Canaan

Canaan is an action thriller where three main characters converge in China as their previous baggage with each other become intertwined with an overarching terrorist plot.

What grabbed me immediately were the visuals and the unique setting of China, which is rarely seen in anime. The action is spectacularly animated creating white knuckle tension, a sense of stakes, and a feeling of brutality. While their are fantastical elements involved, the action still plays out similar to what you would see in a Jason Bourne or James Bond movie. The character animation is colorful, crisp, and full of complexion.

What is interesting is that the audience has ... to piece together the history the three characters have with each other as the show goes along. This story is a quasi sequel to events taken place in a visual novel to my understanding. Therefore, the show immediately launches into the plot assuming you know the characters already. Thankfully the show provides enough tidbits of information of the characters' past that I could follow along with the story even though I had not seen the visual novel. It was refreshing to see a show with next to no exposition dead-weight at the beginning and gets straight into the action. It makes you pay close attention so you don't miss crucial information.

While this show does not reach top tier in any of its elements, this is still a solid action anime that I believe is an underrated gem. I'm glad I stumbled onto this one by chance.

Guns and Girls, Tomboys and Terrorism, Sci-Fi and Supernatural, all for one big... bland experience? Disappointing.


Lately, Mino has found his time as a reporter to be somewhat unfulfilling. He only ever produced gossip stories, which one would read at sunrise and then promptly forget by sunset. So, in order to get that huge scoop, he made the decision to dig into a certain terrorist group while pretending to be writing an article about the "International Conference on Anti-terrorism" that's going to be held at the capital of the factory of the world, Shanghai. He is accompanied by Maria, his blond and jovial new photographer. But ... when Maria unintentionally captures images of the blood-coughing masked guys at the core of a carnival that everyone appears to be rather passionately involved in, things take a sharp turn. And to her amazement, Cannan, her one and only white-haired, gun-toting batman of a friend, arrives for her rescue. Mino notices that something strange is happening in the city.
What might it be, and what other unexpected and frightening facts are awaiting our team?

The essential characteristic of "Cannan" is how well it manages its cast of characters. There are close to 15 of them, and while some rapidly recede into the background such as the gun-hu old man with his young companion or the masculine Moe cab driver and his favorite idol, others have a significant impact on the plot. With the exception of YunYun, everyone in the story is paired: Mino & Maria, Cannan & Alphard, Sandy & Hakko, and Liang & Cummings. By the end of the story, everyone has undergone a complete transformation, but each character's development depends entirely on the pair counterpart they are interacting with because without them, you can't really like these characters and you might even detest a few (I hated Liang as much as I felt sorry for her).

I had the distinct impression that the titular two tomboys were descended from Shiki of the "Garden of Sinners". All three of them have a guy or girl they like or look up to and are both cool and strong. However, Cannan and Shiki are similar in terms of abilities, while Alphard and Shiki are more similar in terms of personalities (they even share the same VA). Although this was more prominent later in the narrative, the anime concentrates on their rivalry and how these two overcame their origins. Beginning with some comedy and fan service, there is also sporadically lighthearted action.

The fundamental issue with "Cannan" is that it falls short of conveying all of the different themes it set out to do. Themes of terrorization and human experimentation set the stage for a story of acceptance, but it was handled rather sloppily because the plot never really engaged the audience emotionally. Additionally, despite having so many characters and only 13 episodes, none of them really hit the emotional high points they were established for, which can leave the viewer with an unsatisfying experience. Although it makes every effort, it never succeeds in bringing about the progress it promises to bring about in its own characters, even if it breaks them in the process.

It contains some impressive gun-fu action scenes, one character moment when they elevate a woman who is amusingly strolling by a sparkling fountain, and of course, those buns' bounce is beautiful, but regrettably, there aren't many action scenes. Considering that both titles have the same creator, I suppose it makes sense that the character designs are extremely similar to those in Garden of Sinners. I paid no attention to the soundtrack other than the final song that plays as an insert, and I have no interest in looking it up either. However, the opening is quite strong.

