Canvas 2 ~Niji-iro no Sketch~

[rei]

Originally Posted by rei

Kiri's omikuji - You must wait for your wish to come true
Elis' omikuji - Your wish will be granted

I don't think so After reading that omikuji, Kiri said, "I've...waited long enough..." It can't be that she'd waited long enough for Hiroki to paint now, can it? Because Kiri didn't know that Hiroki had stopped painting until she met him again. I think she was waiting for Hiroki to respond to her feeling. Then again...

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Spoiler for Assorted Art Cards from DVD 7 & 8 (there are three with each DVD, and two binders to hold them all) - NSFW?:

NICE! "Elis in Wonderland" Sumire is the caterpillar, Hagino is the white rabbit, Tomoko is the Cheshire Cat, Shie is the EVIL Heart Queen , Kiri is the Royal Guard (card! ) & Elis is well...Alice Mami is a chicken? I don't remember any chicken in the story

Anyway thanks for posting those pics I hardly find them on the internet (or maybe I was just too lazy to search )

[Eddi]

just saw the whole anime it was good but the ending just suced hope they make another season to fix that if it ends like that it just sucks

[npal]

Well, it doesn't suck per se, it just doesn't seem to connect too much. Maybe some extra scenes are included in the DVD version?

[Narumi]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Spoiler for Assorted Art Cards from DVD 7 & 8 (there are three with each DVD, and two binders to hold them all):

Ren <3

And the picture of the Saginomiya's is awesome too

[Hage-bai]

Originally Posted by Eddi

just saw the whole anime it was good but the ending just suced hope they make another season to fix that if it ends like that it just sucks

Don't hold your breath. Send the series to the recycle bin and move on.

[rei]

Originally Posted by npal

Well, it doesn't suck per se, it just doesn't seem to connect too much. Maybe some extra scenes are included in the DVD version?

No, no. It is somehow connected (IMO that is )
I tried to go everywhere to look for answers & most people complained the same thing & yet, no one come up with an explaination about how it ended up like that. Some Kiri fans said, "Kiri lost. This anime sucks." While Elis' fans said, "Yay! Elis won. Who cares about the story." And others said, "Eewww. Gross" or "I don't get it". Plus there are more other things that people said

As Elis fan myself, I was also dissatisfied with the ending. Since I can't find the answer from somebody else, I have to do some observation myself I watch it over & over & over again. I think I get the idea now (or maybe ) Damn. I need some free times to write down my opinions. Unfortunately, I don't have much free time.

[npal]

Well, I'm an Elis fan, too, that's why I didn't grow that discontent about the ending. Not only that, but I don't care much about the whole taboo-or-not business, so I guess I'm on the nice side

[rei]

Originally Posted by Vexx

I think the only problem many people had with Canvas 2 was the jump from the last scene at the airport to that eyecatch in the end credits.... the dots had simply not been connected in the storyline to imply he had that kind of interest in her, unlike the other choice who he clearly did entertain those kinds of thoughts about.

This is the reason why I'm not satisfy. But that was before though. People claimed that Hiroki's choice is coming from no where. And somehow 'Out of Character'.

[npal]

^ That's not true actually, before the ending credits, it seemed liked a no-win situation. It wasn't really out of character, but it needs explanation.

[rei]

^ May I need the detail of what need to be explain? I really don't understand what is needed to be explain. Maybe I can come up with something.

Anyway, Hiroki's choice is pretty clear to me. So I don't think the ending is a twist afterall (like most people have claimed it to be). Canvas 2 is not just a simple story (IMO). It requires some understanding about the characters especially Hiroki, since many people can't see his thoughts.

[npal]

Well, let's face it, Hiroki-Kiri wasn't progressing very much (it was moving, albeit at snail pace), and we didn't hear the answer to the second confession. Hiroki-Elis seemed finished from way back, at least from Hiroki's side. Then suddenly, Kiri apparently interprets Hiroki's behavior as breaking up. The reunion in the end seemed like a sibling reconciliation. I mean, even I failed to get any romantic atmosphere there, besides the warm and fuzzy feeling that everything is ok now. They could have left it at that with no problem at all. But the ending credits establish something whose existence was too difficult to spot, if at all. It needs a bit more explanation.

[rei]

^ So meaning to say that everybody was expecting Hiroki to see Elis just to show her the painting & went back to be with Kiri?

