Canaan – 04

I can somewhat understand the criticisms against Canaan. It’s in no way the best show of the season, the comedy isn’t the funniest around, and the characters themselves pale in comparison to some of the other shows this season. The plot isn’t the most interesting out there either. And yet as entertainment, it works for me. The reason I’m watching this series is not the characters or plot, but rather the direction, and that one has really been excellent so far. The creators really know how to create gripping action-scenes, and PA Works are definitely establishing themselves as a high-quality animation studio.

In this episode, we delve a bit into the past of Canaan, and are shown how she was rescued by her caretaker, and trained in the art of gunslinging, only for her caretaker to be killed off by Alphard. I assume that this show is going to be a thriller, aiming to kill said assassin. I really didn’t like how she suffers from the “I’m about to kill you but I won’t because that will spoil the fun”-syndrome, but I have to say that that gunfight between her and Canaan was the best this series has shown since the first episode.

At this point, I have no idea whether or not the creators are going to be able to top that first episode. At least the characters seem to be coming together, but I really don’t know whether this is the kind of series that attempts to have a very well animated first episode, only for the budget to continuously drop throughout the rest of the series, or the kind of series that has a bit of budget saved for an awesomely animated finale. Usually I just assume the former, but we are talking about PA Works here, not some sort of mediocre Zexcs or ACGT here. Especially the fight this episode showed that the animation budget has in no way run out yet, if only the pacing would increase to allow for a more creative gunfight.

The reason I’m a big fan of anime is the way it combines visuals, audio, storytelling and characters into one. I’m a big fan of multimedia that manage to combine all into one. And it’s also not like the story and characters are so bad that they make the rest of the series dull either: while they’re not the best, they’re definitely good enough for this series to work with. I’m enjoying this series a lot, because of this.
Rating: * (Good)