You can either read this post or just be contented with this picture.
I do not profess to know much about criticism and it is an easy task to entertain me (I enjoy quite a lot of anime shows that are out there), but there is this incomprehensible tingle in me whenever I watch an episode of this anime. I had my reserves in sharing my thoughts as I thought it be best to wait until the broadcasting has completed before making some form of a conclusion.
So this is my interpretation of what CLANNAD’s gist is ( and if I am wrong, then this post is pointless): When empowered by strong emotions like love and friendship, a person’s thoughts are able to shape the future.
With that in mind, CLANNAD strives to present itself as a subtle and simple philosophical discourse on how we ought to live our lives, and it mainly preaches that happiness is obtainable through positive thinking. Think of the anime as a simplified version of William James’ Is Life Worth Living? complemented with visuals which gives the show an ephemeral aesthetic quality. Fine enough, but it is regretful that the entirety of the anime has been drowned in a stifling compilation of side-stories (suspiciously guilty of pandering to moetakus and the visual novel loyalist under the feeble disguise of promoting the heartwarming theme of FAMILY-NESS). As a result, the plot, which is the sequence of predicated events leading to Tomoya’s understanding of how he ought to live his life, does not successfully deliver its message with a strong impression.
Those who are guilty of stifling the main message of the anime are, sadly, the popular characters. Kotomi had the honour of drawing first blood by causing the anime to derail from the development of its plot into the narration of her side-story. Of course, moetakus some might argue that it was just a clever device to encourage Tomoya’s understanding of social bonds but that is only convincing if Kotomi’s arc had been centered around Tomoya and the narration of his interiority (his inner thoughts and stuff like that). In fact, if it had been centered around Tomoya, those Kotomi episodes would not have been considered as a Kotomi-arc! Kyou, Ryou and Tomoyo were the lesser of this evil that I speak of; but the tales of the Sunohara siblings, the dorm mistress and Miyazawa dealt the final blow and confirmed my disappointment in CLANNAD. The aforementioned are examples are what hindered CLANNAD from its true potential so is there an example of a minor character who has actually contributed to the development of the main plot? The answer, in my opinion, is yes. Surprisingly, Fuuko, in ID SOJOURNER’s words, despite being retarded person, is a brilliant contributor to Tomoya’s growth as a character and her “daughter-father” relationship with Tomoya foreshadows what is to come in the future. The first few episodes of the first season was about her, but it was not all about her too. It is praiseworthy that during the those “Fuuko episodes,” there was a balance between telling Fuuko’s tale and at the same time have Tomoya’s physical and psychological involvement going as well.
A jolly good fellow known as E.M. Forster (he is dead) wrote about the difference between plot and story in a novel. Of course, they did not have anime back in then but it does not mean the concept of plot and story is not applicable to anime (I refuse to explain why for the sake of keeping this post short 
). The plot is a string of events that are bonded by causality. Something happens and it causes something else to happen next. A story simply refers to an event that captures our interest. In CLANNAD, the plot would be represented by the following sequence:
- Cynical Tomoya meets Nagisa.
- Nagisa asks Tomoya to be her friend.
- Nagisa seeks to revive the drama club.
- Tomoya, as her friend, offers to help her.
- While engaged in Nagisa’s affairs, Tomoya is affected by Nagisa’s optimism.
- Nagisa’s optimism compels Tomoya to rethink his disposition about life.
- Tomoya eventually falls in love with Nagisa.
- ???
- Fuuko end.
As for an example of story or stories, we can see it as follows:
- Kotomi acts moe.
- Kyou gets trapped in the storeroom with Tomoya and awkwardness ensues.
- The dorm mistress realizes that her lover is actually a cat and she becomes interested in furries.
- Sunohara Mei entraps moetakus the audience with her fetish-appealing antics while pretending to contribute to the main theme of FAMILY-ness (but she is voiced by the voice actress of Nanoha. DIVINEEEE BUSSTAAAA).
- Miyazawa introduces us into the realistic world of gangsters. West side is da best. FAMILY-ness is “accentuated” at the same. Respeck.
- Kotomi acts moe.
