Misae Sagara

Mei Sunohara

Nagisa Furukawa

Fuuko Ibuki

Kotomi Ichinose

Tomoyo Sakagami

Nazo no Shoujo

Kyou Fujibayashi

Yusuke Yoshino

Toshio Koumura

Garakuta no Ningyou

Kouko Ibuki

Akio Furukawa

Youhei Sunohara

Sanae Furukawa

Ryou Fujibayashi

Mitsui

Tomoya Okazaki

Yukine Miyazawa

Rie Nishina

Male customer

Sugisaka

Naoyuki Okazaki

Oogami-sensei

Harada

Tomoya is a bitter, third year high school student. His mother passed away, causing his father to resort to alcohol and gambling. Tomoya is distant with his father and has become a delinquent in the years since his mother's death. Walking to school, he meets Nagisa Furukawa who is a year older but is repeating the grade due to illness. She is alone, as most of her friends have moved on. The two begin hanging out, and as time goes by, Tomoya finds his life shifting in a new direction. 
 
(Source: Sentai Filmworks)

#Clannad and Clannad After Story Review/Analysis# 

Hello, my name is TheRoundChestnut. 
Due to the success of my Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann review, I decided that I wanted to make more reviews to give the people who are hesitant on watching a certain series reason why it is good or bad. 

This time, I am conducting a review on Clannad.
This review will discuss what themes it expresses, the character which upholds its themes, and the uniqueness of this anime. I, then, will discuss why this anime is not for everyone, and shall give some suggestions on if this is anime is right for you. 
I will be discussing more of its story rather than its animation and music, etc.
(This review will contain minor spoilers, but not anything too bad) 

img300(http://wallpapercave.com/wp/PbwXXDR.png)

The reason why this anime is beloved for what it is is the amount of depth between each and every character, whether that leads into romance or even feuds within their families. The story is centered around Okazaki Tomoya, a delinquent who is wandering through his final high school years and constantly aggravated on the dullness of his own life. The reason why the premise of the beginning is important is because the viewers realize that the main character is at his grey point (the lowest point) of his life and sets up a story of change. This is already more hooking than most romance animes out there, because the viewers are able to experience the change of Tomoya from the lowest point of his life and eventually to his peak.
The characters that are introduced through out the story are represented in Tomoya's expansion of his relationships with other people. His build of relationships becomes important throughout both seasons because they allow Tomoya to feel "alive" rather than living "dully" without any relationships. (Kinda pointing fun at those people who do actually live those kind of lives). The show presents a way how a person can change through the interactions of people and how they can grow upon those relationships by merely being with them. 
Another theme that is present throughout the series is the ties between sacrifice/loss and redemption. (I'm not going to say anything specific here because if I do then it's super spoilers). The characters all experience these ties at least once in the series. Not only does this provide character development, but it also allows the viewers to relate it to their own lives and surroundings. Clannad emphasizes on this theme because it allows the viewers to sympathize with the characters and their hardships. This theme centralizes the entire series as a means to convey the importance of emotions and sympathy and loss. Imagine losing a relative or as little as your favorite toy from when you were 8. Now imagine losing them. To others it may seem nothing or out of pity to say sorry, but inside it is different. It's a heavy lump of disparity for that loss. Clannad uses that as a mean to tell its story and the different backgrounds each character faces. This is why Clannad is powerful in conveying its story, and thus leading to people loving it so much. 

Animation wise for a 2007 - 2009 show by Kyoto animations, this is really a spectacular anime to watch visually. The characters are fluid and well designed, scenery is real, and most of all the world and atmosphere feel alive. 
Music is very fitting for what ever scene there is. If there is a scene of lively talking, then the music is lively as well. Same goes for when the atmosphere is heavy, music is heavy and dramatic. I love the OST always gives me the chills for how memorable and nostalgic it is.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KMzDVf2Bx4 - probably the best). 

img400(http://images5.fanpop.com/image/answers/2831000/2831204_1340793297275.87res_400_300.jpg)

But, as I said in the beginning of this review, this anime is not meant for everyone. Here I will be discussing the common problems/refutes people make when complaining about this show, and I will refute them to try to convince you a bit that you may have looked the wrong way. 
1. "It's too boring." - People who usually say this are people who watched Clannad thinking its like Toradora or SAO, with a bunch of action or drama that drives the story. Clannad isn't like those two. It immerses the viewers in the perspective of Tomoya. Clannad is a Slice of Life, not a dramatic romance.  

2. "It's way too slow" - This I can kind of understand this. The first season goes around introducing each character with their own arc, so when it does get to the final episode of the first season, the viewers feel drawn out. But like I said earlier, this is a Slice of Life that draws the viewers and immerses them in their world. And the only way the characters can come off meaning is by giving them their own arcs. So in the end, it's not wasted episodes. 

3. "Where is the sad part?" - This is something I have major concerns with. If everybody came to watch the sad part and the sad part only, then this entire first season didn't need to exist. The whole entire reason why the sad part is sad (somewhere in the second season) is because the entire show (first and second season) builds up to it. And the reason why it's so heavy and impactful is because it happens to the characters that we watched up to this whole time. So if you're watching Clannad just for the sad part, either stop watching because you're not going to feel sad, or take a step back and enjoy every part of it. 

4. "It's overrated and hyped up so much." - It may be overrated because of how popular it is, and how much people gush over it. I was like that too thinking no show was going to make me cry, but I was wrong when I watched this. This show made me change my perspective when it comes to watching shows and to take them how they are meant to be taken. And hopefully if you could take the time to watch Clannad again with that idea in mind maybe you could grasp why people refer to this show like how they do. 

5. "Where is the romance" - The romance of Clannad does not come to the forefront so easily. The build up of the first season onto the second season is key. The interactions that Nagisa and Okazaki had were developed (slowly) so that they can fully flesh out into a couple in the second season. The romance here is intimate. I don't think it is anywhere direct in its portrayal of romance in both season, but it does not have to be that way. Romance can be interpreted in different ways. Some like it slow and some like it fast. But being able to appreciate both ideologies is what makes watching Clannad a wonderful show to watch. 

img400(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a3/42/ed/a342ed26bff3e91f2a14c7f923066610.jpg)

Conclusion: 
I do not think Clannad is for everyone. The romance in this show is slow, and the progression of the story is slow. But if you are here for a fast romance, then this is not your show. Sit down, lose the sense of time, and enjoy the ride. I want to express how much Clannad means to me and I want you to understand the same. 

Should you watch Clannad? Definitely.

Determining if this anime is right for you.

Todos nós já assistimos ou pelo menos conhecemos algum drama. Devemos levar em consideração a vasta galeria de diversos tipos desse gênero. Mas em minha humilde opinião, esse supera é muito qualquer expectativa. A obra tem a seguinte sinopse: Tomoya Okazaki é um dos protagonistas principais de Clannad. Devido ao seu hábito de sempre chegar tarde à escola, matar aulas durante o dia e ficar fora toda a noite, ele foi rotulado como um delinquente (um jovem que desafia a autoridade). Logo início do primeiro episódio, Tomoya é mostrado como um estudante do ensino médio de 17 anos que se ressente da sua cidade por causa de todas as más lembranças que ele experimentou enquanto vivia nela. Ele é o tipo de pessoa que tem pensamentos profundos sobre sua vida, mas geralmente não fala sobre eles. Em vez de cair em depressão, porém, ele se torna um delinquente sarcástico. Mas Clannad não é um anime que retrata só a vida de um, mas de vários jovens durante o período colegial. Enquanto ele caminha a roda do colégio, ele avista a personagem Nagisa. Vale ressaltar o ponto forte do anime, que são os personagens carismáticos, muito deles são muito fáceis de se criar um laço. Kyou, Kotomi, Tomoyo, Fuko, Yukine, Ryou. E todos com o passar do drama vão mudando e se desenvolvendo de uma forma muito bonita, a maioria até descobrem o que deveriam realizar em suas vidas, e os rumos tomados. Segundo ponto forte sem dúvidas é o seu incrível desenrolar, vai demorar muito tempo para que exista um drama tão bem elaborado como Clannad proporcionou – demostra a atitude dos muitos protagonistas, o fato de que nem tudo pode ser resolvido facilmente, tem muitas falhas que terão de passar na sua vida e que vão lhes ajudar a tornar uma pessoa melhor, e nisso Clannad é mestre, sem dúvidas, não é atoa que o mesmo sempre fica em altas colocações em tops como este, provando somente que ele cumpriu e superou o que era de se esperar.

A ost de Clannad é incrível, ela consegue absorver o máximo de cada cena, e isso só acontece quando o diretor da staff do anime sabia o que estava fazendo e tem experiência para saber como utilizar as osts de maneira correta, existe uma imensidão de animes em que as músicas não chamam a atenção e bem poucos em que ela é realmente necessária para a cena, este é um dos casos.

Aqui com certeza é uma das maiores qualidades do anime, já que ele foi animado pela Kyoto Animation, muito conhecido por ser um dos melhores estúdios, se não o melhor estúdio de animação do japão, então sem dúvidas quanto a palavra “qualidade” este anime impõe e muito. Um detalhe quanto ao carácter do design, que o estúdio estava sem seu ápice na época em qualidade, mesmo se for uma pessoa exigente quanto a animação, pode ir assistir sem medo.

Nunca fui um fanático por animes mas sim, eu amo, esse foi um anime capaz de mudar meu pensamento de viver. Clannad sem dúvidas foi um anime que mudou minha forma de pensar e encarar a realidade, eu me arrependo fortemente por não ter assistido antes, então os créditos por apresentação do anime fica para meu amigo Lucas (Exclamaniac!). Julgo este anime como essencial para todos, posso dizer a você, que vai ser sempre lembrado pelo resto da minha vida.

Em baixo, minha análise em vídeo =) youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCSxVjp11FY)

A long time ago, I found a bottle floating in the ocean off the coast of Santa Monica. It contained a lengthy research paper, allegedly belonging to a renowned pair of married scientists who had disappeared at sea years prior. I never told anyone about this paper… I mean, after I read it, how could I? It spoke of concepts that frightened me, and the idea of handing it over to anyone in authority chilled me to the bone. I could never hand this thesis over to my own government, because I just knew someone would try to use the information contained within to develop weapons that could destroy the very fabric of existence as we knew it. See, this thesis spoke of alternate timelines… I know, big shock right? The multiverse has been existing in the minds of scientists for years now, but here’s the thing Never has the method for accessing those timelines been so perfectly realized.

The paper spoke of a unique world where everything… And I mean everything, from the movement of the stars to the fate and decisions of every individual human… Revolved around the whims of one perfect teenage boy, who thankfully was too apathetic to harness his true powers, with which he could easily mobilize an army of obsessive, sexually-frustrated moe girls. Out of all the millions of alternate versions of this universe, there were some where people believed his plight to be pinnacle of emotional depth and perfection in story-telling… And in other realities, people claimed that his story was sick, pathetic wish fulfillment and tragedy porn. And that, in heavily simplified terms, is how you access these multiple realities… You create a universe so divisive that every single person who experiences it has a radically different experience with it, and accept that every single one of those opinions is somehow correct.

