ÆON Community

Recently I watched the anime Canaan which I remembered from some time ago when I think Affian mentioned it….I grabbed it at the last LAN and began to watch it hoping for a decent anime about female assassins…y’know like a good one for once…not like Phantom.

The premise basically is that there is a killer virus (the UA virus) designed for mass biological warfare that was tested on human subjects…and the main characters (Canaan, her friend Maria and Maria’s business partner Mino) are determined to get to the bottom of where the virus came from and why it exists. The virus itself typically kills people within 12 hours…but occasionally some will survive and become “Borners” who harvest some type of super human power in some fashion.

Canaan herself is a trained assassin that utilises a virus enhanced power known as “Synaesthesia” which basically allows all her senses to be linked. That means she can feel colours, see smells and taste feelings etc…basically where we can see someone’s aggressive body language, she can actively feel it…or where we can hear something down the hall, she can see and taste it. This of course makes her an insanely good killer but what makes her so powerful is that she can see colours surrounding people. The colours signify how they feel…meaning she can pick out a killer in the midst of a crowd just by seeing his colour.

Maria is Canaan’s old friend who she protects like no other simply because Maria is kind to her as no one aside from Maria has been this way to Canaan before…Canaan’s enemies (a terrorist group named the “Snakes) see this and use it to draw Canaan out.

Mino works alongside Maria to capture and record the oddities surrounding Canaan, the Snakes and the UA Virus and acts much like an older brother to Maria and takes care of her throughout all the issues. Eventually the team grows larger as they find borners, ex-scientists that worked on the UA virus and other people.

When Canaan’s uses her Synaesthesia power her eyes glow a creepy flame red…shits cool man.

Anyway, time for my thoughts:

Firstly nothing really stays static throughout the anime…almost all the characters change completely which isnt unexpected…but its frustrating. In the first episodes Canaan is a happy-go-lucky kick ass chick who’s on a mission to stop everyone in her path…by the end she’s some hard-done-by emo who starts hallucinating and dreaming things and even though she can see people’s movements before they happen, she simply cant be her old Nemesis…which pissed me off more than a little.

However, Maria and Mino both grow throughout the series legitimately in that they both learn that they are simply pawns in the game that Canaan lives from day to day.

As far as other characters go, I felt that they simply overdid Liang Qi, who is the younger sister to Alphard who leads the Snakes. She was meant to be portrayed as some sort of Chaotic Evil character…but the way she came out was just basically someone that was batshit insane yet she was still able to maintain and operate important operations for the Snakes…which made no sense to me whatsoever.

Our first view of Liang Qi in the series…acting as a dominatrix.

The Character YunYun was thrown into the series presumably for comic relief also and to me it just seemed like she wasn’t necessary…she only performed one particular special thing for the heroic team and required the team to support her and save her on many occasions…waste of time imo.

To be honest I would have liked to see a larger rivalry between Canaan and Alphard instead of one big ass finale episode of them just jumping about doing acrobatics with guns.

Also Canaan is expert with all guns…you see her use a rifle once and then its just Pistol and Knife…it would be cooler if she opened a can of whoop ass occasionally with some overpowered rifle or shotgun or something equally exciting. Or even a sword or something…

As far as animation goes, its fairly smooth and available in 720p upwards which is always nice…however as the series progressed you could see that many scenes were rushed and ill-planned out and it made for horribly drawn out dialogue as you couldn’t concentrate due to terrible scenery.

As far as story goes, it was a little weak…strong at the start and end but lacking a hell of a lot in the middle with many characters being introduced just to die off again which frustrates the hell out of me.

That’s all I’ll write today, I give it a 6/10…it was by no means bad…but it was barely good…but definitely watchable.

EDIT: I did give this anime a 7/10 originally, but I’m reducing it after rethinking the finale…There were some stupid things happening in the last episode that were completely pointless…and it didn’t end the way it should have.

Highlights:

• Canaan and Maria semi Yuri moments.
• The president of the USA doing a Vash the Stampede-esque “LOVE AND PEACE” speech.
• Reading the subbers writing it as “Love and Piece” …lol.
• The mute chick has hot secks with a corpse…which caught me WAY off guard.
• YunYun thinking she was dead and in hell.
• Canaan’s awesome acrobatics in episode 1.