| 21 February 2009
Overview
Every now and then, a series comes along that you just know is going to be special. I can name classics like Ah! My Goddess!, Record of Lodoss Wars, and Onegai Teacher. For more recent examples, how about the two ef series and Wolf and Spice? Now, if you're paying attention, you're going to notice that all of these have a common thread through them – they're all, to some extent, romance stories. As a rule, I find that the more a story focuses on character relationships – as romance stories by very nature must – the better the series is. So with that in mind, I present to you a new entry to these special series, Clannad.
| Fields | USA Info | Japanese Info | Image |
| Title | CLANNAD |  |
|
| Alternative | クラナド (Japanese) | ||
| Dates | 2007.10.04 - 2008.03.20 | ||
| Company | Kyoto Animation, Anime Workshop Basara, Imagica, TBS, Kyoto Animation, MOVIC, Pony Canyon | ||
| Creator | Visual Art's/Key | ||
| Director | Tatsuya Ishihara | ||
| Genre | Romance, Drama, Harem, High School | ||
| Related | Clannad (Movie), Clannad (Visual Novel), Clannad After Story (TV), Clannad: Another World (OVA), Clannad: Tomoyo After (Eroge), Clannad (Manga) | ||
Review
Like most series that are based on visual novels and eroge, Clannad follows
a pretty standard formula for its setup. Small town, high school, seemingly
constantly blossoming cherry trees, and a male lead that may or may not be
worth all the female attention that he's very shortly going to be receiving.
Well, not quite, actually. See, while that IS the setup that Clannad uses,
the ongoing story is reflected in the events of an alternate world where little
golden lights constantly float on the wind above endless wheat fields. The
only living inhabitant is a single, lonely girl who builds a robot out of assorted
pieces of junk. The girl has the power to bring things to life, and the narration
for these dreamlike sequences is done by the spirit of the robot.
Got all that? Ok, set it aside, because it's going to be awhile before it
becomes really important.
Back in the real world, we meet our protagonist, a young man named Tomoya Okazaki, a self-proclaimed delinquent who often skips class and just in general gets himself into trouble. He's not a social outcast, mind you – actually, he's easily one of the most charismatic male leads I've seen in anime. He just doesn't give a damn about school, and he's got some good reasons that are explored, gradually, throughout the series. Anyway, on the first day of his senior year, he meets a girl standing at the base of the hill road that leads up to the school, and pauses. Very abruptly, Nagisa Furukawa, the girl in question, says the name of a food, and then starts talking – after a moment Tomoya realizes she's talking to herself. He answers her question, though, and tells her to just start walking or she'll never find out.
You start to really get a glimmer of Tomoya's personality here. See, he's not like the standard harem male lead. The bastard has a spine. And a sense of humor. And isn't afraid to be, frankly, an ass at times, playing pranks and telling people exactly what he thinks. One of the running gags in the series is the jokes that he plays on his best friend, Sunohara Youhei, such as tricking him into thinking that he's slept for five hundred years and is the only living being left on earth when he nods off in class. There is something else about Tomoya, though – as blunt and rude as he is, he's an exceedingly loyal friend, and you start to realize as the story progresses that he's willing to go to incredible lengths to help those around him. He's quick to blame it on the fact that he's bored and doesn't have anything better to do...
Opposite Tomoya is Nagisa Furukawa, who's actually a year older than Tomoya. Unfortunately, she also has a weak body and gets sick easily because of an accident when she was younger, and missed so much school her senior year that she had to repeat. She lacks self-confidence and is very shy, and has to face the prospect of going to a school where all the students that she grew up with are gone now, leaving her alone – and naturally, she's too shy to make new friends easily. Now, my co-author likes to talk about the concept of 'moe' girls – girls that inspire an instinctual need to protect them in the people around them. Nagisa is, at times, what I consider a moe-blob, a character who's only purpose in the story is to stand there and need protection. At times, I said. Not always.
Clannad's main story centers on Tomoya and Nagisa's journey – Tomoya from being a delinquent that doesn't like his life at all into a decent guy, and Nagisa from being too shy and self-conscious into a surprisingly tough and steady young woman. Their characters are developed gradually, through their own actions and through their effect on those around them. Tomoya, for example, finds out that Nagisa wanted to join the theater club her senior year, but it turns out that the club didn't have any members left and so is closed this year. He points out that it's probably impossible for somebody as shy as she is – then decides to help her out anyway.
