Kanon's story revolves around a group of five girls whose lives are connected to the same boy  

Wednesday, July 22, 2009
































The player assumes the role of Yuichi Aizawa, the protagonist of Kanon. He is a cynical seventeen year-old high school student, and is known to play jokes on the girls his age he knows and interacts with throughout the story. Despite this, Yuichi is very loyal and will go to great lengths in order to please others, even at the expense of his own time and money. He generally has a selfless personality and does not ask much from others in return for what he does for them. Ayu Tsukimiya, the main heroine of Kanon, is a short, strange, and mysterious girl immediately recognizable by her winged backpack, red hair band, and tendency to refer to herself with the masculine first-person pronoun boku (僕?). She has a fondness for eating taiyaki, and is notorious for her catch phrase, "ugū" (うぐぅ?), which she mutters as an expression of various negative emotions such as frustration, anger, and fear. Yuichi's first cousin Nayuki Minase, another of Kanon's heroines, has been in love with him since childhood, and must learn how to deal with her feelings, especially with the threat that he may fall in love with one of the other girls. Nayuki talks noticeably slower than those around her, and has constant trouble waking up in the morning except on a few occasions when she is up before Yuichi, much to his surprise.[1]
Yuichi is accosted a few days after arriving in the city by Kanon's third heroine Makoto Sawatari, a young girl who has lost her memories, but despite this she is sure that she holds a grudge against Yuichi from when he last visited the city. Makoto has a mischievous side and constantly plays pranks on Yuichi. She has an affinity towards the spring and once wished that it would stay spring forever.[8] Yuichi coincidentally runs into Shiori Misaka, another heroine and first-year high school student suffering from an unexplained illness since birth. Her affliction has caused her to become very physically weak, and she is almost always absent from school because of it. She tries to be strong in the face of her condition, and gets along well with others, even though she does not know very many people her age due to her condition. The fifth and final heroine in Kanon is Mai Kawasumi, a third-year student of the same high school that Yuichi attends. She has a cold attitude towards almost everyone, but despite this, she is actually a very kind and caring person; she "punishes" someone who makes a playful joke about her by giving them a light karate chop to the head.[1]

[edit] Story
Kanon's story revolves around a group of five girls whose lives are connected to the same boy. Yuichi Aizawa is a second-year high school student who had visited the city where the story takes place seven years prior to Kanon's beginning. The story opens on Wednesday January 6, 1999[1] when Yuichi arrives in the city and is very detached from it and its inhabitants. Prior to his return, it is decided that he is to stay with his first cousin, Nayuki Minase, and her mother, Akiko. After his long absence, Yuichi has forgotten almost everything except minor details of what happened seven years before and is in need of being reminded of what he left behind. Nayuki initially tries repeatedly to jog his memory, but is unsuccessful. Throughout the story, as he learns about the supernatural undertones of the city, Yuichi is reminded of the events of seven years ago.
On the day after Yuichi's return, he is out with Nayuki who is showing him around city. Nayuki remembers that she has to buy things for dinner, but Yuichi is reluctant to go into the store with her, arguing that he might get lost. Moments after Nayuki leaves him waiting on the sidewalk, a strange girl named Ayu Tsukimiya collides with him with little warning. Upon recovering, she drags him away to a nearby café and confesses to inadvertently stealing a bag filled with taiyaki after being accidentally scared away by the salesman before she had a chance to pay. Yuichi drags Ayu back to the salesman, where they both apologize for the trouble, and Ayu is forgiven. They decide to meet up again another day and Ayu scampers off. A few days after he has been in the city, Yuichi is accosted by a girl named Makoto Sawatari who has lost her memories, though still remembers that she has a grudge against him from when he last visited the city. After she collapses in the street, he takes her home and learns about her situation. Akiko gives her permission to live with them for the time being, which is against Yuichi's plan to hand her over to the police.
Another girl who is connected to Yuichi's past is Mai Kawasumi who attends his high school as a third-year. She takes it upon herself to fight and defeat demons at night while the school is deserted. Due to this, she is constantly blamed for accidents because she never denies them, being too sincere to say anything and knowing that no one will believe that there are demons in the school. Yuichi coincidentally meets a fifth girl named Shiori Misaka for the first time who he gets to know along with the other four heroines in the story. She has suffered from an unexplained affliction since birth which makes her weak to the point of missing school because of it. Yuichi starts to talk with her more after noticing her in the school courtyard one day. It turns out that Shiori stands outside on the school grounds nearly every day because she wants to meet someone dear to her.




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There are several important locations featured in the Kanon story, though the location names are seldom mentioned explicitly in Key's works  
















































There are several important locations featured in the Kanon story, though the location names are seldom mentioned explicitly in Key's works. The time of year the story occurs in is during winter, and since it often snows periodically over the course of the entire story, the city is always presented covered in a layer of snow. The shopping district is featured throughout the story when the characters go into town, and especially whenever Ayu appears in the early story. The high school where Yuichi and the other main characters attend, including the school grounds, is shown predominantly in Shiori's and Mai's stories, and is otherwise a general setting where Yuichi interacts with other characters.
There are recurring themes that appear throughout the story. A music theme is present, as the episode titles from the 2006–2007 anime have parts in their titles related to music, such as overture and introit. Miracles play a large part in the story; Kanon's plot line and characters are influenced by various instances where miracles occur.The act of promising and keeping promises is found throughout the story. Yuichi eventually makes important promises to the five main girls while at the same time fulfilling past promises he had made with four of them when he used to visit the city as a kid.
One of the motifs in the story is amnesia, or memory loss; three of the main characters—Yuichi, Ayu and Makoto—suffer from amnesia in varying degrees; this is used as a plot device to advance the story.Another motif deals with the favorite foods of the five main heroines. Newtype USA stated in an article on Kanon that, "it's when the characters are eating something really tasty that they seem most beautiful and alive," despite the somber setting and overall tone of the series. These five foods of choice are: taiyaki (Ayu), strawberries (Nayuki), nikuman (Makoto), ice cream (Shiori), and gyudon (Mai).







