Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Canameeeks
tdlr: watch for some yuri and action only. Do not watch it if you consider playing 428: Shibuya Scramble
Before I start, let me tell you a story of a man not known to many.
He's a very passionate journalist, striving to report the truth to the best of his abilities. He's very egoistical but had the talent to back it up. He has a quick temper and is quick to blame others. Despite this, deep inside, he's a kind man. He cares about those close to him. Even after his spirit was broken, he kept running until he reach the finish line.
People who have watched this anime probably couldn't guess that I'm talking about Minorikawa Minoru.
Hi, this is the 1 very Minorikawapilled review... thing
Canaan is based on the Canaan bonus story by Type-Moon featured in 428: Shibuya Scramble. Tonally, it's…
Read at the sourceAshVampire
Anime is a cultural product, and for most (even non-otaku), that much is obvious. But the importance of this fact seems underestimated by my estimation. When I say anime is a cultural product, I don't just meant that it is set in Japan and infused with Japanese motifs, tropes, and ideals. Those things certainly play a part, but anime is a cultural product in its ethnocentrism as well. Though we western otaku have embraced anime and gone to extensive lengths to do so efficiently, anime is not really made for us. Anime is predominantly set in Japan, utilizes jokes specific to Japanese locales and language, and generally doesn't concern itself with perceptions of reality outside of Japan.
This level of ethnocentrism is, I think, partly why many western otaku go from simply being anime fans t…
Read at the sourcechips901
On April 28 20XX, the CIA formed a joint operation with Tokyo PD to help resolve a kidnapping case. As you'd imagine, if the CIA are involved, this is pretty serious business. See, the victim of the kidnapping case, Maria Osawa, was injected with the Ua virus and was set loose onto the busy streets of Shibuya.
The Ua virus is particularly deadly, causing the victim to violently bleed out of every orifice after 12-24 hours of infection. You can already imagine the means of transmission if the symptoms are *that* horrific. If they did not find Maria Osawa within this timeframe, the streets of Shibuya would be painted in red.
That's all in the past though. Of course, the CIA and Tokyo PD would work together to keep this case away from public light. But to those who did know about these even…
Read at the sourceEvenWeirder
Canaan is an action thriller where three main characters converge in China as their previous baggage with each other become intertwined with an overarching terrorist plot.
What grabbed me immediately were the visuals and the unique setting of China, which is rarely seen in anime. The action is spectacularly animated creating white knuckle tension, a sense of stakes, and a feeling of brutality. While their are fantastical elements involved, the action still plays out similar to what you would see in a Jason Bourne or James Bond movie. The character animation is colorful, crisp, and full of complexion.
What is interesting is that the audience has to piece together the history the three characters have with each other as the show goes along. This story is a quasi sequel to events taken pla…
Read at the sourceDewDue
Guns and Girls, Tomboys and Terrorism, Sci-Fi and Supernatural, all for one big... bland experience? Disappointing.
Lately, Mino has found his time as a reporter to be somewhat unfulfilling. He only ever produced gossip stories, which one would read at sunrise and then promptly forget by sunset. So, in order to get that huge scoop, he made the decision to dig into a certain terrorist group while pretending to be writing an article about the "International Conference on Anti-terrorism" that's going to be held at the capital of the factory of the world, Shanghai. He is accompanied by Maria, his blond and jovial new photographer. But when Maria unintentionally captures images of the blood-coughing masked guys at the core of a carnival that everyone appears to be rather passionately involved…
Read at the sourcehexashadow13
tl;dr: An anime that starts off with some good build up but has essentially no solid payoff to anything which is especially disappointing considering how 428 left off.
This anime is a sequel to the visual novel 428: Shibuya Scramble, primarily drawing from the bonus Canaan scenario that was handled by Type-Moon. It isn’t strictly required to have played 428 before watching this from a plot point of view, though I still would heavily recommend doing so as it’s a pretty great VN and this anime spoils essentially all of it pretty much immediately. As such, this review is assuming that the reader has already played 428. Considering how high of a note 428 ended on I went into this with pretty high hopes, but ultimately I was pretty disappointed.
The overarching story and world building, what…
Read at the sourcexcwm
Honestly, I don't know how I'd even begin to describe this show. If someone were to ask me, "So what is Canaan even about?" I don't think I'd be able to give them an answer. But I think this ambiguity works in Canaan's favor as the series can point the audience in the direction of the characters as they slowly unravel the mystery of everyone's past. You're thrown into the story as if you were halfway through a season, and the show puts together the pieces as the episodes go on. I'd liken it to Darker than Black, which happens to be a favorite of mine. Another thing I found to be incredibly compelling about this show is the way it depicts the downfalls of living your life solely for another person.
