Why is Clannad: After Story so loved?

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Lime Pawpaw
Towns Folk
This post will contain spoilers.

I watched Clannad because everyone touted it as the saddest, most moving anime ever. The first season was really good - moments of extreme sadness, but lashings of humour too.

After Story's ending, however, was so disappointing that it made the whole anime feel like a drag. It didn't help that they cut down on all the humour and rushed from story arc to story arc, leaving none fully resolved. It felt like a typical 'visual novel advertisement adaptation' anime. But I could have borne it all if not for the ending.
If a story builds up so much grief then it's unfair to the viewer to use a deus ex machina (which was a pretty pathetic 'meaning-given' for the other-world segments) to turn back time and make everything happy-happy again.

Not to mention that godawful sad-sad-are-we-sad-yet soundtrack that dominated After Story's second half.
So what was it about this anime that made everyone say it was great and moving? I didn't feel moved at the end. I just felt exploited. "We're killing the kid off, the world is ending for the father who's lost everything... aaaaand everything's okay again! Whoopdy frickin doo." :panda:
 
I had a similar problem with Elfen Lied. People raved that it was so dramatic that it would leave a viewer in tears, but there were a number of errors in it that really sucked me out of it. Like the Dychlonius (horned Nekomimis) are the enemy of mankind, and when one gets loose from a science lab, the answer is to send some others after it! And Bando didn't conduct himself as a pro assassin. (You can't be a good one if you're egging on your highly dangerous target.) My biggest problem was with the main characters. Kohta has no direction in life and was really stupid at the ending. I admit Lucy/Nyu was an interesting character though, but she still had some missed opportunities for me to feel some kind of sympathy for her situation. All that and throw in a basket case named Yuka, (among other characters that really didn't fit in the plot.) started to confuse and bore me into submition.
 
I believe it was what the main character learned from that experience. Tomoya hated his life and the town he was born in. His mom died and his dad become an alcoholic. Tomoya has a variety of characters to be involved with and give him meaning. Tomoya in the end is suppose to learn to love and forgive before he could truly make a family with Nagisa. Nagisa's death would symbolize that your decisions can hurt the ones you dear and Ushio's symbolizes that you need to hold on to those who already love you.
Elfen Lied, loved the stroy (reminds me of Angel Beats-but bloodier) Sure it's plain, but I think it's more of a cult classic. Only a minority would probably like. It's not bad, but It's more visual and feeling oriented. The Hymn Liilium( The opening song) gives it a religious tone. The point I'm trying to make is, it has a spiritual/dark feeling about it. Angel Beats was about young adults wanting revenge on god for unfair lives/deaths. It was dark, yet beautiful to see how they dealt with their pain.
Both are very good, I think they are trying to depict human cruelty, loss, and pain. Clannad's ending is a redo and Elfen Lied was set in stone.
P.S. Jun Maeda worte Air, Clannad, Little Busters!, Angel Beats! and Charlotte
 
I would've thought the Hymn Lilium meant that the Dychlonious were of a divine species. (Perhaps even false deities,) and there were still missed opritunities and illogical characters. Mayu didn't even fit in the plot. (Watch any episode of Law & Order SVU and you'll find a similar sort of character.)

And realistically, wouldn't be better if not all of those bullies who killed Lucy's puppy were terrible? (Say one was a sociopath who frightened his other two friends by doing that.)

And still, Bando was more a prick than a killing machine like he was alleged to be. Kurama was okay-ish I guess. (Maybe his blowing up with Mariko was his only safest way to help Nana? Or was he suicidal?)

Kohta though, he mostly sucked in every episode he appeared in.
 
Misery likes company. To give Tomoya a free pass and reverse everything bad that happened to him - something that can never happen to us - is to not put the viewer's emotions in perspective. And I'd be fine with it if this was just another 24-episode adaptation that people would take as an alternative to the visual novel, but to see it universally praised and on just about every best-of list is irritating looking at the child's-fantasy ending.
 
Misery likes company. To give Tomoya a free pass and reverse everything bad that happened to him - something that can never happen to us - is to not put the viewer's emotions in perspective. And I'd be fine with it if this was just another 24-episode adaptation that people would take as an alternative to the visual novel, but to see it universally praised and on just about every best-of list is irritating looking at the child's-fantasy ending.
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My point too! (I was stalking this post long before commenting. BTW, @Ace, quit taking parts of what I said and using them alone. :mad:)
I find Elfen Lied neither the worst nor the best, although it was far from the latter extreme. I can't say anything for the manga, but the anime was not well enough explored; some characters seemed as if thrown in for good measure. The protagonists, though in their own right fascinating, did not grow overtime nor do anything substanstial. Sure it was an experience, but not the best one ever, as most claimed.

Death in the show was so frequent, the show often had a detached or even comedic feel of it - of course, there were lots of kills in the show, some funny, some emotional, some ironic or just - whatever feeling, this aspect of regular murder, though different from the bloody manga I've seen before, missed a few screws to really set it into the viewer.

Written down, this story of deadly telepaths, split-personalities, amnesia, blood and guts, puppy love, and cruel humanity sound like the makings of a heavily moral and sinful story. But as I saw it come together, it just didn't mesh very well: not unlike staring at a jigsaw puzzle 2/3 complete, with a few pieces forced into places they can't fit in.
It does do right in some places, like in Kurama's backstory, and some parts of the last episode, but what it didn't do correctly or repeated itself with just... distracted me. Individually, some of the characters had themselves pretty good traits and stories. Put together, it seemed disjointed.

Ultimately, it was the missed opportunity of Lucy's character that disappointed me. I thought Nyu was an escape from the harsh reality Lucy had seen too closely, I wished for more a send-off for that personality, for more a conflict between either side of innocent and guilty. I hoped we'd be treated to more an inside view of the mental tug-of-war like with young-Lucy.
In the end, it was everything sorta wrong with everyone that outweighed everything else which affected my opinion of the show: moderate, with a strong feeling of incompletion. Series grade C
 
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I did love clannad, I still do. When I watched it I was still fairly new to anime and yes it did make me cry. I was more shocked when
nagisa died, I didnt cry at that. I cried when the litle girl and her daddy were huging in the field. and when fuko left.
I did enjoy the soundtrack it was actually well written, and I love the art style. the storry is good but takes a certain audience to enjoy. well two audiences.

As for elfen lied that ending was more shocking than dramatic and sad. I wont say anything else about it because this a clannad thread.

I always liked Kannon and angel beats more than clannad. I didnt really like Air
 
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