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[CrazyRah]

Death Note.. oh Death Note 

 

Right now got the last 3 episodes left and man are my feelings quite different now from how they were 10 episodes ago and even more different from 15 episodes ago. Will write a way more detailed report in a little over an hour i suppose about all of the anime and divided everything up in parts that the anime itself has kinda divided itself into

 

[TheChris92]

So, this is my third time writing this -- Got my text deleted again, but I'll try again for the third time. Clannad: After Story. My last analysis focused a bit on what I'd consider some of the central themes of the anime.

This time I'd like to discuss a little bit about what it is that made Clannad and its second season so good, when it comes to its emotionally engaging story.

There's also a few anime, games or even films that have managed to make tear up a little bit, and to understand why and out of my sheer curiosity of figuring out the answer as to what makes a sad story.. well sad, I'm gonna proceed with drawing parallels to other examples. Out of recent memory I can recall games like The Last of Us, Persona 3 & 4, inFamous 2 & Snake Eater making me cry, while movies it would have to be The Hunt & Eternal Sunshine -- With anime its Full Metal Alchemist.

I wanna draw a line that places these examples beside each other, in order to understand what might be common between their approach to narrative techniques or conveying emotional engagement, but also provide with a few other examples of how I feel most shows, games, tend to fail on delivering that same powerful sense of loss and sadness that tickles the heartstrings.
In fact, let me reiterate that a bit -- I think it's also important to note, how strong emotions don't usually spawn solely from loss, but also from moments of joy or bittersweet scenarios -- like temporarily parting ways with loved ones, characters confessing their love for another, or characters obtaining their goals and desires, sometimes depending on genre and handling of the situation at hand, it can definitely spark tears or powerful emotions in the audience. There are definitely a few bittersweet angles to sadness, where the sadness could also reflect joy, as in tears can be induced by an overwhelming turning point that went from dreadful to happy, or at least something that leaves with a sense of hope in the midst of despair.
An example could be the hero committing the ultimate sacrifice, by giving up what's most precious to him, in order to safeguard the world he loves, or the hero finding true resolution and contentment in starting a family, settling down or retiring into obscurity, living life in all its glory, and of course there's other side of the spectrum.. tragedy, loss, despair.
The strong emotions aren't mutually exclusive -- They exist to be conveyed in any great story telling depending on circumstances and how its executed.


I tend to be see a pattern in a lot of stories, that seek generally to provide mature drama, often backfiring -- or at least they tend to feel forced, to a point where it all becomes unconventional and absurd, sometimes even unintentionally hilarious. An example that springs to mind is David Cage's Heavy Rain. I think the game generally had the problem of badly written dialogue andvoice acting, but the writing itself also suffered, which is ultimately the support beam for its dramatic effect.Heavy Rain, as its marketing on its box and everything would imply, wants to be an intense crime drama, and it handles these intense moments with about as much subtlety as a spermwhale in a airplane luggage compartment.
To some degree I'd argue that Heavy Rain lacks a sense of flow as it only goes between 5-10 minutes before the next high-LARIOUS tragedy strikes, and often they come off as nothing more but shallow attempts to score poignancy points with the player, and the concept of dramatic timing means about as much to the game's pacing as my arse do withe the dark side of the moon.

Ignoring the game now -- The conclusion I wanted to draw, before setting things off with some indeep review of Clannad, goes like this: In regards to the emotional parts of a narrative, there are several factors that needs to be considered, for it to pay-off the way you want. Music, or rather audio, is an important factor, sometimes the most intense moments are enhanced by not having any music at all, which incidentally is what Japanese do best in animation. Whether it be the atmospheric sounds of an empty city, or the gusty blows of the winds, silence and carefully planned music can work wonders -- The sense of dramatic timing. It needs to come in small dosis, and it needs to be consistent with the tone it wants to create, and with the circumstances of the plot. Lastly, if they are meant to convey strong emotions, then it needs to consider how it'll affect the development of not just the plot but the characters, if it exists solely for shock value, then it'll lose the weight it carried on the audience, and ultimately lose them as a result.

