Okay, I just watched Episode 10 of the Kanon remake last night, and I have to say it was rather painful.
For those of you who don't know much about the new Kanon, it's a difficult show to describe. It doesn't seem to have much desire to go anywhere, yet it is somehow strongly atmospheric. It has one guy meeting a bunch of seriously strange girls, but thus far it doesn't seem like much of a harem show. It is also, by my standards, very, very moe (sometimes painfully so), but that factor usually hasn't been overwhelmingly, and as such I've generally found the show to be enjoyable, though not earth-shatteringly so.
Up until now, that is.
For those of you who aren't following the show, the recent arc on the new Kanon (I've never seen the old one) focused heavily on Makoto, a weird girl who seemed to have memory problms and was actually a fox turned human. Due to the nature of the 'miracle' that allowed her to be human, however, she was fated to eventually disappear, and to lose human behavioural characteristics even before that. So Episode 10 basically follows the downwards spiral towards her inevitable disappearance. You might think the sadness of the story was what made it painful, but unfortunately it wasn't. The reason Episode 10 was painful wasn't because of its sad story. It was because of Makoto having for the most part lost her ability to speak like a human. Her tendency to say 'Auu~' was okay earlier in the series when she did it on occasion, but when it got to the point where that was virtually all she said, it was enough to make me groan. Repeatedly.
As with many other bad episodes of a series I've had some level of liking for, I did watch Kanon 10 in all it's groan inducing entirety. But I didn't enjoy it much (despite some excellent voice acting on the part of Yuuichi/Kyon rip-off's voice actor -he really sounded like he was choking up during the ending narration). Hopefully it's not a sign of what's to come for the series, because while I don't consider the new Kanon to be all that great, it hasn't been all that bad either, and it would be a shame if it became too cringe-worthy.
Oh, and welcome to my blog. It's just a free time project, not a really serious one, but I hope you enjoy it. I certainly intend to.
4 comments:
Well, can't say I entirely agree.
Nice blog, btw.
Anyways, about Kanon 10: probably the best episode of the series so far IMO. Excellent animation, acting and storytelling.
The music in particular I think is tone-perfect in this episode.
Anyways, we knew an episode like this was coming. Kind of like watching 'Titanic', except Kyon owns DiCaprio and Winslet completely owns Makoto. And in both cases the inferior character dies. Pwnt.
Never seen Titanic, but I actually liked Makoto (the magazine and bath scenes were hilarious) and found her demise painful.
However, I've got to say, I disagree with the whole "Auu" thing being annoying. It just doesn't bug me that much.
Since you brought up Titanic...
Another problem with this episode may have to some degree been that things were so predetermined. Kind of like in Titanic, you already know the ship's going to sink. Of course, I was kind of expecting that Makoto might die (did she actually die, or did she just return to another form when she disappeared?), and there was some brief hope that there might be another outcome, but regardless... the big problem I had with this episode was Makoto's limited speech repetoire. In my view that kind of ruined things.
As for production values -this episode didn't stick super well in my head (Kanon isn't exactly a big favorite of mine) but the series has tended to have high production values (although I'm not really a huge fan of Kyoto animation's stuff, at least compared to many people), so I suppose we may have some common ground there. I believe I already mentioned being impressed with Yuiichi's voicework in the narration near the end...
"Another problem with this episode may have to some degree been that things were so predetermined."
On the contrary, that's exactly what makes it so gut-wrenching. Another good film example of this phenomenon is 'United 93'.
...How this conversation got to a film about 9/11 is beyond me.
Anyways, Kyon owns this episode. Hopefully the rest of the series is as good. Kyoto's always been good with the 'storytelling' aspect of things, so I have plenty of faith in that.
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