Suffice to say, the plot is the collective of events that have been intricately contrived through cause and effect. On the other hand, the story, in E.M. Forster’s context, is the vestige of neolithic or paleolithic days when Neanderthal man huddle together while one of them tells how he had managed to pwn a wild beast. What Forster is trying to say is that the story is not as intellectually engaging as the plot because it only requires curiosity to captivate readers of a novel, or the audience in the context of anime. Thousands of years have passed since humans were simply savages who hang out in caves and gawp over a crude tale of skull smashing, and currently, we have evolved into moetakus people who ogle over animated girls. Basically, nothing has changed. The story still captivates as it appeals to the primitive aspect of our nature, curiosity. We are still doing the same thing. Instead of being critical over what matters, we. the blinded audience, cast the importance of the plot aside and just succumb to the pandering done through relatively irrelevant stories of cute girls.
My message is simply to state how the various side-stories have, through their shameless interruption of the plot, impeded the emotional built up and the overall development of the anime’s plot. As a result, the side-stories make the main message of the anime unconvincing. Imagine yourself telling a really funny joke to a group of friends and you suddenly derail into talking about something else. Would the punchline be funny after the pause? Sorry CLANNAD, I am not buying it.
P.S.
The most prominent merit that I can see in CLANNAD is also its greatest lie. Its excellent visual art beguiles the audience into forgetting its errors.
MoeKotomiLuv2345: OMG. THE BACKGROUND IS SO CAPTIVATING!
Tomoyo_After: Deshou Deshou? I cry all the time when something emotionally gripping happens!
ID_SOJOURNER: Clannad is sh*t.
MoeKotomiLuv2345: You are just a bitter little kid who does not know how to appreciate the pristine elegance of Clannad!
ID_SOJOURNER: OSH*T. YOU ARE RIGHT! CLANNAD IS SO TOUCHING!
EDIT
- Relentlessflame has notified me of a certain flaw in my post, and I have to agree. I should have indicated the connection between the recurring theme of the significance of family and the moral of the story. CLANNAD, the presence of a family, or social bonds to be specific, constitutes one’s ability to think positively. Tomoya’s experience, through the many tales in the anime, is suppose to make him understand that.
- Lelangir-Lelangir has dazzled me with a frighteningly confusing commentary on his neat little commentary blog anitations (I am not a very smart person) but I am honoured that he has bothered to share his thoughts. I do not think my logic in saying “CLANNAD is bullshit disappointing” includes the original VN, because all faults lie in just the execution of the anime. Being faithful to the VN can be possible by preserving the “spritiual essence” of the VN and infusing it in the anime; faithfulness does not always equate to conformness to the original content. Of course, Kyoani has contrived to mould the content so as to make the anime as linear as possible but that is another story.
- One of the main reasons why I am wrote this post, despite it being pretty obvious to Lelangir, is probably because this anime’s overwhelming popularity can obstruct members of the audience in seeing its flaws. I am just trying to stir the spirit of argumentation (and this post is not only opinion that I have about the anime adaptation).
- I hate tautology. It gave me a headache last semester. I had to do logical translations to prove the tautological nature of statements that were given to me. lol
You are bullshit. Clannad owns u in every way.
I am content with the picture.
I think in riuva, only Ascaloth is buying into this series.
I had the same idea in not so many words. Too many garbage story arcs dilute the power of the message Clannad is barely able to convey at the 11th hour.
Hey. I did not put the title as Clannad is bullshit! Who did that?
[ID SOJOURNER]
Hehe….
Clannad is a very inspiring anime. And not a bullshit. Inspiring but not boring. The drama, nicely done is some way. But Clannad is not the best anime sometimes because some of the elements of the anime that disturbs us.
What?
Stories are causal too. [Kotomi acts moe] is not a homogeneous thing, it is a process, and reducing processes to descriptive, non-causal labels is bleaurgh. Moe is a causative psychological process.
Yeah, basically.
same @jpmeyer
@Hynavian
Whenever I find myself disliking something, it saddens me because my disposition prevents me from seeing its merits.
Maybe Ascaloth can tell me what CLANNAD has acheived. I am not being sarcastic.
@Kairu
It could have been inspiring to me, I assure you my friend. This post is a lament about one big glaring mistake that I see it in.
@lelangir
Indeed, a plot is a story but not all stories provide a plot. As for moe, isn’t it just a causative process pertaining to the audience and has no real impact on the subsequent events in the narrative?
Or I could have misinterpreted your comment. I wonder.
When you look at the relation between the original game story structure and the anime adaptation, the reason why the sidestories are disconnected from the main plot is pretty obvious — in the game, they were never connected that way, but they threw it all into one timeline for the anime. So that much makes sense in that it was sort of the concession of the adaptation (good, bad, or indifferent aside — it’s the approach they’ve taken on all the Key adaptations).
