Kanon
Visual Novel
Time period covered: The last ~3 weeks of January 1999
I played: First half August 2012
More decent comedy/romance/slice-of-life seen from the perspective of the new guy in town--or at least the guy who hasn't been to the town since a dimly remembered childhood.
Too damn cute: characters with trademark whines like "uguu~" or "auu~".
I enjoy it quite a bit, but
Bad points:
- Deus ex machina endings
- Text skip mode is nice and FAST, but too nondiscriminatory. I liked that the equivalent in Katawa Shoujo had the option to stop skipping when new text was reached. So if you're playing and taking different choices here, you might accidentally skip over something new while trying to quickly get past the old.
- Main character Yuichi gets TOO DEEP into romance too quick. The story doesn't give a lot of time, but it's pretty awkward when after knowing someone for, say, a week's worth of afternoons he's ready to say he wants to spend his entire life with them.
My order of route completion: Mai, Shiori, Ayu, Makoto, Nayuki
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Anime (2006)
I watched: August 16-18, 2012
The anime is about as close an adaptation as one could hope for. The music is there, the voice actors, most of the story from the separate routes, and even the background design is very faithful.
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The character to gain the most in the change is Kitagawa. In the VN he was pretty much just the only other guy with a name, who happened to hang in the same circle as Yuichi. That's still the case here, but now he has some desires of his own, acts as a greater comedic relief, and helps Yuichi get out of a bind in several more situations.
Another thing that strikes me is something that can't really be seen on screen. In the VN, all the main action of any route takes place in a span of 3-4 weeks. For the adaptation's purpose it seems like it spreads out to a bit more like 5 weeks, but the point remains that now instead of having to deal with pretty much the highs and lows of one story, Yuichi's got to deal with most of them. Dude should really be much more of an emotional wreck.