Music / Kanon Wakeshima

Kanon on World's end, Girl's rondo PV

Kanon Wakeshima (分島 花音) is a Japanese cellist, singer, and artist. She was born June 28, 1988, and rose to fame through a contest. She debuted under DefStar Records on May 28, 2008, with the single "Still Doll", but has since switched to Warner (Bros.) Records. She is most notable for the ending themes for the first two seasons of the anime Vampire Knight.

In 2010, she formed the duo Kanon×Kanon with Kanon (bassist of An Cafe) to produce theme songs for anime series.

Singles:

• Still Doll(2008)
• Suna no Oshiro (2008)
• Foul Play ni Kurari / Sakura Meikyuu (2012)
• signal (2014)
• killy killy JOKER (2014)
• World's end, Girl's rondo (2014)
• Right Light Rise (2015)
• Love your Enemies (2016)
• Unbalance by Me (2016)

Studio Albums:

• Shinshoku Dolce (2009)
• Lolitawork Libretto (2010)
• Tsukinami (2015)
• luminescence Q.E.D. (2016)

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Tropes applying to Kanon Wakeshima:(YMMV tropes go here!)

• Alice Allusion: Her song "Still Doll" start with the verse:
  Hi, miss Alice...
• All Just a Dream: Her song "Toumei no Kagi" delivers this verse at the end of what an only be described as an some sort of acid trip:
  Waking up from a dream,
  The morning sunlight, my right hand,
  The Invisible Key glistens,
• Anime Theme Song: Pretty much how she started her carrer, so far the following songs used as such were:
  • "Still Doll" as 1st ending of Vampire Knight
  • "Suna no Oshiro" as the 2nd ending for the same series.
  • "Calendula Requiem" as the 2nd opening of Shiki
  • "Koi no Doutei" as the second opening of 30-sai no Hoken Taiiku
  • "Foul Play ni Kurari" as the ending of To Love-Ru Darkness
  • "signal" as the 2nd ending of Strike the Blood
  • "killy killy JOKER" as the opening of selector infected WIXOSS
    • In addition "World's end, Girl's rondo" was used as the second season of WIXOSS ^note Selector Spread Wixoss
  • "Right Light Rise" as the ending of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Her cellos; not only they have names and different colors, but Kanon also likes to make drawings of them.
• The Cameo: Kanon gives her voice to the maid in the 8th episode of the first season of Vampire Knight.
• Cannot Spit It Out: The "Marmalade Sky" song is entirely based on this trope:
  The secret hidden in my heart
  About my feeling
  You can ask about
  But I'll never tell
• Concept Album: Her album "Shinshoku Dolce" was said to be themed about the pain a child goes through by entering the adult world.
• Cover Version: Among the many collaborations she has made, she was part of the sixth tribute album to hide: Female Spirits where she covers Beauty & Stupid
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Pretty much everything of her first period, with her first CD "Shinshoku Dolce" has themes of this. Shifted to a more classic Lolita image in recent years.
• Forbidden Fruit: Her song "Kajitsu no Keikoku" (Warnings of the Fruit) which she said it was based in the Bible tale of Adam and Eve.
• Floral Theme Naming: Some of her songs has this: "Calendula Requiem", "celmisia", and "Sakura Meikyuu" (Cherry Blossom Labyrinth).
• Fractured Fairy Tale: Some of her songs are about the original versions of many fairytales, and the PV of her song "Lolitawork Libretto~storytelling by Solita" is about Kanon messing up with many classic ones, apparently just For the Lulz.
• Genre Shift: Her initial style was a unique fusion of baroque pop, dark ambient, Goth Rock and Doom Metal...with cellos. Later works lean more towards mainstream Anime pop, but the gothic and doom influences are still there.
• Gratuitous French: Both of her songs, "L'espoir -Mahou no akai no Ito" and "Lolitawork-libretto":
  • The song Lolitawork Libretto opens with this verse:
  Moi qui suis mons rêve
  A girlish mechanism
  T'etends ma chérie
  • And the "L'espoir ~Mahô no Akai Ito~" opens with this:
  Ce piège que je t'ai tendu,
  Ce fil de couleur cerise
  Tombe dedans, esclave de mon amour
