You've probably heard a lot about Clannad by now. The show is relatively famous, and is consistently held up as a masterpiece of emotional manipulation and dramatic storytelling. It's difficult to break down Clannad into subcategories of story, art, sound etc. because the show's strongest points are when it weaves these together to create a sum greater than the parts. We'll start with a breakdown though, and then we'll get into the more complex details.
Story: 8/10
The problem with the Clannad story is that it is wildly inconsistent. At times, it proves itself to be absolutely brilliant. It's capable of building upon itself in creative ways, making amazing use of well-established characters and culminating in some of the most powerful scenes I have ever seen. The drawback is that when it's not being incredible, it's usually fairly weak. Clannad likes to deviate on side-stories completely unrelated to the main plot in which it quickly develops characters that are never seen again. When you adapt a visual novel into a show, you have to understand that the two operate differently. In attempting to inject as many characters and elements from the visual novel as it can, Clannad clogs up its episodes with bland deviations from the main plot. In addition, the entire first season of the show is fairly mediocre. Asides from a few essential moments of development for the main protagonists it is just introducing us to love interest after love interest, all of who become completely redundant by the end of the first season and are barely ever seen again. The whole first season could easily have been condensed to six or seven episodes and tacked on to the beginning of Afterstory in place of the irrelevant side stories present there.
Art: 5/10
The art was quite frankly jarring. For a show that was trying to build up your attachment to its characters by making them as human as possible, the moe eyes-the-size-of-your-face style was completely out of place. There was also too much visual novel conversation, with people standing statically right in front of each other. Clannad often lacked in the body language or movement of its already alien-looking characters that it really could have used. This is actually surprising, considering that Kyoto Animation has been known to absolutely excel in body language and small character movements, with shows like Haruhi Suzumiya or Hyouka being visually transcendent. I will confess though, the show's use of lighting was oftentimes very impressive, and there are a series of scenes between a young girl and a robot scattered throughout both seasons that are animated in somewhat different style and are completely gorgeous.
Sound: 9/10
The music in Clannad and Afterstory is pretty astounding. All of it is absolutely essential to setting the tone of the story, and most of the tracks do an incredible job of slowly establishing feeling behind themselves regardless of what is happening in the show. I feel the need to give special mention of the show's use of a single song, however (which has several variations throughout the show). Dango Daikozuku rocked the freakin' day. Not only did it fit the show's tone perfectly throughout, its introduction as a part of the plot in the first season gave it a tangible meaning and connection to the characters. In the second season, when it appeared constantly in the form of the track 'Nagisa' the effect was absolutely devastating. It is an amazing testimony to how well a song can be used in a show to create emotional impact by lending meaning to the music past just how it sounds. On the flip side though, I would like to make special mention of how absolutely disastrous the show's second ending theme was. Late into the second season it was capable of single-handedly ruining the emotion and tension of the end of the episode with its aggresive, loud and peppy howl. I became accustomed to pausing the show the instant the episode ended to prevent what I had just experienced from being ruined by that musical incarnation of Satan.
Character: 6/10
Just like most of the show, Clannad's characters are wildly inconsistent. The two main protagonists are a girl named Nagisa and a guy named Tomoya, and the difference in quality between them is extremely drastic. Tomoya is an extremely solid character: he suffers from a bit of VN protagonist syndrome in the side arcs, but his development is impressive and he is certainly not without human flaws. Tomoya's struggle to adjust to the working world and come to terms with his future, along with his conflict with his father and his own fear of ending up just like him are extremely compelling. He tries to be kind, but he's sometimes selfish and is bad at putting things in perspective. One could make the argument that Clannad is about Tomoya's journey and what he learns about life in the process. On the other hand, you have Nagisa. Nagisa is a saint. She is quiet, polite, caring, compassionate, selfless, and essentially flawless. It's impossible to connect or relate with Nagisa: she's just too unbelievably perfect. The show wants you to care about her, so they have her be the nicest little angel, but instead this makes her unrealistic and bland. Nagisa's "struggle" is to stop being shy, but she hardly even has to try as people are constantly lining up to get closer to her. As for the other characters, there is once again a drastic divide: characters like Akio and Ushio are absolutely stellar: some of the best father and child characters I've ever seen, but others such as Fuko, Kyo and her sister, Sunohara and most of the other side characters hog enormous amounts of screentime and are essentially bland archetypes.
