Clannad

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Slice of Life, Romance

Summary:
Clannad follows high-school delinquent Tomoya Okazaki, who is always skipping class and has no goal in his life.  He decides to help a girl named Nagisa Furukawa revive the drama club, a good way to kill time.

Review:
Personal Opinions(replacing 'Introductory Notes')
The anime ended up not meeting my expectations.  It's a pretty popular anime, and I'd heard that it was sad.  I didn't end up crying, or even coming close to, but I did laugh a few times.  But mainly I'm upset about the girl the main character ended up with, although it was quite clear from the very beginning.  However, I'll try my best not to let this interfere with the review, even though reviews are completely subjective things anyway.

Story: 5/10
The story started out weak, and ended in a somewhat okay way.  I felt like the first episode was kind of boring, although I think that's mainly due to my biased opinion of the main 'heroine'.  I ended up leaving the anime for a few weeks before picking it up again at the third episode.  From there, the story became a lot better.  The next two story arcs, Fuko and Kotomi's arcs, were very interesting and full of drama.  The story arcs seemed to lead to a supernatural direction, and so I was dismayed when the rest of the anime never returned to any supernatural themes(besides stuff for comedic effect), much less answered my questions about the previous occurrences.  Of course, the anime was still interesting after that, but I felt it became more light-hearted and less dramatic.  But I did have more laughs.  I was also upset because of the ending.  They do a play at the end, and I'm unhappy because the anime didn't really answer what happened in the play, or at the end of it.  Besides, the play was kind of trashy in my opinion.  However, although I have numerous complaints, I did enjoy the story overall, mainly due to the characters.

Characters: 7/10
Most of the characters were pretty interesting.  At first, some of them seemed a bit too similar to each other, but throughout the story you see that they are all actually different it most ways.  I especially liked the easygoing and lazy but kind character of Okazaki.  I also liked the characters of Kyou and Tomoyo(not Tomoya, which is Okazaki's first name).  I didn't really like Nagisa or Ryou because both were absurdly child-like, despite being like sixteen/seventeen years old.  Nagisa especially, she was very gullible and way too reserved.  She was a big crybaby and had low self-esteem, and her personality just annoyed me a lot.  But usually the characters were enjoyable, which was good.

Art: 8/10
The art wasn't top notch or anything, but instead very simple, which I think suited the series more than a more realistic artistic style would.  The characters weren't ugly, which was good, and they looked normal enough.

Sound: 6/10
It was okay, I guess.  I liked the Dango Daikazoku stuff, it was cute.  But Nagisa's and all the other girls who were portrayed as kindergarteners had little girl voice acting, which was kind of annoying, but fitting.

Conclusion:
Final Notes:
Not that good of an anime in my opinion.  It wasn't as sad as I was expecting it to be, and it didn't really tug on any heartstrings.  Being a fan of Tomoyo and Kyou, I thoroughly enjoyed the OVAs where Okazaki ended up with the different girls, more so than I expected since they were more touching than the actual series itself.  Although I didn't like Clannad, I still have high hopes for Clannad: After Story due to it's very high ratings.
Overall Rating: 6/10

Other Information:
Source: Visual Novel
Length: 24 min/episode
Rating: Pg-13