I’m still as enamoured with a minority shows, though. I’ve made a start on Fruits Basket and not before time either; it has a great iyashikei vibe with some impressive character dynamics that push it just out of the realms of mediocre and into the territory signposted Could Be Very Good Indeed. The latest episode of Eve no Jikan was exquisite as always, and came out sooner than I expected too. Reviewage for that coming right up soonish.

Higashi no Eden

The ending – which isn’t an ending after all – to Eden of the East was a fine way to finish what proved to be a fine series. After a middle section that gave me mixed signals it got its act together and piled on the Serious Questions to produce something remarkably close to what I’d hoped it would’ve been in the first place. I’m actually glad the sequels are going to be feature films rather than being made-for-TV because the subject matter and artwork won’t suffer from the small screen constraints. Of course, many were annoyed at the decision to continue it in that format but isn’t it preferable to squeezing a story of such scope into one TV run?

I’m glad the religious subtext wasn’t important after all: when the social commentary was emphasised instead it was much more satisfying. My recent travels followed by some more forays into the writing of Ryu Murakami have given my fascination with contemporary Japanese culture a kick up the backside so the interesting stuff bubbling under the surface here was really fascinating when extrapolated just outside the realms of the here-and-now. Excellent opening and ending themes too, which worked well with the imagery.

K-On!

A victim of the snap judgements and the argumentative approach that the fandumb breeds so well, K-On committed the cardinal sin of being on TV but not being Haruhi Suzumiya. Considering it doesn’t really aspire to be anything in particular apart from undemanding, cutesy fun I’d say it’s doing fine. I don’t think the issue fans should have with K-On! is important for the simple reason that there isn’t an issue to speak of; I certainly don’t see the point in paying attention to armchair experts who claim there’s a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of watching it.

The bottom line is it makes me laugh but not to a degree at which I get a hernia and an asthma attack simultaneously, and the musical aspect is Relevant To My Interests. Quite frankly I find it easier to relate to a teenager walking starry-eyed around a guitar store than watching an obnoxious brat who threatens the integrity of the space-time continuum every time she gets pissed off about something. Besides, according to Baka Raptor the Haruhi light novel emphasises the aspects of the story I enjoyed more than the TV show did; the declaration “Sarcastic mental asides work better in book format…” is the point where I was sold on it. I couldn’t care less about the TV version, sadly, and can’t see why I ought to either.

Clannad’s Kyou chapter

Speaking of KyoAni, the final Clannad bonus episode played into the Kyou fanboy camp but was nevertheless a sweet little study into what happens when the unstoppable force of a tsundere girl meets an unmovable object in the form of a tsundere guy. In a remarkable state of astute observation Sunohara remarks how Tomoya and Kyou make a pretty good couple, exploring the little hints and ‘could’ve been’ moments that the main series and the Tomoyo After episode had to ignore. Quite frankly it didn’t feel completely natural after I exposed myself to a True End (twice) and a Tomoyo End but Kyou is a vivacious and expressive character who’s always fun to watch, and the feelings expressed all came across as genuine enough.

What this episode was fundamentally about was, I suspect, giving Kyou the screen time her fanboys were clamouring for but for the rest of us it’s another opportunity to let ourselves get swept along in the dramas and dilemmas of the old love triangle. I guess this would be just another high school romance with the unrequited crush thing going on, but the fact that it’s a revisit type of outing means that you already know the characters and how they feel about one another so all that’s left to do is speculate about how things could’ve turned out.

Aaand…I’m out. I want to watch something but after being treated to a small number of excellent titles, most things would now would blur into a mass of immature, derivative slush. I need a heartwarming drama about people I can give a stuff about (to replace the Clannad-shaped hole in my life), a grown-up piece in the IG/Bones vein that casts familiar ground in a new light (until the Eden sequels appear) and a gritty actioner that doesn’t do the boring-as-buggery Shounen Jump thing where fights are animated poorly, use hackneyed dialogue and last for bloody ages. I refuse to believe that ALL new anime is a load of bollocks so please take the time to list some worthy gems so I don’t have to. Then we can crack open the Pimm’s and enjoy the summer.

The feature-length film covers the same ground as its younger counterpart but inevitably leaves out the side-stories and, interestingly, wraps it up with an alternative ending. Most noticably the art style and direction are different thanks to a Toei production crew, although the only change in terms of casting is that of Tomoya’s VA (i.e. Kenji Nojima as opposed to Yuuichi Nakamura). The result is different for sure, but I’d hate to think a KyoAni bias would stop you giving it a fair chance.

I can’t say where it diverges from the VN but assuming the TV episodes are more faithful to the original material the film does tweak a few things: there’s no Ryou (odd, considering Kyou does appear), no Fuuko, no Butan, Kotomi’s part is practically a walk-on one and the screen time of the supporting cast who do remain is more downplayed. It maintains that Tomoya/Nagisa focus of the After Story only this time right from the beginning, which I actually thought was a wise move: most shortened versions of stories choose to omit important things and include trivial ones but in this case the screenplay opts to focus on the main relationship and the all-encompassing Family theme.

