Ok so I just finished the first season of Clannad, and I have to say as a whole it is pretty good. I’ll share some thoughts on the show, but don’t expect me to cover everything since these are mostly spontaneous thoughts that popped into my head!
There WILL be very light spoilers in the following since I don’t think there’s a way to properly convoy what is going on in this series without talking about them.
First things first I want to talk about the characters since this story is highly character driven. Almost all of the main cast are extremely likeable each with their own unique quips, and charms that drive me to smile whenever I see them bantering around on screen. This is greatly amplified by the extremely simple, but mellow BGMs that pop up to accompany these moments from time to time. There are no assholes in this series, and the atmosphere is cheerful throughout.
Continuing on I want to touch a bit on characters more individually, and in-depth: This show carries itself through at least in the earlier phases through various arcs. (Strictly speaking only two have extreme deviations from the main overarching plot though). The “heroines” of these plotlines were the main outstanding stars in great characters.
My favorite one is likely Fuko. The reason I liked Fuko so much is because her arc carried variety, and with that variety came a splendid amount of varying moments for her. She could go from completely sad to dizzied by Starfish to snarky to being childishly happy in her own way. All these reactions were very well placed, and the more serious moments really made me feel as if it was exactly how a person like her would feel. She was all in all a great character with problems that are relatable.
There is one thing that I didn’t like about Fuko which is that after her character arc ended, and her wish was now fulfilled she would continue to appear as comical relief for gags. The main reason I didn’t like this is because since her character arc just ended on such a bitter sweet note, and she was believed to have gone, then why bring her back just to act as some weird gag character? In my opinion it trivializes her entire previous character arc somewhat. However since the story-writers seemed to at least be very consistent with her appearing all over the place in even later episodes multiple times I was gradually more okay with it, and it didn’t bother me that much anymore. From a critical standpoint though I thought it was still worth pointing out.
After Fuko then comes a very close runner-up who is Nagisa herself. She probably wouldn’t have made it this high on my likings if it weren’t for the last couple episodes which focused a lot around her. She is much more static than Fuko, but still has noticeable traits and a very likeable quality to her overall. It’s difficult not to like her. However the glowing example shines through in the last two episodes during which she has to come to terms with a very difficult inner obstacle. The progress of her overcoming this hurdle with the help of her family, and friends proved to be one of the very high points for the series, and pushed her character way up. It was incredibly touching.
A minor flaw that I have noticed with her is that I didn’t really feel the power of her motivation of her wanting to reform the club extremely strongly. Instead of feeling like “Yes! I must recreate this club! It is the dream of the century, and my life is over if I don’t!” it felt more like “Eeeehhhh, I kind of want to remake this theater club, because I think it’s nice, and all…” The motivation was not felt very strongly in my opinion.
Next up unfortunately falling way back, but someone I feel I should address anyways, because she’s one of the heroines is Kotomi. She does undergo growth, and has her own share of problems that needs to be dealt with, but I found her the more boring of the heroines simply because her variety was more lacking, and it never seemed to pick up that much.
After talking about those three, I’d like to get onto the slightly more negative side starting with Okasaki, the main character of the story. I’ve found that this “problem” (It may be viable to argue that this isn’t one) is there in various media which usually have a high number of characters in which a high number of them require attention from the story. It’s that the main character usually sacrifices room to have his own distinct traits in favor of developing the character that is in the spotlight currently. He never seems to ever have developed anything too substantial regarding his supposed “hate for school”, or his dad problems. The problems were just there and never touched upon. That being said I really liked the progressions on his “romantic” life, and I’ll touch on that later.
For the most of the supporting cast they really didn’t have too much of screentime to develop depth of their own. Sunohara, Sanae, and Akio were all extremely colorful though so they’re highly appreciated!
Next I want to talk about the pacing, and the story’s atmosphere itself. Possibly one of my favorite things in anime is when they are able to pull off compelling, and funny happenings in the series without resorting to heavy fanservice. There is a bit of fanservice occasionally, but the series mainly wins me over with its extremely cheerful and optimistic tone that it has throughout. Never does it have to resort to ridiculousness that crosses the line in good taste.
The story’s pacing is an area which has flaws, but also has parts that it excels in. The parts that it mainly excels in is taking the plot extremely slowly, and therefore slowly bringing out the ending point of the series, or even just one arc. It makes the whole thing feel very satisfying. Probably my favorite one of these is arguably a spoiler so here:
An aspect that I felt could have been improved is the sense of the overarching plot in the early character arcs. This is more subjective since a greater focus on the character arc at hand is good for the character arc, but I felt that it made the story feel like it deviated extremely far. It was always kind of funny to me how the characters are trying to set up the theater club, and then get distracted by someone else’s character arc.
Finally in the very end I felt like ranting for a small bit on why I don’t like full-blown harems (Since Clannad arguably has that in a sense). Simply put I feel that it is simply too coincidental, and unlikely that SO many girls could like the same guy at one time, and in such close proximity to each other. One could argue that this is part of the ridiculousness that certain anime has to offer, but I would say that I don’t have a problem with most of ridiculousness since most of that is done for humor purposes, and falls under suspension of disbelief. Cold, hard character relationships I believe do not fall into this category (At least not for me), so it is not a ridiculousness that I can overlook.
All in all, Clannad has its share of imperfections, but its greatly optimistic tone, and touching character-driven plot has made this time exceptionally worthwhile. Extremely solid 8/10
Also holy moly, that was a lot of words. I did not expect to end up typing this much when I started (Says me everytime XD)
