[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by DasDingus

Mai: Easily my favorite heroine Mai's character intrigued me from the very start. Maybe I just like independent soft-spoken characters that just seem a little different. Probably why I liked Kotomi so much but I'm getting sidetracked. I thought her relationship with Sayuri was fun to watch and her little karate chops to Sayuri's head were always good for a laugh. Not sure where I stand on the sword-wielding-demon-fighter aspect of her character though. I'd probably give that a neutral grade since I don't tend to like stories like that but it was done well.

Hah, I don't think it's very surprising you'd prefer Mai if you liked Kotomi as well. If Mai had a Clannad counterpart, it'd be Kotomi. The characters are quite similar in a number of ways (Mostly silent, talented, nonsensical, capable of mass destruction) Kotomi's kinda like Mai except much more mellow and chilled out (must be what she puts in her pies)

The first major event in the show is Yuuichi being attacked by a mysterious girl who apparently hates him for some reason. So of course Yuuichi does what anyone would do when a strange girl attacked them, he brings her home with him. The mystery girl gets to say in the extra room (there's always an extra room) while she figures out who she is.

LOL. That's pretty much the first few episodes for you.

However, I was ultimately somewhat underwhelmed with the eventual outcome of this arc as I felt that things were wrapped up a bit too tidily. Mai just comes back to life after killing herself by healing herself? I felt that the arc could have ended with Mai as a casualty or at least in serious condition in the hospital and the overall story would be no worse for the wear. The only advantage I could find from immediate curing of Mai's condition was that she could explain why she tried to kill herself but that was never explored.

Yea I felt her committing suicide made the thing unnecessarily depressing, and it just dragged the story along. It gave the feeling of a Shaggy Dog Story I suppose it's one thing I don't like about Jun Maeda's writing. (Clannad and Air aren't exempt from this) He sometimes has a tendency of creating the shock tragedy train that doesn't really contribute anything to the story. This is a pretty extreme case since it gets undone in 15 seconds anyways.

I mean, this really means they did this for nothing, and Mai could never get over it, and Yuuichi's actions didn't really help at all had it not been for the miracle. The other thing is that overplaying the tragedy card ended up hurting the series. This is all of course an issue with the source and merging threads, but still a weakness and strains my belief that EVERYONE AROUND ME IS DYING OR SUICIDAL.

The Mai arc is still my favorite, but it's this small detail that makes the build up superior to the conclusion. 14 > 15 imo.

I felt the show sort of stumbled toward the finish line in general though as the storyline got very convoluted with Yuuichi dealing with flashbacks about both Ayu and Nayuki at the same time (how many times do they have to replay him slapping the snow bunny? It was like Kanon's version of DENTAL PLAN) and this combined with a surprise appearance from the real Makoto made it feel like they were trying to put too much into too few episodes.

And then we run into my biggest complaint about the series, that being the ending. If you recall what I said before about rules for how the supernatural worked, we had established that a miracle requires the sacrifice of a life and a memory. Makoto's story followed this rule well enough, in Mai's arc her survival wasn't a miracle because her ability to heal saved her (although I wasn't completely satisfied with that result.) However Ayu appears to perform the miracle to end all miracles making no fewer than 4 people healthy again with no apparent sacrifice. If the sleeping Ayu had ended up dying and her death was the life needed to cause those miracles I felt the concept of miracles in the show would have held together much better than the way it ended up.

Haha, Man, is a KyoAni adaptation of a Key game ever gonna have a comprehensible ending? I feel it was a time pressure thing. If Kanon was 26 episodes, it might have been a more satisfying conclusion. I think it falls an inch short of a masterpiece because it didn't come together as well as it should have though the individual stories are very good. But much like Clannad and Air, I sorta just gave them a pass.