Clannad: After Story

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: CLANNAD〜AFTER STORY〜クラナドアフターストーリー

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 24

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 3, 2008 to Mar 27, 2009

Premiered: Fall 2008

Broadcast: Fridays at 01:59 (JST)

Producers: Pony Canyon, TBS, Rakuonsha, Animation Do

Licensors: Sentai Filmworks

Studios: Kyoto Animation

Source: Visual novel

Genres: Drama, Romance, Supernatural

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 8.93¹ (scored by 659,475 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #16²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #118

Members: 1,192,233

Favorites: 70,317

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8.93

Ranked #16Popularity #118Members 1,192,233

Fall 2008TVKyoto Animation

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Episodes: /24

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Synopsis

Tomoya Okazaki and Nagisa Furukawa have graduated from high school, and together, they experience the emotional rollercoaster of growing up. Unable to decide on a course for his future, Tomoya learns the value of a strong work ethic and discovers the strength of Nagisa's support. Through the couple's dedication and unity of purpose, they push forward to confront their personal problems, deepen their old relationships, and create new bonds.

Time also moves on in the Illusionary World. As the plains grow cold with the approach of winter, the Illusionary Girl and the Garbage Doll are presented with a difficult situation that reveals the World's true purpose.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

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Related Anime

Alternative version:	Clannad Movie
Prequel:	Clannad
Alternative setting:	Clannad: After Story - Mou Hitotsu no Sekai, Kyou-hen

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Okazaki, Tomoya

Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi
Japanese

Furukawa, Nagisa

Main

Nakahara, Mai
Japanese

Okazaki, Ushio

Main

Koorogi, Satomi
Japanese

Sakagami, Tomoyo

Supporting

Kuwashima, Houko
Japanese

Fujibayashi, Kyou

Supporting

Hirohashi, Ryou
Japanese

Ibuki, Fuuko

Supporting

Nonaka, Ai
Japanese

Furukawa, Akio

Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou
Japanese

Ichinose, Kotomi

Supporting

Noto, Mamiko
Japanese

Sunohara, Youhei

Supporting

Sakaguchi, Daisuke
Japanese

Furukawa, Sanae

Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Hatta, Youko

Producer

Nakamura, Shinichi

Producer

Ishihara, Tatsuya

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Tsuruoka, Youta

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

"Toki wo Kizamu Uta (時を刻む唄)" by Lia

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Ending Theme

	1: "TORCH" by Lia (eps 1-21)
	2: "Chiisana Te no Hira (小さなてのひら)" by riya (eps 22)

Reviews

Apr 4, 2024

Levi

Recommended

This is an anime you will probably watch more than once just to experience everything again.

Lets start with the story. It focuses on Nagisa and Tomoya's relationship primarily with their friends and family playing an important role of supporting them. The Characters are very well done as you see their interactions with Nagisa and Tomoya and also some get backstories that will have make you quite sad. The music is one of my favorites, my favorite song from the ost being "To the Same Heights". The music is essential and really adds so much more to the emotional scenes. The ending came to a satisfying ...

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Mar 11, 2024

lastnameEver

Mixed Feelings

Clannad Afterstory is the portrait of a life with a sense of scale and scope not often found in the anime medium. In its latter stages you feel a sense of history with its characters that accentuate and heighten their ordinary conversations, giving them a dimension beyond their original meaning. More than a story about family, it’s a story about the passage of time, executed with about as much intelligence and skill as you’d expect from a very talented toddler.

Right yeah, so Maeda watches the film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, yeah? And so he watches this film, yeah, and it’s about this guy, you know, ... and he marries this girl, yeah? But they’re kinda broke, but they have to run this bank, and there’s this big evil rich guy who’s trying to develop the town, he’s trying to get a monopoly on things, and our main guy’s trying to stop him. And he sacrifices all these things to stop the evil guy, yeah? But he gets sad doing it and gets to feeling that he wishes he was never born. So some fat fucker who’s an angel in disguise says “Alright, bet” and he creates a world and invites the guy to view this world, a world where he doesn’t exist. And this world is on some 1984 shit, you know? Major dystopia. His brother’s dead, his cat’s dead, sister’s dead, mother’s dead, father’s dead, Biff has married his mother and owns Trump Tower and is also the president of the United Nations of the World. Main guy goes “nah fuck this go back” and the fat guy goes “Alright, bet,” and he brings him back to the real world and they all go celebrate Christmas.

It’s a good movie, sentimental for sure, but its sentimentality is offset by the fact that the miserable things that the guy James Stewart is playing goes through still happen, and that their outcomes still exist in the fictional world they inhabit. It also displays the power of fiction, of how an alternate reality with no tangibility can have a tangible impact in the reality we inhabit. By viewing a world where he doesn’t exist, James Stewart is made to realize that his life is very valuable to the people around him. You could argue Hollywood peaked with this one. It is a perfect sort of story, for film especially, having the necessary simplicity required for mass appeal while still retaining the depth necessary to remain relevant past the fashions of its era.

