I've seen this show 3 times through and have balled my eyes out every single time. This show has the main character Tomoya who goes through so many struggles in life and starts out in Clannad as some punk who doesn't really care about life and has no goals. Then one day he meets Nagisa and slowly through her he begins a long process of changing himself while trying to help other people. He finds himself turning into a better person.
This all leads up to After Story and after story is where you really begin to fall in love with Tomoya and Nagisa. Their bond feels unbreakable to all the viewers and their experiences are guaranteed to change you. I think everytime i have watched this show I have learned something new about life.
It may sound strange but this show actually did change my life. It showed me that helping another person will only build you up. I have lived my life by that since. There is a reason this is the #3 ranked anime. This show is not some slice of life that will lose you interest. It is a show with realism in it that contains life lessons that have the ability to impact the hardest souls. Starting in clannad there is are metaphorical cut scenes about a robot that picks up every episode for a few minutes. This is never completely understood until the end of Clannad: After Story. It took me the second run through to fully grap the meaning but once you realize it, this metaphor is a theme of the entire show and if you let it this show may just impact your life.
