Great piece. Some hauntingly beautiful scenes. Probably deserves more and higher quality discussion than what I'm about to do below.
The most important thing to have in mind is that it's about one level of abstraction higher than the average object-level show. Not being cognizant of this may result in erroneously comparing this show to Future Boy Conan. I address some of the hypothetical gripes of this erroneous reviewer.
First, the shounen protagonist, and what he represents. This isn't really an adventure show, and the deliberately exaggerated shounen is more of a plot device that allows to reflect on other characters' development and choices, to propel plot and change of scenery/perspective. His excessive optimism is not even a moral point of reference intended by the the creators. It's not as if the show's core message is love and hope and friendship and Shu's the flagship for that, like in a real shounen show. Shu's a madman amongst madmen (also, think of his chimney climbing!), even if with a very different kind of madness.
Second, the character of Hamdo, and what he represents. One might complain that he's a caricature of evil. I say he's painfully realistic in the light of history; think of select emperors, monarchs or even modern African warlords. But more importantly, the evilness of Hamdo is beside the point. The true evil is Abelia's and others' willingness to put up with him, the infamous morality switch of Milgram that gets all too often switched off. It's Abelia's fear of doing moral reasoning on her own, and Tabool's thirst for power, and all that human nature that allows a clusterfuck such as Hellywood to persist.
Third, the character of Lala Ru, and what she represents. She could have destroyed Hellywood any time, but she didn't, until after many people have died. This is not what you've expect from a shounen heroine, but she isn't. She is resignation and despair embodied, a saviour who wouldn't bring salvation because all the good people are already dead. I think it's a cute inverse to Noah's deluge, and her gradual change of heart is a nice reflection and thematic wrap-up for all the development of the important "human" characters (most importantly, Nabuca, Sara and Abelia).
Fourth, narrative omissions and perceived inconsistencies. Lala Ru's origin? How did Hamdo come to power? Why don't they use the "time machine" more? Well, I don't really care.
Patema Inverted: awesome sci-fi idea with woefully generic execution. To all the people trying to make feature-length family adventure films: aping Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky is NOT mandatory, you can have any kind of protagonist or villain or narrative structure whatsoever.
I always missed two things from S;G, things that would justify the high reputation of the franchise, which is not fully justified the way it is.
First, science. There is no science in S;G at all; nor any effort to build consistent mechanics. The struggles we have are mostly of emotion, resolve and character instead of wits. Not that there isn't any great soft sci-fi there, but come on, this is the time travel sub-genre, here you just can't cut any slack on the proper technobabble. It's all weightless if can't follow why the characters do or do not have problems. It's not clear that some serious-seeming issue, like people disappearing from universes, crop up, or get solved, or whether it get solved or not, and in such a state of narrative murkiness we're left with a disconnected series of soliloquys, reminiscences, partings and reunions, all of apparently elevated emotions. Note that this problem is a lot more pronounced in the movie than in the series.
Second, characters. If we ain't got that much science, then we ought to focus on the people stuff. Except the characters are sort of weak. Mayuri is an outright moeblob. Okabe at least has two sides, one comedic and one dramatic but both are rather simplistic and overwrought, even if peppered up a bit by Miyano. Daru hasn't much more depth than Mayushi, Kurisu is a generic tsundere and also a standard fake genius girl who absolutely does not think like an actual genius girl.
Steins;Gate the series was pretty good, even despite the above two weak points. It had some gravitas, tension, some funniness, and of course more sheer mass to it thanks to the runtime. The movie in contrast is mostly a wishy-washy streak of vacuous sentimentalism.
I've the impression that the current Arise team is trying to emulate Kamiyama's style in a way reminiscent of how Kamiyama anno tried to emulate Oshii's style. Difference is, Kamiyama ended up being quite different to Oshii but good on his own, while Arise is stylistically quite similar to SAC but rather bland so far. I could say that Arise is more like the weakish Solid State Society in the sense that we get more technobabble and politics-babble, and less tension and fewer humane elements.
