Art: when I started reading it I thought it was a joke. A really bad joke. While Tomoyo is let's say acceptable, what the fuck is wrong with Tomoya?! I think the mangaka was on drugs when he drew him, because I don't think anybody would make it to draw a character so different from its real concept, not even if they tried. Same goes for the other characters, even though they are still not that bad.
Characters: Despite the short length of the manga, it still managed to
characterize Tomoyo and Tomoya quite a bit, STILL the other characters just look like a parody of themselves, and Takafumi wasn't even introduced! He appears in like 3 panels and his face isn't even entirely shown, but I think it's better off like this, at least he didn't ruin even his awesome character design.
Story: Tomoyo After strong point, despite it being a slice of life, is its story. It is brilliant, perfectly paced and it makes you cry like a baby even when you only think back about it. In this manga though the story is inexistent, it's literally just Tomoya punching 4 guys, an abandoned random little girl showing up just to get taken back to her sick mom that regretted abandoning her and Tomoya getting hit by a car and losing his memory to then die 3 years later after telling Tomoyo to be strong. Now, the story is obviously really different from the visual novel but it's normal, it's too long to get compressed in 160 pages. Though there's one part of the story, the ending, that is really similiar in both the novel and the manga. If it wasn't for it to be plain crap in the manga. What made the visual novel ending so good was the mood of it. Tomoya losing his memories isn't some simple accident, it's a tragedy. Tomoyo throws his life out of the window just to help Tomoya regain his memories even knowing it's impossible, because for her a life without him just isn't conceivable, that's why she is forced to get strong by herself in these 3 years and walk on. This is beautifully shown in the novel, but in the manga it just doesn't work. It just skips to 3 years later where Tomoya just tells her to get stronger and dies, with a simple as heck goodbye, while his goodbye in the novel is pure art. And even the flashbacks are terrible. When Tomoyo finds out Tomoya lost his memories she just gets angry and takes Tomoya for a walk to make him regain his memories, but for how it's shown it almost looks like it should be a comical scene, while there's nothing to laugh about. Tomoyo is deeper than that, when she finds out about Tomoya she is completely broken, while in the manga she almost takes it as a joke. It just looks stupid. Not to talk about the very end, where Kanako just doesn't give a fuck about Tomoya's death, which hurts me since she has a beautiful relationship with him and she even has a breakdown in the novel. Even the fact that Tomoyo just keeps on living his old life instead of completely changing it like in the novel since she found another reason to live is just stupid. This adaptation was a complete mess.
TL;DR: In comparison with the novel this adaptation is a little shit, but even taken alone it still pretty much sucks. As a big fan, I'm disappointed by this manga and I refuse to consider it part of the Clannad franchise, because it has nothing to do with it.
