Visionary Nexus Network

It’s been a while since I’ve had a post put up but hopefully my writing hasn’t deteriorated much since then; at least not as much as Canaan has. With a promising first episode, the series has started to toe the line between the fresh and the mundane. Here’s a quick look at the first three episodes following the pilot, and how they’re shaping the series, for better or worse.

Episode 2 starts off with the secretary and her lackey in the helicopter helping to rescue an escaping snakes leader from her military captors. She slaughters them and escapes in the helicopter as we learn the two women are sisters: the snakes leader being the calm sibling and the secretary the insane one.

The rest of the episode consists of mostly backstory, namely about something called the Ua Virus, which Maria happens to have. We also learn that the name of the rescued blue-haired woman is Alphard and that Canaan seems to be working for the glasses lady in episode 1, and whoever the hell she’s associated with.

After this revelation, unimportant crap happens at a restaurant, which is then attacked by the old man from episode 1 that Mino mistook as being important (of course, now he actually IS important) and his grandson that we’ll call “green-shirt dude.” The two go after Mino and Maria, until Canaan shows up (of course), and kills the old man by sending him into electrical wires.

The reporters get back to their hotel and see their room covered in blood and shit; they get kicked out for it and Maria decides to play with street cats for no good reason. They then run into this:

I raged.

There are three things I hate and cannot tolerate in any anime:

1) Anything having to do with the word “demon”
2) Osugi from Eden of the East, or any other bullshit character who tries doing shit that’s way over his head but thinks he’s all that because he’s anonymous and posts regularly on 4chan
3) CATGIRLS

Now I know, she’s cosplaying. It’s pretty obvious she isn’t actually a neko girl, but still: I raged heading into episode 3. And, of course, episode 3 starts out by introducing me to more catgirls, which I hated. A comedy scene between the reporters, Johnny Cage, and his waifu results in us learning that Hakko also has that Ua virus going around.

After that we get several minutes of bullshit about Maria and Canaan hanging out and doing random stupid crap. While the pair take a train, green-shirt dude decides to make another appearance and go after them again. Canaan conveniently decides to leave the train to get it moving again, so green-shirt dude kidnaps Maria, takes her elsewhere, and straps a bomb to her head. After the last scenes of smiles and happiness and crap from Maria and Canaan sharing moments together, this pleased me greatly. Of course, Canaan comes in yet again to save the day, as green-shirt dude reveals the he and his brother were test subjects for the Ua virus, resulting in nasty side effects like turning his brother into an old man and turning him into a pretzel. Canaan doesn’t really give a shit, and shoots the guy in the stomach after he says he ate the deactivator. Of course, the bomb wasn’t actually a bomb, and he succeeds in getting Maria to be afraid of, and reject, Canaan. Why the hell he decides to be a suicidal jerk about it beats me, but hey, if it means less scenes of Maria and Canaan “playing,” then I’m all for it.

Yeah! You sure showed them!

Episode 4 starts out with more backstory, this time about how Canaan was trained as a sharpshooter and how her synesthesia helped her out with that. We see Canaan getting her snake tattoo, and some guy named Siam humming that same tune from episode 1. We then see glimpses of scenes between Canaan, Alphard and Siam, which seem to hint at Alphard killing Siam, Canaan wanting revenge despite Siam’s words about never fighting for revenge, and Canaan never wanting to see loss again.

A brief scene shows that Johnny Cage and the lady in glasses know each other, and another scene tells us the name of the secretary/sister: Liang Qi. Maria has a brief scene of her going crazy and depressed, which annoyed me because she was saved from getting gangraped at the last second.

Canaan meets Alphard in a bathroom at the event hall, but fails miserably in trying to fight her. Alphard lets her live if only to toy with her for a little longer. Canaan runs away, with Liang Qi noticing her as she flees. And that brings that episode to an end.

Newfags can't ambush.

So, three episodes after looking at the pilot, and this show is starting to get going more, in some good ways and some bad ways. There’s been less action all around, which is kind of good considering how overwhelming the pilot was, but at the same time, it’s resulted in the episodes fading into a routine of sorts, which looks like the following:

Scene reflecting or continuing previous episode—->backstory/flashback—->shit—->new connections between characters—->more shit—->ACTION—->DISTORTION FINISH

Okay, maybe not the last one, but the rest of it feels pretty accurate to me, with all three of these episodes containing similar pacing. Similar pacing from episode to episode works for slice of life comedies or dumbed-down shounen crap, but, in my mind, it’s not very efficient for a show that’s trying to take itself seriously and deliver a story that is deep and thought-provoking. What I got from episode 4 was the standard “revenge” plot crap, with an end boss that’s too strong for the main character at the moment. I didn’t want that to happen at the beginning of the show, and unfortunately it might be happening four episodes in. Hopefully the show tries to break away from its common stride and into something more spontaneous, like the pilot was. Hopefully this happens when the need to throw backstory at us at the start of every episode passes; until then, all we can do is watch as Canaan treads the fine line between originality and stereotype.

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