Firechick's Game Reviews: Kanon

Rating: 70/100

In 1998, after the release of One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e in Japan, the staff responsible for making the game decided to leave Nexton in favor of a company that would give them more freedom. That company was Visual Arts, where on July 21st, 1998, said staff would form the company Key under Visual Arts' banner. A year later, Key would put out their very first visual novel that they made themselves, called Kanon. The original visual novel was a huge success when it first came out in 1999, as it was the first 18+ game (or one of them, probably) to prove that a visual novel that focused more on plot than porn (While still having the latter) could be commercially viable. At one point it was the second highest-selling PC game in Japan, even staying in the national top 50 several times afterwards. Granted, nowadays it's seen as nothing special, as later games such as Clannad and Little Busters would improve on everything Kanon started and receive more acclaim, but those games wouldn't be here if not for Kanon. But even with its fame and significance in the visual novel community, Kanon had never gotten an official English translation. There were fanmade ones, sure, and a majority of Key's titles have been brought to the US since 2015, but Kanon wasn't among them. Many thought that it would never get a legal English localization because of its dated visuals and therefore didn't look as nice as later games. A remake seemed out of the cards since Key isn't known for just remaking their games from the ground up unlike other companies, so it seemed like Kanon would never officially come to the US in any capacity and be left in the darkness forever.

OR WAS IT?!

Against all the odds, in May of 2024, Key announced that an official English translation of Kanon would be released on Steam on June 4th. Not only that, the existing Switch port would receive a patch implementing English and Chinese translations, which would officially come out on December 5th. Seriously, was ANYONE expecting this?! I know I sure wasn't, and I don't think the visual novel community was expecting it either. But with this, we're that much closer for seeing official English releases of all of Key's games, and hopefully Air will come next. But what's Kanon actually about, you're probably asking. High school student Yuuichi Aizawa used to visit his aunt Akiko Minase and her daughter, his cousin Nayuki, in their quiet little town every holiday, but one year something happened and he left for seven years. When he transfers to Nayuki's high school, his memories of that time remain a blur. Upon his return he encounters a number of mysterious girls from his past who all need his help. Energetic taiyaki thief Ayu Tsukimiya is searching for a precious lost item she cannot describe. Quiet and serious Mai Kawasumi hunts demons in the school after dark. The childish tsundere Makoto Sawatari suffers from amnesia and has no place to go. Elegant, demure Shiori Misaka is estranged from her sister and never present at school due to a sickness. Finally, there's Nayuki, perpetually sleepy and cheery yet weighed down by rejection and tragedy. Yuuichi resolves to help them, but as he gets involved in their affairs, he discovers that there is far more to the girls than meets the eye. Mystical happenings lie hidden in this strange town, tied to Yuuichi's forgotten past. In assisting the girls with their problems, Yuuichi must face his lost memories. What happened seven years ago, and why can't he remember any of it?

I've made mention multiple times that I've never had a problem with Itaru Hinoue's over-the-top moe art style, and she's vastly improved since her first go-arounds with the VNs she worked on with Tactics/Nexton. That said, I will say that I prefer her later art styles, and even the style she used for the original One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e as opposed to the one she uses for Kanon. The characters' eyes are big and cover the majority of their faces, that's a no-brainer, though here they make the girls look a bit more...bug-eyed or alien. It's easier to see if you compare screenshots from the game to later promotional artwork. But honestly, I have more issue with the general anatomy of the characters sometimes. There's one CG where the perspective on Nayuki's face looks really off, and one CG featuring Mai in her ballroom dress has her looking towards the camera, but one of her boobs is angled in such a way that it looks like its sandwiched over the other one. These moments aren't all that common, thankfully, and even by the standards of the nineties, the overall artwork and art direction is solid, from the backgrounds to the CGs. There are a lot of little details in the backgrounds, like in Makoto's route where she's actually shown sleeping in Yuuichi's bed, but she's far in the background as opposed to being in the forefront. So what the art direction lacks in polish, it manages to make up for in charm and character. The soundtrack is nice too...though I will admit, as someone who never heard the ending theme in full until last year, I was NOT expecting it to have a rap component...and I also admit that I don't like said rap because it consists of really bad English.

