Canvas 2 ~Niji Iro no Sketch~

Information of Anime

Hiroki Kamikura is a supervisor of an art club of a high school.  He's currently a teacher in training.  Elis Honsen, his cousin with lost her parents, is currently living with him as she attends the same school that he's training at.  Although she loves him a lot, Hiroki treats Elis as his little sister.  Suddenly, Kiri Kikyou, an old high school friend that Hiroki rejected during their last high school years, goes to the same school as a new teacher.  Kiri's feelings hasn't changed for him since then.  Now Elis is concern that Kiri will take Hiroki away from her.  What will become from this love triangle? 

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I have seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

At the start of the show, we learn that Hiroki is a college student that currently under training in becoming a teacher.  He acts as a student teacher.  Ironically enough, he refuses to draw or paint again.  Elis, who is living in his apartment, is a good artist & attends the school's art club.  However, she refuses to use the colour red because it reminds her of the time where she saw blood from her parents when they died in an accident that she was in.

The show goes into a lot of one episode arcs for each girl.  Most of them involve on how Hiroki solves each girl's problems. Although the way, Hiroki gets approved to become a teacher-in-training at the school.  The show enters the main plot a little after the halfway point.

Elis hates Kiri more & more as Hiroki spends a lot of with Kiri & doesn't notice Elis.  When Elis wins an art competition that allows her to study art in Frnace, she starts to lose it by telling Kiri to leave their apartment when Hiroki & Kiri held a celebration party for her.  After Kiri leaves, Elis tearfully tells Hiroki her true feelings.  But Hiroki rejects them & tells Elis that she is like his little sister.  This cause Elis to run away for awhile to do some thinking.

When visiting her parents' grave at her grandmother's place, we see how Elis loved Hiroki.  It was during their childhood years when Hiroki was learning in an art class that her mother was teaching.  Elis was impressed with Hiroki's work & was inspired to become an artist herself.  That's when she realized that she was in love with him.  The arc ends when Hiroki picks her up & apologizes for his actions.

As the show progresses, Elis still hates Kiri but not as badly as before.  However, during the school sports festival in an event, Kiri kindly gives up & allows Elis to take Hiroki.  From here, the show focuses on Elis & Hiroki but later moves to a more dramatic arc.

From episode 13, things start to go deeper.  We take a look at Hiroki's past life when he was a high school student with his friends Kiri & Shintaro Yanagi.  Here, we see briefly how trio are the best of friends & want to continue it forever.  But, we see what made Hiroki stop drawing.  Betrayal, hate, & confusion.  What makes things probably worse is Yanagi is a special teacher for the school.

Yanagi's appearance cause Hiroki to be depressed.  When invited to a reunion with him, Kiri, & Yanagi together, Hiroki ditches them at the last minute while sending Elis to tell them to start the party without them.  At the party, Yanagi confess about what he did.  After telling Hiroki that he would like to see his drawings again, Hiroki tells Yanagi that it isn't his fault & it looks like Hiroki's determination to draw is boosting back.  However, he chooses the path of being a teacher instead even though he failed his public teacher exam. 

To celebrate his acceptance as a teacher at Nadesico, the school he's currently working at, the art club throws a surprise party for Hiroki.  During this time, Elis paints a picture of him as a present.  Here, she tries to use red but in the end she never does use it.  From here, the plot starts to shift back into the relationship between Kiri & Hiroki again.  This occurs when Hiroki joins Kiri to a teachers' meeting outside of the city.  We now re-enter the love triangle again between Hiroki, Kiri, & Elis.

Hiroki is developing feelings for Kiri again when she confesses her love for him again.  Elis is now lost in what she should do as she thinks that she shouldn't depend on Hiroki all the time.  Hiroki, who's also lost, is taking to find his path again in drawing.  All these confusions lends to Elis getting into an accident; deja vu.

