CLANNAD TV

Information of Anime

Tomoya Okazaki is in his third year of high school.  Along the way to school, he meets a girl on the road who is talking to herself.  Her name is Nagisa Furukawa.  Tomoya somehow feels attached to her & uses his time to help her out.

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.

Upon his encounter with Nagisa, Tomoya meets other interesting girls as well as such as the extremely powerful fighter Tomoyo Sakagami & the genius Kotomi Ichinose.  He helps Nagisa in forming a theatre club as Nagisa has a play that she really wants to do.  Aside from forming the club & meeting these girls, he has his own problems with his family.  His father quit his job & took up drinking & gambling after his mother's death.  Tomoya's bond with his father is very weak as he's upset with him.  The viewers also are exposed to an unknown girl in a empty room that build things from junk.  As a result, she created a doll with a soul that doesn't know the empty world surrounding it.

The story goes through arcs between a certain girl & Tomoya & at times Nagisa.  It starts off with Ibuki Fuko to Nagisa at the end.  All arcs deal something about family.  With Fuko, it's about her getting students in the school to attend his older sister's wedding.  However, not many people can see her as she's actually a spirit & her actual body asleep in the hospital due to an accident she was in. The next arc is Kotomi where Tomoya learns about her past & how he actually knows her from before.  The second to last arc is Tomoyo's run for student council president & putting her past aside. 

The final arc entitled CLANNAD is Nagisa's drama performance coming in fruition & discovering her parent's past lost dreams.  With Nagisa's parents Aiko & Sanae encouraging her about how a parent's dream is the same their child's & Tomoya telling her how she's doing something that he & Yusuke Yoshino couldn't do, Nagisa regains her confidence.  She tells the story of the unknown girl in the empty world with the doll that the viewers were exposed of in the past episodes.  Aside from Nagisa rebuilding her confidence to perform onstage, Tomoya slowly opens up with his father.  At the end of the arc, Tomoya confesses his love to Nagisa with Nagisa looking shocked & happy.

The show ends not with the CLANNAD arc, but with the Summer Vacation chapter arc.  It basically covers the building relationship between Nagisa & Tomoya which is moving slow.  Thanks to Yusuke's sister Mei, they move up a bit.

The 24th episode takes place in "another world".  In other words, a different girl which is Tomoyo.  Basically, it's an ending as to what if Tomoya & Tomoyo were a couple as he is about to graduate from school & trying to find a job.  At the same time, he tries to do something to help Tomoyo advance higher with her abilities. 

My Personal Review

Following Key's works, I decided to take up CLANNAD as well.  Problem is that I actually don't know much about the series in terms of the story & theme.  But I jumped onto it nevertheless.

Animation

I'm beginning to think that all anime from Key that's made by Kyoto Animation have the same character designs.  It's starting to look all the same.  The girls have big clear eyes that covers about 3/4 of their faces.  The guys are like that too.  The only one different is the main character Tomoya who has a longer face & small to medium eyes that aren't round.  Although it looks good, it's starting to get a bit old.  For some reason, the 24th episode looked different as if the quality went down a lot.

The backgrounds are pretty detailed in terms of the use of colours.  The toning & shading is very well done.  The sunlight & night scenes are breathtaking.  Also, 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 from that past Key animes that I've seen.  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.  I'm finding the cast to be a bit lacking though.  It's probably that I can't picture them with their characters.  Also, it could be the fact that I know a handful of them.

The music is, I think, the same as the game's soundtrack.  I notice a few of them.  The opening theme song is remixed & isn't too bad.  The ending theme is too cute & yet sad for some reason.  Makes me want to buy the CD.

Story

I'm hearing that CLANNAD is about family & it is.  Tomoya's home problems, Nagisa's weird caring family, & the dango theme.  The forming of the drama club also has some impact in this area as the show gets to the CLANNAD arc.  Also, the mysterious girl in the empty world that appears on the screen at times delivers the internal darkness of some the characters.

As for the arcs, some are long while others are quite short.  I was surprised on how short Tomoyo Sakagami was.  Although a bit of her story is shown in some of the earlier arcs, it didn't seem to be enough.  Based on how much fan base she has from what I've seen on the net, I'm sure it's not enough for most people & that includes me.

Aside from the girls' arcs, we get to see some of Tomoya's background as well.  Although you see a bit of it from each girls' arcs, the biggest chuck comes from Nagisa's arc which is a nice thing actually.  Reason for it is really because of the CLANNAD arc which is the main storyline of the series.

The CLANNAD arc is written pretty good.  It really justifies the show's theme on family.  But I found how Nagisa gets her strength back from her parents & Tomoya a bit too easy.  First she was crying heavily& the next thing you know, she's totally normal & fine as if the crying never happened.  Although she wants to do some acting, I felt that was a bit too unreal.  But overall, the main storyline for the show wrapped up nicely.  But it would be nice to see what Nagisa's reaction would have been with Tomoya's confession & how he manages with his father now.  But the world with the girl & the doll ended somewhat nicely based on how Nagisa wanted it to end.  However, those parts would be covered in the After Story arc.

Overall Conclusion

CLANNAD is another hyped up anime for the Fall 2007 season.  It's funny & dramatic.  If you are a KEY or CLANNAD fan, you should watch this; especially since it's from Kyoto Animation which I expect high quality from.

CLANNAD receives an eight out of ten.  The aiming theme of family is large in this show & it's quite well done.  There were some emotional moments for me & the show is well-written.  However, there are some minor things that were missing from the game such as Ryou's arc.

Last updated on October 28, 2008