Remember how I mentioned in my review for the Air visual novel that the anime adaptation got rid of a lot of the more problematic aspects of some characters, thereby improving on them? Kanon is another case of this. Now, their overall characterizations are unchanged from the game, with the exception of one: Yuuichi. In the game, he's much more smug and cynical, even rather mean, which the anime removed while keeping his sassy and sarcastic personality. I think this was for the better, because some of Yuuichi's actions in some routes run the gamut of being mean-spirited, as there's one point where he straight up takes Ayu's bag of taiyaki and throws it into the snow for no reason. Dude, the hell? And at one point in Mai's route, you're presented with a scene where one of the choices involves...touching Mai's boobs. Yeah, no. Anyone who talks to me at all knows I hate that so much, and I'm glad that here it's an optional choice you can avoid. I will say this though: Even in light of all that, Yuuichi is vastly improved from the piece of human garbage that was Kouhei Orihara from One. What, I wasn;t going to miss a chance to take a potshot at Kouhei Orihara. Any chance I can find to dunk on Kouhei Orihara, I will.

As for the other characters, the girls are...still rather stereotypically moe even with their backstories, with the writers trying way too hard to force them to be cute, and it doesn't work. One thing I think the anime improved upon was Sayuri's characterization. The game and anime's depictions of Sayuri confronting the student council about Mai's actions at the school ball are very different. In the game, Sayuri is surprisingly naive in that she knows the student council doesn't like Mai, yet she still tries to convince Kuze to rescind Mai's expulsion and thinks everything will be hunky-dory, which ends about as well as you'd expect. In the anime, Sayuri shows no such naivete and calls out the student council for their antagonism of Mai, pointing out the discrepancies in what happened that night. I also appreciate that the anime gave Kitagawa more to do, including having him successfully cover for Mai and making him more than just a put-upon butt monkey. In this house we stan Kitagawa. That said, I forgot to mention this in my review of the anime, but if I had one complaint: Akiko is way too blase and permissive for her own good. Seriously, why is this woman okay with some kid doing stuff like setting off fireworks in the middle of the night and filling a bath tub full of miso? If I did stuff like that, my parents would ground me forever. Akiko feels more like a fantasy of a mother who will unconditionally love you no matter what and never get mad rather than a three-dimensional person. The only time in the game she ever shows any emotion besides blase happiness is at the end of Makoto's route, that's it. Granted, later games would get better in terms of character writing and improve on what Kanon started, so there you go.

There is one thing I can say Kanon managed to do right, and it's that none of its routes feel bloated. What I mean when I say this is that in my previous reviews of Air and One, I mentioned how there were parts of those games that went on for way too long, either feeling like filler shoved in for the sake of dragging the game out or repeating previously established information over and over, like the writers don't trust the audience to remember what happened previously. Luckily, Kanon doesn't have this problem, and every route's pacing is tight yet leisurely. Even scenes where it seems like nothing is happening is either called out as such (Usually by Kitagawa or Kaori) or lampshaded. Also, unlike Key's later games, Kanon doesn't have a true route to unlock, though since Ayu is the poster girl for the game, she's technically the main heroine by default. Plus, repeating my points from my review of the anime, I feel Makoto's route was the best out of them, and the air of mystery was also pretty well-executed, along with all the other positives I mentioned earlier. I do feel Makoto, Shiori, and Ayu's routes were the strongest out of them, in that order, and feel Nayuki's is the...least good, though that's mainly because I don't like the idea of romance between cousins. Y'know, incest and all. Ew.

So yeah, Kanon as a game is fine. It may have set the world on fire once upon a time, but nowadays it's considered just a nice little time capsule that laid the groundwork for Key's later games, and if not for its existence, we wouldn't have stuff like Clannad and Little Busters. I'm glad to have finally gotten the chance to play Kanon in its original form (And I don't mean the 18+ version. I'm perfectly happy not having to look at sex scenes involving minors, thanks), even if I think other games and even other visual novels are better. Here's hoping Air gets officially localized into English next.