Series Review – Clannad

Written by Bananaowns

Images courtesy of Kyoto Animation

The show I am reviewing today is mostly lauded for its follow-up.  I haven’t watched Clannad: After Story yet, so this review will solely by about the first anime season.  Clannad started out as a typical harem series, but surprisingly turned emotional at various points.  I’m Bananaowns and this is an Otaku Youth anime review.

Story and Characters

The series stars Tomoya, a delinquent high school student.  One day, on his way to school he meets a girl named Nagisa.  From there, he quickly becomes acquainted with a variety of other girls that attend his high school.  After his meeting with Nagisa, he learns that she is repeating her last year of high school due to her absences caused by illness.  Nagisa desires to join the drama club, but since her absence, the club has disbanded.  Despite his delinquent nature, Tomoya decides to assist Nagisa in reforming the drama club.

Many of the initial storylines start with Tomoya seeking to recruit members for the drama club, but this initial premise quickly falls by the wayside for almost every story arc that does not feature Nagisa.  Instead, the story largely focuses on the other female characters.  The sequel Clannad: After Story is usually touted as the emotional powerhouse of the series, but I was surprised at how ridiculously emotional this simple harem series was.  Various storylines bring out intense emotion is often surprising ways.  For instance, Tomoya’s inability to play basketball has a dark past to it.  The same can also be said for a girl in the school that loves to give out wooden starfish.  Every story arc has a significant amount of emotion and the series can be a rough watch at times because of it.  Given my feelings regarding this series, I cannot imagine how I will survive After Story.  While there is a lot of drama, it is fair to say that the show can be very comedic at times.  The comedy is largely based early on in each story arc, but is inserted in intervals.

As for the characters, Clannad is filled with a significant amount of great characters.  Tomoya is an interesting main protagonist.  Despite being a delinquent, he is one of the most helpful characters in the series.  While they are mostly used for comic relief, Nagisa’s parents even have a shocking amount of backstory to them.  Every character is similarly layered.  At first they exhibit some generic trait, but as the story arcs develop, the inner facets of the characters are put onto display.  Everyone has some sort of emotional trauma from a past event, and the series does an excellent job at using this past trauma in conjunction with present story arcs.

Animation and Sound

The first aspect of the animation that is sure to raise some eyebrows is the character design.  For the male characters, the design is mostly normal.  However, the female characters have absolutely gigantic eyes.  This design choice has put off a lot of potential viewers and it is what prevented me from watching this series sooner.  I ended up getting used to the design and it actually grew on me.  So despite the gigantic bug eyes, give this series a chance.  As for the rest of the animation, there really isn’t anything that I would describe as special, it’s just solid.  There also isn’t anything too interesting about the setting as it mostly takes place at a high school which is an anime staple by this point.  It’s a solid level of quality though and there is nothing about the animation that I would consider to be detrimental.

The sound design for this series is solid as well.  Clannad: After Story supposedly has a standout musical track.  However, for this series, I did not notice any piece of music that really stood out to me.  The music is appropriate for the emotional scenes and does provide the necessary addition to makes these scenes even better.  The real strength of Clannad lies with the voice acting.  I love the performances of all the characters.  Tomoya has that perfect mix of humor and caring.  The voice actors for Nagisa’s parents turn in some excellent comedic performances.  The comedic timing is perfect in every scene that they are in.  Overall, the animation and sound design for this series is solid.

Final Thoughts

I went into this show thinking it was just the necessary prerequisite in order to watch the greatness that is Clannad: After Story.  I was surprised to find a show that was highly emotional.  This was supposed to be the series that did not tug on the heartstrings.  I wasn’t supposed to cry until After Story, but that’s not what happened in the end.  I was brought to tears a few times in my watching of this series.  I give Clannad my Bananaowns’ stamp of approval.  I don’t know how I’ll survive the next one when I get to it, but there will definitely be a review of the sequel when my heart recovers from watching it.  Thanks for checking this piece out and I’ll be back next week for another review.