CLANNAD Movie

Information of Anime

Tomoya Okazaki is in his third year of high school.  He constantly has nightmares of being in a world of nothing.   Along the way to school, he meets a girl on a road to a hill who can't walk by herself.  Her name is Nagisa Furukawa.  Although Tomoya doesn't care what she does as she constantly sticks to him, he somehow feels attached to her & uses his time to be with her.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

Tomoya is a depressed kid with not only the nightmare problems, but with his father as well.  He doesn't get along with his dad.  Plus, he doesn't go to his part-time job.  His work senior Yuusuke Yoshino helps him out by giving excuses to the company about not be well.  Youhei Sunohara has problems as well financially as he comes from a poor family.

Tomoya with the help of Sunohara assist Nagisa in rebuilding the school drama club.  Apparently she missed a year of school due to being ill in a hospital.  Seeing how she has a purpose in coming to school, Tomoya helps out as he doesn't have any goals himself.  This is after he injured his right shoulder tendon after being attacked by his drunk father.  Sunohara lost his place in the soccer team have losing his temper.

Rebuilding the drama club is a tough battle for the trio with the student council writing "invalid" in red paint on Nagisa's handmade recruitment posters.  However with the help student president candidate Tomoyo Sakagami & her assistant Kyou Fujibayashi, they call the former drama club adviser Kouko Ibuki to help out.  After Nagisa getting Tomoya & Sunohara's name on the club list, the drama is reformed.  However, Nagisa will be the only one acting as Tomoya & Sunohara don't want to as they don't have experience in that field.  Also, Nagisa had a particular play in mind & it can be done by one person.  Thus, Nagisa prepares writing the scenario.  However, she doesn't manage to get it done in time for the festival that was less than half a month away when the club reformed.  But, Nagisa is determined to perform on stage as the script is in her heart.

Since Nagisa's performance, Tomoya & Nagisa start living together in an apartment as time passes.  Tomoya becomes more positive as he goes back to his job & gets an official position.  Nagisa works for a family restaurant at a full-time status.  However, things go wrong when Nagisa get pregnant.  Because of her weak health, she won't be able to live after giving birth.  The worse does happen as Nagisa gives birth to a girl whom was prename in advance by Nagisa as Ushio.  Ushio is put under the care of Nagisa's parents as Tomoya goes back into depression over the loss of Nagisa.  Sunohara & Tomoyo try to cheer Tomoya up who is now been staying at home all the time.

Things change when Tomoya's dad comes to visit him.  Tomoya, who's still angry at him, asks him what he wants to talk about to him.  His dad tells him to see Ushio as Tomoya is becoming just like him when he lost his wife.  He warns him how he got depressed himself for losing her & wasn't able to become a good father to Tomoya.  As a last result, Tomoya's father asks the people close to Tomoya to take him on a surprise retreat.  Tomoya didn't like the idea & doesn't know it was his father's doing.  However, the purpose of this retreat is for him to see Ushio after five years.  Tomoya changes after seeing a grown up Ushio.

The movie ends with Tomoya realizing that he has reached the Promised Tree with Ushio as it was Nagisa's goal.

My Personal Review

Although I was disappointed with Toei's take on AIR, I decided to go try their version of CLANNAD anyways.  What more can I lose anyways?

Animation

The character designs are different from the original game's by a lot in terms of the faces.  It's totally different as it doesn't have that KEY feel to it.  It's almost like they are different characters.  The school uniform designs are the same though.

The backgrounds are pretty detailed in terms of the use of colours.  The toning & shading is very well done as the colours are light & dull. The colours balances out very well between the background & the characters.

In terms of the animation movement, it's quite flowing & natural.  There are quite a lot of those those silly & unreal movements.  In fact, I think this anime has a lot of silly stuff in it with Sunohara going berserk.  The animation is a bit sloppy here as the cycling of frames are a bit too quick or missing something.  There's seems to be a lot of frames missing in-between.

Sound       

The sound effects have a mixture of realistic & silly.  I'm pretty surprised that the amount of silly sounds outweigh the realistic ones.  It's not a bad thing though since it matches the mood quite well.  They are timed on cue & are crisp.

The seiyuus here aren't too bad.  Tomoya was a bit lack for me.  He was a bit lifeless & not too energetic.  On the positive side, it fits the role well as Tomoya is a depressed person.

The music is a bit different from game's soundtrack.  The only one that I seem to notice that comes from the game is the opening theme song.  The rest are new songs or remixes.  The songs aren't too great in my view.  Some of them sound like anime songs from the 70s & the rest are like from the early 90s.  Old school!  It almost made me think that the movie was from the 90s almost.

Story

The movie's storyline focuses on the CLANNAD arc of the game & it's a retelling of it.  In other words, it's an alternative storyline.  Because of this, some of the characters' roles are different.  One noticeable one is how Kyou is helping Tomoyo campaign for her student president election.  Despite it being a retelling of CLANNAD in the director's view, the story is actually pretty good. 

The movie goes more in depth on some of the minor characters such as Sunohara.  I was surprised about his background being from a poor family.  Although it's typical character background in a lot of anime stories, this was a bit deep & unpredictable in Sunohara's character.  The movie is more focused on character development than I imagined.  It manages to balance the movie's plot with the character development part.  But the jokes aren't too funny.  The humour is there, but some of them won't make you hold your gut.

As for the actual storyline plot, the build up is good until it gets to the part where Tomoya learns about Nagisa's play during the performance.  Confessing his love to her was too sudden for me despite how the relationship between the two didn't really show signs of love.  Most of the time, it was Tomoya getting emo as he just weakly supports Nagisa's purpose.  He didn't really seem attached to her.  That part really bothered me as it seem that they were more like friends instead.  After that part, the story continues to get better.  It was emotional roller coaster ride on that part when Tomoya's dad came in.

For the ending, it was okay.  The way it end though seems to be missing something.  It was complete, but felt lacking as if it was rushed.  It was touching though to see the ending result as it produced a happy ending.

Overall Conclusion

CLANNAD the movie was a surprise to me.  After thinking that Toei would screw up again with AIR, CLANNAD produced some great results.  I enjoyed the film overall, even with some of the bad jokes it has.  I would suggest watching this as it was pleasant surprise to watch.

CLANNAD receives an eight out of ten.  The movie's storyline produced some great & touching moments that I didn't think that would be there.  Although the story is written pretty well, it does have a couple of flaws & holes in it.  However, it's best to have fresh mind on the movie if you have played the game or watch the TV show beforehand.  There are differences & they shouldn't get to you when watching this movie.

Last updated on April 29, 2008