Also I cannot overlook the subpar cel-based animations in numerous non-CG scenes. I rarely see such off-model, weightless and stiff basic walking animations nowadays. The fight scenes were very good though, maybe better than their SAC counterparts and more illustrative of the cyborgs' augmented fighting abilities.
On to the audiovisual front. Naturally it's extremely hard to beat Yoko Kanno in BGM, and indeed it's not happening here. So far I also miss the varied, more realistic and colorful settings of SAC, those that didn't adhere so closely to the visual tropes of classic cyberpunk (as witnessed in Blade Runner or the first GiTS movie).
I haven't watched other Patlabors, so I had to pay extra attention to figure out the characters, but it wasn't that bothersome.
Great showcase of the Oshii-style that I loved in Angel's Egg and Ghost in the Shell. Carefully constructed shots, philoso-soliloquoys, and that steady wading through a heavy, thick, molasses-like atmosphere. The complicated political-bureaucratic backdrop is highly reminiscent of GiTS. I really liked how characters got very effectively established in just a handful of brief scenes, even though this is not a character-heavy movie; Gotoh in particular was really fun.
I am reminded of Chomsky's depressing and (semi-justifiedly) paranoid musings on cold-war era power games. Nowadays I tend to be plain bored by moralistic and philosophic ruminations in media; you just can't expect that insights would be found in fiction of all places, and I'm not even saying that Patlabor 2 has novel insights, but it really is a great experience and provides some food for thought.
From 1993's perspective it certainly appears surprising that we haven't seen more of those "surreal wars" and "unjust peaces" (yep, those few wars that we had in the developed world aren't weird enough for our purposes here. And I haven't even mentioned Stanislaw Lem's visions of horrifyingly surreal wars in some of his novels). A Chomskian present demands a cyberpunk future with blue-orange morality and corporations and governments flailing around in schizophrenic fits. But in reality people seem to hate moral ambiguity so much that they force the world into a comprehensible mold. We'd rather not work for evil corporations and evil governments, and we'd rather believe in a single moral standard above organizational and personal interests, or else we like to profess such morality or self-deceive into believing in such a morality. Which is actually an extremely good development.
Pleasant animetic experience overall, though I would have liked more juice. The first 2-3 episodes started off really well, enchanting atmosphere, cross-cultural mish-mash charm, amazing voice performance by Kobayashi Yuu and all. An attention to detail and some tasty humor (coming to mind: Kureha and Kanata staring at the phone with nervous anticipation).
Note that I don't mind moe or SoL at all. In fact, I recall back in the day SnW got some flak for using a character style heavily associated with the institute of moeblobbery, but as time marches on people would forget about the minutiae of then-contemporary anime and look at the designs with fresh eyes. As such a person (and someone who never watched K-On) I liked the character designs a lot. They are aesthetic, they are expressive, they are reasonably proportioned, and in SnW also well animated. Compare and contrast the cockroaches bred at Key. I also think they're even better and more organic than the current designs at KyoAni (Kyoukai no Kanata, Free!, Hyouka, etc...).
On to the missing juice. The characters aren't very interesting, with the exception of Rio, and she doesn't get all that much exposition either. As for the themes, we've got quite a few schmaltzy pep speeches about commonly valued human values. I need at least some spin on those, or I need them to be expressed less through talk and more cinematically. I don't necessarily believe in "show, don't tell" - there is nothing inherently wrong with telling - it's just that conventional slightly boring messages should be somehow peppered up.
The main issue here is that at this point I am rather bored by eschatological moralistic plays. Something makes me want to punch those know-it-all psychoanalyzing spirit-guides in the face. Especially that little annoying bitch kid in this particular movie.
I just can"t seem to get any kick out of the life-affirming lessons present in the movie. It is the sort of thing I could theoretically enjoy once in a while but here I couldn't at all. I'd rather get my life lessons from fiction about life rather than from fiction about life lessons.