Of course, it wouldn't be a harem series with only one girl (or would it...?), so surrounding him are the Fujibiyashi twins, Kyou and Ryou. Kyou is loud, brash and over protective of her twin, Ryou, who is quiet, sweet and calm. Then there's Fuko Ibuki, a young girl that likes to hang out in unoccupied class rooms carving stars – I mean, starfish – out of scrap wood. Tomoyo – notice the o rather than the a – Sakagami is a second-year student that transfers in to Tomoya's school and could teach Chun Li a few things about rapid fire kicking. Last but not least, we have Kotomi Ichinose, a studious, genius girl that doesn't need to go to class and spends her time reading in the library.
That's just the letterman list, folks. There's a pretty good sized cast to be found in Clannad, and an inordinate number of them are cute girls.
Alright, so what about the animation? The trouble with high school based series is that the artists, if they're not careful or get lazy, don't spend as much time on character design because the characters have to wear uniforms. Fortunately, that didn't happen here – while the cast spends a good deal of time in their school wear, we also get to see them around the town in casual wear, and the designs are pretty damn good. I will admit that some of the characters start to look alike after awhile, though – Kyou and Ryou are a given, they're twins, but Kotomi is easy to mix up with Yukine, who ALSO hangs out in the library and likes to serve tea and food to those who visit her. It's not intentional, but it happens when there's such a large supporting cast, as there is here.
Flow wise, I have to say, I've been impressed by Clannad. The animation is very crisp and clean, and especially the other-world sequences featuring the lonely girl have very high production values, resulting in an unusually fluid effect that adds to the surrealistic nature of the other-world. The real world material is very well done too. Very good job on the animation in Clannad, it easily stands with some of the best modern series in terms of sheer quality.
Equally well done is the voice acting in the series, especially on the part of Nagisa, Sanae, and Fuko's VA's. I mean, the depth portrayed by all the actors involved in the series was great, but they're stand outs for doing awesome jobs of bringing their roles to life. This is the same sort of voice acting that made Ah! My Goddess! and Onegai Teacher stand out, among others. It should, by the way, be no surprise that Sanae, Nagisa's mother, was played by the immortal Kikuko Innoue (Belldandy, for the uninitiated) – and as usual, she really does steal the show in her scenes.
As with many romance series, the music of Clannad is top notch. The opening theme is the same as was used in the game, Megumeru by Eufonius, and serves to set a light hearted and faintly ethereal tone that is readily apparent in the overarching storyline. The closing theme, on the other hand, is Dango Daikozuku – loosely 'The Big Dango Family' – by Chata and is guaranteed to put you into diabetic shock. For those unfamiliar with the term, dango is a type of Japanese dumpling, and a few years before the events in Clannad, there was a popular show that featured a large family of living dango – one that Nagisa was very fond of watching.
Actually, as long as I'm on the topic of family, I should mention that family is a strongly reoccurring theme found throughout Clannad. The relationship of Tomoya with his father is one of the strongest driving factors in the series, and that's placed in counterpoint with Nagisa and her parents, Sanae and Akio. Time and again we see how important family, as well as the greater circle of friendships that are forged can be in the dark times of the character's lives, and there are many sad and quite poignant scenes that just wouldn't work if that emphasis hadn't been made. Such a strong foundation of family isn't one that's seen often in anime – though naturally, often over the course of a series families are formed and become more and more important. Clannad, though, starts with a basis built on that concept, making it stand out.
Overall
Quick, can anybody tell me what I'm about to say?
By this point, I figure that I've reviewed enough plot-heavy, romance based series for my response to such a well crafted storyline to be pretty predictable. Clannad is one of the best series that I've seen in recent years. Its storytelling is more straightforward and natural than ef's intertwined, interleaved character threads and onion-peel layers, so it's easy for it to appeal to a broader audience, but there's a lot of subtle character interaction and development taking place here. Like Ah! My Goddess, Onegai Teacher, Romeo x Juliet and others before it, Clannad enjoys a writing staff that didn't rush themselves and allowed the story to develop naturally. There are a couple slow points, but they never get tedious – instead they act as calm moments between story arcs. And the really incredible thing about it?
Clannad the series doesn't try to cover the entire game. In fact, it only covers about half of it – the second season, Clannad After Story, will be finishing the storyline. We get a series that doesn't try to rush to cram too much material into too little time, answers to some questions, while others are left open, such as the true nature of the other-world girl and the robot. Told you to hang onto that for awhile. That, combined with great animation and a voice acting performance easily stands among the best I've ever heard, makes for a truly magical series. My highest marks for Clannad, and the strong recommendation that you clear a day in your schedule and sit down to watch it – maybe even with somebody special to you. This is one of those series that you curl up with your significant other with a bowl of popcorn for.
