The comedy aspect of Clannad is easily one of biggest drawing points. In fact, most of the scenes I remember the best are the comedic ones. In comparison to Kanon’s (KyoAni version) comedic parts Clannad has far more and in general funnier. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise as Clannad’s mood was far happier. I would love to see KyoAni do a ‘Fumoffu’ version. However, Clannad is still a romance/drama and it does get serious at times. Overall though, the series retains a very happy atmosphere.
However, what impresses me most is the way KyoAni handled the adaptation. Clannad is a visual novel with several distinct routes and this has often caused problems when adapting it to an anime. In addition, Clannad doesn’t have multiple male protagonist (ie ef ~a tale of memories~, Myself; Yourself) nor is the director crazy enough to split the main character in 2 in such a popular title (Kimikiss got bashed quite a bit on 2ch). Clannad solves this problem by making Nagisa (the main girl) a major character in most of the routes. So instead of the male lead jump from one arc (girl) to another we have Tomoya and Nagisa go together from arc to arc. This way we can see the natural development between Tomoya and Nagisa. Compared to Kanon (KyoAni version) this was a definite improvement, where the romance between Ayu and Yuuichi felt extremely forced. Although Nagisa does conveniently disappear for an episode so they can focus on the Kyou/Tomoyo routes. At first I thought this was a weakness on the part of KyoAni, in the end I became lenient in this regards as the nature of their stories are very difficult to do with Nagisa. In addition, Tomoyo also seemly disappeared for much of the beginning and suddenly reappears midway. This on the other hand is something I simply cannot forgive! *waves Tomoyo fanboy flag wait I can’t forget my Kyou flag and my Nagisa flag and…
While Clannad does have an arc story structure the flow between the arcs are done very well. Instead of jumping from arc to arc, it felt like each arc was part of the natural flow of the story. The fanboy inside me wishes they spend more time on Kyou and Tomoyo however, I’ll have to admit they did effectively tell their stories, just like the rest of the cast. My main complaint would have to be the fast pacing of the earlier episodes. Perhaps I just got used to the fast pacing after a few episodes, but I though Clannad would have benefited by slowing down the beginning. I think KyoAni originally planned on cramming more the Clannad story and have the after story within 26 episodes. This should explain why they ended on ep 23, well 22 if you don’t count the extra episodes, and announced that they are going to animate the after story separately.
As for the characters, they distinctly follow your typical archetypes but it isn’t as blatant as Kanon or Da Capo. In general, I found them quite charming and lovable, from Sunohara’s crazy antics to Kyou’s awesome bouts of tsuntsun and deredere. In addition, most of them are well developed, in particular Tomoya and Nagisa. Those two have grown the most and their relationship grew in a very realistic manner. As for the way the characters interact, once again, extremely fun to watch. However, most of the interactions were between Tomoya and the girls. I would have like seen more interactions between the other characters as this does give it a more harem feel.
KyoAni doesn’t forget about the technical aspects of Clannad. As expected the animation is very sharp, vivid, smooth, and very consistent. Art is also on a similar level, with beautiful background and detailed characters. I’m quite happy they didn’t completely follow the character designs of the game, unlike in Air or Kanon. As I’m not very fond of Itaru Hinoue’s art, the main character designer for the game. In my opinion, the art of Clannad the anime is far superior to the CGs of Clannad the game.
Clannad has a very happy tone and feel to it. This is characterized by the laugh out loud comedy to the heart warming drama. You won’t cry from sadness, as in Air, instead you’ll cry tears of joy. This is because something so funny happened you’ll tear up or something so incredibly heart warming happened.
