Anime / Canaan

Spoiler Warning: this page contains unmarked spoilers for 428: Shibuya Scramble. You Have Been Warned!

"Welcome to The Unholy Land! Colors have scent. Sounds possess images. In this future world, where biochemical weapons have changed the game, an unlucky few have their senses blended. They are gifted with abilities beyond what normal humans feel. They possess synesthesia. This makes them the perfect assassin. And a perfect target. Welcome to the new world. Welcome to the war."

Canaan is an anime series based upon a scenario from the mystery Adventure Game/Visual Novel titled 428: Shibuya Scramble, which (the scenario, not the whole game) was created by Kinoko Nasu and Takashi Takeuchi of Type-Moon fame (at which point many tropers rush off to leech it from the Internet, no further questions asked). The game was obscure outside of Japan until its official localization was released in 2018 (till then, its notability in the West was basically being "that Visual Novel Famitsu gave a 40").

Neophyte professional photographer Maria Osawa travels from Japan to Shanghai to report on the annual festival, where she also hopes to meet Canaan, a mysterious Action Girl who saved her life a couple of years ago and has been fascinating her ever since. However, things get ugly when a Nebulous Evil Organization targets Maria. Known as the "Snakes", they are led by Canaan's arch rival Alphard and are somehow involved with the "Ua Virus"—the biological weapon that Maria was infected with during a Shibuya terrorist attack. Fortunately for Maria, Canaan shows up to save her again, much to her (and the fans') excitement.

The creation of the show has resulted in a franchise that includes manga and light novel adaptations.

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This anime contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Canaan is a mercenary gunwoman.
• A-Cup Angst: Yunyun, who stuffs rolls and meatbuns (and in the final episode watermelons) down her shirt to make her breasts look bigger.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Maria and Alphard seem to have swapped hair colors in the transition from the live action to animation. In 428, Maria had black hair while Alphard was a light-skinned brunette, whereas Canaan has Alphard designed with darker skin and black hair while Maria’s hair is almost blonde.
• Alliterative Name: Alphard Alshaya and Minoru Minorikawa.
• All Part of the Show: In the first episode, multiple people are shot and killed (or die horribly from the Ua Virus), and everyone thinks it's just part of the festival. Maria's partner Mino, however, attests that it's something else.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Hakko does this after Liang Qi tricks her into using her voice on Santana. He was already dying and requested that the last words he heard be, "I love you."
  • Cummings to Liang Qi seconds before he shoots her. She was dying anyway.
• Anime Chinese Girl: Yunyun.
• Arc Words: The melody Alphard and Syam have been humming seems to be shaping into an Arc Tune.
• Attention Whore: Liang Qi, oh so much. It's not hard to extrapolate that her revealing attire is her attempt at attracting Alphard's attention.
• Aura Vision: What Canaan's synesthesia amounts to.
• Ax-Crazy: Liang Qi
• Badass Bystander: The taxi driver. Being voiced by Joji Nakata really helps.
• Badass Boast: Subverted when Yunyun appears to be going to give one after taking Maria hostage, but she just states her name.
• Badass Longcoat: Alphard's is her favorite accessory.
• Badass Normal: Some characters take awesome risks. Mino first tries to run into the virus infected area... not even eight SWAT men can force him to move, he also risks being killed in a precision airstrike trying to save Maria and delivers a Cooldown Hug to Hakko even whilst she's shooting at him. Cummings twice risks getting shot for real by Liang and Alphard herself.
• Bathing Beauty: Liang Qi is the craziest one ever.
• Bathroom Brawl: In one episode, Canaan and Alphard get into a fight in the bathroom.
• Big Damn Heroes: Canaan rescues Maria from Malevolent Masked Men. She then proceeds to kill them all from long range with a pistol.
• Bilingual Bonus: Lots and lots of Chinese, and also a smattering of English, is used in the series due to the Shanghai setting. Levels of accuracy vary.
• Bittersweet Ending: Canaan leaves Maria in the end, because their lifestyles are too different. Maria will be with Canaan "in her heart."
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Guns and knives are knocked out of people hands on an almost regular basis by a good marksman.
• Blood from the Mouth: In gratuitous amounts. Liang Qi in specific produces torrents of the stuff◊.
• Bond One-Liner: "... and play cat's cradle."
• Book Ends:
  • Canaan up in a tower with a sniper rifle, with some sort of candy stick in her mouth.
  • Canaan and Alphard first met and fought on a train, and their last battle in the anime takes place atop a train.
• Break the Cutie: Maria, then Yunyun, then Hakko...
• Brought Down to Normal: Canaan loses her ability to "see colors" at the end of episode 7. She gets it back later, but only after getting hit indirectly by a missile, and confronting Alphard.
• Brown Note: The fact that Hakko's voice can kill is only noticeable by the responses of other people.
• Bullet Time: One of Canaan's many combat abilities.