That world is called Clannad, and it is beautiful. I mean aesthetically, and in terms of animation? This show is gorgeous. Unsurprisingly, it was produced by Kyoto Animation, the patron saints of good looking anime, and as you may have expected from my only other Kyoto Animation review (Free), Clannad obviously had a lot of love and money poured into it   A wide range of motion and visual effects is used throughout the series, effortlessly switching between the mundane shots of people walking and talking together, to the fast paced actions shots of over-the-top fights breaking out on campus, to beautiful CGI that gets used sparingly and never looks out of place, and at no point is it ever apparent that the producers had to bother saving a single penny.

Well, that turns out to have been a very good choice, because this series is based on a KEY visual novel, which means it carries with it a very distinct sort of design. I’ve seen the term “Moe-blob” used to describe this design, where male characters have reasonably realistic facial proportions but their female counterparts have giant, tumorous doe-eyed countenances, and it certainly applies here, as this is the kind of show that would look like walking garbage if it weren’t produced with the budget of a small country. PA Works might have been a better fit, but comparison aside, Kyoto Animation knew exactly what they were doing with this title. Big eyes can easily look like dead eyes, but Kyo-Ani took full advantage of those giant peepers in order to channel an entire spectrum of emotions that breathe full, vibrant life into what would otherwise be unrealistic and unrelatable visual novel tropes.

Like the animation, the music is diverse, had a lot of love and attention put into it, and can cover a wide variety of moods, and it works… Most of the time? Okay, positives first, emotional highlights are very well tended to, and the music that plays during those ‘other world’ segments is hauntingly appropriate. The Insert song “Dango Daikazoku” appears very prominently as an in-universe song that the cast is aware of, as well as the ending theme for the series. Where the soundtrack unfortunately falters is in it’s quieter, more mundane moments, where characters are just standing around talking. The music playing in support of these moments could best be described as generic, as it sounds like plenty of these tracks were ripped directly from the backgrounds in the game and played on loop. Honestly, there are times throughout the series where those tracks just wind up coming off as annoying, overpowering the dialogue rather than supplementing it.

And as for the dub… Oh boy. We’re about to enter sticky territory with this one. Granted I’ve been in this territory before, but not under these circumstances, so bear with me. In fall of 2014, veteran ADR director Steven Foster quit his job with Sentai filmworks. In a very revealing interview, he later trashed many of the shows he had worked on, relating the intense fan hatred of his work to the fact that the work itself was unsalvageable. One of these shows was Clannad, which he didn’t understand and found entirely unrelatable, so he basically just covered his ass by casting people he knew he could trust to handle the roles. Ever since release, Clannad has been considered one of the worst english dubs of all time, the quintessential example of Mr. Foster’s dubious talents, and… I don’t really get why.

Okay, let me start off by saying I don’t think this dub is very good. There are tons of little hiccups in the dialogue, such as awkwardly worded lines like “He’s that retired charismatic musician” and “I don’t know where the taking seriously even begins with you,” that would honestly sound right at home coming out of the mouths of Johnny and his best friend Mark, but in my opinion, Foster’s instincts were more or less spot-on when it came to casting this show. David Matranga is one of my favorite voice actors of all time, and while he’s limited to deep voiced characters, he can utilize a lot of humor and drama within that limit, which made him the perfect choice for the main character, a 17 year old delinquent with a troubled home life and a penchant for pulling pranks. Luci Christian turned up the kawaii-ness to play his gentle and sensitive love interest, and Greg Ayres was on fire in his typecast role as Sunohara, even if I’ll admit his character was changed from interesting to insufferable in the rewrites.

I mentioned in my Angel Beats review that Emily Neves was a bit on the mediocre side, and that her co-stars were way out of her league. Was that too mean of me? Well, I hope this redeems me… Following Angel Beats, she got really good, really fast. She’s turned into a very subtle and natural sounding actor, which helped to save the otherwise questionable character of Kotomi, and of course, Hilary Haag was a natural choice to play the dippy Fuko. My only serious complaint is with the two twins Ryou and Kyou, and I’m sorry, but as good as Shelley Callene-Black can be when handled properly, she sounds like a forty year old, and has no business playing a teenager… Even a gruff one. Brittany Karbowski plays her more diminutive sister to a somewhat better degree, but it kills me to hear such a multitalented actor get stuffed into such a one note role. I kind of wish they’d cast her as both sisters, using different tones and speech patterns for each. But aside from that, I have no idea why the dub is so reviled, because it’s nowhere near as bad as Angel Beats was, and I see no problem in recommending both languages.

As for Steven Foster’s other complaints? Well, I’m personally of the opinion that an ADR director shouldn’t call a project unsalvageable, even if it’s a terrible show in general. Master of Martial Hearts has to be one of the worst anythings I’ve ever seen, but damn it if Funimation didn’t put all of their effort into dubbing that turkey. No anime is bad enough that dubbing it is a waste of time, and if you think it is, you should probably hand the responsibilities to somebody else, rather than slogging through a project you don’t want to do. Having said that, I will very begrudgingly admit that his comments about this particular series aren’t entirely unfounded.

We’ll start with the obvious one; He claims Clannad is difficult to understand. This is sadly true for a lot of people, and I’ll freely confess that I was taking the supernatural elements of the series with a grain of salt until somebody sat down and explained them to me. In addition to the main story, which is somewhat confusing in it’s own right, there are two plot lines that can leave viewers scratching their heads. The first is the multiple universes, an idea that gets brought up in seemingly random fashion until you smack your head for overthinking it and write it off as an excuse to have different paths from the game adapted into OVA episodes. At least it makes more sense here than when Umineko tried to explain it. The other is a strange, haunting subplot about a lonely little girl building herself a sentient robot friend and bouncing existential questions off of him. There’s also magic tying emotions to the town, and once I had it explained to me it DID make some of the more questionable occurrences seem clearer, but you’d have to be paying extra close attention during the sequel series to pick up on any of that for yourself, and none of it really adds any depth to the story, they just explain things a bit. I’d go as far as to say there’s no shame in just taking the supernatural material with a grain of salt.

So what about his other complaint, that he couldn’t relate to the characters? Well, that’s like saying Peter Griffin would make a bad party guest. There is nothing realistic or believable about literally any of the characters in this show, the things they do, the things they say, or the way they relate to each other, and this can all be connected back to the fact that it was based on a visual novel. A visual novel, for people who don’t know, is a text-heavy dating game where you pick the romantic option you like the most out of a handful of options, and perform tasks to raise their affection levels so you can pork them. Turning this format into a series is not an easy thing to do, I admit, but that doesn’t excuse any show from sucking at it.

Remember how in Toradora, the main character started off without a single girl interested in him, and he eventually wormed his way into the hearts of three girls as they got to know him and understand his value? Well, out of Tomoya Okazaki’s options, there are two girls who already love him right from the get go, one who loves him but is in denial, and two who don’t immediately love him but instantly trust and get along with him. To be fair, the writers took the extra effort to give him a personality, but that doesn’t make up for him and Nagisa’s parents being the only characters with any emotional depth. Sunohara’s entire purpose is to act like an obnoxious pervert just to make Tomoya seem more cool as a result(and he gets worse in season 2), and the female characters run the gamut from infantile pansies to obsessed harpies whose every goal in life revolves somehow around either winning Tomoya or giving him tasks to complete to win them.

And that’s basically how the plot of this anime unfolds… On the path to completing the main quest, for the main girl, Tomoya has to complete various tasks to satisfy the other minor arcs, for the other girls. Each accomplishment unlocks a new girl’s challenge, which frustrates me to no end. According to Clannad, you can’t form or strengthen a relationship with somebody without doing elaborate chores for them. In order to get somebody to come out of their room, you have to weed their yard and plant a new flower garden for them. If you want to get someone elected student council president, you have to take them around and have them participate in a bunch of athletic club activities, which they couldn’t possibly do themselves. You can’t confess your feelings to a girl who’s obviously showed signs of liking you since episode 3 until you take her by the hand and practically drag her through all the processes of starting and maintaining the club she kinda sorta wanted to join, and no, I’m not making any of that up.

Essentially, Clannad… This oh so romantic classic… Paints dating in such a way that perpetuates the classic toxic attitude of entitlement. You don’t have to worry about physical attraction, mutual respect, chemistry, or any of that complicated stuff… If you paid fifty dollars for dinner and she didn’t put out, something must be broken in the game. From date rape to people simply getting pissed that you didn’t thank them for saying God Bless You, entitlement is an ugly thing, especially when you force yourself upon peoples’ lives in ways they don’t want or need. As Parker J. Palmer put in a recent column called The Gift of Presence, The Perils of Advice, “The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed — to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is. When we make that kind of deep bow to the soul of a suffering person, our respect reinforces the soul’s healing resources, the only resources that can help the sufferer make it through.”

So, why does Tomoya feel the need to meddle in every single thing? Why can’t he just connect with people on an interpersonal level? Because you’re supposed to be able to insert yourself into this character, and if you’re the target audience for visual novels… Lonely Japanese men who can’t get laid because women refuse to marry early out of fear that the legal bondage of marriage will destroy their hopes of having a career… Are presented with simple binary choices from women who are already openly accepting of the idea of polishing his knob, and will happily reward him for making all of their clearly and explicitly established dreams come true. I’d just like to point out that I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at age 4. I’m legitimately socially retarded, and this shit even sounds pathetic to me.

The reason I started this review off with a sarcastic plot synopsis is because I just didn’t know how to describe the plot accurately without jumping right into some of my negative comments. There’s a lot of stuff that happens throughout the series, but since I’m only reviewing the first season in this post, the usable plot boils down to who Tomoya is going to pick, which is a very hard climax to relate to any of the melodrama that set it up, especially since the reward it was driving towards was something that could have been taken care of within a six episode ova. God forbid the series starred normal people, or the important love connection could have been made THAT early, cutting off the most obvious will-they-wont-they scenario since Love Hina right off at the pass.

So now that I’ve gotten all of that off my chest, was there anything redeeming about this series? Yes, and quite a bit. Out of all the story arcs, with Tomoya leading hapless child-like girls around by the wrist while they thirst for his dick, there’s one arc featuring a much more believable child who DOESN’T have a wide-on for him. That girl is Fuko, and if you’re able to ignore the egregiously unfunny Suzohara/Tomoyo skits that happen throughout, it’s by far the most compelling arc of this season. What she wants, where she’s coming from and what she has to go through is damn near tear-jerking, and it feeds into the main plot way more than the others. And aside from that, there are a lot of jokes that are objectively funny, and none of them involve the comic relief character, Sunohara. Hell, Tomoya’s practical jokes are the funniest content available, and his joke on Sunohara just happens to be the one that drags on for too long. Unfortunately, a handful of good jokes don’t make up for a truckload of bad ones, so take what you can get, I guess?

Clannad is available from Sentai Filmworks. It can be purchased in affordable quarters if you’re not interested in the dub, but if you are, good luck, because after over five years, the sixty dollar price tag has only dropped to about 40 dollars as an occasional sale price. The set comes packaged with a special OVA episode replacing the main girl with one of the side girls, and it exists. A second season called After Story is also available, and while pricing is virtually the same, I’ll be reviewing that very soon. A film is also available stateside, but true to Key’s roots, it’s only a cash-grab retelling of the series. There are tons of manga and game entries that are available in Japan, but as far as I’m aware(correct me if I’m wrong) none of them have been released stateside, as visual novels are not as familiar a thing to westerners as they are to Japan.