I also disliked the voice acting. It lacks depth and nuance and dynamic. The stupid spirit-guide boy especially lacks dynamic, being restricted to same vaguely petulant tone throughout. You could say the acting here is intentionally naive and simple in a Miyazaki-esque way; you could say that people out there in the real world are mostly bitchy and asshole-ish in a primitive, heavy-handed way. I can see how this could be a valid approach but it's not working in Colorful, It's fucking boring compared to e. g. the portrayal of Ikari Shinji in Evangelion (a character similar to Makoto here in several ways).
Death Billiards: the main issue here is that at this point I am rather bored by eschatological moralistic plays. Trains to hell, bridges to heaven, making peace with death or life, ghostly guides psychoanalyzing souls in limbo, believing you're dead, or, alive (correctly or incorrectly) - this sort of thing.
It sort of invites a succinct, cheap and schmaltzy take on the more profound aspects of our lives. The biggest problem though is the morally repulsive (to me, at least) deathism inherent in pretty much all afterlife narratives. It sort of dirties and sours the whole thing in which it's embedded, making me less perceptive of other potentially occurring interesting ideas.
I though a bit about the point of Death Billiards. I couldn't figure it out; It's most likely just another variation on the standard crappy deathly wisdom. The uncertainty of the final verdict could give me a pause and make me think of alternative interpretations, but honestly I don't care that much.
Zetsubou sensei: well, what can we actually get out of a couple of cours of narratively disjointed abstract satirical gag snippets? We could have gotten more than what we actually got. Quite a few of the "topics" deliver a real punch, gnawing at real-life hypocrisies and vices, and I - as someone who takes after Gendo in not being particulary "adept at life" - personally took a few hits. Which is good, I guess. But a lot of topics were just banal or uninteresting. I would have welcomed a lot more Pythonesque absurdism; it would fit well with the stream-of-consciousness style. For some reason the Japanese seem to be unable to grasp the British school of humor, though note that a fair chunk of the world shares that trait.
Shinbo and Shaft and the acting crew did a good job. Kamiya hiroshi is a master of making those gasps and shrieks and spirited speeches. Nonaka Ai/Kafuka also stand out, Kafuka being the generally funniest character out of them all because of the black humor inherent in her overly cheery rants and the little bits of unexpected non-sequiturs or strange imagery there. Marina Inoue also delivers. They animators were quite, well, "effective" in making do with a limited budget, mostly in a good way. I grew a bit tired of the repetitive cut patterns and audio cues after a while though.
Psycho-Pass: weak, weak, weak. Butch Gen has to try a LOT harder. There's nothing new and particularly interesting here, it has been done to death in sci-fi a million times and much better. The ending was decent, and maybe the only part where some beneficial Urobuchi idiosyncrasy could be detected. 6/10.
Spice & Wolf 15 is again delightful; maybe slightly weaker than the previous volume but still pretty solid. I'm happy to see that the weak and digression-like vol 13 was just a one-off stumbling.
Shin Sekai Yori: suddenly production quality shot up like a rocket in the last episode, which was also awesome in general and closed down the series really nicely. Overall SSY is great and stand unique amongst anime as an outstanding social science fiction. It also pulls off a very difficult feat: it avoids degenerating to both utopia and dystopia. Instead it scrutinizes ideas and tropes about social justice in a balanced and non-trivial way.
This would be a solid 9/10 series if not for the unfortunate budget constraints that sadly did subtract from the experience at times. I'll settle for a strong 8. Make no mistake, that counts as unambiguous praise and recommendation in my book.
Watched Clannad After Story. It should be obvious that at its best Clannad AS is on a completely different level than Clannad. In the "true" AS there was plenty of good structure, character development, poignancy, and an extremely commendable total disposal of anything that is even remotely wish fulfillment. The deaths touched me and angered me, meaning that I was wishing rather strongly that someone comes and repairs the fundamental defects in this goddamned world already.
