The story follows the life of Yuichi Aizawa, a high school student who returns to a city he last visited seven years prior, and he has little recollection of the events from back then.

[1] Yūichi Suzumoto, a scenario writer who worked on later Key titles, commented that the sex scenes in Kanon are very self-contained, and can be easily removed without altering the story.

Newtype USA stated in an article on Kanon that "it's when the characters are eating something really tasty that they seem most beautiful and alive", despite the somber setting and overall tone of the series.

[7] These five foods of choice are: taiyaki (Ayu), strawberries (Nayuki), nikuman (Makoto), ice cream (Shiori), and gyudon (Mai).

Ayu Tsukimiya, the game's main heroine, is a short, strange, and mysterious girl immediately recognizable by her winged backpack, red hair band, and tendency to refer to herself with the masculine first-person pronoun boku (僕).

She has a fondness for eating taiyaki, and is notorious for her catchphrase, "ugū" (うぐぅ), which she mutters as an expression of various negative emotions such as frustration, pain, and fear.

[8] Yuichi coincidentally meets Shiori Misaka, another heroine and first-year high school student suffering from an unexplained illness since birth.

She has a cold attitude towards almost everyone, but despite this, she is actually a very kind and caring person; she "punishes" someone who makes a playful joke about her by giving them a light karate chop to the head.

Yuichi Aizawa is a second-year high school student who had visited the city where the story takes place seven years prior to Kanon's beginning.

Upon recovering, she drags him away to a nearby café and confesses to inadvertently stealing a bag filled with taiyaki after being accidentally scared away by the salesman before she had a chance to pay.

[10] Baba gave the developers the freedom they desired, and they officially transferred to Visual Arts where they formed Key on July 21, 1998, and started production on Kanon.

Art direction was headed by Key's artist Itaru Hinoue who worked on the character design and computer graphics.

[4] An updated adult version called the Kanon Standard Edition was released on November 26, 2004, with added support for Windows 2000/XP as a DVD-ROM.

[15] The Standard Edition incorporates the extra graphics added to the earlier all ages version of the game, and other technical changes such as more save slots.

[16] Another all ages updated version compatible for Windows 7 PCs called Kanon Memorial Edition was released on April 30, 2010.

[34] Visual Arts and Prototype have announced a Windows release for Kanon distributed via Steam with English, Japanese and Simplified Chinese language support.

[37][38] The cover art and internal illustrations were drawn by Itaru Hinoue, the artist who drew the artwork in the visual novel.

The first two released were Yuki no Shōjo (雪の少女, Girl in the Snow, Nayuki) and Egao no Mukougawa ni (笑顔の向こう側に, Beyond the Smile, Shiori) in December 1999.

Paradigm re-released the five novels in conjunction with Visual Arts under their VA Bunko imprint, which removed the erotic scenes, starting with Yuki no Shōjo on June 27, 2009,[39] and ending with Hidamari no Machi on December 26, 2009.

A sixth novel titled Kanojotachi no Kenkai (彼女たちの見解, The Girls' Opinions) for the supporting character Sayuri Kurata written by Shimizu and illustrated by Zen was released on March 31, 2011.

The show, produced by Movic, was hosted by Yukari Tamura and Tomoko Kawakami, the voices Mai Kawasumi and Sayuri Kurata, respectively.

[51][52] The individual chapters were later collected into two separate tankōbon volumes published by MediaWorks under their Dengeki Comics imprint released in September 2000 and on July 27, 2002.

From chapters one through four, the main heroines presented are: Shiori Misaka, Makoto Sawatari, Mai Kawasumi and Ayu Tsukimiya.

[64] Ichijinsha also released two more volumes of anthology collections of four-panel comic strips titled Kanon 4-koma Kings in April and June 2001.

This version, directed by Tatsuya Ishihara[81] and written by Fumihiko Shimo, aired between October 5, 2006, and March 15, 2007, on BS-i, containing 24 episodes.

[85] In July 2008, the licensing rights of the second Kanon anime were transferred from ADV to Funimation Entertainment (now known as Crunchyroll as of 2025) who continued to produce the series in North America.

Kanon was one of the three games supported at launch, the other two being America Ōden Ultra Quiz from DigiCube and Marle de Jigsaw from Nippon Ichi Software.

[101] Yūichi Suzumoto commented in an interview in March 2001 that he felt the end of Kanon's story could be summed up as "the prince and princess live happily ever after.

[107] However, Martin comments how one of the series' flaws is how it "overplays the mundane cutesiness and moe cards at times" causing little to happen with the plot.

Martin adds another series comparison, citing Kanon as the "polar opposite of Gurren Lagann", which deals primarily in its action-oriented content.