• Butt-Monkey:
  • Cummings. Poor dude never seems to catch a break, though the events of episode 11 ventures into Woobie territory.
  • Yun Yun. It seems like nothing goes right for the poor girl no matter how hard she tries. Let's see, her borner mutation is a second appendix, her boss considers her life disposable but also controls the supply of medication she needs to survive, she had her workplace shot up by her own "allies" twice, she failed an assignment because her boobs were too small to interest the target, and she got interrogated at gunpoint with her own gun (while still wearing the embarrassingly skimpy bunny girl outfit from her failed assignment to boot).
• The Cameo: Chiaki, Chiri, and Yanagishita from the 428 game make cameos in the final episode attending an exhibition of the photographs Maria and Minorikawa took. Maria’s twin sister Hitomi also makes a Voice-Only Cameo talking to Minorikawa on the phone, played by their actress from the original game Narumi Konno.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Yunyun. It is even Lampshaded by Maria and Mino from episodes 2-5 as they wonder who she is.
• Central Theme: "There are many ways to see things, from the dead or living, from like and love, from light and despair. But the best way is to see everything."
• Child Soldier: Canaan's background. Alphard's, too. Trained by the same man, no less.
• Close-Call Haircut: Canaan gets one in episode 9.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Maria. As Yunyun put it: "I've just found the Eighth Wonder of the World."
  • Yunyun herself isn't far behind Maria ...
• Combat Parkour: Canaan does this in addition to her gun fighting skills alongside her synesthesia powers, making her a formidable mercenary.

• Crazy-Prepared: Liang Qi, especially in episode 11 when you see her massive stockpile of weapons, grenades and ammo, one will notice shurikens and a freaking chainsaw among the lot.
• Curtains Match the Window: For almost the whole cast, each person's hair and eye color match. About the only exceptions are Liang Qi and Cummings.
• Cute Little Fang: Yunyun has an incisor sticking out of the corner of her mouth.
• Cute Mute: Hakko, what with being "voiced" by Mamiko Noto. Subverted, since it turns out she can speak. It will just kill you!
• The Cutie: Maria, oh so very much.
• Damsel in Distress: Maria.
• Dark Action Girl: Alphard, Liang Qi
• Dead Person Conversation: Canaan with Siam in the last two episodes.
• Death by Despair: Hakko, refusing to leave the collapsing building, seems to have decided to just die next to Santana's corpse.
• Despair Event Horizon: Hakko crosses it after accidentally killing Santana when she thought she was delivering a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Liang Qi.
• Disease Bleach: In some cases exposure to the Ua virus results in dark hair turning white. This is known to have happened to Canaan, Liang Qi, and at least one other girl who was an attempt to make a second Canaan.
• Dodge the Bullet: One of Canaan's powers, which becomes prevalent in the last episode.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Liang Qi: "She's going to pull my tongue out; slowly and slowly, she's going to cut my neck open, then reach into the wound and churn my insides!"
  • When Mino, sitting on a park bench, is thinking of the previous night when he first met Hakko (in her rather revealing Cat Girl costume), a jet from the fountain suddenly shoots into the air. When she appears later on in the same scene and comes to sit down next to him, a whole bunch of jets go off.
• Dragon Lady: Liang Qi's choice of dress and sadism give her elements of this trope, along with The Baroness.
• The Driver: The nameless taxi driver.
• Eagleland: Mildly done, but the United States is given a rather unflattering depiction in Canaan; They have a bombastic bozo for a President, a corrupt crook for a Vice-President, are shamelessly neoconservative, and the CIA collude with a terrorist/private security organization in the development of biological weapons, using Chinese villagers as test subjects.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Alphard. Besides the obvious example in Liang Qi, she sets the hearts of both the male and female party guests in episode 4 aflutter when she passes by them in her sexy evening gown.
• Fan Disservice: Two instances from episode 11.
  • First, there's Liang Qi's bloody, Rasputinian death scene, all with her wearing skimpy lingerie.
  • Second, there's Hakko's sex scene with Santana's corpse.
• Fingore: In episode 12, when Alphard has a gun pressed to Canaan's head, Canaan has her finger behind the trigger, and when Alphard pulls it her nail visibly cracks and bleeds.
• Furo Scene: Liang Qi has upwards of half a dozen.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Done by Maria of all people who delivers a punch combo to Yunyun's face when she's being fatalistic regarding her condition.
• Girls with Guns: Canaan, Alphard, and Liang Qi all do plenty of shooting (though with Liang Qi, it's a BB gun to shoot her assistant with)
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Canaan's Synesthesia abilities induce this (whether it's literal or for the audience's benefit is not established).
• Gratuitous English: Episode 7
  • HOOLEE SHIT!
  • A lot of the Americans' dialogue in that episode.
  • "GET SOME GET SOME GET SOME GET SOME"
  • ULTRAVIOLET AND NOISE-CANCELING HELMET!
  • Episode 2, when the trucks get attacked... "GOGOGO!GOGOGOGOGOGOGO!"
• Gun Fu: Canaan's primary style of combat, with a healthy dose of Gun Kata thrown into the mix.
• Gunpoint Banter: Multiple engagements with Canaan and Alphard involve plenty of conversation and exposition.
• Gun Stripping: Canaan is seen disassembling and maintaining her pistol on a few occasions.
• Heel–Face Turn: Yun Yun. Not that it takes her very long.