[Vexx]

I think you're missing the complexity here, rei. Hiroki obviously considers Elise his most important person at the end but we never really get the sense that he's physically attracted to her.

npal's view pretty much matches mine and my recollection is that he was a big Elise supporter .... I've heard the manga does a better job of communicating the notion that Hiroki at least shows himself as being *physically attracted* to Elise whereas the anime treats the pair's relationship as almost purely "father-daughter-platonic" for the whole series til that end credit eyecatch. The last few episodes show the Kiri side of the triangle faltering (he seems to be just going through the motions as something he "ought to do") but the Elise side never really heats up in the physical domain to correspond even in a subtle way.

No one else is spoiler tagging so here goes...
Hiroki's motivations aren't that hard to understand ... Elise is important to him, he doesn't want to lose that bond. In the end, that simply is more important to him and we grieve for Kiri. But the bond with Elise has been portrayed as totally platonic from Hiroki's side throughout the series so the end eyecatch becomes a "wtf?" with no lead up. A few extra minutes of scenes scattered throughout the series or even an occasional blush from Hiroki would mitigate that.

Anime series are often very sketchy in storyline and viewers have to infer depth which often doesn't actually get portrayed but while the writers did a pretty good job on the Kiri story thread rise and fall ... they faltered just enough on the Elise side that even many Elise supporters didn't buy that last little snapshot in the blankets.

Overall, its still a pretty good ero-conversion anime and I wouldn't tell anyone NOT to watch it... the Hagino and Tomoko moments are worth it alone

EDIT: after some offline conversation with rooboy, I should clarify that my description of the Hiroki-Elise relationship for most of the series as "father-daughter-platonic" DOES not mean Hiroki raised Elise. She was raised by a relative and moved in with Hiroki to conserve expenses in expensive Japan to attend school where he taught. The anime implies that she's had a crush on him for a long time but there's not much in the way of explicit flashback. Hiroki, for 99% of the series, treats his relationship with Elise AS IF he were a caring father, not a possible consort.
I'll also point out that cousin-marriages are common throughout the world and legal in much of the US so any view deriding the choice on that basis has no basis in fact.

I'd love to see a spin-off series with Hagino and Tomoko going to college ... purely for literary reasons of course <snort, laugh>.

[mangatron]

Ah, I remembered when Hagino's date episode aired...I went mad crazy insane That episode alone set the stage for my later outbursts of joy with the beach episode that came along the way. Canvas 2 is sucha nice series, I'll personally say that it is a rare anime, I haven't seen something like this before. And when I say before, I mean of all the anime I have seen. And that is a long, nasty list of what I have seen

I'll say the manga does a nice job of lightening up the series in a comical way. We see Hiroki in a way we have never seen before. Of course, the girls are so pretty, but the story is what I would like to make note of. I do like the way it handles Elise's past. Ah, Elise....Hagino...Sumi....zzzzzzzzzzzz.....

*/me is dreaming mode*

[rooboy]

I'm going to not rise to the "pretty good" bait (I consider it "pretty average"), and just stick to the main thrust of this discussion. I do think that the second episode (Hagino's date episode with Hiroki) is one of the two or three best (if not the best) comedic episode I've seen in any erogame-anime conversion. And the Elis confession episode (and aftermath episodes) were very powerful, but I thought the whole thing lost steam after that.

If the eyecatch had had Kiri in it, that would have been an out-of-left-field moment. Hagino or the Director (both were shown to have some level of romantic feelings towards Hiroki) would have been an out-of-the-stadium moment. Elis is in between, it's out of the bleacher seats. Clearly Hiroki has deep, meaningful feelings for her; however, we were continually lead to believe these feelings were platonic. The last time these feelings had come up in any sort of meaningful way, Hiroki had rejected Elis.
Nothing really lead us to believe that he was going to end up with Kiri either; however, this does not equate to evidence that he was considering Elis. Most evidence that indicates anything regarding his feelings towards Kiri is circumstantial - it relies on either things we didn't see (like her confessions) or things we have no meaningful basis for comparison on (like how slow the relationship seemed to be moving, we have no idea how long it would normally take those two - since neither has ever been in a relationship before). His feelings towards Elis were (we thought) crystal-clear when he rejected her earlier in the series: he loves her like a little sister (or a daughter, I guess).