"Canaan" throws the audience right into the middle of the story, introducing multiple charac…
Read at the sourceFaye_Reagan
I'm generally the type of person to give shows I've seen scores of 9 or 10, but I also usually only watch highly acclaimed or recommended shows. I broke out of that habit for this show because I happen to have a psychological condition/disorder that some of the characters in the show also have, synesthesia.
I would give this show a 7 or solid 7.5, which remember is NOT BAD. Using words instead of numbers I would say the show is 'pretty good'. Funnily enough, the fact that I have synesthesia myself sort of lowers my rating, because the supernatural abilities synesthesia gives the characters broke my suspension of disbelief quite a lot. That being said, it shouldn't be a problem for the average viewer. In fact, in my experience the way people without synesthesia view having synesthesia is…
Read at the source_Aeterno
No idea how it feels for the anime-only people as usual but it absolutely spoils the origin story of Canaan and Alphard from the visual novel and distorts your perception of better-written characters badly repurposed here, and just the former alone makes me glad I could properly experience it without ruining it with this anime.
It didn't add anything worthwhile to the novel, oversimplified and one could say ruined the characters. What else? The pacing is feeling way too rushed and the story really wants you to either remind you of some of the events of the novel or is really just made for those who never read the novel in the first place because the amount of exposition was boring me out of my mind (it is obviously both but it just feels so off). The new characters were entirely uninteres…
Read at the sourcejonunderw00d
Oh boy, where do I start?
Canaan is simply a mess. How messy it is? I'll try to lay it out as brief as possible.
Story: 4
This is my biggest gripe. It's not unfair to say Canaan is half-baked and most likely badly adapted from the source material. The whole premise of the show seem destined to fall apart as the story progressed. If you're looking for plot holes, you don't have to. They'll come to you.
The plot doesn't pick up at least until episode 6. I found it really difficult to get excited to continue the series due to how convoluted and messy the beginning of the story is. You'll have to wait until episode 6 to at least get a better glimpse of what Canaan is supposed to be.
Does it get better afterwards? Yes, but not by much that you'll wonder why you decided to spend your precio…
Read at the sourceR-Z
This review will contain spoilers.
I didn't expect much from this show when I first decided to watch it. I was planning on watching this between shows to fill the gap - turned out it was a good call.
Story: The setting struck my immediately from the first seconds of the first episode. I remember thinking to myself "I think I've stumbled across a hidden gem again". For anyone whose a fan of Darker than Black or Speed Grapher, this will be up your street. I found the story to be unique, particularly the focus on a main character who uses a real life condition (Synesthesia) as a combat ability. The way the virus introduced through the strange masked folks at the carnival who die when exposed to sunlight sets up a great deal of mystery in a really nice way. The show grips you, and it doesn'…
Read at the sourcePiereDelecto
TLDR; if you like action movies and can live with characters going from great to gross and weird, Canaan is well worth the watch. There are SPOILERS ahead.
The greatest strength of Canaan is the direction of the action sequences, the incredible sounds that went with them, and the gritty background art. There are flashes of brilliance in animation and character art as well (the femme fatale scene in the bathroom comes to mind). There is an absolute buffet of gnarly, very pretty action sequences like the taxi chase, the helicopter rescue, the stealth bomber, the secret service, all reflecting good taste and talent for animating action movie cliches with an original flare. Terrorist organization Snake causing a ruckus on trains planes and automobiles in too many excellent scenes to name sets…
Read at the sourcejadyjads
Watching "Canaan" as a fan of its game prequel, 428 Shibuya Scramble, was a lovely experience. Getting introduced to an anime form of my favourite protagonists and their entourage was absolutely ~wholesome~ and "Canaan"'s story follows up on Shibuya Scramble's very well. My personal opinion is that for a viewer to enjoy "Canaan" to its fullest, they would need to have played Shibuya Scramble, as it gives a lot of weight to Maria Oosawa's backstory and relationships, but also because it includes a Bonus chapter exploring one of Canaan's most formative experiences, which is only partly shown in the anime.
I think, however, that a viewer who hasn't played 428 Shibuya Scramble could still enjoy "Canaan". It touches upon tragic topics that aren't typically explored in anime - if you're looking…
Read at the sourceTawsif_Ankon
Canaan was an okay anime to me. The first few episodes were intriguing as the anime tries to draw the viewers attention. As the series progressed the quality started degrading.