• Heroic BSoD: Hakko's actions after the death of Santana could be seen as such.
• Heroic RRoD: Canaan gets one of these in Episode 7, when she realizes her Synesthesia abilities don't work anymore.

• Hyper-Awareness: Of a sort. Synethesia allows people like Canaan to see emotions as colors, smell sounds, etc, which gives her an immense edge in combat to the point of being able to dodge bullets!
• Hyperspace Arsenal: The crazy old Unbloom guy who Canaan fights early in the series.
• Idiot Hair: Maria has it. Canaan even lampshades this in episode three.
• Idol Singer: Nene is one.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Crossing over with Hyper-Awareness, Canaan's Synethesia gives her insane control over her attacks. Exemplified in the first episode where she's capable of killing distant targets, some behind cover, with a pistol while swinging from a flag pole!

• In Love with Your Carnage: Liang Qi
• Irrevocable Order: The vice-president cannot call off a B-2 about to bomb the president because they dropped the bomb seconds before he gave the recall order.
• Just Plane Wrong: Someone forgot to inform the animation staff that B-2 stealth bombers do not have vertical stabilizers, or afterburner nozzles on the engines. Oddly enough, shots of the cockpit and bomb bay are both relatively accurate, which makes one wonder whether the structural changes were intentional.
• Just Train Wrong: The penultimate episode Seasonal Train. When the last car is forcefully detached the train keeps going on like nothing happened although in reality the failsafe systems should bring it to a screeching halt.
• Karma Houdini:
  • At the end of the series Canaan is still working with Natsumi despite the fact that Natsumi would have killed Maria without the timely intervention of Alphard.
  • In the end, the tale of what happened at the ghost village is never told, allowing all the people who used its population for test subjects in bioweapon research to get off scot free.
• Kick the Dog: Liang Qi, all the time.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: A zig-zaggy, blurry, sort-of-inverted example. In the final episode, Alphard shoots her own arm off, but it's not really to save her life, it's to get rid of what's left of Siam. She does survive, though.
• Location Theme Naming:
  • Canaan.
  • Syam or Siam may refer to the region now known as Syria, or to the name of Thailand in the old days.
• Love Hurts: Any romantic subplot in Canaan.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Liang Qi, so much so that she does not take Alphard abandoning her very well.
• Love Martyr: Cummings to Liang Qi.
• Love Triangle: Cummings loves Liang Qi, who only has eyes for Alphard, and Alphard doesn't seem to care about either of them.
• Magic Skirt: Despite the extremely short hemline and often sitting with her legs apart, while in her qipao Liang Qi somehow never manages to flash the audience, mainly through creative use of camera angles. As she becomes (even more) unhinged she quits with the skirt altogether and just goes around in lingerie.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Partly justified by the fact the scene takes place during a carnival.
• Manipulative Bastard: Natsume.
• Meaningful Name:

• "Alphard" means "the solitary one" in Arabic. It's also the name of the brightest star in the constellation Hydra, marking the heart of the snake. She wasn't quite modest when she chose her new name.
• Written in kanji, Hakkō can mean "misfortune" (薄幸).