Since the accident & her recovery, Elis makes up her mind & decides to go to France to study art.  This was the prize she received for winning in an art exhibition.  With it, she decides to give up on Hiroki.  In the meantime, Hiroki decides to become a teacher over an artist.  Plus, he decides to go after Kiri as his girlfriend & let go of Elis.  However, this changes on Christmas Eve when Hiroki finds Elis' new painting of crimson angels in red.  With this, he ditches his dinner with Kiri & starts painting.  On the day of Elis' departure, Hiroki presents the painting of blue angels to Elis' at the airport.  The story ends after the credit roll where it presents what the characters are doing after a period of time.  It ends with Hiroki & Elis' paintings placed side by side & the two in bed kissing.

My Personal Review

Canvas 2 ~Niji Iro no Sketch~ is based on FC01's ero dating simulation game product lineup.  Although there was a hentai OVA made for the first Canvas game which was poor, Canvas 2 is a much better show than the OVA.  I heard a lot of people say bad things about this being boring & I'm a little in agreement with them.  Although it's not boring, it's quite bad in a way.

Animation

The character designs look much like their game designs.  Big saucer eyes with pupils that have simple coloured eyes.  Even the male characters have eyes that big.  The designs of the characters are quite simple in terms of their clothing.  It's plain & not too appealling.  Nevertheless, it's still pretty good.

The colours are colourful on most of the characters & background.  But when comes to the artworks & intermission & ending credit scenes, it's quite dull.  Since the show uses an art theme, it's a good choice.  However, it doesn't capture much of that artistic feel.  The drawing designs give it that art appearance, but the colours don't.  Personally, I liked how each of the artworks are drawn differently.

The animation movements are quite natural, with the exception of people falling down.  It's pretty smooth.  Sometimes, there are scenes that make the movements look silly even though it's realistic.

Sound

The sound effects are realistic.  The only times that I hear those silly anime sounds are when people start to panic with sweat.  The volume level here is pretty good, even with the sounds that come from a distance.

The seiyuus here aren't too bad.  They aren't too great in my view, but they are bearable.  They fit with their characters quite well & I could feel the energy given off from them.

The music isn't too bad.  It's mainly on the cute side.  However, none of them stick to my head.  I like the opening theme song, but the ending theme song sticks to my head well.  I could hear the song's chorus playing in my head & I don't like that song much.

Story

In the beginning, there are a lot of small arcs to introduce the other female characters in the show.  However, the main story deals with the relationship between Elis & Hiroki with Kiri as a distracter.  When Kiri leaves the picture between Elis & Hiroki, I felt nothing was resolved.  It was like the same as before without Kiri involved.

There are other interesting factors that the show goes to.  They are Hiroki's mystery of why he stopped drawing & Elis' red colour problem.  Elis' problem isn't mentioned a lot in the show, but Hiroki's comes up pretty often which seems to be temporary solved at the midway point.  Afterwards, the show tries to get Elis' red problem solved but later shifts it back to Kiri trying to fall for Hiroki again.  The plot tends to jump around a lot by going in circles, which is frustrating especially as occurs after the midway point.  It seems we have a lot of confused people here.  Elis & Kiri exchange roles in liking Hiroki, then giving up on him, & then liking him again.  Watching this can be frustrating & create a lot of "that again?" feeling.  I'm not sure if the writers wanted to put both Elis & Kiri's storylines together which created this long circle.

The ending was ok, but a little weak.  What made it weak was all this circles that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  With all that messy stuff in the plot, the show wrapped up quite nicely.  However, it could expand on the characters a bit.  For example, what is Hiroki doing now after he mentioned that he's no longer a teacher?

Overall Conclusion

Canvas 2 ~Niji Iro no Sketch~ isn't a exciting show to watch.  I do enjoy watching it, but I felt it isn't complete.  There are quite a lot of unsolved elements, easy answers & the ending isn't solid as I like it to be.  I don't highly recommend watching this series as something you must watch, but it does make a good show to just sit back & watch.  Canvas 2 game fans may watch it nevertheless.

Canvas 2 ~Niji Iro no Sketch~ rates a 7/10 in my scoring books.  It's quite an entertaining show to watch & I somewhat liked it.  However, there are a lot of problems with it as mentioned in the previous paragraphs.  The current pace is a little slow & it took some time to cover these issues.  Too much time really as they expanded the love triangle problem more than needed.  The show did wrap up nicely, but could have done better.

Last updated on December 26, 2007