Enjoyment: 9/10
Clannad made me cry. By the end of the first season I was openly mocking it, but by the end of the second I was most certainly in tears. It isn't often that a show can do that. It's extremely rare, actually; Clannad is one of three shows to date I have actually shed a tear over. If a show can make me cry, I will enjoy it. In addition this, Clannad is oftentimes seriously funny. It has some solid jokes that really help the story to flow along and to keep you engaged. It's humor always came at just the right times and it was original enough that it kept me laughing.
Overall: 7/10
This is a rating for the series as the whole. If I were to break it down by season, I would give the first season a 4/10 and the second season a 9/10. I don't really think it's fair to judge Afterstory on its own merits though, since watching the first season is essentially a requirement to get much out of it and therefore is part of the package. I definitely enjoyed the show: I would recommend it to anyone with a taste for drama or slice-of life, and if you are looking for something that will make you emotional this is pretty much the only show I could tell you to watch.
Now, I want to look at what frustrates me most about Clannad and its Afterstory.
It could have been a LOT better, and it could've been so with relative ease.
The first and most uncontested move would be to change that damn second ending. Switch it with the first one, replace it with something gentler, I don't care. It's got to go.
The second move would be to better explain the show's ending. Though it does make sense upon thought, the way it is initially presented is unnecessarily convoluted and confusing and seriously detracts from the experience. I watched my roommate finish the show, and the first thing he said was "I get what just happened, but HOW did it just happen?" This shouldn't be the case.
The third and slightly more difficult move would be to fix Nagisa's character. Whilst there are plenty of one-dimensional side characters, these are a lot easier to ignore if they are not being focused on as much. Nagisa, however, is an essential part of the story and in order for it to really work to its full potential should be a lot more human. There's no need to stick to the VN here because this ISN'T a visual novel, it's an anime, and it fundamentally operates differently. Giving Nagisa some complexity would do wonders for the story.
The fourth and most relieving move would be to modify the art style. This is no longer a visual novel, you are trying to bring these people to life, so give them human features and have them move like people. The kids are pretty solid: Fuko and Ushio work, with the big girly-doe-eyes fitting their childish characters, and the animation for them far more active than the other characters. All the other characters though, especially the females, need to be redesigned. It's not a crime if it works better, remember, this is an adaptation not a photocopy.
The fifth and most drastic move would be to fix the shows pacing. The first season of the show essentially relies on the second season in order to have any merit. As a stand-alone, it is a pretty weak show. This shouldn't be the case; a show's sequel should excite you not because it justifies it but because you enjoyed the first show enough to want more. There's no reason why "Clannad" can't be a perfectly fabulous high-school rom com with elements of foreshadowing in it, or at least one that's relatively compelling. This would increase the attachment to the story so that you go into Afterstory already caring, and it would do wonders for both Tomoya and Nagisa if the first season centered more around their relationship instead of building up Tomoya's harem in order to later dissolve it. We don't NEED to get snippets of backstory from all the characters in the visual novel because this isn't their story. It's Tomoya and Nagisa's story, so we should be focusing on developing them. Again, this ISN'T a visual novel anymore, and attempting to cram multiple timelines into one is only going to result in a disjointed story and an unfocused narrative.
The show's major focus is family, so why not start with focusing on that? Though already present, a far more intense focus in the first season on Nagisa's family and setting up Tomoya's backstory would be extremely effective. The steady integration of Tomoya into the family's presence, more development for Sanae and showing the strengthening relationship between Tomoya, and Nagisa's parents, as well as with her. At the same time, contrast it with the tragically decaying nature of Tomoya's own family. Make Nagisa more self-involved with the drama club. She really wants to do this play. She's even selfish about it, willing to coerce or pressure people into joining in order to get what she wants, rather than having Tomoya do everything for her. Instead of waiting until the second season to make an impact, start now!
Whilst Clannad possesses sections of absolute superiority, its tendency to sabotage itself and to put little effort into the parts it knows aren't going to be emotionally impacting seriously detracts from the series. It feels too much like a carbon-copy of the visual novel crammed into the form of something you can watch, and not enough effort was put into the actual adaptation process. In order to adapt from one medium to another, you have to be willing to make creative changes, modify the content and look at what you've created and ask yourself not "is this similar to the original" but instead "is this the best I can do with this?"