In addition to stripping out the ‘optional extras’ in the form of each of the arcs belonging to supporting cast members, the feature-length Clannad story takes a considerably more serious tone than the TV series. Again, I think this works in its favour because the high school slapstick moments often felt like filler to me but it does lose some of that carefree feelgood factor that sweetened the bitter pill of tragedy and loss. Youhei is still on hand to offer some outrageous antics but even this is tempered by a more responsible side to him – he gets a job at one point – and the more uneasy dynamic between him and Tomoya.

Not only is Tomoya more distant from the guy who ought to be his best pal, his tsun-tsun side comes more to the fore at the expense of his dry and sarcastic sense of humour (which I’ll admit I really enjoyed in the TV version). His father too is shown in a slightly more favourable light but Akio and Sanae are just as heartwarming and hilarious in both their screen incarnations. The dream sequence is different too, although it makes sense in terms of Tomoya’s situation and fits the altered narrative well. The imagery is still a bit odd, but that’s dreams for you.

What certainly worked much better for me however was the portrayal of Nagisa’s character. I’ve always seen her as being insipid and a pushover; here her fragility is effectively conveyed but her personality is a bit stronger and she seems to have more to say. Rather than being akin to a sakura petal that falls into Tomoya’s hand she actively seeks out his attention and doggedly persists in engaging with him in conversation; I don’t like romantic setups in which one party does all the chasing anyway, but it feels more like a genuine romance here. There’s a stronger sense that it was Nagisa, above all others, who brought Tomoya out of his shell and set him on the road to redemption and adulthood – he’s still the hero of the story but she earns the heroine status she deserves.

The movie genuinely feels like Tomoya’s and Nagisa’s story, which it is of course, but doesn’t wander off at tangents like the series did. I suppose KyoAni had more running time at their disposal in which to explore them, but also I suspect had a more pressing need to recreate the VN experience for the fans. I won’t go on a KyoAni hate campaign here (my stance on them is pretty neutral, believe it or not) but I do think they are pretty fan-aware. Not that this is a bad thing; it just means that Osamu Dezaki is bound to take a slightly different tack.

He is after all an industry veteran so is in a better position than most to take risks and stamp his own mark on the piece than a director tied to viewer expectations. Because it’s a one-off feature perhaps there’s less pressure riding on it too? Anyhow, it certainly bears the hallmarks of a Dezaki movie: like the cinematic outings for Black Jack (which wasn’t bad) and Golgo 13 (which was), Clannad features those ‘postcard memoy’ static watercolour shots at the ends of pivotal scenes.

I’ve noticed these in every Dezaki piece I’ve seen so far and the technique has influenced the likes of Junji Nishimura in his work on true tears. Even so it’s hardly a subtle device and has to some degree been a victim of its own success: basically these shots come across as clichéd and glaringly obvious, which is I’m sure not what was intended at all. The character designs appealed much more to me though: they have an older and less KyoAni-fied look to them that you do actually get used to after a while. It’s hard to believe it pre-dates the made-for-TV incarnation by only a few months because in terms of aesthetics it’s a markedly less polished and ‘cute’.

This is a Clannad that I can appreciate, but at the same time one that I don’t think will be looked fondly upon by fans of the series. The visuals lack that popular KyoAni sheen, even though the characterisation is handled with confidence and the imagery is sometimes quite powerful. The plot omits the side-stories and devotes less time to the supporting characters, but this is a good thing in that the things that really matter are given the attention they deserve. It’s still the Clannad we know and love, just a slightly more serious one but is no less meaningful in how the issues of togetherness, responsibility and love (both of the romantic and family variety) are conveyed. I still shed a Manly Tear™ at Tomoya’s and Ushio’s joyful reunion, after all.

Looking back, I’ve written A LOT about Clannad. It’s pure escapism. It’s funny and emotional at the same time. It’s sweet and fluffy, like cake. It’s fantasy, even though those aspects didn’t always work for me. It was high school romcom but showed wonderful single-mindedness in going for a Nagisa End, throwing in a superlative bonus episode to cover the bases before launching into its second half proper and finally earning my respect. Even though I’ve not played the VN (yet) I somehow think that the ending was better than even the dedicated fans gave it credit for.

It wasn’t something I was in a hurry to finish because I’d heard how things get really tear-jerking after the whole Nagisa pregnancy thing; I decided the best thing to do was to stock up on tea/coffee/beer and a selection of snacks then burn through the latter episodes in one sitting. The marathoning approach worked well in that it helped me get immersed in the story and of course prevented the ;_; being inflicted on me for a longer period.

