Love, Despair, Defeat…Canaan
Hello, everyone! Its been a while. How have you all been? You have no idea how much I have missed blogging. I am still not coming back in full until mid-July but I just completed watching Canaan and I felt that I had to blog about it. I don’t have as much time to keep up with current anime but I have found it easier to watch anime that has already been completed. I took a couple of days off from work so I was able to marathon a couple of shows, Blood+ (I may blog about this experience someday) and Canaan. Canaan, I was able to finish as it was 13 episodes but Blood+ at 50 episodes, nope.
Canaan started out great. Lots of action, intrigue, mysterious character who had synesthesia, a condition in which she identified things by their colors (simplified definition). This mysterious character, Canaan who was found by an assassin, Siam, after her whole village was destroyed. Siam named Canaan and trained her to be an expert killer. We are introduced to Canaan by her impressive abilities as a fighter when she saves Maria Osawa from being killed by at first glance, appears to be some crazed men wearing animal head masks. These men upon losing their masks, appear to go into a violent fit in which they began hemorrhaging, bleeding out their eyes, noses, and mouths, then promptly dying. Great stuff, I tell you. This is just the first episode. I’m thinking, wow, this show is going to be awesome! And it is, for the first three to five episodes.
We are introduced to the UA virus, a virus that has caused catastrophic consequences. It gives “special powers” to some but has a high cost. We learn of that cost later in the series but its still not really fleshed out the full mechanics of the virus. We are introduced to the leader of Snake, a terrorist organization who goes by the name Alphard who is a kick-ass bad girl whom Canaan loathes. Then there is Maria Osawa. She was the most annoying character in the show. A series that had so many elements to explore with its plot turned into a series about Osawa having to be saved every episode by Canaan. And I mean every episode. The show introduced bits such as Maria Osawa having the UA virus, forgetting that she did, her father curing her, having met Alphard before under unknown circumstances and it ignored all of that. It didn’t follow up on what happened to Osawa, why Alphard accused her of “brimming with deceit”. It completely and quickly degenerated to some type of girly drama with yuri undertones. There was a better story in this series besides Osawa being saved over and over. The show became utterly predictable and frivolous as the writers seemed to say, let’s not make this too serious or political. Yes, there were definitely some political issues in this show with terrorism, the US and it’s trigger-happiness (willing to wipe out a large group of people without having all the facts) , China/Japan relations, the UN. It was all there!
Let’s not forget, seeing a Canaan look-a-like frozen in suspension and Alphard stating “Its just a coincidence. Just a coincidence.” Then she promptly set it on fire. What was that all about? The dynamics between Alphard and Canaan also was a beautiful plot-line, much more than Canaan and Maria Osawa. The jealousy that filled Alphard regarding Canaan, the hatred that fueled Canaan regarding Alphard. It was magnificent and made for a great story. But it was all side-lined for Canaan saving Maria. That was what this show was about Canaan saving Maria. Oh, sure, I could like at the overarching aspect that they saved each other, allowed each other to grow. Canaan was shown true friendship, Maria became more mature and learned who she was and how to stand on her own. Yes, I saw that but I felt nothing for it. I wanted to know more about Canaan, more about her synesthesia, her real name, her family. I wanted to know more about Alphard, more about the UA virus. Instead, this anime did to me what a lot of anime from 2008 to the present has started doing, grasped my interest in the beginning, let me down in the end. The art was well-done in this film, the acting was actually pretty decent for a dub, the fanservice was tasteful, and some characters were extremely intriguing. However, I do hope this show is revisited and we get the full story about Canaan.
THE LADY AND ANIME 
I haven’t been able to try out new animes lately, mainly because I lack time. Still, it’s disappointing to get into a series only to realize that the entire series falls flat toward the middle and end parts.
And that’s exactly what Canaan is, a series that falls flat in the middle and doesn’t come back. Its not a new series and I’m not sure if it would have been better if I’d watch it while it was running.