Have you ever wondered why this anime is called Clannad, and what connection(if any) it has to the Irish band of the same name? Well, there’s a funny story behind that. Jun Maeda picked it because he mistakenly believed it was the gaelic word for family. It’s not, of course, it’s actually a portmanteau of two different words essentially referring to an old Gaelic clan. Not only does this story never fail to impress other nerds at parties, but it also illustrates what sets Clannad apart from the other visual novel shows of it’s ilk… The fact that it is so ungodly pretentious. It’s so easy to laugh at the ‘deeper’ subplots as soon as you hear the phrase “The magic orbs are just dragon balls.” I don’t agree with the people who claim that it’s the worst anime of all time, and I’d rather not have any physical contact with people who call it one of the best anime of all time, but I guess I can understand where both parties are coming from. Me, I think there’s merit to this series, and that it’s worth seeing based on it’s technical prowess and the obvious amount of ambition that went into it, but over-all, it’s this kind of emotionally manipulative, cliche-ridden, socially out-of-touch series that the word ‘overrated’ was invented for. I give Clannad a 3/10. 

~~~img600(https://i.imgur.com/NQhOYH3.jpg)~~~
# ~~~__Spoiler-free review__~~~
<n></n>
# Review in brief:

Clannad, especially in this first season, is a free-spirited, slow-burning, and ultimately romantic slice-of-life. It is a mish-mash of whimsical, childish humors and melodramatic, yet sometimes ethereal reflections & revelations. While it is overly immature at times and is overall lacking in substance & consistency, it has one aspect that allows the whole season to resonate when viewed under the right lens; that it is wholly emblematic of the end of adolescence.

# Review part I ~ the underlying story:

This is a difficult season of anime to separate from its series to discuss standalone. The standard visual novel adaptation setup and abundance of common rom-com tropes don’t make it clear what Clannad is or where it’s going. Clannad is so named due to a misunderstanding about the Gaelic word for family, but much of this season focuses on high-school events. The series as a whole is known and often judged by its reputation as the poster-child of “anime that will make you cry”, but many will find this season’s heaviest moments to be melancholic at most.

Before getting into the meat of this anime, one must leave their pre-conceived notions at the door. Strangely fitting as it is, this is a teenage Clannad on display. It struggles with self-reliance and often fails to heed the criticisms surrounding its ilk. Yet the patient and caring observer will be able to see that it is isn’t done preparing itself for that fateful first step out the door and that its strengths, though not fully realized, see it capable of admirable deeds in the right circumstances. All of this is readily apparent right out the gate in the first episode’s first scene.

~~~img600(https://i.imgur.com/6zWdn99.jpg)
_"Oh wow, how many other times has this type of anime started with the sak-" just be quiet and soak it in a little, okay?_~~~

Clannad opens with its protagonist, the troubled delinquent Tomoya Okazaki, at the bottom of the hill his high-school sits atop. He despises his lot in life, and is convinced he has good reasons to feel that way. At the foot of the hill stands another student, Nagisa Furukawa, and her optimistic yet uncertain demeanor plays an odd contrast to Tomoya’s assured negativity. Nagisa suddenly exclaims her favorite food of all things, sparking a brief conversation that Tomoya passes off as inconsequential as he begins climbing the hill.

Now a critical thinker who is versed in this medium and its genres will see ample reasons to say “I’ve seen this countless times before”, “I bet he meets the tsundere next”, or perhaps “they should have just called this Kanon II”. They truly can’t be blamed either; these are indeed all valid responses to an opening as standard as this. It’s an unfortunate truth, as in this scene also resides the very spirit that comes to define Clannad. It can be seen in Nagisa’s silly introductory line inciting enough curiosity to get Tomoya to listen further. It can be seen in Tomoya’s assuredness being given to Nagisa in response despite his negativity. It can be seen in the very hill the scene takes place on, as it’s not just a part of the school or even just the town, but a part of life, one that Tomoya has unwittingly began climbing. All of that is thematically referenced throughout the series. Though it’s hard to tell from the get-go, there is an underlying yet overarching story layered within the otherwise typical supernatural high-school shenanigans Jun Maeda is known for.

This persistent usage of typical & expected events as a vehicle to deliver deeper connected meanings is both Clannad’s greatest strength and biggest weakness. Not many of these events are as layered and few are as important as the scene at the foot of the hill, but a lot of Clannad’s scenes, despite how uninspired they may appear on the surface, often carry a piece of the underlying story that ties the romance, drama, and childish comedy together. The supernatural elements of the story often act as the visible strands, especially the “illusionary world” that seems to represent occasional dreams yet seeps its way into surface-level events. It all makes Clannad accessible to younger viewers without _necessarily_ being too shallow and pointless for a more mature audience. However, the overarching story encompasses the whole of Clannad, not just this season, so the viewer’s focus will tend to be set more on the standard high-school rom-com on the surface than the layered and slightly supernatural drama that only begins here.

~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/B4IJM3R.gif)
_The story of the illusionary world only begins here, but it's connected to the surface-level story both subtly & directly as this season goes on._~~~

# Review part II ~ the surface story:

As I’ve implied thus far, the surface-level story is childish, clunky, and doesn’t tell much that hasn’t been told better elsewhere. It follows Tomoya’s interactions with a standard harem’s variety of girls as he helps sort out their problems and gets to know more about them in turn. It’s a setup that heavily relies on characters to make a worthwhile experience, and Clannad’s cast is not properly balanced for this. Tomoya himself is a fairly competent individual whose strengths and flaws often come into play as he goes through each arc (though his development is rather light in this season). The side cast has a number of effective foils for Tomoya and the main girls (like Nagisa’s father Akio who is always putting on acts and Tomoya’s friend Sunohara whose loud and careless demeanor gets him in frequent trouble) who occasionally give the anime a quirky charm.

Unfortunately, Clannad fumbles the handling of its main girls, which is where a lot of its problems truly lie. The common complaint is that the majority of them act more like children than budding adults. It’s something that the characters in question have reasons for inside the story, but nonetheless severely hampers their development and ultimately the quality of their surface-story arcs. There’s Nagisa (whose _mystery illness_ plays a role in her arrested social development), Kotomi (the quiet autistic savant; not that she displays a whole lot of intelligence in the story, but she certainly displays a complete lack of social skills), and Fuuko (basically a loud Kotomi with an obsession towards starfish and no claimed savantism. Her actual reason for being childish is a spoiler).

Nagisa does get enough development to be tolerable thanks to having her arc come later and from her more central story role as the heart of the drama club used to connect the story segments. However, the early arcs of Fuuko & Kotomi do nothing to make them hold any purpose beyond being shallow copies of previous Key characters. Those of you who have seen Kanon probably already know which characters they're copies of, and their arcs are copied almost as much (the differences being that all that made those two characters in Kanon meaningful is torn out and forgotten). With arcs that are mostly inferior recycled versions of previous Key arcs that only have Clannad’s underlying story to keep things interesting (unless melodrama, meme pranks, and repeat jokes can hold you over) there is no consequential rebuttal for the criticisms leveled against these characters.

~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/Qf2hrPm.gif)
"Genius" at work. Clannad features only the freshest jokes on repeat.~~~

Speaking of the comedy, the majority of it comes off as shallow filler, especially when it comes to padding out Fuuko & Kotomi’s arcs. While some of it can be quirky depending on what characters are involved, much of it amounts to childish teasing and memery. Simple humor for simple minds essentially. The real issue is that there’s more of it early on than later, so while Fuuko & Kotomi’s arcs get enough time to have made substantial surface-level developments, too much time ends up getting spent on cheap humor for that to happen.

After those two drawn-out arcs, the next arc does the opposite and crams two main girls’ (three if you count Ryou as a main girl, though the attention she gets is lacking enough to make this debatable) development into a shorter arc than the last two. There’s plenty of indications that Kyou & Tomoyo have more character than is initially presented, but little of it is delved into. Even the OVAs these characters received later don’t fully patch the holes this season makes in their development. This leaves the last arc (Nagisa’s) as the only arc where the pacing works. For what her rather standard dandere character is worth, she gets enough serious moments (including more that tie into the underlying story) to at least make her arc better than the others. So long as Nagisa herself doesn’t bug you it’s likely to be the best part of the season.

# Review part III ~ all in all:

So in the end, what this season has to offer plot-wise is the beginning of a supernatural drama which is tied into a poorly-paced and overall shallow high-school rom-com (until the last arc anyhow). However, before reaching a conclusion there is a need to discuss the production values, which as has come to be expected from Kyoto Animation is top-notch for the late 2000’s and holds up strong today.

While Key’s huge-eyed character art style isn’t quite seamlessly integrated in this season, the overall picture quality is high and there’s a lot of smooth animation in place, especially for a story sourced from a visual novel. There’s also an impressive amount of detail put into the background art, which combined with the skilled use of filters allows the visuals alone to instantly set the mood, something the poorly paced story ends up relying on. The “illusionary world” scenes are particularly well made. The completely hand-drawn girl in the mostly CG world works astonishingly well, and the CG designs are so fitting that they hardly feel dated more than 10 years later.

~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/F6UBIHM.gif)
_At least the constantly repeated gags get some good animation._~~~

Ever better than the visuals is the sound quality. In the Japanese dub, the skilled voicework gives the characters a more down-to-earth vibe than the silly comedy and abundance of melodrama would typically allow, which goes a long way in keeping things grounded enough for the underlying story to matter when it comes in between the surface shenanigans. As for the music, well, let’s just say I respect Jun Maeda much more as a composer than as a writer. It’s surprising how easily his music can instantly create a mood, even when it’s as simplistic as Clannad’s soundtrack. It’s been said that perfection is when there is nothing left to take away, and while I’m not the sort to throw that word around lightly there is so little that could be removed from Clannad’s pieces that the aforementioned saying instantly comes to mind when I listen to one of them.

So, with all of that said and done, is Clannad worth your time? It’s always a tough call when I’m asked this, but the biggest decider is typically how patient the asker is. As cheesy of a rom-com as Clannad’s first season is, it’s not just a rom-com when you step back. Much like how the end of a budding adult’s education makes for a beginning more than it does an end, Clannad is only getting started here. This is not the end of yet another melodramatic romance, but the beginning of something far grander, the likes of which rarely show up in this medium or any other. While the stale exterior is not excusable, the story’s core does add a considerable value to the experience even before it’s been fully developed. It still is able to make some otherwise melodramatic moments work even if you don’t connect with the characters and even makes some of the jokes ring clearer.

