Kanon Kazahana

I'm a huge fan of Kanon. I started with the 2006 version of the anime, fell in love with it, then went and read its source material just to experience the magic one more time. In my quest to devour everything Kanon, I even went back and watched the original version of the anime. I wasn't too thrilled with it, but it was an enjoyable experience nonetheless. Finally I went and watched Kanon Kazahana. Going into it, I was pretty excited. It was new content for my beloved Kanon that didn't appear in the VN or the 2006 version of the anime. What could possiblygo wrong? Well, nothing apparently. But the opposite issue arose. Nothing really went right either. The problem with Kanon Kazahana is that it comes across as very uneventful. The whole thing is supposed to be a look into the lives of the characters after the events of the main story, but it really doesn't go anywhere with that. Just about everyone is doing exactly what you'd expect them to be doing. The entire thing left me wondering "So what?" The end of the anime basically implied that all of this stuff was going to be happening, so why did we need to see it all? All of the events of Kanon Kazahana feel like they could be condensed into a 3-5 minute montage and they'd have the same impact. What baffles me is that they actually went and did that too. In a 20 minute episode, they decided it'd be a good idea to spend the last 2-3 minutes of it on a credits sequence with a montage of the episode playing. So... why? What was the point of it all? I felt more or less the same impact from watching the credits than I did from watching the actual episode. Did this special really need to happen? To be fair, one notable event does happen, but when it's juxtaposed against a bunch of pretty pointless stuff and not given nearly enough attention, it doesn't really do anything for you. There's no build to it. It just kinda happens and you're left there saying, "Uhmm... okay." I give Kanon Kazahana a 5. Like I said earlier, nothing really went wrong with this episode, but it came across as so pointless and unnoteworthy that I can't really say anything went right either. It's not bad, but it's certainly not good. If you're a huge fan of the 2006 remake and decided that this special would be the reason to go back and watch the original adaptation, don't bother. You're wouldn't be missing much if that's the case.

If for some reason you found yourself asking questions about what all the other girls were up to after the main story had concluded, here you go. It's a relatively short OVA that just covers the after stories of all the girls who's routes weren't chosen. A pretty boring ending to a pretty boring anime. It doesn't really offer anything that couldn't be inferred from just the main show's ending, and honestly I can't imagine anyone really caring about any of the other girls unless they had played the original Visual Novel. You can probably skip watching this and move on to watching the 2006adaptation of Kanon instead. It might do a better job capturing the personalities of the girls from the original story and be a more entertaining watch. 6/10