Clannad Review ( Part Deux )

So we went over that Clannad, the first season was fairly disappointing. It was filled with tons of filler, half the characters were forgettable, and was a horrible successor to Kanon. So they go ahead and release the second season, something which... if it hadn't come, Clannad would have been a complete catastrophic failure. However, considering this is based on a Dating Simulator, it was clear the story didn't end where Clannad did, so it's clear that Clannad wasn't meant to end when it did, so this is by no means a savior chapter, but just a continuation.

So it starts off Nagisa getting past an illness which eventually makes her lose her chance to pass the 11th grade, and also lose out on being with Tomoya. Tomoya moves out of Nagisa's house and into his own house where they end up living with each other and he gets a job to pay for the place. Honestly, this is a very nice change of pace because it's kind of like showing the growth of a character; learning the new jobs, learning responsibility, watching their relationship grow.... all in exchange for every single side character that we knew. That's right, every single character is pretty much gone: Kyou, Ryou, Tomoyo, Ichinose... Forget you ever knew them cause you got about 2 episodes for them, which further cements what a waste of time their 'arcs' were in Season 1.

*SPOILERS ARE TO BE HAD*
*IF YOU WISH TO WATCH THIS. DO NOT READ*

So within a few episodes we find out that Nagisa and Tomoya are going to be getting married which eventually leads to her being pregnant.

Actually, I'm going to stop right there because this is something that kind of bugged me about this whole love. I always thought that the relationship they had was just going really slow; I never saw them kiss. They always just hung out like friends, she cooked for him. No cuddling, no kissing, no nothing....  And hey, she gets pregnant.

Wait what? They never kissed ONCE in the entire anime and she's pregnant which means they've been fucking. So me as a viewer feels kind of cheated--- afterall these are BASED off of a dating simulator so clearly it's a romance anime yet they leave out the kiss? That's pretty important if you ask me. But moving on.

Yes she's pregnant now. However Nagisa has been going on life with an illness which makes her weak. The illness has no name, no real description, it just shows up randomly, makes her sick, and... makes life suck. No doctor can cure it, no one knows what it is and... yup. It sucks.

Oh and another thing about these kinds of sicknesses in media? They kill. Yes, Nagisa dies during child birth and you can imagine how sad this is. You see, I came into this anime knowing it's sad and that it was much worse than Clannad. And knowing this, I figured this would happen and it's pretty deep. I definitely am already more interested in this season 10 times than the first season. In my opinion, compared to this... it failed catastrophically.  So Nagisa dies giving birth to their child Ushio, which promptly flashforwards 5 years.

Tomoya is in a deep depression and Nagisa's parents are raising Ushio while he pretty much suffers in deep depression. He works long hours, drinks and is slowly becoming his own father. Something that I kind of never mentioned. There's this thing about Tomoya and his father... he hates him and it's kind of hard to understand why. He kinda just tells him to shut up, yells at him, and is just a huge asshole to him even though his father just acts like a nice man... I never saw it.  But anyways, he's becoming his father and eventually the parents plan a vacation which is actually just them tricking Tomoya into watching her for a week and bonding with her which is planned beautifully.


*END SPOILERS*

I wont go into anymore detail but this season definitely saved the entire anime and it's just a shame that you have to sit through 24 episodes of absolute shit just to enjoy this and it ends really fucking sad too. However Clannad suffers from Japanese Ending Syndrome* where every anime ends like shit because apparently Japanese have no idea how to end an anime.... but that's always something to get over.




* I coined this term because seriously, every Anime ends like shit.

Gurren Lagann Review

So like usual, this review will have spoilers. If you don't like spoilers, then quit reading reviews. Because it's kind of stupid to read someones opinion of an anime without going into detail of why they like it or don't like it. But that is neither here nor there. Let's jump right into this!

So Gurren Lagann. I've heard a lot about this and like usual, I ignored it BECAUSE people wouldn't shut up about it. It's kind of strange how the natural reaction to popularity is to go the other direction, it does this with music, video games, movies, tv shows... With enough popularity, it's no surprise people hate Obama!*, however work has been extremely boring and during my down time, I am able to pull up some Youtube and I decided, rather than search for something, I'll just watch this. And so I did... and I have to say, I can see why people enjoy this show.

The story centers about two people:

Kamina

This guy is easily what makes the anime interesting. He is the guy you want to be. He leads Team Gurren and managed to help break out of the underground caves with his little brother and in doing so hi-jacked an enemy mecha so he can fight back. Kamina pretty much embodies hope, bravery, and dreams. And by embody, I mean these three words describe him perfectly. That's all he does is dream, hope, and achieves these with his bravery. His entire philosophy is 'if there's a small chance of it happening, i'll make it happen' and despite all odds of failure, he will always succeed. He never runs from a fight, he never backs down a challenge, and he refuses to ever admit defeat. And of course, he has his catch phrases of "Just who the hell do you think I am?" and a few others... Now with all this said, you'd ASSUME with a character like this, there's no WAY there's any bad in this anime.