  Tu ne peux pas s'y èchapper
• Grief Song: "Monochrome Frame" and "Tree of Sorrow".
• Halloween Cosplay: Not so much a cosplay, but her costume in the "Halloween Party" PV where she participates as:
  • Little Red Riding Hood / The Big Bad Wolf: She doubles as both characters...apparently
• I Call It "Vera": They aren't weapons (well at least not deadly weapons) but Kanon has names for each one of her cellos.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: And they're all of different colors as well.
  • Japanese Honorifics: she also refers to each one in different honorifics:
    • Yaeharu-san is a regular brown cello that she has since middle school, the first one actually, so we're assuming that the "-san" is out of... respect?
    • Nanachie-chan is the red cello seen in the "Suna no Oshiro" PV, and frequently accompanies her in promos and events.
    • Mikazuki-kun is the white cello she usually takes it in tours.
    • Momo-chan/ Momotose: it's a silver cello and it's the newest one, it made its debut in the "Lolitaowrk-Libretto" PV.
• Interspecies Romance: A weird example her song "Kuroneko to Pianist no Tango" (Black Cat and Pianist's Tango) seems to be about a black cat who is in love with the pianist and goes to listen to his music everynight.
• Lighter and Softer: After the singles Still Doll", Suna no Oshiro" and album "Shinshoku Dolce" came the more sweet "Lolitawork Libretto". After Lolitawork, her work shifted to be sweeter and upbeat except if it is for a dark anime, like Shiki''.
• Living Doll Collector: Played straight in "Still Doll" and Heavily implied to be the theme of her song "The Dollhouse!" which sings from the perspective of one of the "prisoners" (probably the only prisoner tough) the chorus in the song is this:
  Please take out here!
  By locking the world were I find hard to breath
  You confine me in the dollhouse!
• Lyrical Dissonance and Lyrical Shoehorn: Oh boy, Kanon could be made of this trope, except for very few exceptions, much more prominent in her first CD though.
• Meaningful Name: By her own admision Kanon says that the kanji of her name can be translated as "Sound of Flowers".
• Record Producer: The Artist as Producer type, Kanon owns her initial image and style to the producer of her two albums to non other than the ex-guitarist of Malice Mizer: Mana
• Red String of Fate: The song named "L'espoir ~Mahô no Akai Ito~" (The Hope, Magical Red String) talks about a girl trying to get a guy to love her and talks about the Red String as a trap for her love, the song opens with this verse:
  This trap that I tended to you
  This cherry colored thread
  Fall inside, slave of my love
  You won't be able to escape
• Shave And A Haircut: At the end of "Kuroneko to Pianist no Tango".
• Split Personality: The narrator of "Dokushouka Himegimi-Heroine Syndrome" sees to have one that appears everytime she takes a romance book.
• Talent Contest: Believe it or not, this is actually how she was signed onto a record label.
• Trapped in Dreamland:Both tropes overlap, in the PV of "Lolitawork Libretto" and the song lyrics talk about a girl trapped in a dreamworld.
  I in my dream
  In a picture book
  My beloved can you hear me?
  Waits for her
  • Later the final verse of the song confirms this:
  "Help"
  A fantasy from which there is no return
  "Stop!"
  She Can't hear
  "Wake up"
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: "Dokushouka Himegimi-Heroine Syndrome" is about a girl who wants her love to be like a one of a book, but at the end, grows out the idelistic and structured romance to want to write her love as she wants.
• Title Drop: Many of her songs has this trope, Suna no Oshiro, Monochrome Frame, Kuroi Torikago, Shiroi Kokoro, the aforementioned Toumei no Kagi.
• Visual Kei: Thanks to her associations with Mana and An Cafe's Kanon, she is arguably part of the Visual scene, and it is not unheard of for Visual fans to bring up her name and music in J-music discussions.

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