Who should watch this?
Personally, I don't think this anime is worth the watch as its shortcomings outweigh its merits. But,
Watch this if you want to see some gun-slinging action or just want to waste some time. However,
I believe there are far better Anime.

On April 28 20XX, the CIA formed a joint operation with Tokyo PD to help resolve a kidnapping case. As you'd imagine, if the CIA are involved, this is pretty serious business. See, the victim of the kidnapping case, Maria Osawa, was injected with the Ua virus and was set loose onto the busy streets of Shibuya.

The Ua virus is particularly deadly, causing the victim to violently bleed out of every orifice after 12-24 hours of infection. You can already imagine the means of transmission if the symptoms are *that* horrific. If they did not find Maria Osawa within this timeframe, the streets of Shibuya ... would be painted in red.

That's all in the past though. Of course, the CIA and Tokyo PD would work together to keep this case away from public light. But to those who did know about these events, they would call it the 428 Shibuya Scramble.

428 Shibuya Scramble is a legendary visual novel and is one of the best that you'll ever read. It leaves an everlasting impression with its writing, the presentation, and its characters.

428 Shibuya Scramble was so good and confident that they featured a special scenario from Type-Moon! This scenario would then get a sequel anime, Canaan!

Canaan on the other hand... isn't good. And I never bothered to compare it to its predecessor. Even though Type-Moon can shit out a well-produced anime, sometimes the shit flies all over the toilet seat. Such is the case with Canaan.

The biggest issue I have with Canaan is that it's simply too campy. It's an anime that's blissfully ignorant, lollygagging along the ghettos of Shanghai while dragging you along for uninteresting ride.

The story revolves around Canaan and Maria Osawa, but you don't need the visual novel pretext. You're not expected to know it either. Cool! What's not cool is literally everything else.

Type-Moon is the only studio to place serious plot points near armpits and butts. They're the only studio to show a no-name idol singing at an Anti-Terrorist Convention that gets taken over by terrorists. All of this feels very loosely written. The lack of cohesion and overload of camp proves that a coherent story isn't a priority. And I didn't mind this, as I have 0 expectations for anything.

For 12 episodes you are thrown through a cat and mouse charade, which is uninteresting because all Type-Moon did was flex their choreography.

Oh, sure. Type-Moon does what they do best, I suppose. In Canaan's case the action still feels lacking because fancy anime military backflips are innately less interesting than an overflow of shiny particle effects. But despite the criticisms, it was still entertaining to watch the eye-candy-laced scenarios unfold.

The characters on the other hand are not interesting. They look strong but end up degrading themselves as all characters search for and display the basic principles of a good anime human. The fact that it isn't grounded in any capacity makes me feel like I'm drowning in this bottomless pool of sentimentality rather than wanting to coddle these cold-blooded apex predators.

In the end, much like the visual novel, the taxi driver is my highlight of the show. Even when he's subjected to anime bullshit, he'll laugh, brush it off, and still give you a ride to the strip club the very next day.

On the other end, I was very disappointed to see the main villain, Alphard, degrade beyond recognition. When subjected to anime bullshit, she quite literally falls off in such a way that nobody could've predicted. She acted crazy cool, but was penultimately weak. Fallen from grace. Truly unbefitting of the mastermind known as Alphard.

And Canaan... ugh. For a show to be THIS centered around her... UGH. 12 episodes to show that stoic apex predators can smile too. There's not much to be said about her since Canaan is a simple girl. The show goes out of its way to reinforce that idea and it wasn't interesting because for 11 episodes she didn't display any hint of any meaningful character development.

In conclusion,

Just another day of cute anime girls smiling, terrorism, and unimportant plot twists in favour of campy feels. There's nothing wrong with any of this, but that toilet seat still needs cleaning. So get to it. 4/10.

Until next time.