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"What is this gigantic piece of crap?" - Albert Einstein, 1955

Alright, VN reader here so I might be slightly biased, but just what is this crap? This is hands down the worst adaptation of a novel ever made, tying with Fate that, what a coincidence, shares the same studio. Today I'm here to explain you guys why this is one of the greatest mistakes of humanity.

*Minor spoilers in the thorough review, if you don't want any just skip to the TL:DR*

Story: Higurashi's VN story is nearly masterpiece level. The story itself once you unravel it isn't that mindfuck, but for how it is told, how ... the suspense is managed, how each chapter is always more intriguing, more confusing and more cum-worthy, it makes your mind travel and travel through spaces to just even slightly understand what the fuck is going on. But it isn't because the story is trashly depicted, quite the opposite. Chapter by chapter new informations are thrown at you, most of the time pretty surreptitiously, and you feel like you're slowly reaching out to the truth (no persona 4 pun intended), but right when you think you got this BOOM the masterfully crafted ending of the chapter strikes. It strikes you, your self esteem, your brain and most importantly all your hypothesis, making them crumble one by one. Really satisfying nonetheless.

But what does the anime do instead? It literally just takes one episode, so one fourth of each chapter since it's average 4-5 episodes, to just throw at you lame jokes that ain't funny for shit, then a little bit of messy story points and boom the ending, which leaves you with a WTF that is more like a "WTF is this shit am I supposed to be surprised? if so yes I'm surprised somebody would really fund an adaptation of this crap", and it gives the brilliant novel a bad reputation too. But the rushed nature of it ain't really to blame, you know, it's a 2 million words novel and the most of it is either the story teller or the thoughts of Keiichi/the other characters, so what did you expect? That's not the problem. The problem is they picked some of the thousands of plot points and put them one after another trying to connect them neatly. Failing, obviously, since they made a disaster. Sometimes they would just put fading black transitions between one point and another, destroying every sense of narrative. One wise man I don't remember the name of once said on reddit "it's literally just some plot point thrown at you" and that's the most accurate shit ever. It looks like a stupid summary made by stupid people. It's as if I explained it to my friend: "so there's this guy in this city and one day they all get crazy and he smashes them with a baseball bat then claws his throat out end", he would reply 100% "sounds like shit bro", and he would be damn right. So yeah all of this to say the story telling is a joke.

Sound: Nothing to say here, that's the only thing they didn't adapt so it's pretty godly, even though it wasn't much used for what I recall.

Art: I like this art style. I think it pretty much suits many aspects of higurashi, even though they usually are soo messed up, still decent

Characters: aaah good ol' characters. Keiichi, one of the most beautiful characters of all time, persecution complex'ed, that struggles everyday with mistrust, points down every single mistake of his friends, but when he is put before his sins breaks down. The suffering he deals with, the desperation he sinks into. What can a person do after sinning? Can a person ever atone for his errors? Are errors even supposed to be atoned for? What right do I have to live after I sinned? All these deep topics seen from a 15 years old boy pov, masterfully narrated, which precede one of the greatest growing in fiction history. Rika, emotionally wrecked after 100 years of desperation, eventually loses hope, trapped in a little girl's body, unable to do shit. Frustrated from not even being able to live a normal life, seeks help from his beloved friends that seemingly don't understand her and inevitably follow the route of destruction every single time. All this is the perfect example of desperation leading to depression, but an existential one, from which Keiichi saves her, because "miracles can't happen if they don't all work togheter", simply wonderful. Let's see how studio deen adapted did to this masterpiece element of the story: "lmao i'm repeating it a lot but now keiichi stopped rena and i helped wow my depression is over", very cool Deen.

So, without wasting other words, the characters are jokes. Still a tiny bit decent, though.

Enjoyment: My Anime List is pretty accurate on this, since 1 voices "Pathetic". Yeah, this was pathetic all right.

Overall: once again Ryukishi's genius shines bright, since the core story carries this insult of an adaptation right to the bearable side. Still, not a second passed without me thinking I was wasting time in the worst way possible, but I somehow made it. Maybe for the characters, maybe because I just find it shitty since I'm biased and it's not as crappy as it felt. Still, I personally would never recommend it to anyone, not even my worst enemy.

TL;DR: this adaptation was a mistake. You can waste your time in many less frustrating ways.

P.S: sorry for some potential harsh writing errors, I'm Italian, still I hope this review isn't as faulted as this adaptation

I like Clannad, and I absolutely love Tomoyo. That's why I madly loved the Tomoyo Route OVA too, despite it being reaaaally short, then what went wrong with this Tomoyo After manga adaptation? In short, everything. I repeat, I love Tomoyo After with all my heart, nonetheless I really think this adaptation was a mistake.

Art: when I started reading it I thought it was a joke. A really bad joke. While Tomoyo is let's say acceptable, what the fuck is wrong with Tomoya?! I think the mangaka was on drugs when he drew him, because I don't think anybody would make it to draw ... a character so different from its real concept, not even if they tried. Same goes for the other characters, even though they are still not that bad.

Characters: Despite the short length of the manga, it still managed to
characterize Tomoyo and Tomoya quite a bit, STILL the other characters just look like a parody of themselves, and Takafumi wasn't even introduced! He appears in like 3 panels and his face isn't even entirely shown, but I think it's better off like this, at least he didn't ruin even his awesome character design.

Story: Tomoyo After strong point, despite it being a slice of life, is its story. It is brilliant, perfectly paced and it makes you cry like a baby even when you only think back about it. In this manga though the story is inexistent, it's literally just Tomoya punching 4 guys, an abandoned random little girl showing up just to get taken back to her sick mom that regretted abandoning her and Tomoya getting hit by a car and losing his memory to then die 3 years later after telling Tomoyo to be strong. Now, the story is obviously really different from the visual novel but it's normal, it's too long to get compressed in 160 pages. Though there's one part of the story, the ending, that is really similiar in both the novel and the manga. If it wasn't for it to be plain crap in the manga. What made the visual novel ending so good was the mood of it. Tomoya losing his memories isn't some simple accident, it's a tragedy. Tomoyo throws his life out of the window just to help Tomoya regain his memories even knowing it's impossible, because for her a life without him just isn't conceivable, that's why she is forced to get strong by herself in these 3 years and walk on. This is beautifully shown in the novel, but in the manga it just doesn't work. It just skips to 3 years later where Tomoya just tells her to get stronger and dies, with a simple as heck goodbye, while his goodbye in the novel is pure art. And even the flashbacks are terrible. When Tomoyo finds out Tomoya lost his memories she just gets angry and takes Tomoya for a walk to make him regain his memories, but for how it's shown it almost looks like it should be a comical scene, while there's nothing to laugh about. Tomoyo is deeper than that, when she finds out about Tomoya she is completely broken, while in the manga she almost takes it as a joke. It just looks stupid. Not to talk about the very end, where Kanako just doesn't give a fuck about Tomoya's death, which hurts me since she has a beautiful relationship with him and she even has a breakdown in the novel. Even the fact that Tomoyo just keeps on living his old life instead of completely changing it like in the novel since she found another reason to live is just stupid. This adaptation was a complete mess.

TL;DR: In comparison with the novel this adaptation is a little shit, but even taken alone it still pretty much sucks. As a big fan, I'm disappointed by this manga and I refuse to consider it part of the Clannad franchise, because it has nothing to do with it.