I’m glad I sat through the high school-centric first season because the payoff in the second season was so rewarding. It was heartbreaking, sure, but I thought the way in which history repeated itself with Tomoya and Nagisa taking after their respective parents gave a wonderful feeling of togetherness and continuity; it highlighted how everyone is connected and wrapped up the overall Family theme with a delicately-tied bow. People die and familiar places change but you shouldn’t let the losses get in the way of seeing the bits in beween: life, love, friendship and all that stuff.

To go off at a quick tangent, I don’t follow traditional Christian beliefs any more. My science-based education and my habit of questioning everything (not to mention wariness of organised religions) has given me a half-spiritual, half-scientific acknowledgment similar to the Gaia hypothesis in thinking of the entire planet as a cohesive whole. By this I mean that I see human beings as connected to the world and each other in ways that neither science nor religion can fully explain.

The best thing to do I think is to take care of the things we can perceive and understand on an everyday level and let Nature, Him Upstairs or whatever you choose to call it, take care of you. Clannad’s final message was a simple statement that the bonds between friends and especially family are what holds society together, but holds us together as individuals too. It’s sappy and sentimental I know, but if you have an aversion to sentimentality you’d have steered clear of this story in the first place, right?

The ending has been notoriously contentious. Does my acceptance and satisfaction of it therefore mean I’m misunderstanding things? I felt the way in which the ending was handled was really fitting, beyond episode 22 taking some sharp and unexpected turns. If you think of the Clannad TV show as a stand-alone piece that doesn’t need prior experience of the VN to fully appreciate, it does beg the question “does a story fail if it requires a user manual to understand it?” Yep, RahXephon, I’m looking at you too here.

Although Clannad features a lot of true-to-life situations and issues, it’s still a fantasy story: you should expect the unexpected and accept that miracles can happen when people wish for them. Fuuko’s awakening led to some great comedic scenes but her revival was miraculous in itself and as such served as a reminder that the city in which the story is set isn’t the Real World; it was as if the writers were reiterating this fact ahead of time in bringing her back.

I can see two ways to appreciate the ending more. Firstly, it’s not usually possible to satisfactorily condense a multi-threaded narrative into a single-threaded storyline, unless you tell the alternative stories separately (as was the case with Tomoyo’s episode, and soon, Kyou’s). In Clannad ~After Story~ the idea of going back and telling the story again, with significant changes to the plot, is actually part of the narrative itself so it’s an opportunity that I think couldn’t be passed up. Such a reset is not just a depiction of a VN player reaching the Bad End and going back to play it again and read the Good End: in the case of Clannad that’s actually what’s happening to the characters.

The fact that Tomoya goes back and lives his life again, as it were, is a remarkably faithful recreation of the visual novel’s structure; the fact that jumping back in time is something that occurs within the story, rather than being just an aspect of the VN’s gameplay as is usually the case, makes this possible. As a transition from branching VN story to a linear televised one, it succeeds for me. Is it a success as a stand-alone story though?

The whole of Clannad was for me Tomoya’s rites of passage into adulthood. He fell in love and learned how to care about those around him in the first season, then grew up into a responsible working parent who reconciled with his father in the second; some of these episodes were indeed heartbreaking and tragic, but were lessons he needed to learn in order to enjoy, and value, what he had in the end. In a way, he had to earn his happiness – raising a family of his own – to literally nurture the seeds of his parents’ generation and make the circle complete.

The problem with going back and doing things all over again is that it suggests disregarding the experiences of the first chain of events, and the character development that results. What makes the happy ending so powerful is that we have already seen Tomoya lose his wife, then go on to miss five years of life shared with his daughter and ultimately experience losing her too: I saw how bad things could be, and as a result appreciated the good ending all the more. If Tomoya lived a happy life with Nagisa and Ushio, he’d have to have some recollection of the first ‘life’ and its unhappy ending to appreciate the second as much as the viewer does.

I can accept both of these arguments but that does depend on some things that I’m taking on faith until a rewatch confirms them. Firstly, Tomoya has to have those memories of the events in episodes 16-21. Secondly, the fact that both Nagisa and Ushio survive in episode 22 must be due to Tomoya experiencing the Bad End to its tragic conclusion, and drawing something from it, be it wisdom or enough of those little orbs of light. That way they make sense and make the Manly Tears (both from Tomoya and from me as I watched it) worthwhile.

I think the Orb Collection idea, Nagisa’s and Ushio’s connection with the town and the degree to which Tomoya remembered Nagisa’s and Ushio’s deaths in the first instance, could have been explained more clearly. Kotomi revisiting the parallel universes idea was another foreshadowing of future unexpectedness (as were Fuuko’s awakening and those periodic Light Orbs) but when the story had played down its fantastical elements in favour of slice-of-life and comedy for a fair while I can sympathise with those who were taken by surprise when redemption seemed heaven-sent.

