[Kaiba]

Score: 8.1 out of 10.
Scenery Porn.


That was how I got into Clannad, with prominent members on another forum I frequent ranting about how beautiful the background was. I chose to give it a shot for the heck of it, and I am glad that I made that decision.

The first season was overall not bad, but was inferior to the After Story (though that is just as true in the game). The first few episodes were an interesting way to get someone new to be accustomed to the world, and things were pretty interesting from the get-go, with Kotomi, Kyou and Tomoyo making me smile in various ways or another. However, I nearly dropped it after the Fuuko route, as it was for me a poor start. Fuuko’s hyperactiveness and naivety more irritated me than anything else, and thus I had notable difficulty empathizing with her as her troubles grew. The fact that supernatural stuff just sort of appeared all of a sudden was for me a further turn-off initially – keep in mind that I was new to Key and thus was completely unfamiliar with their pattern, and thus viewed the whole supernatural stuff as some junk completely out of left field. I frankly dropped it for a short while after 8, and while I picked it back up after 10, I have never watched Episode 9 of the first season (though I know what happens, thanks to the game).


Next was Kotomi’s route, which for me was utterly fantastic, with Episode 14 becoming the first episode where I gave them a 9. I found her story incredibly touching, what with her sorrow, what she had to put up with, and just her reaction to being brought to the world around her which she had ignored for so long. Tomoya’s determination to help her was for me a significant part in his growth, as it was really the first time when he chose to help someone for the sake of helping others and not for the sake of killing time, which was why he initially chose to help Fuuko and help in the drama club. After the power of that arc, I knew that I had to continue it.


The next few episodes were interesting, and while deredere Kyou was a nice scene, it really made respect Tomoyo more than anyone. I did not like Nagisa at this point in the story, and thus was a little annoyed in the finale of Episode 18. However, Kyou also irritated me – pushing her sister onto Tomoya was annoying from my perspective, and her losing it in contrast to Tomoyo’s grace and quiet dignity at the end of Episode 18 did not endear her to me too much. I like Kyou to a degree, but at this point, I do prefer second season Nagisa (who for me is almost a completely different character from herself in the first season), Tomoyo, and Kotomi over her. They weren’t bad episodes, but overall, there wasn’t anything in them that overall impressed I in the same way that Kotomi’s arc just amazed me.


The next few episodes were the important ones, the formation of the drama club into something real, and the realization of Nagisa’s dream. Tomoya moving out was a powerful scene – perhaps it was me, but I was always somewhat sympathetic to Naoyuki, as he never seemed that bad of a person – just someone who had lost an emotional bond to his son, and had no clue as to how to reconnect. Everyone working together to form the drama club was pretty awesome to me, as well as the constant back and forth between Tomoya and Nagisa. When Nagisa found out about her parent’s secret and lost it, it irritated me and impressed me more with Nagisa just being a weak person – but it gave the Furukawa parents, who are absolutely splendid characters, a time to shine absolutely dramatically, as well as Tomoya to rush towards Nagisa and show the degree to which he has grown – Okazaki Tomoya from the beginning of the first season would have never done what he did at the end, rushing towards Nagisa and shouting out that she must perform for the sake of everyone else. That scene was powerful, the confession scene (which was also pretty good), made me give Episode 22 Clannad’s second 9. (I didn’t watch 23 as I thought 22 was the end of the first season, and while I found out I was wrong, I never got around to watching it).


Over the summer, I went and downloaded the game, and played through it. The After Story was absolutely spectacular – Kotomi’s route in the game is my favorite of the School Life, but After Story blew it out of the water, and thus I began the second season with incredibly high hopes of what it could do.
It was an unimpressive start. The baseball scene was a nice start, but then we went with three arcs which I didn’t care too much and were frankly not that well presented in the series. It was a poor start, but I did see signs of Nagisa becoming more mature and stronger than we ever saw throughout the second season, so I kept patient. Episode 9 was the true start of the After Story, and it was a very good start – Tomoya’s concern over Nagisa was touching, and while I was incredibly depressed with Kotomi being put on a bus, I knew it was going to happen, so I grumbled and sat back at the end of Episode 9, which was very good.


The next few episodes were very good, as expected from the true After Story, and KyoAni did a good job at adapting things. The dynamic between Nagisa and Tomoya was sweet and endearing, and there were many, many well-done scenes here, such as the marriage proposal, Yusuke’s story, and the concern over Nagisa’s pregnancy. And then the scene came, the one where I and everyone knew what was coming – and I was disappointed. Nagisa’s death scene was for me disappointing, with the fact that they made it way too obvious that she was going to die spoiling a lot of tension to which happened (the fucking ED didn’t make things better – whoever came up with that ED needs to be shot for completely spoiling the mood). It could have been more powerful than it turned out, and I didn’t even come close to crying during 16. The next episode covered Tomoya’s reaction, and while depressing, it was rather okay.

And then 18 happened.


Clannad After Story is not the best show this season – Toradora and Kannagi were just plain better and more interesting from my perspective. But this episode, episode 18 is one of the greatest things I have ever seen, in any media. When Ushio started crying in Tomoya’s arms and the music started, I felt like I was hit by a truck – and yet it was one of the best feelings I have ever had. It will be an episode which I hope to God will stick in my life for all of eternity. It made this person, someone who rolled his eyes and chuckled at the end of Grave of the Fireflies, to break down completely and sob uncontrollably for the next five minutes. While I had only given out 6 nines for the previous 40-odd episodes combined, Clannad After Story 18 became the third 10 I had ever given out in 4 years of watching anime – it is without a doubt the greatest episode of Clannad by far, and it is so touching, so unbelievably sad yet heartwarming that …. Words cannot describe it. This was the high point, a point so amazing and touching that nothing after this episode could even touch the high which this episode had reached – if Kyo Ani had just ended with this, everything would have been terrific.


Yet unfortunately, they had to continue on. Ushio was presented splendidly, and was unlawfully cute. While they had to drag Fuuko again, she was actually fairly well done for once, as Ushio’s awesomeness simply balanced out Fuuko’s sheer irritating behavior. Seeing Kyou was also nice, and the dynamic between the two was touching – it helped show one of the key points of the game, which is that you will lose touch with those you interacted with in high school. 19 and 20 were very good episodes, and while not as good as 18, that is nothing to be ashamed of.


The end suffered from the fact that ultimately, I felt that there was really no way in which Kyo Ani could do it in a way that would be understandable from the perspective of someone who has not played the game already, and they really did it as well as they could to make sense to the average viewer. While Kyo Ani really did do a decent job, the material they had to work within the ending was pretty bad, and thus I knew there would bad reaction to it – to tell the truth, there was far less “WTF is this shit” than I really expected. I think people just kind of realized that it was Key being Key, and to some degree, they let it go. While Kyo Ani did a decent job at adapting the ending, it was a fairly irritating ending, and they did suffer for it. Having Fuuko run around the end didn’t help things from my perspective, especially I had completely forgotten that scene existed in the game, and was thus completely irritated with an episode like this ending with that idiot running around.


Overall, this was a good series – not very good, but good. While it hit incredible highs, the fact is that the pacing was rather meh, as I felt that Clannad did have excessive focus on the minor characters. While the story is powerful, it could have improved. While overall, it was good adaptation, it could have been better, and there have been far better series out there, and for this year. As I said, I give these 8.1 out of 10 – it was a good series, and one can get into it – yet there were problems with certain members of the cast, and at times it’s completely forgettable. I do think that one should watch this series, however, and be patient with it – if nothing else, just to see the 18th episode of the After Story.