Clannad & Clannad After Story Introduction (The After Story was edited a bit to remove spoilers)

Tomoya Okazaki is a third year high school student resentful of his life. His mother passed away from a car accident when he was younger, causing his father to resort to alcohol and gambling. This results in fights between the two until Tomoya’s shoulder is injured in a fight. Since then, Tomoya has had distant relationships with his father, causing him to become a delinquent over time. While on a walk to school, he meets a strange girl named Nagisa Furukawa who is a year older, but is repeating due to illness. Due to this, she is often alone as most of her friends have moved on. The two begin hanging out and slowly, as time goes by, Tomoya finds his life shifting in a new direction.

Now entering the second semester, he continues to meet a variety of different people, expanding his own world in the process. Through his relationship with Nagisa, and his various encounters, Tomoya begins to understand the meaning and importance of family. Unfortunately, Tomoya and Nagisa are faced with many hardships and challenges along the way.

Review – Probably no spoilers, I tried to keep it pretty spoiler free.
An incredible emotional roller-coaster ride. You’ll find yourself entertained, laughing out loud one moment and holding back tears the next. To take a quote from another review: “…only the most cynical of souls will avoid shedding at least a few tears at certain points.” I definitely believe that to be true. I don’t believe it’s possible to watch this series and not tear up. You’d have to be DEAD INSIDE to not shed a single tear throughout the entire series.

What I wrote about this series in a previous post also seems to hold true:

I’ve determined that the purpose of this anime is to make you cry you eyes out. To provide episode after episode of touching drama that cumulates to a tear jerking episode before beginning the next story.

The series is almost a bunch of small short, 2, 6, 8 episode stories…within an overall 44 episode story arc (5 of them are “another world” tales or recaps). It’s a bit unbelievable that there’s so much tragedy within just a few group of friends…but…well, I guess even in real life, everyone’s got their story to tell.

Anyways, I guess I’ve written enough about how sad it can be. You’ll have to watch for yourself. It’s definitely a memorable experience…there will be some short stories that just touch your heart and others that…are just alright.

Another aspect of the show I like is how there are moments that you don’t understand until near the end of the second series. There’s a scene in the very first episode of Clannad that is explained on the very last episode of Clannad After Story. It’s amazing that they have these pieces laid out so far in advance. Even if this originally a manga and is complete before anime production, by tying the seasons together, the intros and outros, there’s certainly a bit more depth added to the world. Even the Dango outro in the first series plays a recurring role/theme in the second series.

Side Note…unrelated to Clannad…well sorta…
I’m the type of person that really feels…empathetic towards characters I watch. When I watch anime/shows, I place myself in their shoes and feel what I believe their feeling. In that sense, I also start taking aspect of their past and their character…to really feel what someone feels. It’s strange, I also feel drawn to fictional characters, more so than in real life. I’ll feel something is sad when I watch anime but I’m a pretty cold hearted, empathy and sympathy lacking realist when it comes to real life. It’s like I turn off my ability to feel in real life…but I crank it up in shows I watch. I guess it balances out…

The point of that was that…I don’t know if I could watch this same series again. Given the things I know about the character’s future…the challenges they face, everything is amplified. I mean, if I watch the first thing go wrong, I start to feel everything that’s going to go wrong…within that first thing. I’m also more emotionally attached to the characters a second time around so I can understand them more. Overall, it makes watching a series like this a second, third time, emotionally much harder.

I guess the difference within how I feel in real life as opposed to what I watch…is that I never know the whole story in real life, never experience what others have experienced, can never really put myself in their shoes. So I can’t feel. Whereas in anime, I know all the important parts of the story. I witness it and I’m a part of it. “Empathy, I lack it…in real life”.

/back to studying .NET and working on my website…it was a nice 6day~ ish break from everything.