The third thing I noticed, is that Tomoyo more of a moeblob, and less of a typical Kuudere, than I remembered. Apparently present!me has an unfairly negative view of newbies’ comprehension abilities, including the abilities of past!me. That says more about me than about the series. Two years ago I found it perfectly enjoyable, and I also enjoyed it now, but now I found it just complicated enough that I wouldn’t recommend it to a newcomer. All the characters are introduced in these elaborate situations, there are long time cuts between scenes, etc. The second thing that I noticed, was how much stuff is happening in the first few episodes. What I’m talking about, is that it really feels moe, just like quality shows in the above genres can feel funny, scary, or exciting, but only if they succeed at their goal. Bun no, I don’t just mean that it’s following the moe tropes, or it is “in the moe genre” whatever that may be, in the same way as something can be a comedy, a horror, or an action-centric story. Hell, I even knew that much before watching it at all, even for the first time.
I mean, that sounds obvious, right? I remembered that much from my first viewing. Now I’m 10 episodes into the first season, and there are several scenes like that: Clannad is moe. When I saw this, and found it incredibly cute, I was surprised how is it possible that I didn’t remember of it. I remembered to rewatch Clannad, after I bumped into this video: The little touches of the execution, that mak something enjoyable. Compared to that, it’s unfortunate, that we are (or at least I am) prone to forgetting exactly that for first. It’s an old truism, that it’s the execution, and not the originality, that really matters. Nagisa turned into the “annoyingly childish nice girl”, like that one from Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, and Tomoya himself turned into the Yuuji Everylead, The Wry. The character of Kyou, was slowly turned into “The Tsundere”, something like a mix between that one from Infinite Stratos, and that one in To-LOVE-Ru. As the smaller elements started to fade from my memory, and only the larger plot points and tropes remained, my mind somehow filled the blanks with genericness. I enjoyed the whole show, some arcs less than others, I laughed at the laughing parts, cried at the crying parts, and joined the crowd in my certainity that Clannad is a masterpiece.Īfter that, it was inevitable that in in the next months and years, I felt more and more strongly that I was just tricked by the wisdom of the old saying: “Every joke is new, for a newborn”. Also, even if by being a troper before an anime fan, I already recognized the character archetypes being used, I wasn’t truly bored with them. And not just “stories with romantic subplots” like what any novel or movie has, but unapologetically cutesy, sugar-coated melodrama, that somehow still ends up being obviously different in it’s themes from western cutesy, sugar-coated melodrama. When I first saw it, I was still at the point of being amused by the whole concept that romance, a traditionally feminine genre, has this male-oriented anime subgenre. But I thought I should still start the post with this, because regardless of whether it only happened in my perception, or if my perception happened to be accurately reflecting a larger trend, it’s an important part of how my mindset changed about Clannad. No one would personally identify with being responsible for these vague trends that I feel, so I would be ranting against no one in particular. First of all, I don’t even know if the fandom really “changed it’s opinion”, or this feeling is only caused by me constantly getting deeper and deeper into more cynical communities, while the first “popular consensus” that I felt, only came from naive newcomers like myself, hanging around on “gateway” fansites. And even if things did change, no one reading this is a personification of the whole fandom. I’m not saying that as a rant against the fandom. Nowadays, I mostly see it in the same sentence with the word “overrated”, with seemingly everyone being sure that everyone else but them is mindlessly worshipping it. Back then, on all the anime sites that I frequented, popular consensus treated it as an unquestionable classic, a masterpiece that every anime fan who finds the romance genre even vaguely appealing, should see. It’s been over two years since I first saw Clannad.
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