“shall I take you? to a place in the city where wishes come true”
-Episode 1, Clannad, Nagisa
The message of what Clannad initially intends is promising – however, it is something that is not correctly delivered in my opinion. The series is divided into a series of arcs that at the very end of the day, it has an overarching theme that it tries to deliver. It works – sort of. My biggest problem was in the division of the arcs – it was extremely unevenly divided especially with the beginning 10 episodes being entirely focused on Fuko and then approximately 3 episodes dedicated to the main heroine in the story, Nagisa. Honestly. What the heck? While the arcs themselves are beautiful and emotionally provoking, the transition between each arc is messy and rough. Overall, it did work, but it left some holes (such as the robot and the girl) that ALWAYS came out in the beginning of the episodes but never was there an explanation to satisfy the viewers at the end of the series. Also, the stories are quite cliche.
Animation (8/10): simply amazing. Animation is extremely clean – it’s easy on the eyes and there isn’t anything that distracts me from the story. I’m not really an artist so I can’t really critique as well as I would like, but nothing really bothered me too much about the art, aside from the fact that all the girls seem to look EXACTLY THE SAME. IN the beginning I couldn’t remember their names and just started calling them “the silver haired girl” “the brown haired” “the purple twins” etc.
Music (10/10): the music is fantastic, but they are rather simple melodies. However, it worked for Clannad. Clannad for the most part, tells a simple, slice-of-life story. So the music fit beautifully and wove into the story (especially in the emotional moments, but also in the comedic moments as well) I think the voices were appropriate for each characters – especially tomoya’s.
Characters (7.5/10): My biggest problem with the characters were their development into the story. I felt that certain characters were overemphasized than others, but the development of side characters in some sense had outshadowed the two main characters’ growth which had bothered me. But I did love Nagisa’s parents as well as Tomoya’s bff as comic relief throughout the story. Each character has a quirk that makes them easy to distinguish one from another in terms of personality, which I loved and wished was further developed.
enjoyment (8/10)
Overall (7/10) for me this was an anime with potential that was never fully developed. I always felt that Clannad with 24 episodes was just too short to tell its full story about all the characters, to tell an overarching message AND to develop a loveline between tomoya and nagisa. Although it is important to keep in mind that Clannad was originally a visual novel containing multiple branching storylines -- and so there were hardships to integrate the storyline into one and still keep a focus, it is still not an excuse for convoluted and confusing arcs that were not well put together. Overall, with it’s poignant stories, it’s an anime that could be watched for enjoyment, but with plot holes here and there and rough transitions, it ends up being nothing more than an “average” anime in my eyes.
***************
with that being said, I HIGHLY encourage anyone who had either 1) the same opinions as I did after finishing clannad/clannad AS 2) who loved the series to death to play the visual novel. While I think Clannad/Clannad AS averages out to be a 8/10 total, the Visual Novel is a solid 10/10. It covers all the "holes" and problems I had with the anime seamlessly and spins a simply beautiful story. (the story is the same, but it's more indepth and the characters are much more fleshed out). I've played around 20 Visual Novels (Ever-17, Tsukihime, Sharin no kuni etc) so far -- and I can say with confidence that Clannad is definitely a gem. If you are going to play the game though, I highly recommend the 300 hour walkthrough (more like a must-have) it's extremely hard to play without one in my opinion.