But I do think you got the “gist” wrong, and that did sort of self-evidence the conclusion. You said the side-stories had a sort of vague “theme of family-ness”, but said the gist of the show was about “strong feelings that shape the future” and then lamented how the side-stories didn’t support the message. The only way you could come to that conclusion about the show’s message, in my mind, is if you ignore the contributions of all the side-stories — and that’s exactly your point! It’s the classic apples + oranges = fruit equation; the common denominator between *all* the stories in the anime is what points to the the message and theme of the show, and that’s what ultimately drove the plot (since it’s basically a very long parable, or maybe a bunch of parables that deliver the same message). But if you dismiss all the side-stories as being about cave painting-induced moegasms, then yeah… no wonder you see them as not fitting (structural compromise of the anime aside).
So, I’m going with the “I think you got the gist wrong rendering the post pointless” argument. That’s one part of the primary plot’s message, but I don’t think “that’s it”. Morals are never “when , can result”. Morals are calls to action. Not that you probably expected much more than either “you’re right” or “you’re an idiot” in reply, but there you have it…
(Err that was supposed to be “when x, y can result” in the last paragraph there, but I forgot that triangle brackets are for HTML, so… ^^; )
I could be biased when I say I agree with you – Oh wait, I never finished the series, but then again that’s because there were so many ‘stories’ that never did interest me that I dropped the show before I got to know the ‘plot’. Huh.
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@relentless flame
Hey. Thanks for your comments! I knew something was wrong with my post as I have a bad habit of not proofreading my posts(I really need to amend that horrible nature of mine).
My words have suggested that the side-stories talk about the importance of family while the main message is optimism in living. I believe it is my fault for not being clear.
In CLANNAD the anime, Tomoya’s realisation that social bonds (like having a family), is crucial in possessing the will to live with positivity. My failing lies in not indicating that link.
Actually I have no qualms about the side-stories if they had revealed more of Tomoya’s interiority. Some people have a point in saying that these side-stories are for Tomoya to sojourn through so that he can eventually realize the moral of the story. I have to repeat myself. Tomoya was originally a disgruntled individual, but his growing social bonds (hence the family-ness) with various individuals groomed him for optimism. It is a pity in my opinion that the potential of these side-stories was hindered by shift of focus from Tomoya to the side characters.
I agree with your definition of what a moral is. It is an instruction and a narrative is its discourse.
So you can rephrase my words with a more imperative flavour and say, “See the world through colours and live a happy life!”
Yeah. I hold my opinion in regards to the anime but I appreciate your thoughts!
@issa-sa
It seems as if I really dislike CLANNAD but that is not true! I loved the first 10 episodes of the first season. It is just that my fondness dwindled because of the same reason as yours.
Person’s thoughts may shape the future, but distance between cognition and overt behavior is vast sometimes.
Dreams will remain dreams if you keep on dreaming.
TED talk on happiness by Harvard psychology professor.
@Kitsune
You always have something interesting to contribute. Props!
“Actually I have no qualms about the side-stories if they had revealed more of Tomoya’s interiority. [...] It is a pity in my opinion that the potential of these side-stories was hindered by shift of focus from Tomoya to the side characters.”
Hmm… that does make more sense to me now. I’m not sure, but my first thought was that developing the heroines was less about developing Tomoya, but more about setting us up as viewers for the development that was to come. They’re the parables that prepare us for the main illustration. Does that maximize the effectiveness of the central plot? No, I suppose it probably doesn’t. Again, I think this makes some sense given the anime’s structural compromise, whether it’s a valid “excuse” or not — they were never intended to directly connect to the main plot, only to be side-stories that supported it. However, I don’t personally feel that it significantly diminished or deterred from the moral or message. Perhaps it’s because I keep reminding myself that this is, in fact, a compromise to deliver more of the source material, and not an attempt to totally re-imagine the story in a single linear plot. This is something that I got used to in the 2006 Kanon adaptation, and is largely the same here. So in other words, maybe I’m more “okay with it” because I understand the compromise they made (and why they made it), whereas if I ignored that knowledge and just took the show as it is, I may find myself wondering “why did we need so many of those side-stories, again?”
