Impressions of the Show Everyone Else Has Already Blogged: Clannad
It must really say something about the consistency of Kyoani’s animation quality that I don’t even find it exciting or exceptional anymore. They’ve raised quality to an almost mundane level. Granted, Kyoani’s animation style, especially in regard to Key adaptions, has become almost a visual cliche, promising big eyed, innocent bishoujo’s with tragic backgrounds that can only be saved by the power of love. Which is basically what Clannad is. While this is only the first episode, I feel like I’ve already seen Clannad in both Kanon and AIR. Nagisa is Ayu, Shiori, and Mizuki all rolled in one moe pile with some hot antenna hair added. Tomoyo combines the sarcasm of Yuuichi with the cynicism of Yukito. Kyou is Kaori moved up to a main character. Tomoyo is Mai with a tsundere personality; tsundere being a whole different cliche unto itself. There’s even the vague supernatural elements with Nagisa talking about the dead world, a sequence which reminds me way too much of Ayu’s dream ramblings.
There’s just nothing much original going on here. It’s the same Key template we’ve seen before. Admittedly, Key has shown themselves to being able to create some ingenious stories. They’ve also shown themselves to be as confined to genre archetypes as the next guy, perhaps because they invented them. The one interesting element I’ve seen so far, and my favorite part of the episode, were Nagisa families interactions. While AIR had the family aspect with Misuzu and her mother, I never liked the mom and the jarring end didn’t help things. But with the Nagisa family things feel more natural. For the first time there’s a father character instead of the usual single mom. And Awesome Father is awesome (calling him Awesome Father to distinguish him from Awesome Dad). A completely over-the-top and fun character. Lightened up the rather pedestrian plot of the whole episode.
It did feel like Kyoani jammed a lot into this one episode. I’ve heard Clannad is an expansive game, so that’s probably the reason. Nagisa is obviously the main character this time around, for better or worse. I do think she’s cute, especially with the hair, and she’s not unlikeable, she’s just not very interesting. I know she’s somewhat of a doormat character, but, again, I’ve seen that too many times before to like it again. Clannad looks to be, if anything, a product of Key’s own success, pulling out the same genre tricks that made them popular. We’ll see if there’s any new substance to those tricks however.