There are still many flaws though. Here's how Clannad could've been better:
- Get rid of the fantastic elements. All of them. Keep Imaginary World purely on a symbolic level, because otherwise it was a nice contribution to the mood.
- Get rid of Fuko arc and overhaul the entire first season; make it more realistic from the get go. Reduce the number of harem girls by about two. Spread out the screentime to the remaining girls more evenly instead of the stiff "modular" structure.
- Develop Sunohara with more care from the start; it's boring to watch him as a vapid comic relief for dozens of episodes.
- Ditch the starting arcs of After Story.
- Ditch the aspulled AS ending. Make the sacrifices hurt. Keep Ushio alive and sick, but at worst only Nagisa-grade sick, so that there is still plenty of hope for a happy future.
I wish there was a truly genuinely good gut-wrenching realistic drama out there written and directed on a consistently pro level. Maybe Anno could do it at a later stage when he stylistically calmed down and stopped fucking around making films whose existence is not fully justified, instead focusing on the high quality and intelligent DRAMA direction and cinematography that he often exhibited in NGE and KareKano.
First, the less flattering parts.There is much dating-sim baggage here; FIVE girls are out to get our protagonist, and their great number also means that the non-primary girls will be relatively undercharacterized and not particularly significant in the overall picture. The most interesting is the development of the primary pair, and the other arcs come across as digressions; especially in Fuko's case, who is literally and totally forgotten after her arc ends, providing little continuity or lasting development (also, why do we have Fuko as a random fantastic element in an otherwise realistic anime, why? I dont even). Poor Kotomi also fades into insignificance after her arc ends.
I must mention Anno-KareKano here, because it is by the far the best high-school romance I know. In a nutshell, KK eclipses Clannad in every compartment, be it characterization, dialogue, humor, visuals or music (even though as we all know KK ends painfully abruptly halfway). I don't intend to sound overly harsh, but compared to KK this anime often felt a bit retarded.
I also dislike the identical pan-faced character designs of Key, although by the end I've gotten used to it and there were also bouts of impressive facial dynamics.
On a different note, the most important thing in a proper sappy anime is its ability to pull at our hearstrings. Clannad did suceed in that, eventually, although it took about half of the runtime. Also, a proper romance must absolutely evoke that fuzzy warm saccharine feeling in one's stomach, and Clannad managed to do that too, around the end. So Clannad is definitely a success as a sappy romance. It's fortunate too that Clannad is not TOO obnoxiously dating-sim; for instance there is close to no fanservice. I would also disagree with a certain reviewer who posited that Clannad's female cast is a personality-free group of mobile sex-dolls fully defined by their attraction to Okazaki. I admit the harem stuff slightly creeps me out, but I have to praise Clannad for not actually pandering much to it; there isn't any romantic development at all except with Nagisa really, and that too is sort of understated.
Clannad intentionally eschews sexuality and even a lot of potential romance, favoring emotional storytelling instead in general, which might make it stand out in the dating sim genre, but a lot more sophistication and finesse is needed for carving out a place amongst the very best of anime.
All Comments (41) Comments
Great piece. Some hauntingly beautiful scenes. Probably deserves more and higher quality discussion than what I'm about to do below.
The most important thing to have in mind is that it's about one level of abstraction higher than the average object-level show. Not being cognizant of this may result in erroneously comparing this show to Future Boy Conan. I address some of the hypothetical gripes of this erroneous reviewer.
First, the shounen protagonist, and what he represents. This isn't really an adventure show, and the deliberately exaggerated shounen is more of a plot device that allows to reflect on other characters' development and choices, to propel plot and change of scenery/perspective. His excessive optimism is not even a moral point of reference intended by the the creators. It's not as if the show's core message is love and hope and friendship and Shu's the flagship for that, like in a real shounen show. Shu's a madman amongst madmen (also, think of his chimney climbing!), even if with a very different kind of madness.
