It takes a lot for me to give a Visual Novel adaptation an A. Kanon earns it. The name comes from the Katakana reading of 'Canon,' the name for a piece of music which takes a central theme and repeats it with slight changes, an idea which the anime explores, once you look between the lines. Just one example of the way in which Kanon is a very intelligent series, hiding behind its girl-game exterior.
Kanon is a story about love, memory and miracles. It is a story about loss, fear and depression. It is a story with a lot of drama and a lot of suffering. The thing I love most about it is its humor: Yuuichi (on the right, above) voiced by Tomokazu Sugita (best known as Kyon from Haruhi Suzumiya) being snarky and teasingly friendly with the girls of the cast. Yuuichi also stands out for me as being a very characterful protagonist, he gets awkward around the girl he likes, forgets his promises and makes fun of his friends even as he struggles to do the right thing, rather than providing the weird sense of 'boys must protect girls to get laid' that so many harem series do.
Kanon's adaptation from a Visual Novel is one of the best I've seen, though it also is very clear how they chose to handle the multi-arc presentation: after the cast is introduced, a 3-5 episode arc is dedicated to each of the Visual novel's original storylines, and Kanon manages to thread them all together quite nicely, far better than Air, Utawarerumono or Fate Stay Night; Kanon's overall story is coherent and builds on itself nicely.
Kanon is, like most Key adaptations, quite sad. I cried. Not as much as I cried at Ano Hana, but I did cry. It's genuinely heartwrenching in places, but somehow manages to have an uplifting ending, and not one of those endings that's actually depressing but I personally find uplifting, either.
I hesitate to call it a 'harem' series, because while there are are a high number of female characters, and even female characters with crushes on the protagonist, the crushes are not the focuses of the story and are treated with a certain amount of gravity. Which isn't to say that I couldn't criticize the series at all, but I find myself not needing to because it handles itself with such grace.
If you want to watch a gorgeously animated series with plenty of sorrow, growth and heartstring-tugging, Kanon is a lovely tale of hope in the middle of winter. If you're looking for something funny... Kanon delivers there too. If you need action... actually Kanon has a bit of that, but not a lot. Really what I'm saying is that Kanon is very, very good.
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