Welcome to yet another Key game turned anime. Yes, once again an anime seemingly designed to break the crowds down into bawling masses started its life as one of Key’s dating sims. A rather startling difference between this title and Kanon and Air (another Key game), is the fact that unlike the other two this title was released as an all ages sim, and contains neither fan-service nor the expected H-scenes. But on to the anime itself.

I did a review of Kanon not too long ago, and if you’ve watched it before this, you’ll see some startling parallels creeping out of the story. Apart from the usual elements that come from all sims-turned-anime (the one guy-many beautiful girls setup), some other elements also make a reappearance. I’m not going to expand on them – I’d prefer to look at Clannad on a stand-alone basis, as well as not ruin the story for any potential watchers. The one thing I do think I should mention though, is that, setting itself apart from the large number of other dating sims out there, Clannad contained no hentai elements, and indeed featured very little in the way of fan-service.

The story focuses on Okazaki Tomoya, a third-year high school student. Tomoya is an incredibly straightforward person who generally doesn’t hesitate to speak his mind; despite this he is very loyal to his friends. However, he has a general apathy towards school and life, and is labeled by the teachers as a delinquent. All this is set to change one morning when, while he is walking to school, he meets Furukawa Nagisa, who was standing and talking to herself. All at once she asks him, “Do you like this school?”

This is the starting point for what would turn into a lasting friendship, as Tomoya finds himself intrigued by Nagisa. Nagisa is a fellow third-year student, but she is a year older than Tomoya, having stayed back a year due to an illness. As his friendship with Nagisa grows, Tomoya also meets and befriends several other girls.

Tomoya is, in a way, an interesting character. Despite his negative attitude to life, he doesn’t hesitate to help his friends, often going far beyond what would be considered a normal effort. His characteristic bluntness is one of the more humourous aspects of the story though, as he never hesitates to say what is on his mind, and also doesn’t hesitate to play the odd trick on the unwary person. You might not be surprised to discover that his female friends all harbor some feelings for him.

The story follows Tomoya as he attempts to help Nagisa reestablish the high school’s drama club – in the process they run into various issues – helping Nagisa with these problems almost naturally leads Tomoya into both meeting the other girls and helping them with their issues at the same time.

While the story is mostly serious, Clannad provides plenty of comedic breaks – especially in the form of young Ibuki Fuuko, and watchers of aforementioned Kanon will notice a homage to Kanon in the form of a derivative of Kanon’s rather unique school-uniform later on in the show.

As was the case with previous titles from Key, Kyoto Animation once again took charge of the creation of the anime, maintaining the excellent standard of animation and illustration first seen in Air and later on in Kanon. Again, watchers of Kanon will notice some similarity – although the artwork and character designs are more similar to those of Air – but there are differences enough to set this title apart. A pair of twins who form part of the core set of characters, Fujibayashi Kyou and Ryou (both pictured in the sig below), bear a striking resemblance to the twin sisters in Lucky Star, Tsukasa and Kagami, both in personality and in looks.

For the soundtrack, artist Lia of I’ve Sound (responsible for much of the music in Air) featured for the background song “Ana” (first played in ep. 9), while the opening track (Megumeru) was performed by Eufonius, and Chata performed the amusingly childish, nursery-rhyme like “Dango Daikaizoku”. The remainder of the backround music includes a number of remixes centred around the “Dango Daikazoku” theme plus a few other songs, including the beautiful “Kage Futatsu” by Riya, which was originally the main ending theme for the visual novel.

The series consists of 23 episodes, and included a special episode, all of which aired from October 2007 to March 2008, while a seperate OVA – “Clannad: Tomoyo Dearest” aired in July 2008 – featuring an alternate story in which Tomoya and Sakagami Tomoyo are a couple. This series also only covers the first half of events in the game; the second half of events is covered in Clannad After Story, the sequel, which started airing in October 2008 and will finish its run at the end of March this year.

Anime News Network’s watchers gave the series a score of 8.7/10 – and I would suggest watching Clannad if you enjoyed titles like Kanon and Air.