The story is powerful, there's no denying that and in my view, it came on leaps and bounds from the dull meadow of mediocrity that was the original season. I think Tomoya Okazaki is probably the most well developed character in any anime I have watched and it's almost as if we've been there with him as he has grown up now into a responsible adult. After Story shredded aspects of the anime that in my view needed to be shredded (THANK GOD FUKO WAS KEPT TO A MINIMUM) but it also lost valuable members of the cast which added to the story and more importantly the enjoyment such as Sunohara and Tomoyo.
At times I felt it was just an onslaught of moe and tragedy which in the end just served to lessen the effect each event should have had. The path which we had to follow in After Story certainly was empowering but it was just missing the changes in scenery and in tone that the other characters gave us, Nagisa's and Tomoya's dominant screentime meant they were developed incredibly well but at times I wanted to scream "Where's Yoshino for God's sake?! Give me more Sunohara!" When you are exposed to the same type of thing so much you begin to become desensitized, and that's the feeling I got with After Story. I can't have tears in my eyes when my spine is shivering from those cringey one-liners every thirty seconds! The arcs were filled with variety but I felt that their quality held too many peaks and troughs, from the great (the gang arc and the child arc), to the bad (the ending) to the downright bizarre (the 'cat' arc) and these inconsistencies meant I couldn't truly appreciate this anime for the masterpiece it could have been. I had my seat-belts fastened for a whirlwind of a finale, but what I got in return was a timid autumn breeze.
It's likely that the ever-catchy 'Dango' theme song will ring around my brain-cells from time to time and I might yet one day revisit this. But after finishing this anime the taste in my mouth is predominantly sour.
