yeet fam (posting this introduction from a scrapped 10,000+ word piece on Clannad with little to no editing whatsoever. Enjoy the harrowing Notes-lore.)

Clannad, the anime adaptation, at least, is the worst. It’s not good. There are many reasons why Clannad is not good, and other people have explored those reasons far better than I could ever hope to.

In November of 2015, about six months after I started watching anime, I was a first semester sophomore at the University of Notre Dame. I was also in the depths of depression, a situation which deteriorated to the point where I had to file for a medical withdrawal from the University halfway through the next semester. I have yet to return to Notre Dame. Anyway, on a (most likely) cloudy evening in November of 2015, I had a dream. In that dream, I was on a date with on the wharf in Santa Cruz, California. It was a very vivid dream. It was warm, romantic and left me with a strong feeling of nostalgia when I awakened. I thought to myself, “if only I could dive back into that dream and stay there and never wake up, that would be truly wonderful…”

That, of course, was impossible, but since I knew I had felt that way in the past outside of the context of the dream, I figured that if I could remember what made me feel that way, I could experience it once again. As a huge fan of music, I often associate my favorite albums with a certain mood, feeling or atmosphere, and whenever I listen to those albums, I am able to tap into the feelings associated with them. The nostalgic feeling of my dream felt similar to those kinds of feelings I associate with certain albums, though the feeling from the dream felt far more immersive.

The evening after I had the dream, I listened to the album Devotion by Beach House. I had been listening to a lot of Beach House around then because that Fall they had released two albums, Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars. Beach House remains one of my favorite bands because of their ability to craft sensual music about love. When I was listening to Devotion that evening, I realized, “oh hey, this feels a bit like that dream last night.” It wasn’t quite the same feeling, but I spent the rest of that week listening to Beach House anyway.

The Friday after the dream, I went to dinner with a young woman with whom I had been spending quite a bit around then. She was a quiet mild mannered girl, and well, yeah, that was her. I was putting in a lot of effort to try to like her, since I had come to college with the vision that I’d find the woman with whom I’d spend the rest of my life with before graduating. At Notre Dame, this sort of thing isn’t unheard of, some seniors get engaged just before graduating, the phenomenon is known as “ring by Spring,” and it was a goal I had set for myself. Now, my only goal is just to return to being a student at Notre Dame, but that’s not important. While sharing that meal with the young lady, during one of the many awkward silences, my eyes met hers and my mind was flooded with cherry blossoms, weepy synths, and the distinct image of Nagisa Furukawa.

I realized then that the feeling from my dream earlier that week was derived from my memories of Clannad, which I first watched over the summer. It was one of my favorite anime at the time, though I had only watched a little over a dozen anime at that point. After I finished dinner, I went back to my dorm, hopped into my bed and started rewatching Clannad. Instead of trying in vain to slip back into the lovely dream I had earlier that week and sleep forever, something I would not have minded at all back then, I was able to tap directly into that state of mind by watching the show that first enveloped me with that warm loving experience, and that was better.

I’m currently on my tenth watch of Clannad, so I think I’m fairly qualified, at this point, to dive into it in depth. Clannad is one of the anime that I think about the most frequently. It’s truly an enigma because it’s, like, really bad, but also not. Clannad’s problems are plentiful, and the reasonable fans of the show will acknowledge the validity of them and still defend it as one of their all-time favorite anime. Often times, the defenses of the show these fans offer make it seem like the show is only worth watching for the last ten or so episodes. The most stubborn fans will insist that the show is amazing from start to finish, with the second half of After Story topping the rest in ways they couldn’t imagine possible. My sources for those statements about Clannad fans come from my experience spending time in each of those camps.

My position on Clannad is neither of those now. Nick Creamer, the most vocal and persuasive of Clannad critics that I’ve come across, argued that there is a great anime somewhere in Clannad, but it could have been done in half the episodes. Perhaps that is true, but I think that show would end up feeling very different from the Clannad adaptation that Kyoto animation did deliver to us, and I don’t think that I’d have had that dream if Clannad had been adapted in half the episodes. There’s no fixing Clannad. There is no way it could have been changed into some sort of incarnation that might remotely be considered a “good” anime.

Why, John?

Often times, when I rant about Clannad on twitter, I receive some replies that ask, “if you hate Clannad so much, why do you keep rewatching it?”

Well, I keep rewatching Clannad because I love Clannad. Clannad is good, actually. It may suck, and it may be the worst, but it is good. It may be a trashy harem filled with girls with crippling social anxiety, girls lacking basic social skills, and a girl whose backstory utilizes the exact same conceit as the main heroine from the source material’s spiritual predecessor, but it is good. It may have poorly characterized heroines who are rendered irrelevant once their arcs have concluded, but it is good. It also has a heroine who is prepared to lose her virginity to her sister’s love interest in a P.E. shed, but it is good. Actually, that’s pretty cool and it contrasted a lot against the other heroines, so I think that was actually a good thing, in fact, a similar situation arises in my personal favorite anime. When it happens in Clannad though, Kyou, the aggressive and strong willed heroine suddenly becomes super shy and submissive and it feels out of character, so Clannad doesn’t really handle that very well. When I say Clannad is bad, its examples like that, examples of the characters being handled poorly, in my opinion, which come to mind. Pretty much every decision regarding Sunohara, my least favorite anime character ever, was a poor decision. Sunohara is a cringe-worthy comic relief character in a series that shouldn’t have nearly as much comedy as it does.

Okay fam that’s all I got for today.