dixie81 - 2016-09-12 02:09:23

For some reason, this movie feels like a cheap rip-off of the original series, with too many unnecessary effects and terrible character development.

wschneider - 2016-01-11 15:50:19

It's an older take on CLANNAD, and it's pretty heartwarming. Not as good as the TV show, but nice.

corwin.bert - 2015-09-18 22:37:20

 Clannad es un videojuego hecho por Kye y que luego los derechos fueron pasados a Moe...Kyoto Animation para animar una serie. Pues los japoneses saben como hacer un fanservice de un juego de ligar a la televisión e hizo que varia gente se interesara en la franquicia sin saber nada del videojuego. Lamentablemente Clannad sufre de lo lento que va su historia por la premisa pero almenos cuenta las historias de personajes desconocidos del juego a las escenas de la serie, siendo entretenidas y graciosas y si quieren, emotivas (para mi no lo fue). Luego supe que Toie Animation hizo una pelicula antes que hicieran el anime, pelicula que me intereso más que la propia serie, auqnue siguen con el argumento de la personaje de pelo castaño Nagisa. Kyoto animation con gusto, saco dos Ovas que contaban historias paralelas de ¿Que pasaria si el prota hubiese terminado con alguna otra personaje femenina? La serie es pasable, pero no recomendable de ver, haciendo que mi persona se interese m´pas en las peliculas que en la segunda temporada de la misma, y vere otras obras hechas por Kye pero nadamas en su formato de pelicula.

elda.klein - 2015-06-28 18:40:20

Let's not mince words here: the first season of Clannad was fair enough but it spent way too much time on trivial bullshit that didn't even matter once After Story came into the picture. As for After Story, I absolutely adore the show but let's be real here: the first eight episodes were HORRIBLE and the way it all ended made it lose a LOT of points in my book and the books of many others. At the behest of one of my friends, I decided to give Clannad: The Motion Picture a try and it managed to do EVERYTHING that the TV series failed to do for me. Is it perfect? Not at all, but you know what? It's a million leagues better than the first season of the TV series and it's certainly something that should be watched by all, especially people who went into the first season and came out completely and totally underwhelmed.

Clannad: The Motion Picture is actually the first adaptation of the Clannad visual novel. It was made by Toei Animation in 2007 but it was promptly overshadowed by the TV series produced by Kyoto Animation a year later. Despite my rather low opinion of Toei Animation in general, I must say that they really did a great job with the adaptation. If you're one of those people who believe film adaptations will always be inferior to their televised counterparts, hear me out: making a film adaptation of something (especially visual novels, given that they have so many nuances that just don't translate into another medium) is one of the most thankless jobs anyone can ever do. Whereas a TV show has the benefit of more time to tell a story, movies have to deal with a fixed time slot that isn't broken down into smaller segments so the audience has to watch the entire thing in one sitting.

In a perfect world, every film adaptation in the world would be 100% faithful to the source material and we wouldn't have so many people complaining how the source material is infinitely superior to the adaptation. Alack, this is reality and not every irrelevant detail from the source material you happened to like can be included in the finished product. Things have to be cut out for the sake of both time and narrative consistency. From this standpoint, Toei Animation really did a great job as they took everything that they could work with from the visual novel and scrapped whatever didn't work within the context of the movie. They also made some alterations wherever possible so that the entire work would be a self-contained story and didn't force you to take up the source material or another adaptation just for a sense of solution. If you read all of this and you're STILL fretting over the small details, keep in mind that this is an entirely separate work from the TV series and the visual novel. Just think of this movie as an alternate universe version of Clannad and go from there.

With all of that nastiness out of the way, let's talk about how events actually play out in Clannad: The Motion Picture. Simply put, this movie's the more direct adaptation of the Nagisa route from the Clannad visual novel. Instead of having Tomoya bounce around from girl to girl until he settles down with Nagisa, the focus of the narrative stays with Tomoya and Nagisa throughout the entire movie. We get to see how that fateful encounter with Nagisa at the bottom of the hill all those years ago went on to affect Tomoya's life in ways he never thought possible as well as his growth as an individual. That actually brings me to what I like most about Clannad in general: Tomoya himself.

I don't like Clannad because of the romance. Hell, I'd fucking HATE this series if I focused solely on the romance. What really made me take a liking to Clannad in the first place was Tomoya and how relatable he actually is (well, for me at least). At face value, Tomoya is your standard visual novel adaptation lead: he's a fairly good-looking teenager with a snarky demeanour. However, Clannad goes above and beyond when it came down to how he was written. He's more than just a standard visual novel lead, he's like an actual person. He has goals, has struggles of his own, he's got emotions and all that stuff. Think of it like this: as much as I adored White Album 2, Haruki was no better than a self-insert protagonist and I couldn't find myself wanting to care about him one way or the other. Tomoya on the other hand is a far cry from a self-insert protagonist and what's more is that I actually find myself wanting him to succeed in his endeavours and I actually want things to end up happy for him in the end.

On a slightly different note, Nagisa was also quite a delightful character. Whilst the TV series in general portrayed her as a moeblob/idealised girlfriend character that I couldn't find myself caring about one way or the other, Clannad: The Motion Picture gave her an identity of her own. She still has that weak constitution, don't get me wrong. However, she isn't written in such a manner that's meant to evoke an emotional response out of you. She's strong-willed, endearing (and this time, endearing like a human and not like a beagle puppy), and I actually found myself caring about Nagisa as an individual. That's something the TV series completely failed to do for me, by the way.

