Clannad Critique ~ Doujin Manga Society

Clannad(クラナド Kuranado) is a Japanese visual novel developed by Key that has an Anime adaptation produced by Kyoto Animation and directed by Tatsuya Ishihara

Clannad

The plot of the series focuses on the third year high school student Tomoya Okazaki, who is your average Anime student which is never seen studying and often skip classes and goes wandering around school as he meets the 4 different main female characters and the main heroine Nagisa Furukawa, and help each one with their individual problems (cause who has time for school when 5 cute girls need you right?)

Well finally the very last Anime in the "Hated by Kyou loved by everyone Else" trio is here and before anything let me warn you that, if you really like this Anime and are sensitive to arguments..you might want to skip this critique. I'm not going to be rude nor insult it (since I'm not the type to speak or type that way), still this might feel like a very harsh critique so don't say I didn't warn.

Like always I would like to remind you this is my personal opinion and it's perfectly fine if you disagree with me.

Plot

Clannad's plot is rather simple and on paper it looks like your average slice of life Anime with a good amount of comedy and some love triangle type of problems here and there, with maybe a bit of harem in some parts....though that is not the case.

Yes...this doesn't look colorful nor happy...

Originally a visual novel, Clannad's plot was fit for the type of media it was supposed to be released in, with a plot fit for most galges (date sims), it's transition to Anime was at best..terrible.

Instead of giving a more general approach and let us meet the characters and grow more attached to them, they decided to go with the main heroine route and turn Clannad into an Anime that forces you from the very beginning to feel sad.

Clannad..it literally forces you to feel sad..

Development

One of the things I hate the most about this Anime, is how little screen time they give to characters other than the Main protagonist and the main heroine, plus they try to cram several different characters that appears for a few seconds and aren't show later in with at most a few minutes of screen time each if they get lucky.

Appeared for 30 seconds in the first chapter.. didn't notice if she appeared later on

Had a decent amount of time when first appeared, sadly is only seen later for comic relief purposes
alongside the Protagonist..."friend"

Appeared for a decent amount of time for the first time...was awkward..didn't see her for a while

Fabulous first appearance...ironical had more screen time than some other characters..
still don't understand his relevance to the plot

One of the very few characters I consider likable..still appears for less than 2 minutes
each time she shows up

My favorite character and the only one that made this...series...somewhat more bearable
still doesn't show as much as he should, and brings some of only good comedy in the whole series

Background Story

To be blunt..on this aspect the Anime does so bad...that every time I saw something that could have been some what explained by a minor dialogue on the background by some of the background characters instead of the ghost thing...maybe then, every time this weird scenes appeared, once could understand what the heck is going on...

It's so annoying to see this thing take more screen time than some more
likable characters..or characters that could benefit for more development and screen time..

Nothing regarding the town, the school or some interesting aspects of the characters ( for example the life of Tomoyo as a fighter..which might have been explained in her own game "Tomoyo After: It's a wonderful life", but I don't like erotic galges...) are explained which make the audience assume or either discover where the story is taking place.

Script

On the script part Clannad it's surely a tragedy and no I don't mean the events that happens along side the story...

This is the true tragedy..

If instead of trying to forcibly make the audience cry whit sad scenes, overly dramatic moments and your random drama..the series would have focus on it's comedy strong points.

Hard not to if you dress like that...

Frying Pan! cause metal bats are too mainstream~

Best comedy segments of the whole Anime...

Keeping more dialogue like that instead of the crappy attempts at depressing the audience would not only create a bigger impact when the true dramatic points reach a climax, but also would give more sense to some of the more random scenes that are often shown like for example:

This would have been way less...weird if the whole environment was more fit for scenes like this
making Mr. blondie over there a less obnoxious character...

The main character has some good comedy moments too

Glad you reckon how crappy of a character you are...

I do like this character...lets just throw everything else and make her the main character..

Art

On an art perspective, this Anime has very good quality, the characters are colorful, the animation is done pretty well..except those weird CGI scenes with the creepy girl and the robot...other than that is of a pretty well quality, which is a no brainier since it comes from the galge world where several times you will be looking at a steady image of characters followed up by tons of block of text..

Yay...pretty...

And lastly the ranting section of this critique...so to put it bluntly...I absolutely...HATE this anime.

Well that is pretty obvious since it was in the "Hated by Kyou.." section and all, but contrary to the other 2 Anime featured..which had some good points but flaws that made them just sadly bad.

With Clannad is completely the opposite..I feel so sorry for some good characters that where poorly crammed in this excuse of an Anime, they deserve more screen time and a better setting to live in.

The transition from gagle to Anime was so hideous that I strongly believe playing the game would be more fun that watching the anime( and you could at least see more of the character you like, instead of just watching Nagisa most of the time).

I don't dislike any of Clannad's characters per se(except maybe the blonde guy) the main character, Nagisa and the other girls are nice, some even cute and entertaining to watch, but the whole dramatic and sad setting just kills the little true bonding of character with audience that can be reach.

The thing I just can't stand in this series, the reason why I hate it so much is well..ironically the main feature that made this series so popular

You don't say....

Clannad and it's sequel "Clannad: After story" are famous among Anime fans for being the series that had made cry most of it's audience, and that would be a great thing to accomplish...IF! the series didn't forced the audience to cry.

The whole setting is meant to make the spectator cry, from it's music to the script, to the general ambiance, even the opening theme is so depressing it just make the audience psychologically liable to cry along side the series(note: try slowing down the ending theme and see if that's not creepy)

True story...I guess?

Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying there is something bad with some drama in an Anime, nor that Anime shouldn't make it's audience shed a tear. There are some great Anime which had their fair share of sad moments that were worth of tears, but unlike Clannad they did it by creating a true connection between the spectator and the character, that when the tragedy happened...we felt the pain of the character and we could truly care for them.

With Clannad though...they ruin the experience by forcing the sadness making it so hard to care for the characters that, at least when I saw the dramatic climax of the story and later "dramatic moments" all I could truly say for it was a mere..."Meh"

Hard to do it if I didn't care in the slightness for what was going on..

Well that summarize my ranting and today's critique, I welcome anyone who would like to share it's opinion, suggestions or just any non-murderous comment in our comment section down below.

This is Kyou wishing you all a nice day and be sure to check DMS for more Doujins and Critiques!