Reviews

Unfortunately, much like in Kanon, Clannad puts characters in front of you and then reveals to you their pasts and background later. This holds true especially for Fuko, whose one-note personality of her lobe of starfish wears thin after a couple of episodes, much less the 6 episode arc she has. (Her subsequent appearances after the end of her arc, in which she makes cameos during the middle of conversations to proclaim her love of starfish yet again, do little but distract from the scene she's in.) To quote another person from a forum I go on: "It's like backwards character development". I'm all for unique storytelling in animation as the next guy, but shifting focus from the main characters to focus on another character's story for several episodes on end is kind of annoying to those who want to learn more about the main characters. It wasn't a big deal in Kanon because the side characters were often just as interesting as the main cast, but such is not the cast here. Poor Nagisa spends nearly half of the series tagging alongside other characters, kind of like Mickey Mouse did in the Mickey, Donald, and Goofy cartoons made in the 1930's. Considering that Nagisa has top billing over the other girls in this series, that's a little annoying. Still, though, even in the series' weakest moments there are some cute scenes here and there to pick up the pace of the show. And although they drag from time to time, the two girls' arcs are still more fleshed out than they ever were in Air, and are handled in a realistic fashion as well. It's really the little touches here and there that made this series for me, such as Tomoya and Nagisa throwing Fuko a party for her sister's marriage, Kotomi's struggle to play the violin, Nagisa's attempt to bring members to the Drama Club with pictures of cute little dangos based on a show from her youth, that make it all worth it. And much like in the last Key series, there are surprise twists here and there that you won't see coming until they happen.