Second, the character of Hamdo, and what he represents. One might complain that he's a caricature of evil. I say he's painfully realistic in the light of history; think of select emperors, monarchs or even modern African warlords. But more importantly, the evilness of Hamdo is beside the point. The true evil is Abelia's and others' willingness to put up with him, the infamous morality switch of Milgram that gets all too often switched off. It's Abelia's fear of doing moral reasoning on her own, and Tabool's thirst for power, and all that human nature that allows a clusterfuck such as Hellywood to persist.
Third, the character of Lala Ru, and what she represents. She could have destroyed Hellywood any time, but she didn't, until after many people have died. This is not what you've expect from a shounen heroine, but she isn't. She is resignation and despair embodied, a saviour who wouldn't bring salvation because all the good people are already dead. I think it's a cute inverse to Noah's deluge, and her gradual change of heart is a nice reflection and thematic wrap-up for all the development of the important "human" characters (most importantly, Nabuca, Sara and Abelia).
Fourth, narrative omissions and perceived inconsistencies. Lala Ru's origin? How did Hamdo come to power? Why don't they use the "time machine" more? Well, I don't really care.
9/10
Honestly, I wasn't engaged at all by this movie.
I always missed two things from S;G, things that would justify the high reputation of the franchise, which is not fully justified the way it is.
First, science. There is no science in S;G at all; nor any effort to build consistent mechanics. The struggles we have are mostly of emotion, resolve and character instead of wits. Not that there isn't any great soft sci-fi there, but come on, this is the time travel sub-genre, here you just can't cut any slack on the proper technobabble. It's all weightless if can't follow why the characters do or do not have problems. It's not clear that some serious-seeming issue, like people disappearing from universes, crop up, or get solved, or whether it get solved or not, and in such a state of narrative murkiness we're left with a disconnected series of soliloquys, reminiscences, partings and reunions, all of apparently elevated emotions. Note that this problem is a lot more pronounced in the movie than in the series.
Second, characters. If we ain't got that much science, then we ought to focus on the people stuff. Except the characters are sort of weak. Mayuri is an outright moeblob. Okabe at least has two sides, one comedic and one dramatic but both are rather simplistic and overwrought, even if peppered up a bit by Miyano. Daru hasn't much more depth than Mayushi, Kurisu is a generic tsundere and also a standard fake genius girl who absolutely does not think like an actual genius girl.
Steins;Gate the series was pretty good, even despite the above two weak points. It had some gravitas, tension, some funniness, and of course more sheer mass to it thanks to the runtime. The movie in contrast is mostly a wishy-washy streak of vacuous sentimentalism.
I've the impression that the current Arise team is trying to emulate Kamiyama's style in a way reminiscent of how Kamiyama anno tried to emulate Oshii's style. Difference is, Kamiyama ended up being quite different to Oshii but good on his own, while Arise is stylistically quite similar to SAC but rather bland so far. I could say that Arise is more like the weakish Solid State Society in the sense that we get more technobabble and politics-babble, and less tension and fewer humane elements.
Also I cannot overlook the subpar cel-based animations in numerous non-CG scenes. I rarely see such off-model, weightless and stiff basic walking animations nowadays. The fight scenes were very good though, maybe better than their SAC counterparts and more illustrative of the cyborgs' augmented fighting abilities.
On to the audiovisual front. Naturally it's extremely hard to beat Yoko Kanno in BGM, and indeed it's not happening here. So far I also miss the varied, more realistic and colorful settings of SAC, those that didn't adhere so closely to the visual tropes of classic cyberpunk (as witnessed in Blade Runner or the first GiTS movie).
Holy shit that was awesome.
I haven't watched other Patlabors, so I had to pay extra attention to figure out the characters, but it wasn't that bothersome.