I'm going to say this once more. SPOILERS. <spoiler>

Well, he kinda dies 1/3 of the way through the anime. Something that... to me... ruined pretty much all motivation of continuing considering he pretty much held the entire show together

</spoiler>

Simon

Pronounced 'Sih'mohn', this is Kamina's younger brother. And my god is he just one big trope for half the anime. He's the "I don't have the courage" trope. He spends literally half the anime doubting himself, worrying, whining, and just plain getting in the way. It's because of Kamina's long morale boosting speeches does Simon ever do anything, and right after he'll just revert back to the way he was; just getting in the way. To sum him up in the first half, it would be "Big bro. I'm scared!", if it weren't for Kamina's incredible charisma. This kid, by himself, would make me turn the anime off. He was just that annoying.

<spoiler>

So after Kamina dies, Simon takes over as the lead of Team Gurren and also the main character of the anime. So, OF COURSE, he has to drop this entire whiny attitude, cause even the writers are aware that we're annoyed of this shit. So what do they do? Give us 4 more episodes of even whinier and more self-loathing shit where he wallows in self pity over Kamina's death. And FINALLY gets over it, with like... little reason other than just "Yea, ok, I'm over it."**

</spoiler>

7 years later, he's now Kamina's age. Which pretty much takes all those tropes we just had to deal with and throw them out the window thankfully, and he eventually grows into an interesting character! Truthfully, he almost feels like a completely new character the way he COMPLETELY reverted his entire personality after this. And let's just say, it's very nice to see this.... 

There are two others who the story centers around: Nia and Yoko. But to give an analysis on these two would just be silly because they're such underdeveloped characters that you really would be wasting your time. Honestly, you could just look at a picture of the two and know exactly what and who they are: 

Yoko wears extremely revealing clothes and wields a huge gun. Her personality is pretty shallow and that's about it.

Nia is the sweetest person in the world and everyone loves her. She isn't knowledgeable, but this doesn't stop her from trying. And she has long hair....

To be fair, I liked Nia. She just came out of no where and kind of helped Simon grow as a character, and without her.... I feel Simon would have been completely empty and pointless to the anime. But Nia's character is just so underdeveloped that I have a hard time growing attached to her outside of just sympathy. And that's pretty disappointing considering I DO like her a lot.

< SPOILERS >

To sum up Gurren Lagann, it's pretty much just that story you had with your friend when you were 13 years old, playing with your action figures. You kept trying to make everything more interesting by one-upping everything your friend did. The entire story is just that, "You know what would be awesome is if the characters were like... these underground people and like.... they busted out!"

"Yeah! And then these people in big machines attack them. And they STEAL it from them! Like, almost effortlessly!"

"Oh my god, yeah. And then they combine these machines and become even stronger!"

"And then we take over an even BIGGER machine and it becomes their base!"

"AND THEN THE MOON IS ABOUT TO CRASH INTO THE PLANET AND THEY USE THOSE MACHINES TO STOP IT"

"Yeah and they stop the galaxy from invading with even BIGGER machines"

"YEAH AND THEN THEY BECOME AS BIG AS THE GALAXY AND FIGHT AGAINST THE OTHER MECHA AS BIG AS THE GALAXY AND THROW GALAXIES AT EACH OTHER"

< /SPOILER >

Gurren Lagann is pretty much an anime where ANYTHING can happen for almost no reason. It happens because it's really cool and we like cool. Like, mechas combining in ways that make no sense and healing themselves, mechas powering just from motivation, mechas growing in power just because you just happen to be more confident in yourself, growing technologically more advanced within mere days of just crawling out of the ground, etc. And this is pretty much why the reason the anime works. It WANTS to be a cliche. It WANTS to yell out these awesome names of Attacking Moves that are completely silly, but gets the job done.

This entire anime sounds like something a child thought up, and after episode 17, you start to notice that the tone of the anime grows too loud and it starts to go from Hope to Absurd and it goes downhill. I guess your suspense of disbelief stops ignoring the flaws and starts saying "Okay seriously, this is just going too far" and I have to say.... the ending of it all was just... terrible. And for an anime that honestly goes out of its way to be cliche, I'm not surprised.

All-in-all, I liked it  but I definitely wouldn't rewatch it. If you happen to have the time, nothing to watch, and feel like wasting some time, I'd definitely put it on. It's pretty fun.

Clannad Review

Before I get into this. I want to throw this note out there; this is ONLY for Season 1. After Story is going to be a completely separate review. There is a reason I'm doing this as well which I will get to when I get to it.

