Kanon
Visual Novel
Time period covered: The last ~3 weeks of January 1999
I played: August 2-15, 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â In the VN, all the main action of any route takes place in a span of 3-4 weeks. Â 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. Â Dude should really be much more of an emotional wreck.