• Minion with an F in Evil: Yunyun
• Mistress and Servant Boy: Liang Qi and Cummings are a particularly dark and violent version of this trope. Liang Qi couldn't care less about Cummings and mainly takes her frustration out on him, but Cummings has a (one sided) infatuation with her and seems to like the abuse he suffers. He loves her so much, in fact, that he's the one who gives her a Mercy Kill, and he becomes a monk at the end of the series.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Liang Qi. She likes long baths.
  • Hakko in her hostess club outfit counts for this.
• Mummies at the Dinner Table: Poor Hakko just can't let go of Santana after he dies.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Liang Qi is always attempting to kill Canaan because she believes that Canaan 'changed' her beloved "Nee-sama".
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Liang Qi's stomach-churningly vicious beating of Maria.
  • Liang Qi delivers another one to Cummings while in the throes of a horrific Villainous Breakdown.
• Non-Action Guy: Minoru
• Non-Fatal Explosions: Canaan and her handler manage to hack a bomb to detonate before it hits, saving everyone in the building. In practice, there would be no real difference between a 10 ton bomb hitting a building and said bomb exploding less than a hundred meters outside the building in terms of property damage and casualties among the people inside - The main destructive force from a bomb is from the concussion and shrapnel generated by the explosion, not the impact, and the concussion from a blast that size would turn much of the building into shrapnel.
• No One Could Survive That!:
  • Maria's dad, though his "death" was revealed to be but a sly trick by the Snakes to make the US bomb their own president.
  • Maria's later exploding train ride. Not much explanation is given, although Yunyun appears to have a major hand in it.
  • Finally, Alphard survives falling off a train trestle, as seen in the epilogue.
• One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce: Canaan's power doesn't come with a corresponding weakness, unlike the rest of the Borners.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Alphard towards Canaan. She even delivers a speech to that effect to Canaan in episode 9.
• Onee-sama: Liang Qi refers and relates to Alphard this way.
• Orgasmic Combat: Holy shit, Liang Qi.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Yunyun.
• Plucky Girl: Yun Yun in the last episode, pulling Maria out of a train car that's about to explode and then carrying her who even knows how far. By the time Mino finds them, she's completely out of it and thinks the three of them are in Buddhist heaven.
• Private Military Contractors: The Daedala Corporation. But they aren't entirely a PMC considering that most of its personnel, if not all, are Snake terrorists.
• Product Placement: That red detonator Liang Qi uses in episode 6 looks suspiciously like a red Wiimote Nunchuk; the aforementioned airsoft pistols Liang Qi uses to torment Cummings.
• Psycho Lesbian: Liang Qi is obsessed with her "nee-sama". They are not biological sisters, though, as Liang is Chinese, while Alphard is a Middle-Easterner.
• Psychotic Smirk: Liang Qi's usual facial expression.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Subverted and played straight at the same time in episode 10. Hakko tries twice to kill Liang Qi with one of these, only to have Liang Qi troll her on both accounts and then deliver her own Reason You Suck Speech right back at Hakko each time. To add insult to injury, Hakko finds to her dismay that she accidentally killed Santana with her second speech, which Liang Qi all too gleefully informs her of during her second Speech.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Canaan's eyes glow red when she taps into her powers.
• Red Spider Lilies of Mourning: Red spider lilies are used as a visual motif whenever characters discuss the Ua Virus bioterrorist attack, which occurred in the prequel.
• Red String of Fate: Used to play "Cat's Cradle".
• Replaced with Replica: Alphard does one by replacing a live pistol with an air gun before Cummings could use it to shoot her after she begins to gun down Liang Qi's chopper over the desert.
• Rescue Romance:
  • Maria attempts to replay her first meeting with Canaan by getting in trouble.
  • Liang Qi attempted to do this by setting up a trap for Alphard to get captured in the beginning so that Liang Qi will get to rescue her. Little did she know that Alphard was very aware of the deception, but went along with it merely because she was curious where Liang Qi was going with it.
• Running Gag:
  • Liang Qi's airsoft pistol, which gets used in a minor Gambit Roulette set up by Alphard in episode 9.
  • Yunyun and her, uh... inventive use for pork-buns.
• Rule of Cool: Synesthesia does not work that way! Who cares?
• Save the Villain: Canaan saves Alphard from falling at the end of their climactic duel. How does the rescuee respond? By shooting off her arm and falling... though, see under No One Could Survive That!.
