara
Ending theme
  • flower
    • Composer: Masato Kamato
    • Lyrics: Naomi Kosaka
    • Arrangement: Hiroyuki Kōzu
    • Vocals: Miho Fujiwara

[edit] See also

  • Air, another work by Key, the catalyst for Kanon's anime remake, and also adapted by both Toei and Kyoto Animation.
  • Clannad, another work by Key, which is slated to be adapted into an anime movie by Toei Animation.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Key Products page (Japanese). Key. Retrieved on 2006-12-11.
  2. ^ Kanon 2006 episode 5
  3. ^ The setting is based on Moriguchi, Japan

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../k/a/n/Kanon.html"