The season isn’t quite finished yet but KyoAni seems to have decided to conclude the Clannad After Story a bit ahead of schedule – works for me as seeing all the Grande Finales within one week is sort of tiring. Why I had special interest in seeing the ending of this series in particular was simply the fact that over the course of almost a year and a half the title Clannad has been one of the most profilic works among the anime that has aired. Sure, there was a two-season interval between the first season and After Story but I really feel like the show has been on the air for…well, hell of a long time. Might be just me though as my anime watching tends to become very irregular and scarce in summertime so I don’t really end up with much recollection of what has aired at the time. Anyway, Clannad anime franchise has come quite a way and undergone a lot of changes during its run, so naturally I was very interested to see the end of a long journey.
As I have written before, Clannad After Story evolved into a mature and well composed story about a young man and his circumstances at the end of his carefree student life. This is mainly why I liked After Story as much as I did – because I’m about to reach the same point in life very soon. Thanks to the previous season having built an extensive framework for this sort of serious storytelling I can for once say that I genuinely cared about every single character in the series – and I believe this if anything is the most important single thing for a successful drama story. The show also managed to avoid the landmines of melodrama better than expected and even when the inevitable death toll started going up After Story did not go for the extreme on-screen emoness, instead relying on the subtle storytelling to carefully nudge the viewer into the right mood.
So much text already and I haven’t even gotten to the main subject, so let me cut the fanboy crap here and write a little something about the ending itself. In short it could be described by the classic term “Deus ex machina” or as a Big Ol’ RESET-button. The connection between the “empty world” and the real world is revealed as well as the identities of the mysterious girl and the robot, although most of what you could call an explanation behind the mystery is empty metaphysical babble hardly anyone can hope to decipher without the helping hand of alcoholols. But hey, who cares? As much as the end might’ve felt like cheating, it did its job and allowed the fanboys to finally die in peace…well, at least until the extra episodes have stopped airing. HAPPY END BITCHES.
Meanwhile in Toradora…OHSHI-
Oh yar, I was supposed to write about End of Evangelion. Well, I did watch it but I ended with pretty much nothing to write about. I apologize for the weaksauce post – it’s been so busy recently that I feel too beat up to start raging about stuff.