Publisher: Sentai Filmworks (USA)Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English dub and English Subtitles
Length: 94 minutes
Production Date: 2007
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes
After trying to give the VisualArt’s/Key/Kyoto Animation series (Air/Kanon/Clannad) a chance, and a very good chance at that, I finally decided with “Clannad After Story” that almost all of them were vapid otaku bait with very few redeeming features. The main female leads in all three are infantile women that a lot of men would steer clear of in real life and all three have the exact same key elements (no pun intended). Then you have some of the most unsubtle, annoying and blatantly emotionally manipulative writing in any anime show I’ve seen. Add in the fact that it’s quite lazy writing as well. But then again I can’t see why anime fans go nuts over show like “Nanoha”, which I thought was a soulless magical girl show, and “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”, which is rather mediocre once you take away it’s out of sequence gimmick. The show also shuts out viewers who haven’t read the novels with its references to things which only happen in the books. I remember criticising “Clannad After Story” on a forum and got a right bollocking for it. I was accused of not understand the show. Uh huh. Cause it’s a deep and complex series huh? Seriously, there’s a subset of fans that’ll defend any old shit show to the death and won’t take any criticising their favourite little show. Sigh…
It’s amazing what the very same material looks and feels like in hands that are more experienced, and dare I say it, better storytellers than those of Kyoto Animation. This film adaptation of the original Visual Novel came out a couple of months before the TV series aired. Believe it or not, the late, great Osamu Dezaki directed the film. From the very beginning, the first thing you notice is the animation (by Toei) is many steps down from the gorgeous animation that Kyoto Animation is famous for. The film covers the same territory that both the first series and “After Story” covered. I think this is probably was a bit too much to cover in a film that runs just a bit over 90 minutes. The first hour pretty much covers the events of the first series, with the focus strictly on Tomoya and Nagisa with Sunohara playing a bigger role than in the TV series. Most of the secondary characters are virtually ignored with the exception of Nagisa’s parents, Yusuke and the teacher, Kouko Ibuki.
The last 30 minutes fast forward to the end of “After Story”. Dezaki makes a lot of changes to the material in terms of structure here (and for the first two third of the film). It’s certainly a lot less melodramatic and I don’t feel I’m being manipulated emotionally, which the Kyoto Animation version does in a ham fisted way. In fact I would probably say Dezaki has toned down the fate of Nagisa too much. It does feel a little bit cold, unattached and uncaring. The transition from the couple’s high school days to the aftermath is a little jarring and doesn’t work too well in my eyes. The relationship between Nagisa and Tomoya should have been strengthened and developed more in the first hour. I also had problems with Nagisa. She’s the typical infantile teenage girl who appears in these VisualArt’s/Key shows, and to be frank, she shits me to tears. There was also the rather unbelievable leap from shy infantile girl to her brilliant one woman existentialist play she performed from memory without a script. Is she an idiot savant or what?
The film is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. However I think a film like this just shows how different the end product can be when a very experienced and talented director is at the helm. Oh, and of course it looks so Dezaki with the lighting, split screens and the infamous pastel freeze frames. Gotta love that. I think there is a lot of problems with the basic story and its characters and I think a bit more time should have been allotted to the film’s run time to help flesh out the core relationship in the story, so I can only give it 6.5 out of 10.
Remaining Backlog: 25 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).
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