Great showcase of the Oshii-style that I loved in Angel's Egg and Ghost in the Shell. Carefully constructed shots, philoso-soliloquoys, and that steady wading through a heavy, thick, molasses-like atmosphere. The complicated political-bureaucratic backdrop is highly reminiscent of GiTS. I really liked how characters got very effectively established in just a handful of brief scenes, even though this is not a character-heavy movie; Gotoh in particular was really fun.
I am reminded of Chomsky's depressing and (semi-justifiedly) paranoid musings on cold-war era power games. Nowadays I tend to be plain bored by moralistic and philosophic ruminations in media; you just can't expect that insights would be found in fiction of all places, and I'm not even saying that Patlabor 2 has novel insights, but it really is a great experience and provides some food for thought.
From 1993's perspective it certainly appears surprising that we haven't seen more of those "surreal wars" and "unjust peaces" (yep, those few wars that we had in the developed world aren't weird enough for our purposes here. And I haven't even mentioned Stanislaw Lem's visions of horrifyingly surreal wars in some of his novels). A Chomskian present demands a cyberpunk future with blue-orange morality and corporations and governments flailing around in schizophrenic fits. But in reality people seem to hate moral ambiguity so much that they force the world into a comprehensible mold. We'd rather not work for evil corporations and evil governments, and we'd rather believe in a single moral standard above organizational and personal interests, or else we like to profess such morality or self-deceive into believing in such a morality. Which is actually an extremely good development.
Pleasant animetic experience overall, though I would have liked more juice. The first 2-3 episodes started off really well, enchanting atmosphere, cross-cultural mish-mash charm, amazing voice performance by Kobayashi Yuu and all. An attention to detail and some tasty humor (coming to mind: Kureha and Kanata staring at the phone with nervous anticipation).
Note that I don't mind moe or SoL at all. In fact, I recall back in the day SnW got some flak for using a character style heavily associated with the institute of moeblobbery, but as time marches on people would forget about the minutiae of then-contemporary anime and look at the designs with fresh eyes. As such a person (and someone who never watched K-On) I liked the character designs a lot. They are aesthetic, they are expressive, they are reasonably proportioned, and in SnW also well animated. Compare and contrast the cockroaches bred at Key. I also think they're even better and more organic than the current designs at KyoAni (Kyoukai no Kanata, Free!, Hyouka, etc...).
On to the missing juice. The characters aren't very interesting, with the exception of Rio, and she doesn't get all that much exposition either. As for the themes, we've got quite a few schmaltzy pep speeches about commonly valued human values. I need at least some spin on those, or I need them to be expressed less through talk and more cinematically. I don't necessarily believe in "show, don't tell" - there is nothing inherently wrong with telling - it's just that conventional slightly boring messages should be somehow peppered up.
The main issue here is that at this point I am rather bored by eschatological moralistic plays. Something makes me want to punch those know-it-all psychoanalyzing spirit-guides in the face. Especially that little annoying bitch kid in this particular movie.
I just can"t seem to get any kick out of the life-affirming lessons present in the movie. It is the sort of thing I could theoretically enjoy once in a while but here I couldn't at all. I'd rather get my life lessons from fiction about life rather than from fiction about life lessons.
I also disliked the voice acting. It lacks depth and nuance and dynamic. The stupid spirit-guide boy especially lacks dynamic, being restricted to same vaguely petulant tone throughout. You could say the acting here is intentionally naive and simple in a Miyazaki-esque way; you could say that people out there in the real world are mostly bitchy and asshole-ish in a primitive, heavy-handed way. I can see how this could be a valid approach but it's not working in Colorful, It's fucking boring compared to e. g. the portrayal of Ikari Shinji in Evangelion (a character similar to Makoto here in several ways).
It sort of invites a succinct, cheap and schmaltzy take on the more profound aspects of our lives. The biggest problem though is the morally repulsive (to me, at least) deathism inherent in pretty much all afterlife narratives. It sort of dirties and sours the whole thing in which it's embedded, making me less perceptive of other potentially occurring interesting ideas.