I don’t have a particular like or dislike for dark or serious storytelling; what I do appreciate is a contrast. A sweet story with serious undercurrents perhaps, or doing the rollercoaster ride through despair but assuring us that it turns out okay in the end. It feels life-affirming and uplifting, but is still able to deal with hard-hitting issues along the way: Clannad did just that, and that’s what made it great.

You may remember that I have a turbulent relationship with Clannad. I was frustrated by its tendency to drift into overt sentimentality and sit uncomfortably between fantasy and reality; it offered a principle story thread to follow, only to divert its attention to side-stories; then the said side-stories proved to be sometimes more enjoyable than the main plot thread. It’s a strange feeling when an alternate-universe retelling, reduced to one episode tagged on the end, was my favourite moment of them all and proved to be almost as memorable as the rest of the first season combined.

I guess it’s unfair to criticise it for the fact that it’s a product of a lucrative franchise produced by a commercially successful studio and is adapted from a visual novel since, well, I can hardly criticise the VN medium at all now, can I? Similarly the most superficial aspect of all, the cutesy moe-fied aesthetic, shouldn’t be an issue but let’s face it, often it is. Ultimately though Clannad frustrates me because one moment it’s ‘just another fan-aware high school romance show’ with all the plot devices and tropes that go along with it, and the next it’s flooring me with heartfelt emotion and genuinely well-executed storytelling.

Eternal wrote an excellent post on exactly what Clannad does right in being more than just another KyoAni cash cow; while I can’t gather together quite the same level of enthusiasm I can see where he’s coming from. It looks the same as before but it feels like something else to me now; something more serious that has more to say. What we all take for granted in those stories of classroom confessions, lunch breaks under the cherry blossoms and all that stuff is that this is a fantasy world of teenage romance. It’s perhaps easy for us to forget there’s a real world out there but Clannad ~After Story~ actually addesses this and follows the what-happens-next transition.

And damn, do I know how that feels

Despite this it still shares the first season’s knack of going off at multi-episode tangents to give supporting characters screen time before returning to the Tomoya/Nagisa pairing. As much as I enjoyed the relief of Sunohara redeeming himself in the eyes of his sister and stop being a selfish ass (along with the most epic Your Mum gag in recent memory), or seeing the background to Yukine and her brother, this is just Clannad covering its multi-route narrative bases. As sweet as it was, going even as far as exploring the story behind Misae and her cat seemed a bit completist to me but I can understand the writers wanting to represent as much of the original story as possible (e.g. there IS a Tsukihime anime contrary to popular opinion, but it was half the length it needed to be).

After a couple of diversions that have the typical hit-and-miss effect on me I can now see where Clannad ~AS~ is headed. Or, at least, I can see that it’s going beyond the invisible envelope that surrounds this type of series. This is where Clannad ~AS~ really endeared itself to me: it takes the story outside the situations and settings of the genre. Clannad is all growed up.

The point where Tomoya bumps into the Fujibayashi sisters after their graduation hammered home the important point that they’re not kids any more: they’re adults with lives, hopes, fears…and careers. Watching Tomoya bumbling through his first proper full time job and move into his own place meant more to me than all those episodes of classroom hijinks because I can now genuinely relate to these people. Living on your own isn’t without its benefits of course but it has a big enough share of problems to warrant some screen time in a story like this.

I’m not sure if the other Key works, or indeed KyoAni’s usual output overall, take on subject matter that lies beyond the glass ceiling of high school graduation; if this is the case I’ve been doing myself a disservice by ignoring the likes of Kanon or Air. Looking further afield, stuff like Honey and Clover or Moyashimon feature characters who are a bit older but to all intents and purposes they’re still at school; you have to look to the superlative Solanin to see a portrayal of genuine postgraduate life (but then, I urge anyone to look into Solanin anyway).

I’ve heard Clannad ~AS~ gets a bit teary later on although it allegedly explains the parallel universe thing that crops up at the beginning of some of the episodes. I’ve been wondering about that for a while actually, since it seems to be rendered in labour-intensive CG so possibly the writers prepared it in advance of animating the episodes themselves, fully aware of its place in the bigger picture.

If there’s one thing that could still use some work it’s giving Nagisa a bit of extra gumption on the characterisation front. The latest WS episode (#10) focuses the story firmly on her and Tomoya but considering she’s the main character she still lacks…stage presence is the closest thing I find to describe it. It’s not as if I could ever dislike her (I couldn’t possibly do that, honestly), but what charisma or strength she has isn’t being conveyed too well on-screen. As a supporting character she’d be great but isn’t all this supposed to be about her above all others? Maybe I’m missing something important, or the writers have a really significant plot development for her round the corner. I hope the latter is the case because I’m finally getting the impression that Clannad is more than a bit special.