I suppose this really points to the difference between an attempt at “animating the game” versus “adapting the game’s story for animation”. And I have to say that I sort of feel for directors and story planners these days because there is no satisfying everyone in this regard. The approach Kyoto Animation took on these adaptations has been to try to be as true as possible to the original game so that those who had played the games would appreciate it. And I think they’ve been largely successful in that regard, as nearly anyone familiar with the games seems quite thrilled by the adaptations (minor preference issues aside). But does this make for a good anime when you judge it strictly on its own merits? Possibly less so. With a show like Clannad, you pretty much have to add the disclaimer that “it’s a good adaptation of the game”. Nearly any oddity can be explained by “well, that’s just because it was like in the game”. So it seems to me that it’s an anime that was meant first and foremost for game fans (or fans of these sorts of games in general), because they are the ones most able to keep “the compromise” in mind at all times. When you judge the plot on its own with no regard for the game, I can see how it may seem less cohesive.
That being said, I would also say that I’m not so “radical” in regards to the “plot above all” view of storytelling (and that everything else is just gawking and ogling at pretty pictures like idiots). Plot is important, but so is immersion, and symbolism, and emotion, and colour, and musical cues, and so many other things. If one engages their mind in understanding the more abstract rather than the more concrete (or perhaps in understanding their own reactions to what they see and how it applies to their own lives), they are still active participants in the viewing process. Basically, plot isn’t the only avenue for intellectual engagement, it’s simply the most obvious of the aspects in a story. What ultimately matters most is simply that you are always thinking, and always learning. People often use expressions like “it’s the sort of show where you turn off your brain and just watch” — that is the problem, and it’s actually not because “the plot doesn’t give you anything to think about”.
Anyway, interesting discussion.
lol Flame bait spotted.
There is a need to flesh out the characters and world in Clannad. If you just focused on the couple of Tomoya and Nagisa, you’d remove suspsense fromt eh show and the world woudn’t seem as phantasmagorical as it is. There is a reason for the “bullshit” as you put it.
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@omisyth
Indeed. CLANNAD’s charm, in my opinion, lies in its elusive profoundness of life’s ephemerality (with cute girls). Thus, the side characters plus the illusion world are essential in inoculating such an sensation into its audience.
I just simply think that it was weakly executed in certain ways and that hindered my catharsis.
It is a bit hard for me to express my thoughts without getting tl;dr so I apologise for not elaborating.
While I do not believe that the side stories are bullshit, I can see your point. The stories when analyzed, do indeed contribute somewhat to the main plot. However, it’s done in a way that they could be removed. The thing is, those side stories have other uses/purposes. One of which is pandering to fan-boys, game vets, and more fan-boys, to increase the show’s popularity. While this annoys people who don’t like the characters with side arc, I think the overall effect was positive for the popularity of the show. Just look at all the Kyou fan boys going “OMFG KYOU’S THIGHS!!!”. I mean hell that bit of fan service was totally unnecessary plot wise, but that’s what fanservice is.
This is not to say that the side arcs had NOTHING to contribute to the main plot and/or theme. I could get into detail by explaining how each arc helped reinforce the theme and message, but it won’t change the fact that it doesn’t do it “enough” (For you that is).
Your point is valid and understandable. But for me who loved the side arcs and distractions, it’s an irrelevant criticism (Like saying apples > oranges, but hey what if I like oranges better!).
Clannad is bullshit because there’s not enough Kyou.
@Flamestrike
Surely it is fun. I was thinking how these “interesting” side stories be placed aside as OVAs or extra episodes. We all like to enjoy such snippets, and viewing it after the main plot has been well done would greatly alleviate one’s appraisal of the anime’s ability to entertain.
@Shin
[ID SOJOURNER]
It haunts you day and night.
Amen, brother. This is the most overrated anime piece of shit I have ever watched.
i agree with what he or she sad.couse clannad is deama(its not like i dont like drama) but that kind of drama that makes you vomit.i am a girl (i watch a lot of anime though they are usually for boys)but sorry clannad has no ecchi parts and 1 * * * or more.i needed a bag next to me when i was whatchin it .i saw it up to 5.i was hardly keeping up.the rason i kept up was cause i wanned to know what happened the nagisa and whatever the guy is colledXDXDXDXDXDXDXD
GOD FORBID THAT PHOTO TO BE ON THE INTERNET!
DONT HATE ON CLANNAD!!!!!! Expecially on the internet. not cool. >:(