Story: The story of Canaan stroke as something interesting at first glance but aftert a certain point the plot became kinda obvious and felt a bit generic. And by the end of the series it was all over the place.
For instance- A terrorist organization creating a virus to use people as biological weapons. The P.O.T.U.S being taken hostage. The close friend of the protagonist searching for her purpose and wanting to be self-dependant for being able to stand by her friend's side and in the process getting caught up in commotion and making things harder for the protagonist bla bla..
Characters: The characters didn't ge…
Read at the sourceRyanSpring
Canaan is simply mediocre in every way. It wasn't ever horrible to watch, but it wasn't ever particularly good either. As opposed to a separated art/sound/character/story type of review, as I often do, I'll just go over some of the good things and the bad things the show did, because doing it by section would get very repetitive in this instance because, again, everything about this show is mediocre.
Some of the stronger points include a straight into the action first episode, heavy action and healthy pacing in the latter part of the show and strong female characters being the focus of the show.
Weak points include flat, cookie-cutter characters with little to no development, extremely non-believable/hard to take seriously plot elements and and a completely forgettable soundtrack.
Some…
Read at the sourceREC3
Canaan, this is a very under-rated anime series. I really enjoyed this series as a whole. The idea to take a synesthete and give them super powers from it. The idea is interesting as synesthesia is a real disorder and Canaan is a cool protagonist. I also like girls with guns and Canaan gets it done. It's a lively series with the message, Trust your heart and never hate.
The story, art, and characters are very good. Because of these three reasons the Enjoyment is great, plus what I mentioned above. The beginning and ending are very exciting and wraps up the series well.
In conclusion, this is a series that more people should watch. The promised land was named Canaan, before it was named Israel. It's a classic in my mind and begs the question, Is the glass half full or half empty.
Read at the sourceJonGall
To me, Canaan is the perfect kind of entertainment. It has a story intriguing enough to pull someone in and keep them there through it's entire run, I went into this show with zero expectations and found myself finishing it with them blown out of the water. Nothing I have ever seen has kept me interested in a story as well as this one, and I've re watched it three times... That alone speaks volumes of how well it does it's story telling, even if the story itself isn't groundbreaking, all of it was enough for me.
The characters of this story were developed and nuanced pretty well enough to keep me coming back time after time. Everybody gets their time to shine and be fleshed out in their own ways. Canaan is a story about a multitude of things, big and small, but what stood out to me was ch…
Read at the sourcePanesitox
WARNING Minor Spoilers (I guess lol)
CANAAN is an anime that really blowed-up my expectations. It started as what may appear as a common action anime with just battle scenes (greatly animated though), but it also surprised me with the story that it unfolds, although at first could be somewhat confusing to understand.
One of the may things that I'd like to point out is the excellent work of the voice actors and actresses, they really did an excellent job!
Lastly, I'd also like to point out somewhing that most animes don't achieve and that is character growth and story-telling through the series. It's amazing to see the psychological effects on the characters due to the atrocious events of their past and the way the anime portrays it it's just excellent (specially Hakko's character)
Ove…
Read at the sourceseannyb
"Canaan" is intriguing by staff alone. It’s not obvious why I skipped over it initially. Maybe my fascination with P.A. Works didn't exist yet. Maybe Type-Moon and Mari Okada weren't the rock stars they are now.
Some things age like wine, but "Canaan" is Pepsi Blue. If you have nostalgia for laser blue consumer products, perhaps you also have nostalgia for the George W. Bush era of blockbuster terrorism, dubious US military operations in tandem with evil paramilitary forces, black hawk choppers circling bombed out desert villages, a shadowy vice president and his cabal pulling the strings, the pervasive browns of tactical shooter video games, and more time bombs than you can shake a stick at. Canaan offers all this and more.
That said, it's watchable. Takashi Takeuchi’s familiar characte…
Read at the sourceparmy_john
Starting out, this anime was quite confusing. There was never any real set plot in which the viewer could clearly discern what it means to be the "bad" guy in the show or even what it means to be a "good" guy. You also never really get a clear understanding of what exactly it is that the "bad guys" want other than to just cause some sort of chaos. In the end none of that really matters; it is really more about the story of a journalist, whose tag along co-worker who just so happens to be tied in with one of the action prone protagonists, on his plight to make a good story that could help further his career. In the end, deep seeded relationships are made and the final episode makes the whole ride worth while. Really though, the ending made me smile big time!!!!
Read at the source
