First released: July 2009
Version reviewed: BluRay

A lot of media start right in the thick of things, in media res, but Canaan is the only series I’ve seen that seems to start at the end of things, ad finem. As if all of the interesting development has already happened and this is the epilogue where the elves are sailing west. Wikipedia informs me however that Canaan is in fact a sequel to a Japanese-only Wii game and “conceptualised” by Type-Moon (of Kara no Kyoukai and Fate fame) co-founders Kinoko Nasu and Takashi Takeuchi. Whether having played that game helps in understanding the series is unknown, though unlikely given it shares only a few characters, one of whom is secondary at best.

The broad strokes though: photographer Maria Osawa and journalist Minoru Minorikawa travel to Shanghai to cover an anti-terrorism summit. Maria reunites with an old friend, Canaan, who is a mercenary for hire and possessed of the gift of synesthesia, allowing her to see odours and hear colours (amongst other things). A fine setup, but proving the exception to the rule that anything Type-Moon touches turns to gold, Canaan as a series is like the parade in the first episode: colourful, chaotic, and thoroughly unintelligible. How could it go so wrong?

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Apathy seems to have been a trendy topic for anime the past few years, culminating in 2012 with Hyouka’s Oreki whose, if you’ll forgive the pun, entire driving force was to pursue a languorous existence, free of exertion. Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko (Electrowave Girl and Youthful Boy / Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl) may have preceded Hyouka by a year but nevertheless rails against this trend of laziness, ironically doing so in the most languid and nonchalant way possible.

It doesn’t start as such. The first episode is, for the lack of a better phrase, very SHAFT, by which I mean very Shinbo. It’s sparkling, protractedly verbose and cut together with just enough self-assured rough edges to be purposeful.

It’s pretty terrible.

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I have a confession to make: I often decide what anime to start watching based on gifs I come across on Tumblr. Which is how I came to watch Plastic Nee-san (Plastic Big Sister).

With thanks to Evangelikon for the gif.

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In my three episode preview of Senkou no Night Raid (Night Raid in a Flash / Night Raid 1931) I expressed my concerns over whether the series would sensitively deal with Japan’s questionable activities during that time period. I can safely say that it is all too aware of the feelings evoked by that era and is hyper cautious about stepping on anyones’ toes, perhaps even a little too cautious. For example, when it first aired, the series’ seventh episode was streamed rather than broadcast amidst rumours that the episode’s Japanese point of view on the events around the Mukden incident worried some TV executives.

That should give you an idea of the kind of emotions that, even 80 years later, revisiting 1930’s Japan can evoke. For America it may have been a time of prohibition and organised crime but in the prelude to the Second World War, Japan was embroiled in grand scale military imperialism in and around Korea and China. Buoyed by their successes during the Japan-Qing and the Russo-Japanese wars (the latter of which, bizarrely, was rather covered by the atrocious series Lime-Iro Senkitan), it’s at this turning point that Night Raid starts.

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If you were in a hurry you could easily mistake Mondaiji-tachi’s premise for No Game No Life’s: bored children get transported to an alternate world where they join an underdog group and take part in sanctioned games to win glory and territory. Even though, it give it it’s full title, Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desu yo? (Problem Children are Coming from Another World, aren’t they?) starts with the same kind of torturous lateral thinking that typifies NGNL, their core difference is that series’ reliance on the “games” is all-encompassing and its fantasy-tinged world is a lot more cohesive than the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach taken here.

Its poster child, Black Rabbit (who is for some reason primarily blue as well as sometimes pink), is a prime example of this. Bunny girls are few and far between in anime in general, far more often it’s cat girls and fox girls who steal the limelight, yet here, just in case bunny girls aren’t your thing, there are also cat girls. And dog girls. And vampires. And fairies. And lizard people. And weretigers. You get the idea. Coherence or even a united vision for the series’ world isn’t high on the list of priorities and it prefers to throw enough at you in the hope that some of it sticks.

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