Clannad is not a fair-weather friend; it needs to be tolerated through thick and thin to be truly appreciated. Perhaps that description doesn’t sound very inviting for an _anime_, something often seen as entertainment first and foremost, and it’s not supposed to be. Even so, if you’ve read this far and haven’t experienced Clannad for yourself it wouldn’t hurt much to try out an episode or two. It won’t take long to figure out if you can tolerate Clannad’s faults or not. If you can’t there’s no harm in leaving it be and moving on, as skipping to After Story doesn’t even get you all the way past the story’s shakier portion and you’ll have missed too much to understand what makes the actual After Story what it is. If you _can_, however, you could easily find something so special that it changes your outlook on life.

Typical yet ethereal, juvenile yet beautiful.

__(This review focuses on Clannad, BUT also includes Clannad: After Story, the second season. Parts where I talk about Clannad: After Story have been hidden with a spoiler tag. This review also includes minor spoilers. You have been warned.)__

If you want to listen to the review, check out my video below.

youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2lTJNwknNQ)
# Clannad Review: The Complete Set

>“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” - Omar Khayyam
	
There are many reasons why I picked this quote but put simply its because it just fits Clannad well. Clannad isn’t your run of the mill slice of life drama anime. It’s much more than that, I’ll be going more into detail about it later.

__Episode 1: General Information__
	Let’s start with some general information. Clannad is a Slice of Life, comedy, and romantic anime. It was first aired on Oct 5, 2007, and last aired on Mar 28, 2008. There are 4 producers (Pony Canyon, TBS, Movic, Animation Do), 1 licensor (Sentai Filmworks), and one studio (Kyoto Animation). More importantly, the original creator was Visual Art’s/Key. Key was the original creator of around 7 different series, including manga. Clannad had a total of 23 episodes, 2 of which were OVA’s. Each episode is 24 minutes long, meaning it would take around 9 hours to complete the anime.
	Clannad: After Story was first aired on Oct 3, 2008, and last aired on Mar 27, 2009. It has a total of 25 episodes and 24 minutes long. There wasn’t much change to the staff, but there were slight additions/removals.
__
Episode 2: Story__
	The story is good. Clannad revolves around Tomoya Okazaki, a high school student in Hikarizaka Private High School. He isn’t the best of students as he is always late and sleeps in class. He also hates the town he’s in. He’s friends with Youhei Sunohara, a delinquent very similar to himself. One day while walking to school, he sees another student from his school that captures his attention. He later finds out that her name is Nagisa Furukawa and she is repeating her last year because of her many absences. She also wants to be a part of the Drama Club ~!but later on realizes that the club has disbanded. Throughout the anime, Tomoya and Nagisa make it their goal to get the Drama Club back together again. !~Along the way, they meet many other characters that help and contribute to the overall season. 
	~!Clannad: After Story is different to Clannad. Clannad: After Story is after Tomoya and most of his friends finish high school and move onto college. They all ultimately disband, except for Tomoya and Nagisa who chose to stay regardless of Tomoya's feelings about the town. Throughout the show, Tomoya learns the hard truth about life, and that life is filled with difficulties, but it’s better to be with the ones you love and care for than to be alone. !~
	Clannad’s story isn’t an original one. There are millions of high school anime everywhere. Romance is also overused in the anime scene. However, there are some inclusions that this anime has that many others don’t. ~!As an example, throughout Clannad and After Story, there are parts in the episodes where there are a girl and a robot. The girl is in the Illusionary World, a land where “nothing can be born.” She creates a doll made out of garbage that somehow gains life. The doll convinces the girl to leave the world and they try to create a flying machine. It’s a side plot that goes into the main plot well, and at the same time, it does so in a secret fashion. It creates many theories that make the series even better and have you interested in the what if’s.!~
	~!Clannad: After Story is probably the best season out of the two, it also happens to be a pretty sentimental one. Tomoya is a lot more serious in this season, this is expected since he is an adult at this point. The season also has many themes behind it that can be applied to real life. It’s also a good example of a Slice of Life since it often focuses on the day to day life of an adult. Clannad: After Story is a very sentimental season for many reasons related to loss.!~

__Episode 3: Characters__
	Like I previously mentioned, Tomoya Okazaki is a student at Hikarizaka Private High School. He hated his school and town and would slack off a lot. Then he met Nagisa Furukawa, which changed his life for the better as seen throughout the anime. He slightly changes from Clannad into After Story as seen from his attitude. He became a lot more serious, which restricted the number of jokes made in Clannad: After Story. Nagisa Furukawa is also a student at Hikarizaka Private High School. She is a shy girl and is also the main female protagonist. She is also self-deprecating; she doesn’t care for herself and only for others. She has a great personality for an anime like Clannad as she helps Tomoya in the anime.	Youhei Sunohara is a Hikarizaka Private High School student and is friends with Tomoya. He is similar to Tomoya with his school habits, but he is very clumsy. After Tomoya met Nagisa, Tomoya rarely hung out with Sunohara. He was serious in some episodes, but overall he was clumsy and was the character that gave the jokes/punchlines.	
	This anime really unpacked the characters well. Each character was apart of their own side-plot/arks even if they weren’t important. It gave the audience more of an understanding of the characters within it. ~!For example, a character that was partly in the anime to help Tomoya with his relationship with Nagisa, Yukine, has her own side-plot in After Story. This side-plot ended really well and I’m glad they did it.!~
__
Episode 4: Humor__
	The humor is decent. Like I said before, there isn’t any humor in After Story, so I can’t give a rating for it. However, Clannad has plenty of them. Are they good? Eh. In my Overlord II review, I mentioned that you should never repeat the same joke over and over again. This includes Clannad, as well. A supporting character in the anime, Tomoyo Sakagami, is apart of a running gag in the anime with Sunohara. In one episode, Tomoya and many other students see that there are some bullies with motorcycles outside. Tomoyo makes them leave by fighting them, and Sunohara believes that she faked it. So in almost every episode, he challenges her to a fight, and obviously, he always loses. 

__Episode 5: Romance__
	~!Jealousy. Oh, jealousy. Something that is used in many romantic shows. This anime doesn’t have a lot of it, but it is there. Another 2 supporting characters, Ryou Fujibayashi and Kyou Fujibayashi, are both sisters. Kyou mentions to Tomoya that he’s spent a lot of time with Nagisa and should spend time with her and Ryou.~! She knew that Ryou had a crush on Tomoya so she helped her eat with him. She herself had a crush on him as well.
There’s a reason why this anime is in the romance genre. It’s also the reason why it’s in the drama genre. Yeah, you guessed right, it’s because there’s a surprising amount of romance. Excluding Youhei (self-explanatory), Tomoya is the only male main character that has other characters loving him. To name most of them, Nagisa, Ryou, Kyou, Kotomi, Tomoyo, Yukine, and Fuko (Fuko and Yukine show a relationship to Tomoya in the Visual Novel). Basically, every female high school supporting character loves him. !~

__OVA: Clannad OVA Review__
~!In the General Information part of this review, I mentioned how there are some OVA’s in both seasons. Let’s talk about them. Clannad’s “Another World: Tomoyo Chapter” is an OVA that like the name suggests is an episode with an alternate timeline. It goes with the plot that Tomoya and Tomoyo are dating and she becomes student council president. Tomoya stops dating her after he feels that he’s an inconvenience to her. Tomoyo becomes very popular and accomplished and towards the end, they date each other again because she wants to be with him again.
It’s a decent episode, but it isn’t that original. But hey, what do you expect, most things aren’t original. Tomoya actually starts going to school on time after dating Tomoyo, which means she helped him with going to school, similar to how Nagisa helped Tomoya be calmer. Oh yeah, did I mention that some moments in Clannad, especially this OVA, is cringy and hard to watch because of the relationships in them. There isn’t much that I can say that hasn’t been previously said. Is it a good example of what the anime is about? No. However, it still is a good episode to watch. It’s sentimental towards the end.
!~
__Episode 6: Audio__
	The audio in the anime is great. There are no audio errors (or any obvious ones). The voice actors do their job really well of conveying the character. Onto the opening theme and ending theme, they are also great. The opening theme of both seasons is your run-on-the-mill drama-filled and romantic Japanese opening. The ending theme for Clannad is one of the best ending themes I’ve probably ever seen. It’s cute, it’s relevant to the anime, and it really is good overall. “Dango Daikazoku” (Great Dango Family) is a song about Dangos, a food/character in the anime. Something awesome about the song is that dango is real food, which is dumplings. The song is very upbeat and happy as well as relate to the anime. Unfortunately, the entire ending theme changed to your run-on-the-mill drama-filled and romantic Japanese ending in S2.
	
__Episode 7: Animation__
	The animation is great. Since this anime started in 2007, this anime has the same art style an old anime would, like DBZ. The art style also looks like a drama/romance type anime, so it doesn’t have its own, unique art style. In fact, Kyoto Animation is the mastermind behind the animation production. Shows like Air, Kanon, and Clannad (All Visual Art’s/Key anime) have similar a similar art style as Kyoto Animation is the animation production. However, Kyoto doesn’t only have this art style. They were also apart of many other animes like Lucky Star, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, A Silent Voice, K-On, and a few others. If you compare these anime’s animations to an anime like Clannad, it’s pretty evident that they are different. I think that it’s pretty cool that they have different types of animation.

__Episode 8: Manga__
	I know that for myself whenever I finish an anime, I would want to read the manga, to see if it has anything that wasn’t shown in the anime. Most animes use the manga itself to guide itself all the way to the end, however. This anime does that, mainly because they were both created by Visual Art’s/Key. The anime doesn’t use the order that the manga uses for the side plots, and it’s confusing. Also, the manga hasn’t finished the translation, so you just halt entirely, and it doesn’t look like any of the other volumes will be translated soon.

__Episode 9: Merchandising__
	 Before giving my final review, I want to talk about the merchandising. As I mentioned before, you shouldn’t buy the manga unless you want to experience the show again and you know Japanese. On iTunes, The OST of Clannad is $16 (0.99 per song) and you get 56 songs. Is it worth it? Yeah, the songs are sentimental and overall are pretty good. Now the star of this section, the visual novel. Clannad is on Steam, PS4, and a few others. This is basically DDLC but unironically. It’s $50 so it’s almost full price. I personally wouldn’t buy it as it doesn’t look very good from the pictures. If you are a die-hard fan of the series and want more, however, you could get this. It might not meet your expectations.

__Summary: Final Thoughts__
	Clannad was the first anime I fully watched after my long anime hiatus, and it was a good anime to start off with. Yes, it did end 9 years ago, but with a large amount of anime, there are many that are just looked over and forgotten about. This anime is a pretty good one as well as one that I would recommend. To end off this review, I would like to give this anime my rating. Even though there are some things that aren’t good about the anime, it still is good and deserves an 8/10. Clannad: After Story is a very sentimental anime that teaches the theme of life, which is why it gets an 8.63/10. Overall, the series gets an 8.31/10. Here is a table of my review.

<a href="https://imgur.com/EiUW534"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/EiUW534.png" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>

Thanks for reading my review on Clannad + Clannad: After Story! I hope you enjoyed.
 
Sources:
https://myanimelist.net/anime/2167/Clannad (General Information)
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=7809 (General Information)
https://myanimelist.net/anime/4181/Clannad__After_Story (General Information)
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=9701 (General Information)
https://myanimelist.net/anime/15379/Kotoura-san (Humor)
http://clannad.wikia.com/wiki/Characters_of_Clannad (Characters, Romance)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Clannad_episodes (Romance)
https://myanimelist.net/anime/producer/2/Kyoto_Animation (Animation)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clannad_(visual_novel)#Adaptations (Merchandise)

Clannad is a great and sentimental anime for those sad days. Or, really any other day.

