@lelangir: maybe I was immune to the fanboying and whatnot, but that partial blindness did help me see it in a slightly different way to that of most people. Clannad was excellent (eventually) but I think I’ll need a bit more convincing before taking on the other two. Can either of them match this in the character development and storytelling? If so I’ll give them a shot.

@Peter S: I rewatched #22 when getting the screenies, and it all came back to me. It was a tough adaptation I think but KyoAni did such a great job…now I have to watch the movie and play the VN! I’m planning on a rewatch of this series when the DVDs come out, anyway.

@gaguri: there’s two Kanons?! 0_o

I was face-palming all the way in the beginning, since its ‘uguuu am i cute’ antics really wasn’t my thing, but it does get better.

Since this sums up my initial impression of Clannad, maybe I’d like Kanon after all!

As for Kyou and Tomoyo, I thought they were great characters too. Tomoyo After still wows me so hopefully Kyou’s episode will do her character justice in the same way. Fingers crossed, eh? ^_^

In other words when they cut back to the birth scene I had the cynical reaction at first. A Deus Ex Machina, albeit a stunning one, beginning with Girl and Robot, then that light blob and the stuff floating behind it, slow, moody, patient, magic going on under the surface. I absolutely love how they tried to make it work. Though they couldn’t, I think it’s one of KyoAmi’s finest moments.

(Just watched the first half of ep22 again. Damn, that’s good!)

To be fair I should have played closer attention to moments which had bounced off me the first time. They were setting up for the Deus Ex Machina and I hadn’t realized it. With a rewatch I wonder if my opinion will improve … Um, probably.

THIS. You see, I think that’s the most important part – no matter what the reset trivialized (inasmuch as it does trivialize), the development doesn’t go away. Or at least I see that as the most significant, irrefutable part.

You’re in an interesting position of having seen Clannad before Air or Kanon. I’d like to hear your opinion of those two in relation to Clannad, of course. Oh, what’s that, you still don’t want to watch Kanon? Lelangir vi Britannia commands you….

However, by the time that final episode proper came about I was all but begging Nagisa to come back as much as Tomoya was, and I think that speaks volumes for the way Clannad managed to expertly manipulate my emotions into making that implausible happy ending seem like the only way forward for both the story and the viewer, so I ended up grabbing it with both hands and welcoming it for what it was.

I’ll fully admit that I didn’t enjoy After Story from beginning to end (I always derived more enjoyment from the light-hearted stuff the series brought to the table), but I have a lot of respect for how it handled things – Nagisa’s death didn’t move me as much as I know it did some but it was technically beautifully realised, and the episode where Tomoya realises his similarities to his father in so many ways simply reduced me to tears, before of course that heart-breakingly sad ending before the “resurrection”. It was very deliberate, linear and methodical about how it did things (as you might expect of a series based on a visual novel), but it did those things so well that it never really acts as a negative against After Story.