I though a bit about the point of Death Billiards. I couldn't figure it out; It's most likely just another variation on the standard crappy deathly wisdom. The uncertainty of the final verdict could give me a pause and make me think of alternative interpretations, but honestly I don't care that much.
Shinbo and Shaft and the acting crew did a good job. Kamiya hiroshi is a master of making those gasps and shrieks and spirited speeches. Nonaka Ai/Kafuka also stand out, Kafuka being the generally funniest character out of them all because of the black humor inherent in her overly cheery rants and the little bits of unexpected non-sequiturs or strange imagery there. Marina Inoue also delivers. They animators were quite, well, "effective" in making do with a limited budget, mostly in a good way. I grew a bit tired of the repetitive cut patterns and audio cues after a while though.
This would be a solid 9/10 series if not for the unfortunate budget constraints that sadly did subtract from the experience at times. I'll settle for a strong 8. Make no mistake, that counts as unambiguous praise and recommendation in my book.
There are still many flaws though. Here's how Clannad could've been better:
- Get rid of the fantastic elements. All of them. Keep Imaginary World purely on a symbolic level, because otherwise it was a nice contribution to the mood.
- Get rid of Fuko arc and overhaul the entire first season; make it more realistic from the get go. Reduce the number of harem girls by about two. Spread out the screentime to the remaining girls more evenly instead of the stiff "modular" structure.
- Develop Sunohara with more care from the start; it's boring to watch him as a vapid comic relief for dozens of episodes.
- Ditch the starting arcs of After Story.
- Ditch the aspulled AS ending. Make the sacrifices hurt. Keep Ushio alive and sick, but at worst only Nagisa-grade sick, so that there is still plenty of hope for a happy future.
I wish there was a truly genuinely good gut-wrenching realistic drama out there written and directed on a consistently pro level. Maybe Anno could do it at a later stage when he stylistically calmed down and stopped fucking around making films whose existence is not fully justified, instead focusing on the high quality and intelligent DRAMA direction and cinematography that he often exhibited in NGE and KareKano.
First, the less flattering parts.There is much dating-sim baggage here; FIVE girls are out to get our protagonist, and their great number also means that the non-primary girls will be relatively undercharacterized and not particularly significant in the overall picture. The most interesting is the development of the primary pair, and the other arcs come across as digressions; especially in Fuko's case, who is literally and totally forgotten after her arc ends, providing little continuity or lasting development (also, why do we have Fuko as a random fantastic element in an otherwise realistic anime, why? I dont even). Poor Kotomi also fades into insignificance after her arc ends.
I must mention Anno-KareKano here, because it is by the far the best high-school romance I know. In a nutshell, KK eclipses Clannad in every compartment, be it characterization, dialogue, humor, visuals or music (even though as we all know KK ends painfully abruptly halfway). I don't intend to sound overly harsh, but compared to KK this anime often felt a bit retarded.
I also dislike the identical pan-faced character designs of Key, although by the end I've gotten used to it and there were also bouts of impressive facial dynamics.
On a different note, the most important thing in a proper sappy anime is its ability to pull at our hearstrings. Clannad did suceed in that, eventually, although it took about half of the runtime. Also, a proper romance must absolutely evoke that fuzzy warm saccharine feeling in one's stomach, and Clannad managed to do that too, around the end. So Clannad is definitely a success as a sappy romance. It's fortunate too that Clannad is not TOO obnoxiously dating-sim; for instance there is close to no fanservice. I would also disagree with a certain reviewer who posited that Clannad's female cast is a personality-free group of mobile sex-dolls fully defined by their attraction to Okazaki. I admit the harem stuff slightly creeps me out, but I have to praise Clannad for not actually pandering much to it; there isn't any romantic development at all except with Nagisa really, and that too is sort of understated.
Clannad intentionally eschews sexuality and even a lot of potential romance, favoring emotional storytelling instead in general, which might make it stand out in the dating sim genre, but a lot more sophistication and finesse is needed for carving out a place amongst the very best of anime.