So I’m still pretty new to anime, and I went in to this very tentative based on the art style and the poster, thinking “Is this a serious show or is this just for people who are attracted to 16 year old anime girls?” After finishing the season, the answer is… mostly the former. (Mostly)

It did take me a few episodes to adjust. The way every character is drawn in the same style and has the same facial structure, combined with my sort of colorblindness making the girls’ various shades of blue/green hair look the same, made it hard for me to differentiate all the characters, and I’d extra focus during the opening trying to learn their names. (I thought Kyou and Tomoyo were the same person for a while) But once I got used to the style, it is actually quite nice, and I had no problem with it. I said at the start the characters (even the adults) all look 8, but… you get used to it in the end.

Various ramblings, __full season spoilers__:

Anyway, after the first few episodes, I started to find it quite sweet. There was nothing super investing going on so I can’t say I was enthralled or dying to see more, but the relationship between Tomoya and Nagisa was cute, and the character’s antics were pleasant. I enjoyed it. Then the Fuko arc took off and as it reached its climax, I realized I had become completely drawn in. The episode where they all start forgetting her, followed by the wedding and Fuko’s final goodbye after giving her blessing to her sister, completely broke me. I didn’t expect it at all since I didn’t think I was emotionally invested in that way. That storyline was fantastic.

I have to say, after that arc, I felt the show sort of lost its way a little bit, and that the second half was sort of formulaic. Immediately after Fuko’s arc ends, Kotomi’s arc starts, and it feels sort of like a copy/paste. “Tomoya befriends weird awkward girl, helps her make friends, turns out the girl has a tragic story which comes to a climax but then they solve it with the power of friendship, rinse and repeat” But I didn’t think Kotomi’s arc was as satisfying, because it didn’t have as much of an active goal, and it relied heavily on flashbacks. With Fuko’s arc, there is a clear plot to be invested in – her sister’s wedding, and we learn things about her past naturally through conversations through the episodes. With Kotomi, they sort of give you a bunch of hints something is weird, then (and the episode where Tomoya visits her house and remembers their past was pretty cool) you get a bunch of flashback explicitly telling you her problem, and then they solve it and have a birthday party, and then it’s over. The birthday party isn’t really as sweet of a climax as the wedding, imo. And it also doesn’t provide as much closure – Fuko’s story gets a real ending. Kotomi gets a resolution ish but it’s not as neatly wrapped up, and then after that… she continues to exist in the show, but she gets no more focus and no more plots, and it’s kind of weird.

The plot structure continues to be sort of weird after that, because it looks like you’re sort of getting a third character arc for Tomoyo, who until then mostly was on the side, you have a couple of episodes again of Tomoya getting to know her and it’s all fun and games, then she reveals her tragic backstory, and then… well, this one doesn’t go anywhere immediately. Her plot goal is to save the Sakura trees, but we move away from this and go to the final arc with Nagisa, but then we do actually go back to Tomoyo in an alternate universe and get an ending to this.

The final arc with Nagisa finally putting on the play was very nice and was the only other section that I felt rivaled the first arc in terms of emotional investment. There was still a little bit of what felt like a mislead here, because with all the alternate world flashes, and the way they foreshadowed “Nagisa did something to hurt her parents when she was young, but she must never know about it”, I thought there was going to be another supernatural element here related to the paralell worlds (which I assumed from Kotomi’s plot would come up again) but it ultimately was just totally normal stuff. But it’s a really sad story and the final climax of Nagisa learning the truth, seeing her father’s dreams on video the day of the show, and then crying on stage and needing to be supported by everyone was really sweet, and at this point I really do like Nagisa and care about her, so it was very emotional and I was fully invested in it.

The show also did this interesting thing where it really messed with your mind about if it has supernatural elements or not. It starts with all those weird scenes of the girl alone in the alternate world, plus Nagisa keeps saying vague things under streetlamps, and you think there’s something weird going on. But then it turns out to be nothing, but then there actually is a literal ghost, so the show is not about ordinary life. But then… after that, there actually isn’t anything else! And this is weird, because Kotomi’s plot is about the fact that her parents are studying alternate worlds, so you really think “Oh, I see, this is how they’re going to transition to that being the main plot, Kotomi is really important, she’s probably going to continue her parent’s research and go to the alternate world” but then… nothing happens. And then the alternate world is actually nothing supernatural at all, it’s just foreshadowing for a play? Now, maybe this gets explored more in the sequel, but it’s a little bit weird for this season as a standalone.

Overall though the show does a very good job of making you feel like you are part of a nice group of friends, and every character ends up feeling endearing and fun to watch. I can see why people are really into this sort of anime that makes you feel good watching it, and it also helps make you feel connected to the characters so you get hit harder by the emotional beats.

In terms of theme, the main thing I eventually noticed is that every arc is related roughly to the ideas of the intersection between family and dreams – Fuko can’t follow her dreams anymore, but her dream is for her sister to achieve her dreams. Kotomi’s parents follow their dreams at the expense of their family, while Nagisa’s family in direct contrast give up their dreams to support their family, and then encourage Nagisa to explore her own dreams. Tomoyo’s brother being hospitalized prompts Tomoyo to begin following her dreams and connecting with her family, similar to how Fuko being hospitalized helps her sister. And, this one is less obvious, but all the girls dream of being with Tomoya, but in the end, they are happy for Nagisa when he chooses her, because they are all family. The message seems to be something like: you can choose your own family (even if it means making the choice to accept your own family), and you can be happy as long as someone else in your family achieves their dreams, even if you yourself don’t – because supporting your family can be a dream in itself.

So, my one gripe goes back to what I said at the beginning. Is this just a show for people who are attracted to 16 year old anime girls? No, there’s a lot more going on, and these characters do have depth and serious plot lines. But also partially yes. I don’t mean to sound like a feminist SJW here, but all of the female characters end up having a plot line where they are romantically interested in the main character. And that just feels sort of like… why can’t these female characters exist on their own and have their own stories that aren’t all about falling in love with the same guy? I don’t hate it, because it’s fairly natural and it makes sense they’d all have a crush on him, but still, it just felt a little… I don’t know. It’s the only thing that made me feel that this sort of anime really is the sort of cliché that it seems to be, and made me feel a bit embarassed to be watching. When critics talk about wanting strong female characters nowadays, one of the main criteria as I perceive it is, we want female characters who aren’t defined by how they are meant to be attractive to male watchers. And it does feel like these characters are created to be waifu bait essentially, which is… I mean, they succeed, they’re great waifus. Anyway this is probably a really contentious paragraph already for anyone reading this who is an anime fan so, I don’t mean any offense to anyone, just trying to describe how I feel.

Beyond that, I was a bit underwhelmed that the arcs didn’t all come together in any major way – Kotomi’s plot doesn’t go anywhere after her arc, and even though Fuko, Kotomi, and Nagisa get clear conclusions, Kyou (and Ryou) don’t end up having any character-defining conclusion to their stories, nor does Tomoyo really, besides the alternate ending. Maybe the next season will address this, not really sure if this season is meant to stand alone or was always intended as just a first season. But I guess not every anime needs to build to some large epic conclusion, and putting on the play was a nice climax for the season.

For character rankings…

I like Tomoyo the most, I think. Fuko grew on me and even though I felt her ending gave her closure and was worried that showing back up would take away from it, her appearances throughout the rest of the season were really funny. Nagisa was ultimately very sweet and I cared about her a lot, she does a good job carrying the show as the lead heroine. I liked Kyou (and Ryou). Kotomi was the weak link for me, I didn’t find her quirks or personality very interesting. Oh, and _why doesn't Ryou get a segment in the Opening Credits?!_ Tomoyo > Nagisa > Ryou > Fuko > Kyou > Kotomi.

Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I didn’t think it ever hit the high that episodes 8 and 9 hit again. Looking forward to the sequel.


Very sweet. Fun, enjoyable characters, with some surprisingly touching moments. Never quite excelled for me though

#(THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILER)
img220(https://media.giphy.com/media/lMm1GKkThcWM5dvI28/giphy.gif)

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#Anime is one of the most expressive art forms in entertainment media
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One genre of anime that I really enjoy watching is “slice of life.” What captivates me most with slice of life, It's ability to capture real life emotions, and portray them in animation. Clannad was like an urban legend to me. Most anime rating systems have Clannad: After Story somewhere near the top. 

# I’m going to tell you how watching Clannad made me feel. In my opinion, it is emotion that makes Clannad a masterpiece.

I actually enjoy the first season of Clannad, I just thought it was pretty “regular.” It didn’t have that “stick factor.” Meeting Tomoya and Nagisa felt very run of the mill. “Let’s open the club, make friends, and fall in love. Oh and by the way, there’s also this strange parallel side story about a girl and robot.” 
img400(https://media.giphy.com/media/UYSAu81IYBw4M/giphy.gif)
#It wasn’t until episode nine of "After Story" that everything started coming together for me. 

Clannad told a “regular” slice of life story in the beginning. We meet the characters. We become invested in them. We learn of all their quirks and personality traits. We see their problems, and we see the main characters solve these problems. It followed the formula to a tee.

It’s the tragedy and sorrow of Clannad that makes it something special. As the main story is told from the perspective of Tomoya, we experience everything as he does. ~!The death of Nagisa is tragic because it’s something that can happen in real life.!~ More so over, Nagisa is a character who we’ve already come to know and love, making this event even harder to fathom. We are accustomed to seeing the story play out in favor of the main character, but Clannad is a story that does quite the opposite. 

In fact, Clannad is a story filled with harsh truths about life. It forces the viewer to think about their personal “what if’s?” For Tomoya, he grapples with the pain of “What if I never met Nagisa?”, or in other words “What if I never chose this path of pain?” He basically spends the next five years beating himself up over this very question.

 ~!Just when Tomoya starts picking up the pieces, he is once again pushed into the dirt; and now it’s his daughter Ushio that dies.!~     

img400(https://media.giphy.com/media/FGC9udgvGzylW/giphy.gif)

With all that being said, Clannad has changed the way I look at anime as a whole. I don’t know when I’ll find another show that “sticks” as much as this one does. It truly is one of the greatest anime of all time. It is not perfect by any means, but at the very least, it is real. It’s filled with raw emotions, and that is why Clannad lives up to the hype. Watch it if you haven’t. Watch it again if you have. This is one that will live forever.

#Clannad is the greatest slice of life anime because of its portrayal of human nature. It tells three intertwined stories that form one plot. It has flaws, but it lives up to the hype on emotions alone. This is a show that feels real. Clannad is a true classic. 
img400(https://media.giphy.com/media/wQxGdRdZzazPq/giphy.gif)

Here's a heads up this is NOT a review rather how I broke down and interpreted the anime. This is the most personal post I have made on any platform. However I'm choosing to post this on here because maybe one of you will watch the anime and like me will gain an appreciation for family. 



