The initial Clannad season likes to work in waves; each handful of episodes focuses on a girl working through a personal struggle, where she eventually comes to see with the help of Tomoya and friends how to resolve it. After Story is the continuation of Tomoya's life into adulthood and how he (with some friends sometimes) resolves adult problems.
Delete the pronouns in the last paragraph and you have the basic template for half of all slice-of-life animes. While being basic is not necessarily a bad thing, Clannad After Story's plot is entirely driven by character, and its characters have been some of the most frustrating and flat I have ever seen. The premise of the show is "disaster porn"; lets make characters miserable and useless until our hero, Tomoya, comes to save the day. Because of this premise, characters are forcibly weak to a point where it just seems less natural and more fulfilling of the White Knight fantasy. This doesn't just affect the plot but its themes tell the viewers not to trust others to help themselves out of situations. Moreso, Tomoya is honestly the most broken of them all, yet his problems do not matter until towards the end of After Story.
On top of this, character design is extremely lazy and kind of just relies on hair color to identify characters. And because of that, I've always had a difficult time distinguishing Kyou and Ryou.
In conclusion, Clannad and Clannad After Story are both mediocre at best slice-of-life animes that suffer from fulfilling a dangerous fantasy that forces poorly motivated characters. Dango is a banger though.
