Going into this series I honestly didn't think I was going to be terribly impressed with it, and really at first I wasn't at all. The opening episodes and frankly much of the first season were absolutely brutal for a person who is as stingy with his comedy as I am and I actually dropped it at one point only to catch up and finish it near the end of it's run. I also found that the less Sunohara (still one of the most annoying characters I have ever had to endure in an anime) there was the more favourable I was towards any given episode. If I had to give the first season a score it would probably be something like a generous 6.5, thanks mostly to the finale episodes and parts of the Kotomi arc hitting home with me.
After Story started with me similar to how the first season did and I more or less rolled my eyes at some of the attempts at what I assume was supposed to pass as comedy (again I am extremely stingy when it comes to comedy), and none of the mini-arcs did much of anything for me, but once we got into the actual After Story I got to see why it was that game players claim the them of Clannad is family. Episode 10-20 were among the strongest this series had to offer for me, and honestly if it had ended there with episode 20 I would have probably given this series a full pardon for making suffer through it's "comedy", but alas as I have previously mentioned the final two episodes (21-22 in my book were the final two) felt like a convolution and derailment of what the preceeding couple of episode were trying to get across as far as the responsibilities of the family unit go and no amount of trying to rationalize it's purpose or how it was possible (not that I really care cause that's no the issue) can rationalize that for me. What we got with the idea put across by the final episode just didn't seem as strong or powerful as what we got with the 16-20 arc.
So where does that leave me for the second series. If I'm going to try and BS some number across to convey my impression of it, I guess 7.5 or something. Putting the two seasons together I get an average of 7.0 (yeah numbers
) and a general impression of "well that was a lot better then I ever thought it was going to be". Now I'm not an expressive person when it comes to giving impressions of anime, so you won't really here me going "RAH RAH Clannad!" or "BOOOOO RESET!" or anything of the sort, so don't go expecting that sort of thing. Just let it be known that outside of the "comedy" Clannad managed to for the most part exceed my expectations in most categories and generate an interest in it's story and characters. This for a person who is not really into or drawn to the romance, slice-of-life or whatever you want to call Clannad's genre, or prone to any sort of really heavy or extreme emotion (which in my opinion the series relied far to much on it's viewers to feel for it's own good) that can be described as lasting should be taken as a fair bit of praise. Though obviously I'm not as totally 100% sold on the whole series as your average person here. Just not die hard or easily swayed by emotion enough to be all over this show as some of the others are.