Clannad Arc 1 Fuko-chan
From watching episodes 1-9 it focused on Fuko-chan who is a ghost that is trying to get her older sister Ibuki to get married at school and have all the students attend. However she in real-life is in a coma and she meets Tomoya who is helping her by giving out starfish to people. Fuko-chan didn’t get to experience high-school because while coming back from the entrance exam she got hit by a car and has been in a coma ever since. In this arc she got to experience what having friends is like because of Tomoya and Nagisa. Due to the help of her friends Fuko was able to make the wedding happen for her older sister. As for what I got out of it… I can lose my life any day and miss out on all those experiences that Fuko-chan missed, but also there’s something undeniably warming about having friends like Tomoya and Nagisa and I am grateful to have made friends like them in my life.  I want to be able to help people fulfill what they want to do like Tomoya and Nagisa helped Fuko-chan do what she wanted to do. People can have such a big impact on eachother, the potential is  damn near endless. The love Fuko-chan has for her older sister is wholesome. I will establish that with my siblings one day. 

Arc 2 Kotomi 
From episodes 10-14 Kotomi the school genius was the main interest. She is trying to make friends with the help of Tomoya. Tomoya and the gang help Kotomi do the things she always wanted to do which were make friends, play the violin, and (without being specifically mentioned) have closure/ feel guilt free about her parents death. Throughout this whole arc Tomoya dedicates his time and energy to helping Kotomi and it’s very admirable. He later realizes that they were childhood friends. Eventually after witnessing how much Tomoya, Nagisa, Kyou and Ryou care for her, Kotomi opens back up. She received news that her parents always had their daughter on their mind. This reminds me of the powerful unconditional love parents have for their children even when they have a lot of things to deal with. My mother always worries about me when I go out and she always tells me that, she’s always considerate of me by buying me stuff and helping me when I do not ask for help, she LOVES me. That’s what Kotomi had with her parents and she realized only after they were gone what she had lost. I don’t want to wait until my mother passes away to appreciate what she does for me and what she is for me. 

Arc 3 Kyou Ryou and Tomoyo
This arc was about fighting for what you want for even if you don’t get it. Sunohara didn’t let Nagisa give up on the drama club and balled up against the basketball team to show that they are serious about the club. They did it but shortly after Nagisa got sick. This time Tomoyo goes into the life of Tomoya more and more. She wants to change and not be the rebel she was before and Tomoya helps her become the student council president. It is revealed that for Tomoyo she was a rebel because of her poor family situation, but as her relationship with her family improved she became better and was able to become the president. This shows me the effect a negative family relationship and positive one can have on an individual. Furthermore all 3 of them were fighting for the affection of Tomoyo. Seeing Kyou sacrifice for her sister Ryou was both admirable yet saddening. She clearly wanted Tomoya for herself but she put her sister’s feelings ahead of her own. Furthermore, when more and more girls showed up and created competition for Kyou and Ryou they didn’t give up. I admire the strength they had to go for the person they like and too handle the realization that Tomoya likes Nagisa. 

Final Arc Nagisa
Damn this arc hit me hard. Nagisa was finally realizing her dream of performing in the drama club  and starring in her own play. At the same time Tomoya moved in with Nagisa and it was unusual for him to experience what a real family is. Aiko Sanae and Nagisa are a strong family and it's beautiful. It’s revealed that Aiko and Sanae gave up their careers/dreams to be with Nagisa but they kept this secret. Once Nagisa finds out she feels extreme guilt for making her parents choose her over their careers/dreams. She’s so devastated that she almost wasn’t able to fulfill her dream of performing, until her dad Aiko comes in and hits her with the truth. Aikos tells her “Our dream is to watch you live out your dream”. This hits home and made me realize how my mother immigrated and  gave up her dreams at the age of 19 so that my siblings and I could live out ours in the U.S. with all of her sacrifice, time, energy, hope, and love she gave to us. Also my older siblings especially my eldest sister who took care of me and helped me enjoy my childhood. All of them want me to live out my dream. Yet I am still scared to follow my dreams, ambitions and goals. If I don’t follow my dreams I will be wasting what my family has invested in me. I’m not alone in my ventures. I have my family who although they don’t say it, they depend on me to fulfill what they didn’t. 


Final thoughts
 I asked my mother about her dreams before having me. By 45 she was supposed to start traveling to Europe because she would have been done with my older siblings. However I came into the picture and she had to give those dreams of travelling up temporarily. She made it clear to me that she agrees with what Aiko said. As my mother her dream became for me to live my own dreams out. To add to that, it wasn’t a hard decision for her to give up her dream and begin a new one that involved me. I never knew that about my mother and I’m really glad that I do now. I want to fulfill my dreams not only for myself but for her as well. I didn’t realize just how important a family and the sacrifices parents make for their family are until rewatching this anime. I’m so thankful I watched it again and wrote down my thoughts and what I got out of it. 

Hmu if you ever need to talk @abesalas on IG 

Thank you for reading.

Where do I start...Clannad is the most wholesome story I think I've ever experienced. A real work of art! Rarely has a show touched me in this way (except of course it's sequel *cries furiously*)

It is truly something beautiful and each episode is so well laid out. The way it delivers narrative, introduces characters and twists from simple and wholesome to complex and touching, ensures such incredible pacing that it is so easy and enjoyable to watch. Every scene seems to be perfectly placed and timed for brilliant effect, with a lovely warming art style and fun, well fleshed out characters. 

The music in this anime is also something truly special. Fun, comical and chirpy tunes bounce around in scenes to make them hilarious or just a joy to listen to. Elegant and emotional music hits you at times you least expect it and captures the beauty and sadness of a moment perfectly. I believe that using a diverse variety of instruments and melodies that I wouldn't normally place together, makes something truly unique and fitting and truly brings out that magical essence that Clannad holds. Various composers worked on the soundtrack, so I believe that worked well to provide diverse musical pieces.

This works alongside the art and small details so well, such as the heavy use of pastel tones and pink and white colours, alongside details such as leaves blowing in the wind as the camera pans around characters. This immediately makes a scene magical and it's this transition that gives you shivers. It states more in these features that it sometimes does in dialogue, which is something amazing! This is exceptionally useful when diving into the complex nature of characters such as Tomoya, and when showing emotional connection between characters, such as Tomoya and Nagisa.

You can really tell that not only the writers, but the artists, musicians, voice actors and everyone involved, really poured their love and experiences into making this show. It is full of nostalgia, childhood and the immaturity of growing up, yet holds many mature and beautiful messages that show the harsh reality of growing up.

For the most part this season is wholesome, beautiful and heart-touching, with other areas being deep, sad and holding heart-felt messages. It made me cry a good few times and made me feel both warm and melancholy at the same time, but ultimately left me touched with its relatable narrative. This even made me contemplate events that have and will happen in my own life, which left me somewhat at peace with my past and things to come....until of course After Story came along (see that review for more).

Right so this review wont be entirely one sided there are some issues with the show for some, however they are very minimal and most of them are needed to make the show what it is. This review is for both Clannad and After story but won't contain any major spoilers. So if you've only seen clannad i still urge you to read this and hope it motivates you to watch afterstory

Story - 98/100
Right so a major gripe many have with the show is that the first season is slow, boring and nothing much happens, I disagree with this, however can see why some might say this. Clannad on its own is a fairly generic Romantic comedy drama with a very light sprinkling of wholesome harem (for approximately 10ish of the 23 episodes). But there is one thing to remember its all character development, all this time you are watching these characters you are slowly getting invested in them (even if you dislike them that's still an investment). The first arc i can see why it often puts people off the show as Fuko (main girl of this arc) is to a certain taste ill admit since I didn't particularly like her at the start, however as you go through her arc she gets way better, (episode 8-10) are the saddest in the first season. And whilst some of the arcs aren't as strong as others (looking at you Nagisa Season 1 arc and Yukine afterstory arc, although that's just me, most people really enjoy it), none of them are bad enough to skip or miss, but remember all this time is getting you attached to the characters, especially Nagisa (one thing clannad suffers from is each arc focus almost entirely on each singular girl in their arc, with a few exceptions like Nagisa) who gets a massive amount of screen time and a very clever musical association which I will talk about later. 

Another common issue many have with the romance genre is that the show always ends with the couple finally getting together, some good old first-name calling and handholding, maybe a kiss if your very lucky however Clannad, straight up ignore this with Afterstory and goes beyond, the characters lives after school are shown and acknowledged and its this coming of age theme that so powerfully resounds with you due to the investment you have after all this time watching them, its effectively like raising kids and watching them leave for Uni and Work leaving you behind with just the memories of the time you spent with them. The after story arc (which doesn't actually start until around episode 10ish of Clannad Afterstory) i hold is the saddest most heart crushingly depressing arc in media full stop. What happens as you see the characters build a home and start there lives and work there way through daily troubles is so wholesome and is so lovely to watch and then the latter half of the arc comes along and i wont spoil or hint anything, but what happens in those episodes is so heart crushingly sad and then so happy sad and then so depressingly sad and it goes on and on. There were points where I (a 16 year old male teenager) who thought himself impossible to cry at media (anohana, angel beats, Kanon all didn't work) made me cry so much, that merely recalling those scenes in my mind caused me to break down and sob in the middle of college with several others watching (not even kidding). There where scenes that where so sad/happy/wholesome that it made you cry there were scenes that were so depressingly so I didn't even have it in me to cry, i just sat there depressed.

Music 500/100
The Clannad OST is the best OST you will find in anime. It has some of the saddest tunes you will ever hear, The place where wishes come true, Distant years, Dango Daikazoku, Nagisa, Spring breeze, A days work, Roaring tides, shining in the sky, Toki wo Kizamu Uta, flow of time, all are SS tier tracks and that's not even all of the best tracks. The music really does set the mood in clannad its the music that made me cry more than the scenes. This is because 1. Jun Meada is a musical genius

**This next paragraph contains an implied spoiler for Clannad afterstory do not read it if you have not see the season**
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Clannad does something very clever with its themes, take Nagisa, she has a base theme, its a fairly sad simple childish happy theme, that plays almost always plays when the anime focuses on her. However Dango Daikazoku, Palm of a tiny hand and At the foot of the hill, are all variations of Nagisa theme and these are often played in different sadder of more nostalgic scenes which leads us to also associate these songs with different memories of Nagisa, so then whenever these songs are played we become conditioned to think of her and all the time we've spent watching her so then when certain things occur later in the show and these songs are played, we think of all the memories of her happy and sad  and it increases the emotional factor hundredfold.
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Themes - 100/100
Clannad themes are dominantly focused on Family and moving forward in life, these are very easily made into tear jerkers by the inherent nature of the themes themselves, for those who have family, issues or past trauma, or even those like me who have completely normal families and pasts, this show genuinely made me want to get closer with my family and appreciate them so much more than before, After story also includes a coming of age and growing up theme, with those who are going through the same stage of life as the characters being to relate very easily (since the character go through literally every stage between high school and starting a family together this is a very large audience. Even those who are older can relate and reminisce on younger years. 

