CANAAN Episode 4: Best. Gunfight. Ever.

It's time to break my recap rule once again (it's more like a guideline now lol ^^;), and gush over how freaking awesome episode 4 of CANAAN is!!! XD

Canaan and Maria don't interact at all in this episode (despite Maria's best efforts), ;_; but there are plenty of other cool/interesting/squeal-worthy moments to keep fans preoccupied- like the flashback to how Maria and Canaan met and the Canaan vs. Alphard gunfight at the end!! YEAH!!!! XD But more on that later...

While Maria mopes in her hotel room, we finally see Canaan's backstory- how a soldier (or mercenary?) named Siam (?) found her in a massacred village, raised her, and taught her how to fight.



Despite Canaan's harsh lifestyle and circumstances, I like how she's portrayed as a good-humored, surprisingly well-adjusted kid, instead of another ice-cold, emotionless killing machine a la Noir's Kirika or Phantom ~Requiem of the Phantom~'s Ein. She and Siam have a warm father-daughter relationship, when they aren't shooting things.

Until her first encounter with Alphard





in which she loses Siam and swears vengeance against Alphard, and she and Alphard settle on their trademark outfits.





Snarky comments aside, I'm curious about exactly why Alphard killed Siam, since the show hinted earlier that Siam knew her as well.

Back in the present, Alphard, Liang Qi, and Cummings attend a formal party



while Mino treats Maria to a huge meal to snap her out of her misery- without asking why she's depressed or batting an eye over her behavior- his no-strings-attached friendship and implicit trust in Maria's behavior is actually pretty nice.



Until she does something incredibly stupid- walking around Shanghai late at night to look for Canaan. There's a cute flashback showing how Canaan and Maria first met.









*cheers* ^^
(Random comment- does this scene remind anybody else of the end of episode 1 of Fushigi Yuugi?)

After Maria realizes that she always meets Canaan when she's in trouble, she (stupidly!) decides to wander near a group of strangers in an alley, hoping that they'll attack her, and Canaan's Maria-senses will tingle. The strangers seem like they might bother her (although to me, they really just seem annoyed that Maria might be trying to photograph them), but Yunyun (the comic relief girl who shows up at different part-time jobs), of all people, whisks Maria away from them.



Maria befriends Yunyun, in a sense, although Yunyun doesn't seem to find Maria remotely as "amazing" as Canaan does. ^_^

At the party, Canaan attacks Alphard in the ladies restroom (both for revenge and because she doesn't want to lose Maria the way she lost Siam) and they have an all-too-short gunfight that leaves me speechless with fangirlish glee:



I love how Alphard has a loaded gun underneath her dress, just in case. XD







After their tense, ever-so-faintly yuri-ish moment of confrontation (although I'm still for Canaan x Maria, in case you couldn't tell lol),





Alphard easily wins



but allows Canaan to escape, undoubtedly making nefarious plans for the future. :)

I'm not making any pretenses of objectively recapping this episode. I obviously really, really, really like CANAAN, and am using this post as a vent for my fangirlism. Not that there's anything wrong with that. ^^