Honestly, when the credits started rolling, I thought he was going to be shut of both of them - and I thought that would be an okay ending. He started painting again, he showed Elis that she was very important to him, he had managed to break it off with Kiri after giving it a shot, Elis had gotten over her weird thing with the color red, and she looked like she was moving on with her life in France. At that point I thought it did a wonderful job with themes of growing up. Kiri and Hiroki had left their past behind, Elis was leaving her childhood things behind, and everyone was moving forward. Unfortunately the eyecatch kind of undoes some of that. But, on the other hand, it's less than twenty seconds of the show, so I can't really understand how it "ruins" it for some people either.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by rooboy666

I'm going to not rise to the "pretty good" bait (I consider it "pretty average")

I just have much lower expectations for for ero-conversion anime since they often seem to think they can hire hack screenplay writers "since most of it is written".
So far, only Lamune has really gone into my "special part" of my library from that type of anime.

At first I thought that last eyecatch had nuked the show but after a few months, I think of it as a fairly ignorable glitch of time budget crisis ... something too much of anime suffers from.

[rooboy]

Originally Posted by Vexx

I just have much lower expectations for for ero-conversion anime since they often seem to think they can hire hack screenplay writers "since most of it is written".

No my expectations are pretty low - Canvas2 filled them admirably. I don't think the show is bad or anything, I've actually recommended it to people, I just don't consider it to be particularly outstanding. Some people love it because it fills all of the little boxes they consider important, other people don't because it doesn't.

Though my favorite part, at the time and even now, was that we weren't given very much transparency into anyone's thoughts - so it makes interpretations of their motivations very interesting. In general the way a person interprets Canvas2 character motives tells us much more about the interpreter than about the Canvas2 characters - and it's not often you find it done as well as it was done in this show. Kind of like, I guess, how whether someone considers Suzumiya Haruhi a god, an evolved lifeform, or an anomaly tells me much more about that person than the actual show. We're interpreting those answers (the show doesn't provide them), and, as with all interpretation, it's influenced heavily by background and past life-experiences. Actually as more and more people come on and post whatever they think about the ending, my opinion of the show has risen slightly. I do think it has admirably filled the (often forgotten) actual goal of this type of show: I've thought occasionally about purchasing the game so I can see what's going on with my two favorite characters (who also coincidentally seem to get the least screentime): Hagino and the director.

Back to the topic at hand - Rei, I actually think more people were happy with the Elise ending than with the possibility of the Kiri ending (at least, Elise seemed to have a much larger fanbase at the time), but I think people were just expecting it to start coming up a little earlier. This is particularly horrid from a pacing standpoint because plenty of episodes in the show serve no real purpose. It's okay to have episodes with no plot purpose (every tv show, anime or not, has them - they provide a lot of the better character development), but it's not okay to do it and then rush the ending. Except for one or two exceptions, I don't think most people feel like the show was ruined by what happened at the eyecatch. Most people are just like Vexx and if they didn't like it (for whatever reason), they just ignore it.

[ShadowrazoR]

Could someone please refresh my memory about the last eyecatch? From the screencaps at Random Curiousity, I see only Kiri in her white dress, and then Elis in a red dress. Not exactly something to get pissed about, in my opinion.

*puts up flame shield

Or were you guys talking about that last bit after the credits?

[rooboy]

We're referring to the last bit after the credits.

It's not a traditional eyecatch - but that's the effect I think it had on a lot of people.

EDIT: Though I do have to admit that I liked the fact there was an implied naughty bit to the series as well - I can't count how many series seem to have divorced the notion that sex actually happens in the game from the anime version completely. I always say, "Dance with the one that brought you."

[ShadowrazoR]

Originally Posted by rooboy666

We're referring to the last bit after the credits.

It's not a traditional eyecatch - but that's the effect I think it had on a lot of people.

Yes, it certainly did catch people's eyes. Luckily I always watch past the credits for final episodes.

Originally Posted by rooboy666

EDIT: Though I do have to admit that I liked the fact there was an implied naughty bit to the series as well - I can't count how many series seem to have divorced the notion that sex actually happens in the game from the anime version completely. I always say, "Dance with the one that brought you."

Which brings me to my question: how do most games that were eroge ported over to PS2 and made all-ages handle the H-scenes removal? Do they turn it into implied sex or completely replace it with another (significant) event?