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REVIEW: Clannad After Story Blu-Ray

And when a show cops-out like that, doesn't it feel kind of insulting? Like, okay, these are by and large emotional junk food on the level of the soap opera, but there's still GOOD junk food that might even push the boundaries a bit. Like you, I got the feeling this was going to morph into something pretty special, yet at the end of it all I was wondering "do they really think I need this?"

If it wasn't clear, I'm agreed with Key's claim that this is a narrative cop-out.

Kyonai had to rush the ending to do the 3 epiosde kyou arc which is why It could not be properly explained/displayed in animated form.

Cecilthedarkknight_234 wrote:

Kyonai had to rush the ending to do the 3 epiosde kyou arc which is why It could not be properly explained/displayed in animated form.

I thought the Kyou arc was only one OVA episode?

I don't think its a cop-out, its just...non linear.

The game makes you work your ass off for that ending.

My core problem with After Story is the ending. I've written about it before at length, so I'll try and keep it succinct.

spoiler[The message that After Story was sending to me was that even if Tomoya had been a complete deadbeat for 3-4 years, he could still change and be the father that Ushio needed. After his reunion with his dad (and particularly the moment it hits him about how hard his dad worked and did what he could to provide for him), I was ready to sing After Story's praise. The further touching scenes as Tomoya and Ushio reconnect and slowly form a bond on their trip cemented my jubilation even further. However, this message and all that Tomoya goes through is for naught. Instead of it being a story of how hardship can be overturned and how even in the darkest depths there could still be light, it turned into a fairytale where he was able to re-live from the very moment that Ushio was born (with Nagisa surviving this time). This renders everything, the ups and the downs of the previous few years, absolutely worthless.]

spoiler[And for what? So that there could be a forced happy conclusion? Why wouldn't it have been a happy conclusion if Tomoya had just carried Ushio to the spot that Akio had taken Nagisa many years prior when she had nearly been frozen from the snow and then have the magical orbs bring Ushio back to life and just continuing from there, with new conviction to be the best father he could for Ushio? Such a beautiful story gets tarnished because people can't accept anything other than fairytale mega-happy ending, even at the cost of vital character growth? Sigh.]

Okay, yeah. I fail at succinct. Sorry about that. This was one of the biggest disappointments I have ever had for anime. At least I've already played the Little Busters game so I know what to expect there.

dtm42 wrote:

Cecilthedarkknight_234 wrote: Kyonai had to rush the ending to do the 3 epiosde kyou arc which is why It could not be properly explained/displayed in animated form. I thought the Kyou arc was only one OVA episode?

That would be tomoyo's arc or chapter in season one which was so popular that got it whole spin off game. Kyou's arc in after story started and ended on epiosde 24-26. I really hate being a fan-boy for certain series at times .. it makes me look like a dork/loser but what can you do?? lol

Fencedude5609 wrote:

I don't think its a cop-out, its just...non linear. The game makes you work your ass off for that ending.

Okay, I have never seen this series and don't particularly want to because it's not my kind of show so I have no horse in this race, but...

...STOP USING THIS EXCUSE. Maybe not you in particular, but any time I see people rushing to the defense of this series, the response is "But in the game yadda yadda." A game is not the same as a TV show. As you point out, a TV show is linear, while a game is not. If you're going to adapt a non-linear game into a TV show, you must make it linear, and that means addressing things that might feel like a cop-out when rendered linear. This means you either have to find a linear way of spoiler[addressing the orb-gathering so that the ending doesn't feel like a cop-out], or you change the ending. Since I imagine that the latter would have lost them massive sales from dedicated fans, then they needed to find some way to do the former.

This goes for anybody talking about any adaptation ever. Adaptation involves changing things, and if the adapted product is flawed then it's flawed regardless of how good the original might have been. Expecting people to accept something because the original explains or justifies it does not work. Defend the anime with the anime, not with the VN.

(To take an example close to my heart, I love the Akira manga, and I can tell people who don't like the movie that almost everything they find wrong with or confusing about it is addressed in the manga -- but in the end that doesn't really have any relevance to the movie, which still has those flaws and that confusion regardless of the manga.)

All that aside, "cop-out" is perhaps impossible to determine objectively, and reset buttons in general are very difficult to pull off. One of my favorite series of all time has a reset button push that a lot of people don't like (spoiler[Wolf's Rain]), and there have been other series that people have loved with reset buttons that I found really lame to the point that they nearly ruined the series for me. So I can't tell you just from hearing it whether Clannad After Story was a "cop-out" or not. But if the only defense you can give of the reset button is to reference the video game... then the TV show has a problem.

Cecilthedarkknight_234 wrote:

dtm42 wrote: Cecilthedarkknight_234 wrote: Kyonai had to rush the ending to do the 3 epiosde kyou arc which is why It could not be properly explained/displayed in animated form. I thought the Kyou arc was only one OVA episode? That would be tomoyo's arc or chapter in season one which was so popular that got it whole spin off game. Kyou's arc in after story started and ended on epiosde 24-26. I really hate being a fan-boy for certain series at times .. it makes me look like a dork/loser but what can you do?? lol

No, actually, Kyou's arc in After Story was treated just like Tomoyo's arc in the first season - one episode only, and released as an OVA.

PFF, more like Clannad: Happily Ever After Story.

...and it is all for naught; the ending is still a massive cop-out.

The Deus ex Machina plot element is lazy writing, regardless how well the story unfolds to deliver it.

Perhaps your opinion would be different if this series ended with time traveling mechanics rather than little white balls?