On another note, the other characters were also quite lovely to say the least. For one thing, I don't find myself feeling visceral hatred toward Sunohara since he's not an insufferable moron. Sure, Sunohara is still a headstrong oaf, but he's actually an oaf that makes me laugh rather than scowl in frustration. Speaking of which, Nagisa's parents are back and Akio never ceases to make me laugh in earnest. He's just as entertaining and likeable as he was in the TV series. Speaking of which, Sanae's here too and I don't find myself wanting her to be crucified by Shion anymore (probably because she's not making shitty bread and dating high school students behind her husband's back anymore)! So that's always nice.

Going off on a tangent, this movie managed to make me laugh... a lot, actually. The comedy throughout the entire movie was spot-on and didn't get annoying after a while. Tomoya's still snarking away at everything and Sunohara's antics actually make me laugh raucously instead of making me want him to die a gruesome death because he was annoying. This movie also knows when to cut the crap and take itself seriously whereas the first season suffered from extensive cases of mood whiplash. Yeah... you can tell that I don't hold the first season in that high of a regard, right?

From a production standpoint, Clannad: The Motion Picture is an odd case to talk about. The watercolour stills used throughout the movie were beautifully designed as were the backgrounds and decorations and such, but the character models were rather lacklustre. The animation itself is more of the same, and that's actually kind of disappointing since Toei Animation tends to give their films more budget than they give their TV shows. Everything still looks great, don't get me wrong but from an aesthetic standpoint, Kyoto Animation spoiled Clannad in ways that Toei Animation never did.

Sound-wise, the OST is quite lovely. It's mostly remixed tracks from the visual novel and it does lack certain tear-jerking themes like "Yuki Nohara" from After Story but it's the way the OST is used that really makes it stand a cut above the first season. On that note, the English dub is also quite lovely (take THAT, you mouth-breathing weeaboo dub haters!). Whereas the first season was quite hit/miss given that Steven Foster was the ADR director there was no shortage of moments that sounded awkward or whatever, the movie shares its ADR director with After Story's. Everything sounded natural to say the least, the voice actors did an amazing job as always, and all that stuff. Really, what more could I want?

Would I say I enjoyed this movie? Well... yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. Whilst I still prefer the TV series (mostly because of After Story, but that's beside the point), the movie managed to do what the TV series failed to do for me. It gets to the point quicker, there's less meandering, Nagisa actually has a personality, and so on and so forth. If you're someone who has never watched Clannad before, I'd actually go so far as to recommend you watch this movie in lieu of the first season and then pick up After Story from Episode 9 onward. I really don't understand why this movie gets so much hate. It does what it does incredibly well. Who cares if the other girls don't get their arcs adapted? If you want Kotomi, Tomoyo, Fuko, or Kyou, go play the goddamn VN or something. I swear, the shit some people end up doing confuses me to no end. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback is always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)

zoey00 - 2015-01-20 17:42:54

MICRO/NO-SPOILERS:
This is my first review of anything on here; so this is going to be extremely poor however I wanted to voice my opinion.
The story loosely follows the original anime series and scratches the sequel a little too; the chronological order fits for the movie and the series however it's missing too much, yet at the same point it does somewhat explain the connection between the two main characters a bit better than the original series did.

Overall, I'd consider it a 'Too long; Didn't watch' version of the original series, you'd be stupid to watch this and then the series.

johnston.mckenna - 2014-12-28 11:52:30

If you've watched the show this is for the most part, spoiled, well not really spoiled its.. its.. i don't know how to put it. I guess you could say completely different, yet the exact same thing, you know what will happen, but not how. Characters are different apart from a few (Nagisa, Tomoya, etc...). It tries to do what clannad did in two seasons and it did not fail. You will cry unless your heart is a brick.

thammes - 2014-06-22 09:16:34

[SPOILERS] Só Leia esta Review se você já assistiu o Anime que vem antes do Filme (Não se esqueça disso).                                     O que fizeram com a Musica dos Dangos (esses monstros desalmados)?? Meio que percebi que a intenção deste filme foi resumir tudo (49 episódios contando os Ovas) em 1:30 sem se importar muito com quem assistia. Resultado, me sinto dilacerado após ter visto esse filme que além de não mostrar a irmã Fujibayashi de cabelo curto (quem achar ela ganha um doce) deixa de lado a estória do outro mundo no qual mantinha Ushio presa. ficando assim um trabalho mediano que pensou alto demais na hora de inovar e acabou quebrando vários elementos que tinham dado certo anteriormente. comparando ao anime ele consegue ficar pior em todos os aspectos, desde a História até a formação dos personagens que perderam elementos que adicionavam mais humor (velho e a Sanae-san) (uma das unicas coisas que gostei foi a atitude do protagonista).

zieme.luciano - 2013-07-15 05:45:56

Honestly this movie is something you should watch If you're bored after watching the anime. I mean it sort of follows the main heroine route, but its so rushed because of the fact it's only like a little over a hour and a half.

This leads to almost no development in the characters. In my opinion there wasn't enough tear jerking moment in this movie compared to the anime series. The movie is around a hour and half so you can only fit so many things within a hour and a half interval without making it rushed or uneven.

The art for this movie is... horrible compared to the anime series. A good example is comparing the quality 480p and 1080p. The movie was a 480p, while the show was a 1080p. This was a big drop from the previous work. The character design stayed relatively similar except between Tomoya and Yoshino.

Like myself I love the OST from the anime series and do own it, but the movie OST disappointed me... I enjoyed maybe 1 or 2 of the music it played, so any Anime OST lover will be very disappointed in the dreadful OST of the movie.

The movie wasn't all bad... it had its ups and downs. I sort of enjoyed the Clannad movie because it kinda had more comedy than the anime series. All the characters had a slight different personality which made it a little more interesting. Tomoya is more a jerk in the movie. Nagisa, who in the anime is very timid, is more outgoing in the movie which is a totally opposite.

Overall as a Clannad lover, it was just barley manageable but still enjoyable.