Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Clannad After Story: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Still slow. Not quite as sweet.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 11, 2012

Most of us who survived high school the first time have little interest in reliving that era of our lives. That in and of itself may be the most salient argument against Clannad After Story, the follow up second season to Clannad: Complete Collection. However, taking that tack would deprive the viewer of one of the sweetest little animes of the past several years, and it would also deprive the viewer of one extra added element that is especially enjoyable in Clannad After Story, namely its extremely dry sense of humor, something that wasn’t exploited quite as artfully in the series’ first season. To appear to deal with a couple of apparently unrelated items, let’s look back to two iconic television sitcoms of the late fifties and early sixties, Leave it to Beaver and Dennis the Menace. Both of these shows were relatively gentle (at least compared to today’s raucous outings) looks at family life, and they were both notable in that they took the kids’ eye view of things more often than not. But both of these series lasted long enough that once adorable tots grew into gangly young adolescents or even young adults and suddenly cute hijinks of children seemed a bit odd when they were being perpetrated by six foot tall mini-men whose voices had changed. The aging of the kids put an end to both of these series at least a season or two before their actual ratings may have spelled the same fate. There’s a similar “aging” at hand in Clannad After Story which may make this follow up series less alluring to those who fell in love with the first season’s evocation of the trials and tribulations of high school life. While school life does still in fact play a major part in this second season, at least in the early going, there’s more of a look forward here into the nascent world of young adulthood which may prove a bit unsettling for those who want the comfort of routine.

If the first season of Clannad had many elements of a traditional shōnen, the second season might be thought as being trifurcated into distinct elements, with a shōnen storyline taking up the first third or so of this season’s episodes. This section of the series continues to deal with Tomoya, the teenaged boy who was the central character of the first season. The next semester of high school has started, and we find Tomoya interacting with his friends in such pursuits as forming a baseball team. But many of these opening episodes actually deal as much with Youhei, the kind of frantic “comedy relief” character, and his efforts to find a “fake girlfriend”. The relationship between Tomoya and Nagisa is also explored as the kids all get ready to move into their young adult lives.

The second section of Clannad After Story deals with Tomoya’s post-school life, both as he tries to establish himself in a career and, more importantly, as he attempts to forge a life with Nagisa, who continues to have persistent health problems. This middle arc becomes decidedly more dramatic, even tragic at times, and the tonal imbalance between the opening set of episodes with its often over the top comedy and the flat out melodrama of this section may confuse some viewers. There are still little comedy bits sprinkled into most episodes, but this is a decidedly more “mature” feeling section, as is entirely appropriate.

The third section of Clannad After Story is by far the oddest, an arc it may even be fair to call bizarre. The tragic elements that helped define the second section only increase here, to almost unbearable proportions at times, but then a rather strange science fiction element enters the fray which supposedly helps to explain the long running interstitials featuring the character known as The Girl from the Illusionary World and her strangely lovable little “pet” Junk Robot. There is some nice commingling of characters in the series’ wrap up, but it’s the kind of sleight of hand that doesn’t really stand up to real scrutiny. It may erase some of the sting of what’s gone before, but it seems like a kind of cheap trick that says to the audience, “Guess what? All that angst you just lived through was a big joke.”

There are also some OVAs included as figurative codas to the main storyline here, and they exploit the original Clannad visual novel conceit of being to enter alternative storylines. Clannad After Story starts out extremely strongly, but tends to get weighed down with all of the trauma and tragedy that begins unfolding once Tomoya leaves high school. The ironic thing about all of this is, as bad as high school undoubtedly has been for many people, Clannad After Story seems to be saying, “Wait! It gets worse! Much, much worse!” This also makes the series’ odd science fiction wrap up all the stranger. Still, the basic story here is quite engaging, if awfully sad at times, and the series continues the first season’s really outstanding design aesthetic and nicely delineated characters. But this is one “happily ever after” that leaves a bit of a bitter aftertaste and viewers should be forewarned.

Clannad After Story: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Clannad After Story continues the excellent video quality seen in Clannad: Complete Collection, once again presented courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Clannad After Story offers exceptionally beautiful backgrounds, with lovely floating cherry blossoms or, in one of the more supernatural elements, gorgeous floating orbs of light. Character designs sport extremely strong and well defined line detail, and there's some very well done CGI woven into the more traditional cel animation, including the wonderfully lovable Junk Robot, who looks kind of like a metal teddy bear, but with some very appealing dimensionality. Colors are bright and very vividly robust. Whatever qualms you may have about various story elements in Clannad After Story, chances are you'll have little to nothing to complain about with regard to this series' exceptional visuals which pop wonderfully on this Blu-ray.

Clannad After Story: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

My comments about Clannad: Complete Collection hold largely true for Clannad After Story as well. Aside from the differences in language, the Japanese and English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless surround tracks are virtually identical in terms of mix, so the choice of which one to listen to should boil down mostly to whether you're an original language purist or if you don't mind or can't stand reading subtitles. Voice work on both of these tracks is very good to excellent, though the English voice cast sounds a bit older than does the Japanese one. As with Clannad's first season, this is not the most bombastic sound mix ever created, but fidelity is excellent and decent if not overwhelming surround activity crops up with fair regularity. There are some exceptionally well done ambient environmental effects in Clannad After Story (listen to the beautifully immersive wind sounds in the series' final episode for a sterling example). The series continues the first season's use of evocative and sometimes patently odd music and opening and closing themes, all of which sound great on both of the lossless audio options.

Clannad After Story: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animation (HD; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animation (HD; 10:06). Though this is listed in the singular on the disc menu, it actually includes several different versions of the closing credits.


• Episode 16 Commentary with David Mantranga (Tomoya) and Luci Christian (Nagisa). These two claim to be nervous since they haven't done a commentary for a while, but they launch right in, talking about how when they do as many anime projects as these two do (FUNimation fans will no doubt recognize both of these names from any number of that label's English dubs), it's easy not to be particularly attached to this or that anime. That doesn't seem to be the case with regard to both Clannad and Clannad After Story, as both of these voice actors seems to have a genuine fondness for the projects. They talk in fairly general terms about their characters and some of the plot points (with some minor spoilers).

Clannad After Story: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I personally loved the opening episodes of Clannad After Story because they were often laugh out loud funny, much more so than the bulk of the first season's outings. But then things got really, really serious by the middle third of episodes, and by the time we were in the endgame, things were so horrifyingly awful for Tomoya I couldn't help but wonder why I was even watching the show at all. And then there was that "never mind" moment when the science fiction element made it all better again, and, again, I had to wonder why I was watching the show. Taken as a whole, though, Clannad After Story has a lot to recommend it, not the least of which is its really beautiful animation style. If you don't mind a lot of outright melodrama, you'll probably enjoy this second season of Clannad, even if you may occasionally, like I did, wonder why you're watching. Recommended.