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In the October 2007 issue of Dengeki G's Magazine, poll results for the fifty best bishōjo games were released  















































In the October 2007 issue of Dengeki G's Magazine, poll results for the fifty best bishōjo games were released; out of 249 titles, Kanon ranked fifth with seventy-one votes. According to a national ranking of how well bishōjo games sold nationally in Japan, the original Kanon release for the PC premiered at number two in the ranking. Three years later in June 2002, the original release ranked in again at forty-five, and then again at forty-six the following two weeks. Kanon has sold over 300,000 units across several platforms, not counting the PSP release.
Kanon's gameplay requires little interaction from the player as most of the duration of the game is spent simply reading the text that appears on the game screen which represents either dialogue between the various characters or the inner thoughts of the protagonist. Every so often, the player will come to a "decision point" where he or she is given the chance to choose from multiple options. The time between these decision points is variable and can occur anywhere from a minute to much longer. Gameplay pauses at these points and depending on which choice the player makes, the plot will progress in a specific direction.There are five main plot lines that the player will have the chance to experience, one for each of the heroines in the story. To view all five plot lines, the player will have to replay the game multiple times and choose different choices during the decision points to progress the plot in an alternate direction. Jun Maeda, who worked on the scenario for Kanon, commented in March 2001 that the Japanese public may have fallen under the impression that Key makes soothing games because of Kanon's influence, but Maeda affirmed that there was not one person who worked on Kanon who thought that.
One of the goals of the original version's gameplay is for the player to enable the viewing of adult scenes depicting Yuichi and one of the five heroines having sexual intercourse. Later, Key released two editions of Kanon without the erotic content. The versions that include the adult content include one explicit sex scene in each of the five main story routes, 50-75% of the way through, excluding one fantasy scene.Outside of these, there are two scenes with nudity which use the same CGs.Yūichi Suzumoto, a scenario writer who worked on later Key titles, commented that the sex scenes in Kanon are very self-contained, and can be easily removed without altering the story. Maeda was asked what he thought if the sex scenes had been written in order to promote human reproduction, but he remarks that it would not work in games like Kanon or Air.








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Kanon has been adapted into light novels, drama CDs, and two anime and manga series.  















































Kanon has been adapted into light novels, drama CDs, and two anime and manga series. The first anime is a thirteen episode TV series that aired between January and March 2002; this version includes a one episode original video animation (OVA), Kazahana, released in March 2003. Both the original anime adaptation and the OVA were produced by the animation studio Toei Animation. The second anime adaptation, created by Kyoto Animation, contained twenty-four episodes and aired in Japan between October 2006 and March 2007; this series was first licensed by ADV Films, but the license was transferred to Funimation in July 2008 and is released in English. The second TV adaptation plays on the association between Kanon and the musical term canon by using Pachelbel's Kanon D-dur, or Canon in D major, as a background piece at certain instances throughout the series.








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Kanon is a Japanese adult visual novel developed by Key and released on June 4, 1999 playable on a Microsoft Windows PC  
















































Kanon (カノン?) is a Japanese adult visual novel developed by Key and released on June 4, 1999 playable on a Microsoft Windows PC. An all ages version for the PC was released in January 2000, and was later ported to the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable. The Kanon Standard Edition was released for the PC as an adult version in November 2004 and an all ages version in January 2005. Both Standard Editions are playable as a DVD-ROM and incorporate the extra graphics added to the earlier all ages version of the game, added support for Windows 2000/XP, and other technical changes such as more save slots. The gameplay in Kanon follows a linear plot line, which offers pre-determined scenarios and courses of interaction, and focuses on the appeal of the five female main characters.







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From Far Away (Kanata Kara) is a fantasy shōjo manga by Kyoko Hikawa  















































From Far Away (彼方から, Kanata Kara?) is a fantasy shōjo manga by Kyoko Hikawa. It was published by Hakusensha in LaLa from 1993 to 2003 and collected in 14 tankōbon volumes. It is licensed in North America by Viz Media under the title From Far Away.
In 2004, the manga won the 35th annual Seiun Award for best science fiction comic.


Noriko, an ordinary schoolgirl, has slipped into a mysterious world of magic and flying dragons, which is in chaos due to the ancient foresaying of The Awakening. Every kingdom in the world is in search for the Awakening as they believe that it has the power to control the Sky Demon, the most destructive monster. Noriko meets Izark, the lonesome warrior, and accompanies him. Izark was born with a mysterious power that makes people hate him and causes him to travel alone. He came here in order to change his fate by trying to kill the Awakening only to find out that the Awakening is Noriko. As she travels with him, it gets harder for them to talk as they speak different languages.
Izark realizes that Noriko knows nothing at all about her being the Awakening and can't leave her alone in the middle of nowhere. He decides to take her to his old and only friend Gaya. During the journey to Gaya's place, he is struck by a mysterious illness: the sign of his physical transformation to the Sky Demon, as he turns out to be the Sky Demon in human form. Noriko has no clue about his illness as well as his frustration with her, but tries her best to nurse him. Rachef, the young ruler of Rienca, sends his best warrior Keimos to search for the Awakening. Finally Keimos catches up with them, and he and Izark start to duel in which Izark won.
The story continues on about Izark and his transformations, and his growing love for clueless Noriko. Noriko also realizes her feelings for Izark and a battle between Light and Dark commences as Rachef, Leader of Rienka, tries to take over.





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