So, it's over.
On the whole, I enjoyed the series. It was much more entertaining with an engaging lead character (imagine that). The female characters got less annoying as time progressed, too--many of them actually turned out to be interesting!
I'm not sure what I think of the ending. In some ways it was way too happy, but in another way it wasn't quite perfect, so it almost cancels it out. But there's also kind of a contradiction of logic concerning Mai and Ayu that has me scratching my head. After all, Mai is the one with miraculous healing powers. But somehow, all the happy endings manage to occur without her needing to use them. No...instead, it's the power of the wish of the one inside a dream.
Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah.
But I guess it was a decent enough way to reconcile all the heroines' stories while finishing off with Ayu as Yuuichi's love interest. She has to be the most important one, of course.
(Still not sure why Mai didn't just turn around and heal Ayu. She pointed Yuuichi in the right direction, and he was able to bring her out of the coma, but Ayu still ended up wheelchair-bound. I suppose this was to make it mesh with the video game, but it doesn't really make sense.)
It seemed to end really fast, though not quite as fast as Yakitate!! Japan did. I guess it just seems weird for shows that string out storylines for awhile to suddenly pack a bunch of information into one episode.
I did like the Sawatari Makoto thing towards the end. It made you wonder. Was she reincarnated as a fox in the past? Or was the fox reincarnated in the past? Kinda neat, even if neither are true and it was just Yuuichi's recollections of the original Sawatari Makoto that shaped how the fox-girl turned out.
In all, I'm glad I stuck with the series. I really enjoyed Yuuichi's character. And I'm glad to finally know where the whole "sad girls in snow" thing came from ;>
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March
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- Yuck.
- Tidying up
- Reading
- Day 10
- Okay, now I really do want to move
- Remission
- For the love of all that is good and pure in the u...
- I have no friends!
- She says I'm visiting her in July though
- Want to read something totally stupid?
- Being pissed off makes me so tired
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- When did picture-taking become work?
- Kanon
- SO angry
- Lies
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- Photos up
- I need to stop having such gruesome dreams
- I've made my decision
- Went for a brief walk
- Crazy drunk "let me just drive through the mall" guy
- Time to die
- Tired
- Raoul
- The Puppetmaster
- Detective Conan 457 and 458
- Holy crap, it IS possible!
- Expensive
- A few things
- My Yaris
- A final farewell
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2 comments:
Kanon, overall, had a number of moments where everything went horribly wrong. I was constantly worried about the characters, particularly during the shocking car-crash scene.
Then all of a sudden everything came to a happy ending at the start of the last episode. I actually thought the same thing not-Kyon did, that Ayu was some kind of angel and she had really died when she fell from that tree. The twist shocked me as much as it did him.
The last episode then, was more of an epilogue, everyone else was fixed at that point. It wrapped up all of the character's feelings and development as well, particularly how Ayu had been feeling in her dream-like state.
As for Mai, I got the feeling that she lost her healing power. Weren't her ghosts all manifestations of her power anyway? She could have easily healed her friend while in the hospital, but she just wasn't able to.
The only part that makes me feel otherwise is Ayu coming out of her coma. On the one hand, not-Kyon's attention and care could have brought her back, or maybe the magic of the hairband did it. But Mai could have used her little bit of power at the last moment to pull Ayu out of it. Some things can't just be healed though, she was in a Coma for a few years.
On the note of Makoto, the fox was just replicating the older girl that not-Kyon had fallen for (and mentioned to her) in the past, she didn't copy the girl exactly.
Overall, the series was really well done, though I wish I knew more people who watched the original version so I could hear about how it was done differently/better/worse.
I'll have to start picking series out of the next season soon. Pumpkin Scissors is ending at the next episode too, and the other stuff I'm watching like D. Gray-Man, Busou Renkin and Death Note all appear to be closing within the next couple of episodes too. (Though Death Note might go on for another season, maybe.)
I actually read the Wikipedia synopses of all the character arcs while the show was still going on.
There was a point early on where I was going to give up and stop watching it, so I didn't care if I spoiled it for myself when I went hunting for whatever I was hunting for. I read about Makoto actually being a fox and dying, and that intrigued me, and I read about Ayu falling out of a tree and being in a coma, and that intrigued me too, so I kept watching. I didn't really read about the other characters, so those were new to me at least.
I don't think Mai lost her healing power. The demons were a manifestation of her self-hatred over having powers; she vanquished them when Yuuichi made her see that not loving herself was hurting her and others. That doesn't mean her powers are gone--it means she's learning to accept them. I think the fact that she told Yuuichi what he had to do to save Ayu proves that she still had those powers, because if she didn't, would she be able to "diagnose"?
Maybe Mai did all she could to pull Ayu back, but ultimately it was necessary for Yuuichi to "enter" her dream and merge it with reality.
I don't think the hairband was magical. The only thing that could be called magical was that she was wearing it even though he hadn't given it to her, but that was explained as being a side effect of Yuuichi's repressed memory. His acceptance of what really happened allowed Ayu to come out of the dream.
As for Makoto: yes, that's the explanation we can definitively take from the series, from Fox-Makoto's own testimony to Yuuichi's memories. But when Yuuichi is at Human-Makoto's house, he says "Masaka", which casts some doubt on that, even if it is only his doubt.
It looks like this series was better-received than the original, especially if they were able to announce that they're adapting Clannad too. Milk those video novels for all they're worth!
I've fallen a little behind on my current series, due to running out of hard drive space, but I plan to catch up shortly. Just need to burn some more DVDs. As always, let me know if you have any recommendations!
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