Akio, you are the man
Well done for knocking some sense into that sometimes silly, but overall kind-hearted daughter of his. She should not be allowed to think that she is at fault for the end of his dreams, but rather, her very presence in their hearts and seeing her happy is the continuation of that dream, though it has changed.
Tomoya finally did what everyone has expected but had waited forever to do, and that is confess his feelings to Nagisa. Happy Ending? No doubt.
If this is considered the end and you want to compare just these 22 episodes with Kanon 2006 and AIR, then, even I will have to say that Kanon 2006 and AIR have more emotional impact, as those two series covered the complete story while only half has passed for Clannad.
Therefore I reserve judgment until Kyo-Ani makes the announcement should they go ahead with a second series. It could be never, but I'm willing to bet my head that they will, for the second half, as I've always said, is the true essence of the whole story.
A Sunohara gaffe that may be lost on non-Japanese speakers. When told by Tomoya to go cheer Nagisa up, Sunohara tells Nagisa to perform an interesting spell by writing the kanji "hito" 人 (person) on her palm three times. Kotomi then interjects and says Sunohara's writing it the wrong way, as the kanji he wrote was "hairu" 入 (enter). Kyou makes fun of Sunohara's ineptitude in writing simple kanji.
Both kanji have similar shapes, but the direction of the strokes are different, for "hito", the longer stroke is on the left, while for "hairu" it's on the right. (To make it more obvious in Unicode encoding, a short horizontal stroke is added on top of "hairu" to indicate it's starting from top left to bottom right. )
We'll see what solution the fansubbers can come out with.
Author
Moderator
