Moé Moé Rabu

• Yuuichi ponders over what Mai said to him last night about the demons after him.
• With Nayuki still half asleep, their attention reacts quickly once Akiko mentions her special jam to Ayu, with the both leaving for school straight away.
• On the way to school, Nayuki gives Yuuichi a pair of bunny ears to make as she remembered that he wanted to know how to make girls cute. Seeing the ears causes Yuuichi to flashback to a scene from his past of a young girl wearing bunny ears, standing in a golden field.
• During lunch, Yuuichi finds that Mai is by herself, but Sayuri will come by later. He takes the chance to ask Mai what she meant last night. She says that the demons became more active after Yuuichi arrived.
• Bored waiting, Yuuichi decides to play shiritori with Mai, who surprisingly agrees. Once Sayuri arrives she reveals to Yuuichi that she used to play with Mai, but she was always so bad at it.

• At the end of school, Yuuichi is on the rooftop training. He ends up sparring with Mai but is easily defeated.
• Sayuri appears and wants to join in, but Yuuichi and Mai tell her that they aren’t playing. Sayuri readies herself, falling in the process, but attacks Mai, who easily knocks her sword away. Mai tells Sayuri that she is in the way, with Sayuri running off.
• Later in the afternoon, Yuuichi meets Sayuri and the two go to a cafe to talk. Sayuri reveals that she was once an older sister and starts talking about her childhood and her little brother. Sayuri was raised without being spoiled by her father. Thus she decided to act strict towards her newborn brother Kazuya, but in her heart she wanted to be kinder to him. However Kazuya was a slow developer who didn’t talk or laugh, and always ended up being alone. When Kazuya ended up in hospital, Sayuri decided to break her rules. One night she brought Kazuya some snacks and a set of water gun to play with, but broke down crying that she always loved him.
• That was the first and last time they played together as Kazuya passed away. From then on, Sayuri addressed herself by name as she only saw herself from 3rd person point of view. She only started laughing again since she met Mai and feels that she was the one saved. From the first time they met, Sayuri felt she should be with Mai.
• Listening to the song in the cafe, Sayuri asks if Yuuichi knows the name, but he doesn’t. Sayuri reveals that it’s Canon by Pachelbel. She explains that it repeats the same melody gradually, peacefully and beautifully. Sayuri thinks that life would be nice if they could change things little by little while every day doesn’t seem to be different. She believes that one day she will remember Kazuya not as a sad memory.
• Sayuri heads home to cook dinner for Mai’s birthday party and Yuuichi tells her to call him when it’s ready. Arriving home, he asks Ayu about Akiko’s jam, but Ayu realised that Yuuichi knew about it and comments how that it wasn’t something you call food. Realising the time, he heads out to tell Mai to go back home.
• Sayuri rings up Yuuichi’s home to find out that he’s already left the house, but knows where to find him and Mai, but Yuuichi finds out that Sayuri is on her way after calling Akiko back home. Arriving at the school, Sayuri searches for Mai and Yuuichi, but comes across a running tap in the bathroom. Turning it off she is discovered by a demon and attacked.
• Yuuichi finally arrives at school but only to see Mai fall to the ground in shock. Looking into the bathroom he sees Sayuri on the floor with blood everywhere.
• Taken to the hospital, Mai and Yuuichi find out that the injuries that Sayuri have aren’t serious, but she’ll have to stay in hospital for a while.
• Outside, Mai in a rage, grabs her sword from Yuuichi and starts swinging it around, destroying everything around her. Yuuichi restrains her but Mai blames herself for what happened and feels that she the only one unharmed. Mai tries to stab herself with the sword, but Yuuichi knocks it away and makes her realise that she’d only lose everything by hurting herself. She admits that she doesn’t want to lose anything so the two plan to head back to the school and finish everything.
• At the school, Mai tells him that there are three demons left. Yuuichi says that they’ll finish this tonight and celebrate with gyuudon.

Preview:

Impressions

How rather strange that I was listening to Pachelbel’s Canon in my brother’s car not too long ago. I think it was from an album he bought at the Massive CD and Book sale during New Year’s. Anyway this episode was Sayuri focused and by god it was great. I never knew that Sayuri had such a past as I never did play Mai’s arc in the game (well what can you do when you had no understanding of Japanese?). We find out so much about Sayuri such as why she is so well mannered and to why she always addresses herself by name. Despite having such a past and being saved by Mai, I still see her as a strong character and faithful at that since she never questions what Yuuichi and Mai are doing.

Another great part to this week’s episode was a rather emotional Mai. From seeing her lying in shock to rampaging with her sword it’s a relief to see that she isn’t just an emotionless and non-talkative girl. The change in the tone of her voice was just awesome as well, but she composes herself rather fast seeing how she talks normally again at the school.

Lately the animation has been fluctuating but this week was excellent, most likely to accommodate the action that we see towards the end. But I guess it doesn’t help with the raw being pretty dark. With next week hopefully putting an end to the demons, I’m hoping we see quality like that of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. But also next week we find out more about this friend that Mai talked about last episode. So either next week is the last episode for Mai’s arc or perhaps the week after. Most like the later as I think we’ll be covering a lot about Mai’s past.

Also of note, Kanon might actually be 26 episodes. http://cal.syoboi.jp/tid/910/time

Link thanks to tea panda of VisualNews forums.

Kanon Merchandise of the Week

Now I was actually planning on showing this last week since Comiket71 is now over, but I think this week would be better. Now most of you know i attended Comiket69 in 2005/2006 and I lined up for 2 hours and 20 minutes in the industry section for the Key/VisualArts booth. One of the items I bought was this game called Hirake Gomaa! (ひらけ　ごまっ！). Now I’m not sure what the game is all about but what you really want to see about this are the cards that come with the game. And here are two of them.

Within this game there are more than just characters from Kanon. There are characters from Air, Clannad, Planetarian, and the upcoming game Little Busters. Every now and then I’ll show you different Kanon characters but I’ll show other Key characters if requested. There are definitely some cute ones, funny one, and some strange ones. Akiko’s jam so far is just damn scary.