Key anime are usually something that I enjoy more than others. They have a unique style of storytelling, they are handled in a way that the one watching can't expect what would happen what with supernatural coming into play like time travel and magic. But like I mentioned, it's handled in a way that it's not ABOUT the supernatural... it just happens to be involved. Like for instance, a character could find a bracelet which is known for causing unusual things to happen. They find it and put it on and all of a sudden, they start hearing voices and altering stuff... but that's about it. It doesn't get involved much than that. Because the anime is more about the story of just them living their lives rather than the Supernatural occurring around them.

The way Key anime usually works is: Each character has an Arc. You'll have a few set of unique characters which are introduced in episode 1, sometimes episode 2. Each of these characters will be unique in some way and throughout the anime you'll be in suspense to figure out just what is up with these characters. They'll all act something different than usual from everyone else, give off small hints to their true nature, and in the end it all comes together. It's kind of Haruhi, where the three friends were an Esper, Alien, and Time Traveller.. You didn't find these out  until the end but it all eventually makes sense when it happens.

Now the reason I felt this one was particularly suited for a review was because this one was the odd-man out for the entire patterns these anime generally go on. And for me to figure out a way to explain what I mean might be a tad bit difficult since.... well, to be put it simply; I think Clannad was handled.... extremely poorly.
I hate to throw out my opinion of something so early in a review, kind of destroying interest of what the conclusion will ultimately be, but this is my review. Get over it.

Now when it comes to the characters, you got:

Nagisa: The female love interest to the main character. She's shy, weak, a crybaby, a very sweet girl. I like Nagisa a lot. She reminds me of the perfect girlfriend to have. She doesn't care about little things and just takes life on day by day. She's been held back a grade because she's been sick so long that she fell behind in school. All she wants to do is to have a Drama class and make plays.

Tomoya: The main character. Now let me say, Key's main characters are pretty much the same guy over and over. They're all confused, silly, amnesiac, and kind of self-centered. Tomoya takes no exception to this rule. I think of all the main characters throughout the series, Tomoya might be my 2nd favorite? It's kind of hard to put them all on a scale when they're all the same, pretty much. I like him though.

Kyou: She is kind of... Tomoya's best female friend. Pardon me if my information is wrong, but I think these two have been friends for quite a while and she kind of looks up to Tomoya. She's pretty rash and protective.  I think she's probably the second most interesting female character in the anime. If Nagisa wasn't Tomoya's obvious love-interest. I'd like her to be...

Tomoyo: Tomoyo kind of just... is there. I never understood the point of Tomoyo. She reminds me an awful lot of Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh. But only because they're both very athletic, strong, and loves animals. About that loves animals part, she tends to show up dressed as a bear... this is kind of unexplained...  I really don't think she has much point to the anime outside of kicking Tomoya's friends ass for hitting on her and challenging her.

Ichinose: She's smart and can't play the violin.

That's about the extent of her.

Ibuki: I cannot stand this little girl. She likes starfish and thinks they're the most amazing thing ever. She uses them as invitations to her sisters wedding. She's so boring and stupid and serves no purpose. She's not really even a friend to anyone outside of them pitying her for trying so desperately to get people to come to this wedding.

You see, the first problem this anime has is the characters. To compare it to previous installments, the arcs "supernaturality" are almost non-existant. They're just small little stories which even have trouble holding their water in being called stories... because they're just so rushed and uninteresting that the entire anime would be unchanged without them. But this is something rather interesting because, like I said earlier about Ibuki and her starfish, she's the ONLY PERSON in the entire anime with a hint of Supernatural surrounding her, which is a shame because she's such an annoying character in the first place. I get this hunch that she was intended to be this adorable character which I'm suppose to empathize with... but she's just not. She's not interesting.

Aside from Ibuki though, the story centers almost TOO much on Nagisa, like normally the idea is to kind of give you a bunch of options for what the main character would like as an interest. As the roots of these anime are based off of dating simulators.... and they even attempt to make it a plot element; who he will end up with. But I kind of assumed it would be the girl who 80% of the anime is based off of. How surprised I was when I found out I was right.

The second problem the anime faces is the point of it all. What was the point of the anime? You see throughout the entire season(s), there's always this story going on about this little girl whose the last person in the world who is trying to build a robot because... well, she can. And this robot is the only thing  to keep her company in this world. At first this entire story was very interesting to me, and eventually turns into the play that Nagisa wants to put on. And as for the first season, this entire subplot is rendered pretty inane.



The overall feeling I got from this entire anime was that it couldn't take itself seriously. You see, Kanon and Air both had it's fair share of goofiness which helped tell the story and keep you interested, but Clannad kind of takes it to the next level where almost entire episodes are brought to this level of goofiness that it wastes time that could have been used to develop characters or even make boring characters ( Tomoyo, Ichinose ) even more interesting than they were. Ultimately, I had a VERY hard time watching this completely, and it was pretty much the the 2nd season that motivated me to continue on, which I will get onto next.