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Title:
 Clannad Season Part 1

UK Distributor:  Manga Entertainment

BBFC Certificate:  12

Suggested Retail Price (SRP):  £29.99

Episodes:  1-12 (of 24)

Audio Options:  English 2.0, Japanese 2.0

Subtitles:  English

Release Date:  28th May 2012

Reviewer:  Rich (Webmaster)
 

Manga Entertainment have been surprising me recently with some of their releases.  Although their DVD output has always been relatively eclectic, romance and slice of life drama has rarely appeared on their release schedule.  Their catalogue has always leaned more towards fantasy and sci-fi, mainly because they are the kinds of series the fans buy.  But kudos for Manga for testing the waters periodically with different genres, over the last few months we’ve had light-hearted school drama from both K-ON! and Bamboo Blade, and now we get something new in the form of Clannad.

Sullen high schooler Tomoya Okazaki is a bit of a delinquent student, known for his straight-talking and general apathy towards school.  He's usually found with Youhei Sunohara, a fellow delinquent who has more violent tendencies than Okazaki and is prone to challenging other students to fights.  However, his life takes a new turn when he meets the timid Nagisa Furukawa, a girl who wants to re-launch the failed school drama club but lacks the confidence to do so.  Okazaki surprises himself by deciding to help her to establish the club and recruit members, tapping up intelligent bookworm Kotomi Ichinose, tomboy Kyou Fujibayashi and her sister Ryou and the cute but absent-minded Fuko Ibuki.  Fuko spends all of her time at school sitting in empty classrooms determinedly carving wooden starfish, which she plans to give out to everyone in school as invitations for them to come to her sister's wedding.  Fuko's sister was previously a teacher at the school and she had a dream of getting married there, but events in her personal life have made even her wedding uncertain.  Moved by Fuko's dedication Okazaki and Nagisa decide to help her, but there's something a bit strange going on.  Some people in school seem to completely ignore Fuko and she never seems to attend any classes or leave the school, not only that but Fuko's sister claims that she is in hospital - if that's the case who is she?  And why is she so determined to get everyone to go to to the wedding?
 

I was not sure what I was going to make of Clannad, and to start with it seemed like a very straightforward romantic high school drama, with the bored borderline delinquent Okazaki finding a new purpose in helping the attractive but timid Nagisa achieve her dream of resurrecting the drama club.  Cue the pair growing closer as they participated in club activities, eventually becoming an item, making each other better people and overcoming problems in their personal lives.  Or so I thought.  The series may still go this way

eventually, but even if it does it has taken a significant and unexpectedly intriguing detour along the way.  On the surface there’s nothing particularly remarkable about Clannad, the artwork is nice but not particularly distinctive in its genre, the animation is decent and the music and dubs are fine.  The characters are pretty standard high school archetypes, and the story about starting or expanding a club is a common framework for series from K-ON! to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.  However, whilst the club is a starting point the story quickly steers into new territory with the appearance of Fuko and from this point it unexpectedly becomes part mystery and part supernatural drama.

The storyline is Clannad's strongest aspect, with an average romantic drama plotline expanding into something really interesting and unique as more characters are introduced.  The romance takes a backseat to the drama and the mystery of Fuko and later the mystery of the strange man following Kotomi, there is a love story between Okazaki and Nagisa bubbling along in the background but it's quite understated.  There's no fanservice to speak of, and the series leans far more towards drama than in most school-based anime released in the UK.  This makes it quite refreshing, there's a touch of comedy too with Nagisa's overreacting bakery owning parents and Fuka's spacing out when she thinks about starfish, but what really sets it apart from the crowd is the emotional heart the series has.  Clannad is at times sweet, at others entertaining and at others quite moving.  It's surprisingly melancholy at times, yet at others it can be quite fun and entertaining.  There's some hidden backstories that have yet to be explored, whether Okazaki's dysfunctional home life or Kotomi's tragic past and it's not always clear which direction the series will take, or even if it will resolve some storylines.
 

Clannad is based on a 'dating simulator' style computer game, and its origins are pretty obvious when it comes to the characters.  The protagonist is noble but a bit of a bad boy and the female characters all tick different archetype boxes, from the timid but attractively earnest Nagisa to the energetic and cutesy Fuko and the intelligent but distant Kotomi.  Dating games are built around the player character wooing one of several different stereotyped love interests, and feature different story paths and outcomes depending

on how you interact with each one.  These kinds of games don't always translate fantastically well to anime as the characters can be bland and the storylines insipid, but whilst there's a whiff of the former about Clannad the storyline is anything but.  In fact it's intelligent and engaging, drawing you in to its world and constantly keeping you guessing,

Clannad Series 1 Part 1 was nothing like I expected.  As an adaptation of a dating game I would expect romantic entanglements, lots of fanservice and a complex love triangle.  Instead I got plenty of drama, some good comedy and a strong emotional core that was more than a little unexpected.  Romance is kept simmering along under the surface, and instead of focusing on Okazaki's relationships with all of the women around him it instead shows how he helps them with their problems and issues.  The storyline is engrossing and quite moving in places, it's never clear which direction the story will take and this builds the tension as Fuko's sister's wedding approaches.  The original plotline about the drama club is largely put to one side for the majority of this volume, and with a new storyline about Kotomi kicking off towards the end it's unclear when it will return to it.  The downside of this is that it sidelines Nagisa somewhat, but despite this I highly recommend Clannad Series 1 Part 1.  It's another surprise form Manga, and it's a type of series we rarely get to see in the UK.   Well worth a look.

Extras

Nothing, plus there's no 'play all' option in the menus which means you have to play each episode individually, which is a bit annoying.

Ratings

Feature:   Extras: N/A
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