Originally Posted by Sorrow-K
For a penultimate episode, that certainly lacked urgency. It demonstrates a massive difference between Clannad and Kanon that's already been pointed out, in that Clannad is much more a slice-of-life, and doesn't have anywhere near as much of the pathos and heavy drama of its predecessor. Which is fine. As others have said in this thread, it's exploring themes, such as family and loneliness. And the relationship development has been outstanding. All the important characters have changed in ways that are clear. Tomoyo was the obvious example in this episode, but Nagisa was the much more subtle one. A few times they pointed out just how much she's changed since the beginning of the story, but it's worth pointing out again.
I love how so much of the story is told through gestures. A look, a pat on the head, a character staying quiet in a certain situation, so much of the characters can be read from how their body language or their gestures, rather than just what they say. This is an aspect that KyoAni seem to do really well in all their anime. If you just listen to dialogue, you miss a lot of the story, so there's a certain subtlety to the storytelling, but at the same time each of these gestures have a clear meaning, so it's not so overly subtle that things don't make sense.
Well, most things anyway. A minor one, but I have no idea why Kyou stuck out her tongue while they were talking about Tomoyo getting contact lenses.
Anyway, I think it's almost a good thing that the dramatic intensity in this hasn't been as high as we typically see in Key stories. A heavy plot-twist now will just be jarring. It's a very different anime from Kanon, and that's all there is to it.
A minor criticism... the not-terribly-explicit fanservice towards the beginning of the episode really felt out of place. It reminded me of that scene in the first episode of Kanon where they showed Nayuki in a bra for some reason that made no sense. It's like KyoAni has to have a nonchalant fanservice scene once every season. I mean, I can understand a bit of fanservice when they're playing it for laughs, eg, all those jokes in Haruhi, and the scene where Kyou and Tomoya got trapped in the storeroom. But these types of scenes are just confusing. It's like they're saying "here, have a fanservice scene, but it doesn't really serve any purpose, so just pretend you don't notice"...
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