Characters and dialogue- 200/100
The characters are pivotal to this show, as with any drama slice of life it is the character interactions which carry the bulk of the show. Our main protagonist Tomoya Okazaki is a brilliant main character, he is not wish fulfillment by any stretch of the imagination, he is multifacted and comes across as a conciveable real person, who could actually exist not just a blank slate anime character whos only trait is "he's kind and selfless" and that's why all the girls in a 20km radius fall in love with him. Tomoya is most definitely not this, he is brilliantly written as a lazy comedic delinquent who's only wish is to move out of this town which holds nothing but bad memories for him. This all changes when he meets Nagisa our main (and best) girl. She is the singular best example i could ever think of for a Dandere done expertly, she is shy yes and she has a naturally nervous dispostion, however she still isn't defined by these traits being able to motivate herself to take a step of courage to do what she needs to do, on her own or with Tomoyas help, she isnt a stuttery person and she even has a dream of acting on stage in a play (which she forms the drama club to do). She is in every way a better version of Ryou (the other dandere of the show) who is a co mplelty average dandere with all the issues that come with that and so is completely overshadowed by Nagisa (sorry Ryou fans but its true). Again, as with almost all of Clannad's characters she could conceviably be a real human person with multiple dimensions and traits, yet she still retains the appeal of a dandere (that urge to just want to pick them up and hug them and protect them from everything might ever harm them because they are so kind hearted shy innocent). The only characters with which i don't feel this is true is Ryou (as mentioned before) and Sunohara (Tomoya's only friend at the beginning and the designated comic relief character) both of which are fairly standard fare anime characters. The only other characters i would like to spotlight is Akio and Sanae, they are once again conceivably human characters, yet they are also amazing comic relief dine right and the best parents ever, honestly, even someone who hates clannad will admit Akio and Sanae are cool. On that note, clannad's comedy is on the whole done very well, there where several scenes in which i straight up laughed out loud. Of course there were some jokes that fell flat, but with almost 50 episodes of content that's a given. The shows dialogue between the characters also works brilliantly, they all feel like humans, having human conversations with witty, interesting dialogue with several emotional scenes (both happy and sad) that got me sobbing either from sadness or a couple of times the dialogue was just so wholesome and lovely it brought tears to my eyes (that baseball scene where she falls in love all over again is a brilliant example, if you've seen the scene you know the one I'm talking about, if not go look up clannad fall in love again on you tube and watch the scene there aren't any spoilers in it unless you haven't seen the first 15 episodes of clannad or somehow think Tomoya wont end up with the main girl).

Art/Animation - 90/100
Its good, i know the art style is often a major factor in why people don't like it, but i got used to it really quickly and it really isn't that bad and don't be that guy who refuses to watch an amazing show because "the eyes are too big", the animation is decent, its Kyoani so the bar is high, there are however several exceptional scenes that are super beautiful (Kyoani is so amazing) especially Kyoani's usage of small character movements and details which portray the characters so brilliantly

Overall this show is brilliant amazing and perfect in every way, the music, writing, characters md story all come together to form one of the greatest shows of all time, please watch it if you haven't already i promise it wont disappoint

This review is of both clannad and AS but contains no spoilers so read it even if you haven't seen the either show

~~~__Pituus:__ 23 jaksoa
__Genret:__ Komedia, Draama, Romanssi, Slice of Life, Yliluonnollinen
__Julkaistu:__ 5.10.2007 - 28.3.2008~~~

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Clannad perustuu ehkä yhteen suosituimmista Visual Novelleista mitä Japanissa on. Clannadin on luonut Kanonista ja Airista tuttu KEY ja animoinnista vastaa Kyoto Animation. Clannad aiheutti ilmestyessään aikamoista pöhinää, näin monta jaksoa kestävä adaptaatio Visual Novellista ei ollut tavanomaista ja KyoAnin ollessa puikoissa odotukset sarjaa kohtaan olivat hyvin suuret.

Sarja alkaa KEYlle tavaramerkiksi muodostuneella tavalla: poika tapaa tytön. Clannad alkaa, kun sarjan päähenkilö Okazaki Tomoya, joka ei niinkään ole kiinnostunut koulunkäynnistä, tapaa sattumalta Furude Nagisan, tytön jolta puuttuu itsevarmuutta. Alunperin Tomoya ajatteli vain härnäillä tätä tyttöä hieman, mutta siinä samassa päätykin myös auttamaan Nagisaa teatterikerhon perustamisessa, samalla tavaten ihmisiä joita muuten ei olisi. Pikkuhiljaa Tomoya, joka tähän asti on tunnettu pienenä häirikkönä alkaa avautumaan ympärilleen oleville ihmisille, päätyen samalla kohtaaman näiden ei niin onnelliset menneisyydet. 

Tämän aiheen äärellä vietetäänkin lähes puolet sarjasta, juonenkuljetuksen jäädessä alkujaksojen jälkeen taustalle, liikkuen eteenpäin vasta aivan viimeisissä jaksoissa.

Clannadin animaatiojälki on hyvin sulavaa, piirtojälki on selvää ja värikästä. Taustat ovat myös hyvin tehtyjä, kaikki tämä on sellaista jota on Kyoto Animationilta totuttu näkemään ja se ei petä. Erityishuomiona valojen ja varjojen käytössä KyoAni on tässä sarjassa kyennyt pääsemään sellaiselle tasolle, jota ei nolkytluvun loppupuolella oltu totuttu näkemään. Tämän sarjan äärellä tehdyn työn antama kokemus voidaan nähdä KyoAnin myöhemmissä sarjoissa.

Sarjan seiyuu-työskentely on mielestäni hyvin loistavaa ja hahmoille hyvin sopivia tuoden hyvin esille hahmojen tunteet. Ääniefekteissäkään ei ole moittimista vaan ovat hyvin sopivia, vaikka ne eivät olekaan mitään mieleenpainuvia kuin muut sarjan osa-alueet. Clannadin taustamusiikitkin ovat hyvin tunnelmallisia tuoden oikeissa paikoissa oikeanlaisen tunnelman esille. Clannadin äänimaailma kokonaisuudessa on varsin ja sopiva sarjaan.

~~~__Eli siis:__~~~
Sarjaa voi varauksetta suositella kaikille jotka ovat pitäneet KEYn/KyoAnin edellisistä teoksista ja oikeastaan kaikille. Clannadin komedialliset kohtaukset ovat täyttä kultaa ja osa hyvinkin mieleenpainuvia. Lisäksi sarjan dramaattisemmat kohtaukset ovat välillä hyvin liikuttavia.  Kaikenkaikkiaan Clannad on erittäin mainio sarja.

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~~~__Plussat:__
Hyvin luotu komedia
Hahmot ja heidän väliset suhteensa
Osaa luoda tunnelmaa ja dramaattista kerrontaa

__Miinukset:__
Paikoitellen tarinankerronta nikottelee
Juonenkuljetus unohtuu täysin suurimmaksi osaksi sarjaa~~~

Clannad sovittaa lähdeteoksen hyvin mutta ei erinomaisesti

~~~img220(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Clannad_Logo.svg/1280px-Clannad_Logo.svg.png)~~~
~~~https://anilist.co/anime/2167/Clannad/
~~~
#~~~ (Spoiler Warning)~~~
Clannad was cute little anime that also gave me nightmares. okay well... I'm joking about the nightmare part. In all seriousness, I did enjoy watching Clannad about half of the time. The story, overall, was pretty sweet and for the most part, gave backgrounds to most of the main cast. The first topic id like to talk about is the Fuuko arc. I personally wasn't the biggest fan of the Fuuko arc. I'd like to believe this is mostly due to the fact that when it ended,~! they completely forgot about her. It made the entire arc absolutely pointless. !~

Although I do have to say I enjoyed her guest appearances in later parts of the show. 

Another character that annoyed the hell out of me first vol/arc was [Youhei Sunohara](https://anilist.co/character/4610/Youhei-Sunohara). I thought that his voice was so annoying and the scenes he was in were unenjoyable. This applies to most of vol 1. Overall, you could say I was just not a fan of vol 1. I will acknowledge that parts in vol 1 were important for events in vol 2 to happen, but I thought that it could've been a lot more enjoyable.

~~~img220(https://i.gifer.com/A1gy.gif)~~~

Another issue I had while watching this anime (as @awesomedk and @savagespencer1 know) was the eyes/overall face design of the characters. I did not like how big they made the eyes and how small they made the character's mouths. This is especially visible in [Nagisa Frukawa](https://anilist.co/character/4604/Nagisa-Furukawa). I mean almost every time I see her I visualize sid the sloth from Ice Age. Here is a visual comparison of the two to better prove my point.

~~~img220(https://wallpapercave.com/wp/wp4089323.jpg) img220(https://i.imgflip.com/1v5qtx.jpg)~~~

The wide eyes just get me every time haha. Plus the two strains of hair coming from the top of her head annoyed me almost the entire anime. I'm sure many people don't share this opinion but it is one that I wanted to bring up in my review.

Now not all of Clannad was bad. I actually really enjoyed vol 2! It finally gave us the beginning of the relationship between [Nagisa Frukawa](https://anilist.co/character/4604/Nagisa-Furukawa) and [Tomoya Okazaki](https://anilist.co/character/4606/Tomoya-Okazaki). I really enjoyed their relationship and I think the studio did a great job showing how youth treats love. Especially these two characters who are both more on the shy side when it comes to their personality. Vol. 2 also showed more insight into [Tomoya Okazaki's](https://anilist.co/character/4606/Tomoya-Okazaki) family life which I thought was a pretty important story point. Unfortunately they still only continued to tease us with Tomoya's youth and never actually fully got around to explaining in full. visually at least.

