I am currently reading Tokyo DTED. Its not a comic for the young'uns unless you want adult situations. My friend recommended it to me telling me he related to the protag's reason for treating a certain someone in a terrible way (referenced in chapter 1) and wanted me to share that particular feeling. Spoiler: I can see why he would. A girl makes a promise to a nice dude (the protagonist) that they will end up together when they get to high school. When they enter high school she starts sleeping with his brother, causing the protag to get mentally scarred and despise her. Later on I will send him a comic related to how I felt 10 years ago >:3
Waaauuaauagggghhghghhhhhh.... ≡(TェT)≡ I just finished Clannad / Clannad After Story. How to say this - it was sublime, and it was juvenile... it tore my heart open, it made me laugh... at times it took whiskey (strait) to tolerate, at others I couldn't turn away... and now it's over, and I can't have it back the same way again... Okay, first - the most important part: Spoiler ISNT IT THE CUTEST KITTYCAT YOUVE EVER SEEN????! ≡(❤ω❤)≡ Now, for commentary... I so want to say this is the bestest anime everrrrrrrrrrr. ^____________^ It's about living as a family, with all the sorrows and joys which that entails. (and kitty-cats too!) BUT, it has some faults which make me hesitate. BUT, I love it despite the faults, which is maybe the point? >_< The weakest arc is the third section of Clannad, which is really shallow and mostly ducks the themes which make the rest of the series so gud. The OVA / alt-world-24th-episode shows how much stronger it could have been, and I'm really sad that we missed out on that depth. In particular, it could have served as a precursory exploration of the developments between Tomoya and his father towards the end of After Story. Anyways, the other huge let-down was Spoiler the final episode. (This is where the whiskey came out.) Y U RUIN A MATURE, THOUGHTFUL STORY WITH WISHY-WASHY OOPSITSAMIRACLE! EVERYBODY HAPPY NOW! ≡(TェT)≡ Otherwise, the pacing of Clannad / After Story was amazing. It felt so much longer than it actually was. That feeling of looking back over ground covered is a very rare feeling in any kind of media, and only The Wind in the Willows has ever managed to evoke such a strong feeling of nostalgia in me. Its other tremendous strength are the characters. SO MANY. SO GOOD. They're all visibly cookie-cutter (my one criticism of the otherwise stellar animation - it took me a while to realize that I have to map hair color / shape to names), but they're all so unique and round. Perhaps a few too many ended up a bit on the sobby side, but that's ok for a story like this. AND FUKO IS THE BEST. ≡(★ω★)≡ if you dispute this I will never speak to you again >:O Oh right - the moment I noticed how good the pacing was is when Spoiler Fuko returns in After Story. I was about to run out of tissues, and I was wondering (b/c there were only a handful of episodes left), whether all the loose ends would be resolved. AND THEN THEY WERE EXACTLY AS I HAD IMAGINED. And it wasn't sad any more. For a while. Spoiler And then they ripped my heart out again. ≡(xェx)≡ I can't cry any more... Right... so, Clannad + Clannad After Story. You should watch it.
Yeah Clannad is a hot mess. It does so many things so right, but the rate at which it cycles characters due to the medium whence it's adapted is hilarious enough in itself as to be distracting from the content of the series. And the final episode is a joke that players of the game appreciated and everyone else disdained for the crap that it was. The dango daikazoku song still makes me tear up a bit when I hear it, though. FWIW, the Toei Animation Clannad movie, while way worse-looking than anything Kyoto Animation has put out in the entire history of its studio, is waaaaaay better. You should check it out, @neoncat, and see how you feel about the different storytelling. Also, if you have all these feelings about the characters, you should watch AIR (2005) and Kanon (the 2006 Kyoto Animation version).
Hrrrmmmmm... I just went to look at the wikipedia page. So it was adapted from a visual novel... Is it worth playing at all? I am usually highly skeptical of the visual novel genre. >_<
I guess having grown up on Maison Ikkoku, Clannad never gave me "the feels". Then again, when I watched it I had already lost my heart so that might have influenced it in some manner. A nice adventure series (so far): Tsuyokute New Saga. A huge war was fought against a demon lord and humanity was torn apart. The hero, mortally wounded after slaying the demon lord, finds a strange artifact that sends him many years back into his younger self with all of his memories. Its a nice read so far.