• Scenery Censor: Liang Qi's first scene, in which she gets out of the bath in Cumming's office and, still nude, goes to retrieve some documents for him. As she bends over to hand them to him, a conveniently-placed plant on the table in the foreground acts as Censor Foliage.
• Sequel Hook: Canaan gets an assignment to kill a "one-armed woman".
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Liang Qi is quite poetic at times, especially in regards to hurting people.
• Sex Is Violence: It certainly is for Liang Qi, a potential poster child for this trope.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Canaan's shirt.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Only demonstrated in episode one, Liang Qi is the BEST SECRETARY EVER! All other things considered.
• Shout-Out: The US President is clearly a fan of Trigun; he manages to get the entire crowd and other world leaders screaming 'LOVE AND PEACE!!'
• Shower Scene: Alphard gets a vaguely plot-important scene where we first see that she has the same tattoo as Canaan.
• Shown Their Work: Other than the glaring errors with the stealth bomber, the creators clearly spent some time researching everything from US military uniforms through Chinese railroads to the local cuisine of Xinjiang province.
• Shoot the Dog: Cummings has to kill Liang Qi after her attempt to give herself Synesthesia...really, really doesn't end well.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Arguably most of the main cast have this going for each other, but Liang Qi for Alphard and Cummings for Liang Qi are the most obvious. Cummings even becomes a monk after he has to Mercy Kill Liang Qi.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Liang Qi, again.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: Canaan spins a metal rod to block bullets when fighting a Borner.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Canaan.
• Super-Soldier: What the Snakes and the CIA did in Xinjiang with the supposed plans to use the Ua virus in the first place.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • Alphard's humming in the first episode.
  • China Kibun de High Tension plays during a life-or-death chase scene, in which the taxi Maria is in is being pursued by an insane old man with an Uzi.
• Spit Take: A businessman's reaction to a naked and dripping wet Liang Qi casually walking into the room.
• Stereotypes of Chinese People: Well, it does take place in Shanghai.
• The Stoic: Alphard and Syam. Whether in flashbacks, or the present, neither shows much emotion whatsoever, being completely flippant and dismissive to the events around them.
• Superpower Lottery: The kind of mutation a Borner gets, along with its strengths and drawbacks, seem to be entirely random. Hayatori in episode 2 has two hearts, granting him immense agility and premature aging, while his brother in episode 3 can contort and squeeze inside small spaces, though he's physically trapped in a child's body. Meanwhile Yunyun has been granted... two appendixes.
  • The "winner" until now is Hakko: She can kill you with her voice!
• Take My Hand!: This is how Canaan and Alphard's ultimate duel ends, but Alphard really doesn't want to be rescued by her... She survives, nonetheless.
• 12-Episode Anime: There are only thirteen episodes.
• Too Kinky to Torture:
  • Liang Qi's assistant Cummings eventually starts enjoying her constant abuse.
  • Liang Qi herself would appear to be getting very excited when Alphard is beating her down in episode 11.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Canaan and those sugar candy stick things she's often shown munching on.
• Tyke Bomb: Liang Qi.
• Villainous Breakdown: Episode 11 has a truly horrific and heartbreaking one of these on the part of Liang Qi.
• The Virus: The "Ua virus" led to the outbreak of mutants known as Borners.
• War for Fun and Profit: Alphard helps all countries go to war with each other and takes money from everybody; she also helps countries go to peace (since peace also results in rearmamenting and sales opportunities).
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Nobody thinks to find out how many Borners are left out there other than Hakko and Yunyun, and whether they'd like the opportunity to get their life-saving medicine from a more reputable source.
  • Alphard suggests that something important happened during the incident where Maria and Canaan first met, which Maria can't remember due to traumatic amnesia. Whatever it is, it was never revealed.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Yunyun is a Borner mutant... with two appendices.
• Where It All Began:
  • The train (possibly the same train, but at least the same make) was the setting for both the beginning of Canaan and Alphard's feud (when Alphard killed Siam) and their climactic duel.
  • The airport that Alphard is sitting in during the epilogue would seem to be the same one from the last scene in 428.
• Yandere: Liang-Qi.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Alphard with regard to Liang Qi. Liang Qi with regard to Yunyun.
• Your Head A-Splode: Hakko's power, to a degree.
• Your Mom: In episode 5, Santana and Minorikawa eventually devolve into slinging this back and forth.

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