[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by SJCrew

No, not at all.

I disagree.

These guys are teenagers and they're in love.

Which is why a kiss or two would probably have helped.

But Clannad was never about "hot and heavy" romance. Like synaesthetic rightly points out, Clannad is a dramedy. Romance is a secondary feature; it's not the driving feature of Clannad.

A hot and heavy makeout scene (like the one you referred to in that YouTube video) might clash with the typical mood and tone of a dramedy. At the very least, I see nothing lost by not having it.

Furthermore, Nagisa and Tomoya become husband and wife. It didn't matter how often they did it, so long as the timing and execution were spot-on. For example, check out 3:59 - 4:04 of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoAxGQUOD5Q

That's what I mean when I'm referring to "the sex make-out". It happens in movies and IRL all the time...

Exactly.

It happens in movies so much that it's really not all that special any more.

Indeed, one could argue that Clannad very effectively conveying romance without having to use such a scene is part of its distinctive charm; it's something that helps to distinguish Clannad from the commonplace and the typical as far as modern entertainment in general tends to handle romances.

... and I can perfectly picture Tomoya and Nagisa doing this at some point, especially as a married couple and in the privacy of their own home.

Sure, I can too. It doesn't mean we need visual confirmation of it.

I saw quite a few instances in the anime where appropriated sexual tension is omitted entirely. In retrospect, it's actually a bit odd to make Tomoya seem so chaste in here while he was much more lax about his libido in the source material. I think the latter is much more befitting of his character.

I saw nothing at all wrong with how Tomoya came across in the anime. He struck me as a good friend with a healthy sense of humor and a strong sense of self, and eventually a caring and supporting boyfriend and husband to Nagisa.

I respect how anime Tomoya maintains his composure when amongst attractive female friends; how he keeps his cool and actually treats Kotomi, Kyou, Ryou, and Tomoyo just as good friends.

Heck, I find it encouraging. Tomoya shows that a guy actually can be a good platonic friend with girls.


Edit: One thing to keep in mind here; the visual novel offers up different routes for Tomoya to take. Hence, visual novel Tomoya is not set on any one particular girl: it's up to the person reading the visual novel to decide where Tomoya will go.

With the anime, however, Tomoya is set from the very beginning to eventually end up with Nagisa. Tomoya's lack of sexual tension in certain scenes could be due to how he decided early on that Nagisa is the girl for him, and that's that.

His behavior around the other members of the female cast makes sense, and is appropriate, from that perspective.

Indeed, this is a strength of Tomoya's, that causes him to compare favorably to Yuichi from Kanon 2006 (in this one area, at least).

A common criticism I've read of Kanon 2006 (and hold to myself) is that Yuichi seems to shift almost absentmindedly from one girl to the next to the next, causing a certain sense of disjointing to Kanon 2006, and making each individual relationship look a bit weaker because of it (particularly the canon one that many would argue pales in comparison to some of the earlier ones).