It astonishes me how far anime has sunk these days. Gone are the days of thought provoking mind fucks of such animes like Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain. Gone are the days of truly dramatic and strong heroes like Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star. Where is the political and social commentary from works like Ghost in the Shell?
Now, this is not to say that all old anime was perfect. However, anime companies no longer want to innovate; they'd rather play it safe and stick with boring rehash after rehash. No longer would they go for what is deep and what is artistic, but pointless fan pandering. No longer does anime challenge one to think; it merely rots your brain into a mindless zombie doomed to buy whatever crap the studios make.
The cancer that is killing anime is moe. That's all you have to do these days; just stick a semi-attractive moeblob on the cover and your shit sells like hotcakes. No need for story or well developed characters. And at the center of this shitpile is Kyoto Animation.
They initially started the "moe" craze with Haruhi Suzumiya, a pointless boring series that has absolutely no plot and soul. True, it had the badass Nagato, but the other characters were so insanely annoying and pathetic that it set a new standard in mediocrity. Just because they are cute? Just because of the dance? But thanks to the internet hype machine, people were brainwashed to believe it was good.
Afterwards the moe craze broke out much like the smell of crap after someone opens the door after taking a long dump. The next of KyoAni's works of terror was Kanon which proved even more pointless than Haruhi.
For these reasons, I paid no heed about Clannad, the supposed successor of Kanon. I expected the worse despite all the hype. Could Kyoto Animation actually produce something good?
The answer is no. They can draw beautiful backgrounds, but asking them to write a good script is absolutely impossible. While Clannad lacks Kanon's sexual deviancy, it makes up for in lack of creativity since its characters are recylcled tropes. How very creative!
The main female lead, Nagisa, is merely a copy of Shiori. Except she doesn't like ice cream. She also cries a lot and keeps singing that retarded dango song. By episode 5, I was wondering if she'd get hit by a car or something. If she could fly or something, she'd be interesting. Unforunately, Nagisa fails to do anything interesting and only serves to cockblock pimpmaster Tomoya from scoring with the other available chicks.
Kyou and whatever her sister's name is for once, are not pathetic moeblobs, unlike Nagisa. They actually are quite sexy, but since Nagisa ruined the chances for a Kiss X Sis style situation, it's an opportunity much wasted. But for the most part her character is ruined due to Kyoto Animation's continuous fan pandering, and she gets reduced to a crying, pitiful excuse for a person. KyoAni teases us with a potentially hot storage room situation, but Tomoya would rather fantasize about Sunohara and his underage sister. Lame.
Kotomi could have been an interesting character, but her storyline is simply recycled from Mai's. The violin was admittingly a nice touch, however she didn't decapitate anyone with it. Kotomi rounds out the moetardation in the story. Stupid=cute huh? She's a genius; doesn't excuse your bad writing!
Fuko. They wasted several episodes on her. Ptfff, starfish. Arguably, the most annoying character in the series (who gave her so much ritalin anyways?, and that's saying a lot. Fuko is the frosting on the shit cake.
Tomoyo is the fighting cool character. However, she's quite the downgrade from Mai "Jesus" Kawasumi. She can't even resurrect the dead, so that's kinda pointless. The combos were funny the first time, but come on, repeating that gag is incredibly pointless. The anime just tried to convince us that she is awesome, but like everything in the show, it's incredibly forced. Oh yea, Sunohara btw; pointless gag?
And that's pretty much the 1st season. Pointless "moe" characters doing stupid shit nobody cares about. Nothing happens. Nobody even dies.
So some people claimed that After Story was better. It was, but that's not saying much. The first 8 episodes of After Story are useless filler. Nobody gives a shit about what Misae does with her cat. And Tomoya is a pedo, yea, big surprise. Yukine... who? Meh. How can anyone claim that After Story is the best anime ever when 1/3 of it is devoted to filler.
So the best part of the show happens... Nagisa finally kicks the bucket. However, the unusually cheery ending song might have been nice for me, but how does that promote sadness? Tragedy my ass, comedy is more like it.
Now even at this point, the show could be saved. Tomoya, after seeing Nagisa's death, goes crazy and turns into Darth Vader, then Ushio's grandfather Akio could have taught her the Jedi ways. Sadly, none of that happens, and we just get some more crying after Tomoya realizes what a shitty dad he's been. He also does not have sex with Kyou. Then some shit happens, and a acid trip brings everyone back. Happy ending. Really? You create a little bit of tragedy, and undo it anyways? AND IT ENDS ON FUKO. WTF? And a recap episode. Ok... Whatever shred of dignity this show has; it went out the window with those light orbs.
Clannad is a terrible series. It's not the worst series ever, but the worst part about it is the devoted moe KyoAni zombies claim it as the best. And after all this hype, all I got were stupid characters that experienced equally as stupid events. Trite and shallow; this is the type of crap anime is now. And you just have to thank KyoAni. Do not believe the hype; you'll regret it.
First season: 2/10
Second Season 3/10+ 2 for Nagisa Dying/-1 for deus ex= 4/10
Overall 3/10 BAD
Author
Ah, but in any case, we're all here now. 