I can safely say now that Clannad does this with such precise skill that it manages to ruin my soul more than 3 times with its second season After Story -- It breeds familiarity too by telling a story about unlikely match of Tomoya and Nagisa, whom draw strength from each other as they grow into a couple of capable adults and eventually .. a family. As After Story's name would imply, Clannad twists what we thought we knew about most romantic-animes, by first providing a capable ruse to derive our attention away long enough that we realize the show isn't over yet.
Stop me if I don't make sense -- What I'm trying to say: You know how most romance anime you'd probably be able to tell its inevitable outcome, solely from common tropes that comes with the genre? In Clannad's case, we don't just see what happens until the part where the young lovers finally, officially become a couple, but it also takes uswith them when their journey is done, what happens "AFTER" the story is done. It's at that point where we realizethat might have stumbled upon something bigger than what we thought.

Clannad provides a fascinating image, reflecting people's journey through life. Generally, we view high school as the laid relaxing part of our lives, where responsibility isn't piled up from knees to neck, given how we don't need to think too much about decisions yet, and most of our day is planned out for us. Clannad starts off as that traditional view of high school, where you are having fun, you're powered up and ready for the future, filled with dreams and hopes and passion to move on with your life. As soon as the story is over, and we see what happens to Nagisa and Tomoyo, we also begin to realize slowly how cruel life can be -- The characters have graduated, they've been cast out of Eden, and must now face the world on their own with only each other to support. We desire companionship most of all after high school, to grant meaning to our existence and our daily days of living -- We need people in our lives to complete us, to fulfill the things we can't.

It's only when the first real tragedy strikes, in After Story, that we realize how naive we've been, about Clannad's premise, but also how we've taken so many things for granted -- it puts us in such an uncomfortable, yet welcoming, and leaves us to think and reflect upon ourselves. At this point we can immerse ourselves fully into Tomoya's shoes

.

The reason why the tragedy of Nagisa's death is so powerful is because of the emotional weight it provides on the people she leaves behind. It's an incredibly hopeless situation, but it also solifies the concept of hope even in the midst of despair. Tomoya breaks down emotionally, he becomes detached from the world, but as he struggles to come to terms with Nagisa's death the “People completes People” idea is brought vividly to focus as Kyoani flashed the bits and pieces and the sights and sounds of Nagisa’s life across the screen. Her death actually molds Tomoya into a better person and a better father,  juxtaposing the sacrifices his own father made for him. Tomoya stopped running away, and once he finally realizes this, he recalls the prints Nagisa left behind on his soul. It is as if she was next to him, and telling him that it's time to forgive, and move on, because while in the words of Bebop "You're gonna carry that weight" you never have to carry it alone, and do not let that burden crush you. At this point, he finally brings Ushio home to visit his father, it is at this point where Nagisa completes Tomoya's development as a character, as a father, and as a man, even though she was no longer physically there. It was Clannad’s spin on the traditional “she lives on within him”. In fact Tomoya’s final redemption felt like the completing of many circles, small and large, from all the people he had interacted with, whom he had helped, and who had helped him, and through whom all he was able to at last understand himself and know his way forward. The Tomoya that found happiness and catharsis was Tomoya plus the sum of significant people in his life. There is little concept of destiny or calling or fate in Clannad’s universe – it is all people. Tomoya’s life was people. A possible interpretation of the ending, of Tomoya’s decision that he wanted to meet Nagisa knowing all that must come to pass, could be as thus: it isn’t about what happens in the end, everything that has happened throughout his time with Nagisa and Ushio didn’t become pointless because both eventually died. Tomoya was who he was because of his life spent with his wife and daughter. He lived and felt happiness, and that living was worth it. Better to have lived and laughed and suffered and lost than to have never truly lived before. For a life without the people important to it wasn’t true living in Clannad’s valuation.


Last time I talked a bit about relationships & people, how they are connected, how they relate to the heart of Clannad's story, but there's also something else that is common throughout it all, especially in its character, most importantly main character, Tomoya. It's the feeling of "doing".

 

The sense of perseverance, even in the midst of great sorrow, deep regret, there's always a feeling of determination that drives the characters forward. Interestingly enough, “just jump in and do something” is also something of a recurring theme in Clannad. There's always a feeling of pressing forward for the characters Clannad, no matter how the circumstances, and it's usually there where the strongest growth lies in wait. The characters always manages to come up with some form of activity to keep their minds off other affairs that hinders them -- there is an earnest of pride in it all I think.