~~~img220(https://i.gifer.com/OEFK.gif)~~~

Switching gears a bit, and this will be one of the last things I talk about in this review. Even though it didn't make too much sense story-wise, I thought the last episode was amazing! It was really cool to see an alternate version of events with these characters. I thought the relationship between [Tomoyo Sakagami](https://anilist.co/character/4603/Tomoyo-Sakagami) and [Tomoya Okazaki's](https://anilist.co/character/4606/Tomoya-Okazaki) was a great little side story. One that I didn't even know I wanted to see. This story alone made me enjoy the characters a lot more. It was the perfect mix of comedy and slice of life I was expecting going into this anime.~! It was sad seeing them split yet still be so in love with each other. !~ 

~~~img220(https://i.imgur.com/ymyRDsP.gif)~~~

In review, this anime was full of ups and downs for me. While I did not enjoy the first vol as much as I would've liked, and while I didn't like the animation/art style, I still liked parts of the story and some of the characters as well as their relationships with each other. If I were to spilt vol 1 and vol 2 into two separate reviews/seasons I would give vol 1 a 6.5/10 and vol 2 an 8/10. But in the end, they are both considered one season so my final rating for Clannad as a whole will be 7.6/10 the 0.6 being added due to the amazing last episode.

Is Clannad worth the watch? I mean I'd say if you have the time go for it, but be prepared to fight your way through most of vol. 1. It wasn't absolutely bad, I just wasn't a fan of the art style and I think that played a big part in why I disliked a lot of the anime. To me, the characters didn't seem realistic enough. they almost seemed like dolls. I wouldn't say don't watch this anime. there are some amazing parts to it. the romance builds on you and so do the characters.

__Here is my rating for the show:__
Story: 9
Characters: 8
Visuals: 6
Soundtrack: 8
Enjoyment: 7
__Overall: 7.6/10__

my thoughts on Clannad vol. 1 and vol. 2. the good and the bad

(___wrote this after a rewatch___)I haven't been hooked on a show in so long and not to my surprise, clannad stole my heart yet again. I can't explain why this show resonates with me so much, but I can try to convey why I think it deserves the 80 rating I gave it.

__Comedy__ : As of 10/10/21, Clannad is the funniest anime I've seen/implements humour into a story the best I've seen.. All the gags and bits are pulled off so well and are never bad jokes. Sunohara is always the butt of jokes but every time its amazing. Kotomis violin scenes and attempt to learn how to communicate normally was hilarious. The Sanaes bread gag is funny. Akio in general is funny. Tomoyas relationship with Fuuko is very similar to Araragi and 8kuji, because both pairs have a banterous relationship, with constant jabs at each other despite being good friends. 

__Cast/Character dynamics__ : A constant warm pleasant atmosphere throughout the show is provided by nothing more than the fantastic cast and its dynamics. For example Tomoya + Kotomis dynamic was built amazingly. I can't name one character I think added nothing to the story.
By far the best dynamic in the series is provided by Tomoya + Nagisa. A brilliantly developed lovers relationship, done using the best trope for couples, the trope being " Two characters meet as friends, learn and gain from each other, ultimately meeting a point where they need each other to be whole". Tomoya is such a fantastic main character and his struggles being transformed because of Nagisa is so beautiful.

__Narrative__ : Clannad is so overlooked when questioning the story and its impact. Following the same structure as bakemonogatari, we follow Tomoya as he helps a bunch of girls with their issues. Each story holds a large amount of significance and is written perfectly. The main plot point, being the theatre club/Nagisas play, is expanded upon at a great rate along with the "side plots" with the girls. Fuuko's story is a great intro arc to the series, Kotomis arc is astonishing, Tomoyos mini arc provided alot for the main cast, then the final arc which I'll call Nagisas arc was just stupendous. Such a perfect climax. Unfortunately I cried on ep 22 during the play.

__Soundtrack__ : I've always thought this an it's common knowledge but clannad has one of the best soundtracks in anime, including After story of course. Not much needs to be said other than that every emotional moment is backed by a soothing / mood setting OST, some of them are truly magical. Also has one of the best ending songs in anime.

__Animation__ : Something I didn't appreciate on my first watch, but my God did this show get a lot of care. The direction blew my mind, so much detail in the camera work, backgrounds, all the gags, character emotions, just everything. I am not very well educated on cinematography or production, but I know when something had real care and passion put into it. The very first scene of clannad ep 1 is just mind boggling. Well done Kyoto.

___Final thoughts___ : This show has the perfect mix of comedy and seriousness, alongside a lovely cast who you'll never get tired of. They don't make shows like this anymore and its a shame to see.

A Beautiful story, overshadowed by its successor...

Personally one of the most enjoyable SoL experiences that I have seen, even in Season 1.

~~~__Introduction
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"CLANNAD," a seminal work in the world of anime, transcends its origins as a visual novel to become a poignant narrative masterpiece that explores themes of family, friendship, and the bittersweet facets of life. Developed by Key and adapted into an anime by Kyoto Animation, "CLANNAD" first greeted viewers in 2007, quickly garnering acclaim for its emotional depth, intricate storytelling, and well-crafted characters. This review delves into the heart of "CLANNAD," examining its storyline, character arcs, animation style, soundtrack, thematic essence, and the indelible mark it leaves on its audience.

__Storyline and Setting
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"CLANNAD" introduces us to Tomoya Okazaki, a disenchanted high school student whose life takes a pivotal turn upon meeting Nagisa Furukawa, a girl repeating her final year due to illness. The storyline unfolds in the fictional city of Hikarizaka, presenting a tapestry of lives intertwined by fate, choice, and the pursuit of happiness. The narrative intricately weaves together the mundane with the supernatural, leading viewers through a journey that is as much about external encounters as it is about internal transformation.

The first season lays the groundwork, focusing on Tomoya's relationships and the various challenges faced by the characters, all while subtly introducing supernatural elements that hint at a deeper connection between the characters' struggles and the town's mysteries. "CLANNAD AFTER STORY," the sequel, shifts the narrative gear, delving into life's harsher realities and the essence of family and personal growth.

The juxtaposition of the two seasons showcases a remarkable narrative evolution, from the exploration of high school life and youthful aspirations to confronting adult responsibilities and the inevitable adversities of life. This transition not only amplifies the emotional weight of the story but also enriches the characters' development, making their journeys and the lessons they learn resonate deeply with viewers.

__Animation and Art Style
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The animation and art style of "CLANNAD" are integral to its storytelling, providing not just a visual feast but also serving as a narrative tool that deepens the emotional connection between the audience and the characters. Produced by Kyoto Animation, known for its high-quality production, "CLANNAD" features a distinct art style that captures the essence of its original visual novel while also bringing its world and characters to life with vivid detail and expressiveness.

__Visual Storytelling and Atmosphere:__ The use of color, light, and shadow in "CLANNAD" plays a pivotal role in setting the tone and atmosphere of the series. The contrast between the vibrant scenes of youth and the subdued tones reflecting moments of sorrow or introspection creates a visual narrative that complements the emotional arcs of the characters. The animation's attention to detail in facial expressions and body language enhances the storytelling, making each character's emotions palpable and engaging.

__Symbolism and Imagery: __"CLANNAD" employs a rich tapestry of symbolism and imagery, with recurring motifs such as the illusory world and the sakura trees serving as metaphors for the characters' journeys and the themes of the series. These elements are rendered with a delicate touch, inviting viewers to delve deeper into the narrative's layers and the characters' internal worlds.

__Soundtrack and Audio
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The soundtrack of "CLANNAD," composed by Jun Maeda, Shinji Orito, and Magome Togoshi, is as much a character of the series as the characters themselves. It plays a crucial role in evoking the series' emotional landscape, seamlessly blending with the narrative to enhance the impact of key moments.

__Emotional Resonance:__ The series' music, from the poignant piano melodies to the sweeping orchestral pieces, is meticulously crafted to mirror the emotional arcs of the story. Tracks such as "Dango Daikazoku" and "The Place Where Wishes Come True" have become iconic, not only for their immediate emotional impact but also for their ability to evoke memories of the series' most touching scenes.

__Opening and Ending Themes:__ The opening and ending themes of "CLANNAD" and "CLANNAD AFTER STORY" encapsulate the series' spirit and themes. They serve as bookends to each episode's narrative, preparing the viewer for the emotional journey ahead and providing closure while reflecting on the themes explored in the episode.

__Sound Design:__ Beyond the music, "Clannad's" sound design contributes significantly to its immersive experience. The ambient sounds of the town, the school, and the natural environments add depth to the world of "CLANNAD," making it a living, breathing entity that enhances the viewer's emotional connection to the story.

__Themes and Emotional Impact
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Family and Bonds
One of the central themes of "CLANNAD" is the concept of family and the bonds that define it. The series explores various facets of family life and relationships, from Tomoya's strained relationship with his father to the warmth and love found within Nagisa's family. "CLANNAD" illustrates that family extends beyond blood relations, highlighting the importance of chosen bonds and the support network that friends and loved ones provide. This theme resonates deeply, encouraging viewers to reflect on their own relationships and the value of connection.

Struggle and Perseverance
"CLANNAD" does not shy away from depicting the struggles of life, including illness, loss, and personal failure. However, it also emphasizes the power of perseverance and hope. Through characters like Nagisa, who battles her health issues to achieve her dreams, and Tomoya, who learns to confront and overcome his past traumas, the series offers inspiration and solace to viewers facing their own challenges. The narrative encourages a message of resilience, underscoring the idea that while life can be fraught with hardships, strength and support can be found in the bonds we share with others.

The Journey of Life and the Supernatural
Interwoven with the realistic portrayals of life's challenges are elements of the supernatural, most notably the mysterious "other world" and the concept of wishes influencing reality. These elements serve as metaphors for the characters' internal struggles and aspirations, adding a layer of depth to the narrative. "CLANNAD" uses these themes to delve into philosophical discussions about fate, destiny, and the interconnectedness of lives, inviting viewers to ponder the greater forces at play in their own lives and the power of hope and belief in shaping one's future.

Emotional Impact on Viewers
The themes of "CLANNAD" are universal, touching on the core of human experience. Its ability to evoke a wide range of emotions—from joy and laughter to tears and introspection—is a testament to its storytelling prowess. Many viewers find themselves deeply moved by the series, seeing their own experiences and struggles reflected in the characters' journeys. "CLANNAD" has a unique capacity to inspire, comfort, and provoke thought, making it a deeply impactful series that stays with viewers long after the final credits roll.

__Cultural and Fan Reception
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Upon its release, "CLANNAD" quickly resonated with audiences both in Japan and internationally, praised for its emotional depth, complex character development, and exquisite storytelling. Its ability to weave together themes of family, friendship, love, and loss into a coherent, relatable narrative has captivated viewers across the globe. The series has inspired a dedicated fan base, engaging in discussions, fan art, and stories that extend the life of "CLANNAD" well beyond its final episode. Its impact on the anime community is immeasurable, influencing other creators and works, and continually attracting new fans who find solace, joy, and reflection in its episodes.

__Final Thoughts:
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Reflecting on the journey that "CLANNAD" takes its viewers through, it stands unparalleled in its ability to capture the complexities of the human experience. From the laughter shared among friends to the tears of facing life's inevitable sorrows, "CLANNAD" encapsulates the full spectrum of emotions, making it a deeply personal experience for many, including myself.

Personally, "CLANNAD" holds the distinguished title of the best anime I have ever seen. Its unique blend of realistic storytelling, emotional resonance, and philosophical depth goes beyond entertainment, offering viewers a mirror to their own lives and the lessons learned along the way. "CLANNAD" teaches us about the strength found in vulnerability, the beauty of human connections, and the indefatigable spirit of the human heart.

Its narrative elegance, coupled with masterful animation and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, creates an immersive world that is both a refuge and a place of profound learning. "CLANNAD" does not simply tell a story; it invites viewers into its heart, challenging them to grow, reflect, and embrace the fullness of life with all its joys and sorrows.

As a testament to its greatness, "CLANNAD" transcends the title of mere 'entertainment.' It is a life lesson, a companion through dark times, and a celebration of the human spirit's resilience. For these reasons, among many others, "CLANNAD" remains an unparalleled masterpiece in the realm of anime, touching the souls of all who journey through its world.

In closing, "CLANNAD" is more than just an anime—it's a profound exploration of life's deepest themes, delivered with a grace and emotional depth unmatched in the medium. It stands as a beacon of storytelling excellence, forever cherished in the hearts of those it has touched.


~~~

Clannad Series Watch Order

Clannad Movie

Clannad

Clannad: Mou Hitotsu no Sekai, Tomoyo-hen

Clannad: After Story

Clannad: After Story - Mou Hitotsu no Sekai, Kyou-hen