Yeah, so this is relevant because Maeda saw this and tried to emulate it. Source: telepathy. Source two: there’s a Tomoyo Afterstory visual novel with the subtitle ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. And the plot bears many similarities to the film. Guy meets girl, marries girl, is happy for a time, encounters hardship, is met with tragedy, wishes that he never met girl, encounters further tragedy, renounces his wish, which reverses the tragedy, and they all live happily ever after. Not a one-for-one copy, but the same beats are hit. The way Maeda does it is out of wack obviously, because the tragedy that occurs happens in the story’s real world, and so when it is reversed, it reverses what caused the wish in the first place. This is why many people feel that the ending in Clannad Afterstory feels so cheap and hollow – it doesn’t build upon what has happened before. Instead, it overwrites it with a new reality, that’s happier, but also less meaningful than the reality that existed before.

The characters have regressed. Tomoya is arguably the most interesting person in Clannad’s story, giving the moeblob atmosphere a harder edge with his delinquent status and his troubles with his father, and so to see him here as this kind of goofy kid in the middle stages of the story and a punching bag in the latter half is a bit too one-note to be interesting. Same with Nagisa, she’s sweet and kind and kind and sweet and that’s all she really is. A puppy to be run over. Same with Ushio, but here it’s a non-issue. Ushio is a really good part of the story. Maeda here is able to achieve a perfect union between the way Tomoya feels towards her and the way the viewer feels, which results in many emotionally fulfilling moments. Her introduction is the starting point of a good stretch of episodes where the show is plainly, really good.

Outside of that stretch, the rest is dubious. The girl and the robot has got to rank as the single most superfluous narrative of all time. Each time the story transitions to its world, it kills off any and all momentum the main narrative has generated up until that point. They walk and talk and – whatever! None of it matters. To the very end, nothing that happens in that world matters in the slightest. It is the source of the fantasy elements in the story, but the viewer never sees its influence. It exists to give off a pretentious magical, ethereal air, an aesthetic of something profound, for something as hollow as bird-bones.

And as usual for Maeda, things take too long to get going anywhere. There is an exorbitant amount of time spent with Tomoya at his new job for instance, ad the first episode takes its entire runtime to reintroduce characters who aren’t even important to the main plot, and the two story arcs preceding the main story are entirely irrelevant to the main story. All this superfluous detail dilutes the quality and impact of the important story moments.

I’m not going to say some shit like ‘I wanted to like Clannad Afterstory’ as if it was Maeda’s job for me to like what he’s written, but it’s true that I liked the idea of liking Clannad Afterstory. I’m not going to say ‘admirable’ either, because that’s just patronizing, but I like the idea of a story like Clannad Afterstory. For people don’t like the ending of Afterstory for another reason: there are no consequences for any of its characters. Tomoya gets to live happily, with his beautifully kind wife, and his adorably loving daughter. Somehow, there’s a feeling that this isn’t fair, a feeling that Tomoya is a criminal who has hoodwinked the detective called Realism. There’s almost a sense of jealousy. ‘I don’t want this to exist, because I don’t want to acknowledge that such a thing could be real.’ Because if miracles were to exist, if magic really was real, then what value does your suffering hold? If all your pain could be reversed in the flick of a wrist, then what was the point of the pain to begin with? I think such thoughts are besides the point. Pain and suffering has meaning because a choice is made to imbue these moments with relevance. The meaning itself is not real, yet there is a choice made to believe that the meaning is real. The belief leads to a change in the real world. Through the belief in something un-real, something real occurs. That, in a way, is a kind of miracle, which is what the ending tries to capture, though obviously, the miracles that occur in real life are not as miraculous as Jun Maeda’s success.

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Mar 7, 2024

Ryan_the_Bread

Not Recommended

Funny

What is this? Is this anything?

Clannad: After Story is the anime equivalent to watching a YouTube video titled something like “Sad animal videos to make you cry - Part 6”. Is what I’m watching “sad”? In the most basic sense, yes. Does it in any way rely upon a particular connection to the characters/animals involved? No. It relies upon a sense of sympathy/empathy that most people just instinctually have. Clannad: After Story is, to borrow a phrase, all fart and no shit.

To accuse a piece of fiction of being “emotionally manipulative” feels strange; most, if not all, art falls under this umbrella. Of course any ...

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Hopefully this isn't annoying Ricdumb - Apr 10	3 replies	by Ricdumb »» Apr 20, 6:25 PM
Poll: Clannad ~After Story~ Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) angel999 - Oct 23, 2008	319 replies	by KingOfPneumos »» Apr 14, 10:59 PM
Poll: Clannad ~After Story~ Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Davison - Oct 16, 2008	260 replies	by KingOfPneumos »» Apr 8, 7:26 PM
Poll: Clannad ~After Story~ Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Kiseki - Oct 2, 2008	347 replies	by KingOfPneumos »» Apr 7, 6:44 PM
Poll: Clannad ~After Story~ Episode 22 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) patient_senses - Mar 12, 2009	1,168 replies	by Chilicon_valley »» Mar 10, 8:29 AM

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Clannad: After Story

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Characters & Voice Actors

Okazaki, Tomoya

Furukawa, Nagisa

Okazaki, Ushio

Sakagami, Tomoyo

Fujibayashi, Kyou

Ibuki, Fuuko

Furukawa, Akio

Ichinose, Kotomi

Sunohara, Youhei

Furukawa, Sanae

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Clannad: After Story

Alternative Titles

Information

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Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

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Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

Recent News

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