Kanon

I have so many mixed feelings with Kanon. On one hand, it has a strong vibe (that unfortunately isn't as amazing as AIR's, but still remarkable) with strong cgs, memorable tracks, (mostly) cute characters, and each endings ended up being emotional despite me not fully connecting with the heroines.. But on the other hand, the main issue is that it spends so much of its time narrating random SoL moments that it feels like it forgot to build up for me to care about each heroines : i couldn't care less about Mai's [spoiler]monsters[/spoiler], Makoto [spoiler]regressing to a child..? idk[/spoiler] or Sayori's [spoiler]random lore drop[/spoiler]. Heck, even Ayu's [spoiler]lost item[/spoiler] felt so irrelevant because it simply did not seem to impact the story until a certain random point. Sure, there was foreshadowing, but the whole theme about the importance of memories feels so poorly delivered. I liked Nayuki's route, but only cause Nayuki is the goat (the route in itself is very much mid, with prehaps the worst emotional peak of every routes), and somehow doesn't get described like a poor disabled child that can't do anything despite whining to the MC (looking at you Makoto, i h…

I first read this back in 2009. It was my first Key VN and it still holds a special place in my heart and an important place in VN history. It's probably the weakest of Key's "season trilogy," but that's mostly because Air and Clannad are literal masterpieces. It's still very much worth your time, the characters are very memorable and you can see the seeds of what the staff would later go on to do. Also the vibes of wintertime in a small town are immaculate.

If you are someone who wants to either re-experience Kanon in a modern way or are someone who is playing it for the first time, then I cannot recommend this remaster. This remaster suffers from numerous issues, including a very poor English translation (which is odd given that previous releases with English options have a far better translation) with a lack of the original honorifics, Japanese terminology, and numerous false translations + poor spelling and grammar in numerous areas apart from just having a very dull tone, the inclusion of Japanese voice-acting is nice, but the protagonist is not fully-voiced, as there is a section in the story where he is completely silent (most likely due to budget cuts or issues with contacting the voice actor) which is especially odd given that there exist prior rereleases of the game which add voice-acting for all the characters *except* the protagonist which I think is a much more reasonable use of an exception rather than half-@ssing the job, the "16:9" backgrounds were made by poorly-cropping the originals which causes inconsistency with the final aspect ratio not to mention the use of either AI-upscaling or some sort of remastering algori…

The original Key visual novel. And its pretty good! I watched the 2006 anime, but this is a nice experience. Amazing music as well.

i will never reach such a high and such a low reading or watching anything ever again

good good good