Tried to watch the Clannad movie, but stopped after half an hour. It just didn't have any energy, and kept summarizing major events with a couple lines of narration. The characters felt like they were each inflexibly rooted in a single mood. (sorry :-/) (also, there was no Fuko) I guess I should clarify that it was the side adventures and depiction of family life that drew me in. Clannad was not the most satisfying in itself, but I don't think After Story would have been as powerful without that silly and superficial foundation. (growing up and all that, y'know) I wasn't particularly a fan of the dating aspect of Clannad (that was the utterly juvenile arc I harrumphed at earlier), and all the main protagonists are a bit flat (excepting Tomoyo, and after-story-Kyou, who was another missed opportunity). Even Nagisa is mostly uninteresting in herself, serving more as a passive thread that holds the plot together. Also, what I was trying to discover earlier (without stumbling into spoilers) is the relationship between all the various Clannad manifestations. The visual novel came first, and presumably provides source only into the beginnings of After Story (seeing as it's a cyoa sort of thing)? And yet, the movie followed the same general arc as the series, so is there a "canonical" choice? Wikipedia said there was a sequel visual novel with Tomoyo as the "canonical" choice, though its short description sounded a bit trashy... I guess I will have to go play through the visual novel now. (eta: or wait for the english sub to come out in by the end of the year or so... gotta pick up Japanese one of these days >_<)
Another big difference is that the 2006 Kanon was generally hilarious—KyoAni's comedic timing is on point.
Well, the links to all the manga I have posted are now worthless. I apologize for that. Looks like I'll have to find another place to read manga.
Ok, Kanon was decent and much lighter than Clannad, though its humor never quite reached the pitch of some sequences in Clannad. It was thematically troubled, a bit muddled and repetitive, but it had some interesting characters. Mokoto and Shiori were probably the most well-developed, followed by not-Sunohara, while the others sadly got left without much development (or non-sequitur development). Flashback-reveals also got a little bit tiresome by the end. Still, it was pleasant. I'd situate it right alongside Crest of the Stars and So Ra No Wo To. Spoiler: theme crit But that theme... "smile until the end" isn't just dumb, it's harmful. They indirectly acknowledge that a couple of times (Shiori finally crying in the last ep, Yuichi admitting he was chasing illusions), but there was too much emphasis on everybody-be-happy-all-the-time. Also, y'know you can be nice to people even when they're not about to die. Also, Yuichi sure gets over people fast.
eh? wat?? I enjoyed those too, despite their flaws and my rampant criticism. soranowoto was actually really good after whiskey! Kanon will probably float upwards a bit with time, as I forget being annoyed at Yuichi, probably settling somewhere near Eve no Jikan and Samurai Champloo. Oh, and I remembered some other anime I forgot about / watched new ones: - FLCL: it gave me a headache, but I finished it and was confused and gave up and made myself tea and then felt better - Kemono no Soja: I had high hopes since it was based on a series by the same author as Seirei no Moribito, but it was actually just a kid's show. The man-exploiting-nature theme was very heavy-handed, and the main characters (aside from Erin's mother) just weren't complex. I dropped it after ~7-8 episodes. - Air: didn't grab me like Clannad, or even Kanon... maybe I'm now just inured to the anime-drama-female archetype, but I couldn't distinguish any of the leads except by their hair color. They were also too coy about the macguffin quest, and the protagonist dude wasn't very likeable. dropped after 3 ep.
I don't blame you for that. It was the weakest of the KyoAni series. Rewatched Danshi Kokousei no Nichijou. Its now one of my favorites. Did you know that Fyra was featured in the series? Spoiler: Dead ringer for Fyra. Seems mangatank has returned fused with mangapark.
I just thought banner/crest of the stars is supposed to be one of the best shows (haven't seen it), and the shows you're putting in the same ranking are like, okay.
Oh, huh. To me, it seemed like fluffy sci-fi. It sunk a lot of time into obscure / confused scenes in made-up language, and was about genetic-supremacist galaxy-conquering space elves who are somehow all cuddly-likeable... so, yeah... >_> I also couldn't figure out what it was trying to say, b/c half the time it was overly sympathetic to conquered planets, and half the time to the space elves.
To each their own Neoncat. I dug the Crest of Stars series (all 3 of them) for the character development. Space elves were just the icing on the cake. Currently re-watching: Coyote Ragtime Show, Mahou Tsukai Tai, Inukami, Ranma 1/2, and Nanaka 6/17.