 

The earliest example is probably Fuko’s starfish distributing. The entire idea of distriburting and making starfish is sort of silly, but the overall thoughts earnest heart placed into it that makes it all the more meaningful -- it’s hardly the last random thing onto which our characters pounce either way, right? When Kotomi shut herself in and refused outside contact, Tomoya decided that he was going to spend days and days cleaning out her yard. When Mei was worried about Sunohara, she decided to beg and do everything she could to get the soccer team to let her brother play again – when her brother showed no sign of wanting to do so – with Tomoya and Nagisa in tow. And in Mei’s case, it didn’t even really work out, and yet the happy end for her arc did come as almost an endorsement of her actions. Clannad seems to be advocating this: whenever someone you care about is in trouble and neither you nor him/her seem to be able to sort it out, well, do something anyway. Find something you can do, and do it. And in light of all the above discussion, there may be some sense to this. In fact the way it often works in real life is that you often don’t know if something you’re doing will work out, and dedicated efforts sometimes lead to nothing whereas sometimes something offhand and random, or even unintentional, ends up making a big difference. So the idea is not to hold back on doing something just because you don’t think that it’ll work, because you never know when something you do could make a world of difference to another person. So do something – anything – whenever you have the chance. Even if you do a million useless things and then do one thing that mattered, that one thing would be worth it. My favorite example of that one thing is when Mitsui, having rudely turned down Fuko’s starfish offer once, walks up to her again, said she would try to attend the wedding, and told her to do her best. That obviously meant the world to Fuko. In Clannad’s model of the world people have only other people to count on for support, and so there could be a time when the difference between someone being able to move on and find fulfillment could hinge on a simple action you could choose or choose not to do. So always choose to do. Never hang back.


The climax of the series presents u with parallel situations. On the one hand we have Tomoya standing on the hill in an altered version of the opening of the very first episode. Having now lost Ushio as well as Nagisa he is once again, this time more deeply, feeling that he should never have met Nagisa. That if he simply chose not to speak to her at this point in time, her life could be saved and their suffering could be averted. Time is stopped, except for Tomoya, who is doing nothing, and Nagisa, who is walking away in slow motion. The world is presented in the dull colours that represent Tomoya's original negative outlook on life. At the same time as this is happening, similar thoughts are going through the mind of the doll in the illusionary world. It has led the girl out into the winter snow in an effort to find a better place, the place it believes it came from. Now they lie half buried in snow, and the girl appears to be dead or dying. The doll thinks that it may have been better if they had never attempted the trip, though unlike Tomoya he keeps trying to move on. In the final moments leading up to the climax, it is revealed by the dying girl that she is Ushio and that the doll is Tomoya. She also reveals that she cannot leavethe world with the doll, as she is this world, but she says that they can meet again in the other world. Once sheis done delivering these sudden revelations, the world explodes. Climactic certainly, but not that helpful when trying to figure out what these final pieces of the puzzle mean.

I think it's impossible to say what the metaphors overall meaning could be -- Not having a consensus explanation actually makes the story all the more powerful, and memorable, as the symbolism, imagery, the Illusionary World, reflects the underlying meaning to Tomoya & Nagisa's, but not just that, it reflects the struggles we all go through in life. Looking back, it's safe to say that I feel there's more talk about when taking the ending into consideration. In some ways, it seems to partially play out the multi-verse theory, in a similar fashion to that of BioShock Infinite, but looking back, there are indications that Tomoya has memories of that other world. I like to think that the world itself represents the psyche of each individual human being, one of my reasons as to coming to this conclusion is the final scene, where Fuko finds Ushio in a similar fashion to how the doll finds the girl.

I think it's meant to draw parallel between people, as the Illusionary World reflects the state of being of the real one and its people. But I think I'll leave further discussion of the ending to another post tomorrow.

[Isichar]

@Chris

 

 

I can't wait to read your post on it tomorrow.

 

I completely agree with what you said about most stories trying to present mature themes and having it backfire. It's rare for a story to hit the emotional and mature sweetspot that Clannad managed to, for me at least. I'm really starting to appreciate how much better the Japanese typically tend to handle the audio then western media for these kinds of situations.

[Isichar]

For some f*cking reason I was getting all emotional when reading that and got teary eyed. Had that f*cking Dango sh*t playing in my head ><

 

Great, now Chris is making me cry!

 

Good. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one...

[Liamv2]

Looks like I better bookmark your mini novel for when I finally get round to Clannad.

[Isichar]

Lots of tissues in After Stories case.

 

One part had me crying for like 15 minutes straight until my eyes hurt.

