Maria Osawa is a ditzy young reporter sent to Shanghai to help cover a conference. Unfortunately, tensions are running high in the city, and when she is targeted by assassins, it falls to her old friend Canaan to save her. Canaan is a young Middle Eastern mercenary who uses synaesthesia to her advantage in combat, but can even her superior skills help her protect Maria whilst also pursuing revenge against her long-time rival Alphard?
Canaan is a difficult anime to write about, not only because it is a sequel to a Wii game I’d never even heard of before consulting Wikipedia, but because large chunks of it simply make no sense. The series throws together numerous different characters, along with a semblance of a plot, and then simply seems to hope that the mix will last for thirteen episodes. Standard anime jokes such as the ditzy girl and the comic relief sidekick with no breasts mi together with plot elements involving a deadly virus, special abilities and a rather loose definition of synaesthesia to create something that needs an annotated glossary just to understand. One suspects, however, that certain scenes will still be completely ridiculous even if every aspect had been fully explained.
More memorable than the plot is Canaan’s extensive cast of characters, although not always for the right reasons. Take for example Alphard’s psychotic subordinate Liang Qi, who has a penchant for wandering around naked and shooting at people. She is undoubtedly the most unbalanced of the cast, but certainly not the only one who could do with a few sessions at the therapist. From physical mutations to emotional problems, everyone has their own issues to deal with, to the point where you can’t really bring yourself to care about any of them.
So then, why bother watching Canaan at all? The reason, of course, lies in the eye candy. All of the female characters are easy on the eye, so much so that you’ll remember what they look like long after you’ve forgotten all other details of their lives. Overall, the animation is slick and smooth, with enough action scenes to make up for so many disappointingly static series from certain other studios (Bee Train, I’m looking at you).
Final Thoughts
Although it’s hard to follow what’s supposed to be going on in Canaan or even be certain as to why one should care, somehow it manages to pull off style over substance to the extent that it is actually quite watchable. There’s no doubt that the only reason to watch it is on purely shallow grounds, but if you accept it as purely throwaway entertainment, then it isn’t too bad.
Tier: Bronze-