[Liamv2]

I keep putting it off mainly because I know i'll be an emotional wreck for at least a month and I don't have time for that.

[TheChris92]

Thanks for the appreciation everyone, I enjoyed writing it even though I had to start over a few times. I'm gonna edit it a bit.

 

Btw, in case some of you didn't see it earlier. This Eminem song is strangely fitting to Clannad.

 

[Isichar]

Thanks for the appreciation everyone, I enjoyed writing it even though I had to start over a few times. I'm gonna edit it a bit.

 

Btw, in case some of you didn't see it earlier. This Eminem song is strangely fitting to Clannad.

 

 

I've seen it and I agree, it fits well.

 

I have a lot more I can say on your notes personally, although if your typing more I'd like to see that first.

 

FYI I've lost book posts before and it's frustrating as hell

[Isichar]

I remember when I use to laugh at the gaping space between their foreheads. Now I can't even do that anymore due to how many emotions that series hits.

[Liamv2]

You mean this?

[TheChris92]

The ironic thing is that (as Chris here points out) Clannad is all about people. However, personally, I can do without people. So one has to wonder why I can't watch the second opening of Clannad without that huge surge of overwhelming emotion.

 

 

I mean, dude, it's unreal just how the anime hits me on just so many different levels.

 

ETA: Chris, have you put this up on tumblr? I believe I've lost the link to your blog page. Oh and if you don't mind, I'm gonna copy pasta this on a word-document just for keep's sakes. I've never been sure about the ending, and it seems that its ambiguity has even got you wondering, but even so, your talk on Tomoya's choice really puts into words my own feelings.

 

I wonder if writers even think about these things when they tell a story. Do they go into it saying "right, symbolism here, a tad of emotion here, a pinch of music here" etc... I'd rather hoped they didn't, or at least, a minimum amount of that. It'd be nice to know that writers just want to tell the story, and everything that's picked up from it comes from a natural talent they possess but do not purposely apply. Kind of like singing. Are the vocals really mapped out beforehand? Or does the singer reach that high point, or that low tone because it simply feels right.

I like to think they don't. It was more or less a thought that came to when I was watching the documentary on the Last of Us development phase, or at least something I was reminded when I watched it. Check it out there. It's interesting to note Troy Baker's feelings to the process of acting out one of the most powerful scenes in the game, and most emotionally draining. It takes true effort out of the actor too. Sometimes that's enough. In the documentary, it seems lean towards writing a story first, as they go along, and thus impactful stuff comes after or they come natural as it progresses. This is basically what little I know about it. I study narrative production and storytelling, but I can't say I'm an expert on the subject. I know that Naughty Dog tend to think hard on what kind of story they wanna tell, but I think it's during that process where the twists, the sadness, or powerful stuff simple integrates naturally. It's important to remember that no matter what it is, anime, manga, book, film, nothing is there by accident, everything has a meaning, everything serves a purpose, every shot taken in a film is framed the exact way it is for a purpose, not always as deep as one might think, but there it is. 

 

 

 

I think that's what I wanted to say in regards to Clannad in my analysis, it was about how the best stories don't seem planned ahead too much in order to get the best reaction out of its audience. That's what I believe anyway.

[CrazyRah]

I keep putting it off mainly because I know i'll be an emotional wreck for at least a month and I don't have time for that.

 

Same here, i'm putting it off for a time when i actually have the time to marathon all off it and that wont be happening until earliest mid-august and probably even latter than that. Besides it's taken quite a while to recover from watching PMMM in all its glory, kinda wanting to appreciate the little sanity i now have for a little while longer

[TheChris92]

Well, if you can recommend Anohana I'll definitely give it a whirl.

 

It's odd thinking back now. Because there's something I feel I missed out on mentioning in my review, analysis, whatever you wanna call it.

Clannad, despite it all, actually ends with a happy ending, and yet it fits so well? Isn't it odd? I think it relates to how the anime essentially said what it needed to say, in terms of its underlying message, and felt more or less like a strict lesson that Tomoya had to realize in order to grow as an adult. It's at that part where we sort of come to accept the supernatural, the other world, because it plays out a bit more like a psychological aspect to the psyche of the characters and their struggles.

 

It's hard to put more exact words on it right now. But yeah..

[Isichar]

Well, if you can recommend Anohana I'll definitely give it a whirl.

 

I definitely can. Great watch.