Mega Megane Moé
Hell and Heaven Moéltdown
Posts tagged Clannad
My Show Is Better Than Your Show, March Madness Edition
Mar 5th
There seems to be cries every season about how the cropping of shows is worse than the last, and while this may or may not be true depending on your taste in shows, I’ve always found it hard to be lacking in stuff to put up on the screen every night. This is because while there may not be many standout, my-God-I-need-to-watch-this-now shows in every season there are always plentiful bounties of sleeper hits, things worth trying because someone said it was good, or just plain old shows, enough to ensure that I get continually buried deeper and deeper in a pile of anime I need to catch up on.
Perhaps a large part of it is due to the fact that I enjoy being very easily influenced and thanks to that I can pick up random shows if two or three people say it’s actually pretty good – doubly so if they can nail a weak spot of mine – combined with the fact that I really haven’t seen much, having only been in the anime-watching business for just over a year.
To prove that anime Is Out There – cue the X-Files theme – I’m going to spend a little time tonight going over the majority of my watchlist, instead of the huge specialty posts on a single anime which have been written recently. In case you haven’t figured it out, that’s mostly code for “I want to talk about True Tears, Clannad, and Shana II but am too lazy to unify it in an easy way” with some bonus laughing at other shows added in.
Since it’s March and all and I like to pretend to be hip and knowledgable about sports (Protip: Motorsports yes, sportssports no.), it’s a super special sweet sixteen – ow, my manliness – March Madness-type organization with, you guessed it, sixteen shows on the list. There are in reality a few more but the majority of the extra would consist of “I saw this once, and would kind of keep watching it if there were nothing else to watch,” which explains itself well enough.
To be fair it doesn’t have the mass-voting aspect or the actual sports-related references of the other March Madness anime posts, but, hey, 16 anime, that’s a lot. Read the rest of this entry »
Anime Diaries: In-character humor and romantic recommendations for Valentine’s Day
Feb 14th
(Part of a Anime Blogging Collective Valentine’s Day post rush; refer to IKnight’s handy article collection for links to all the others.)
Who is she? I don’t know, but she has glasses and a valentine. Instant kill, no saving throw.
With the rise of the Internet, it’s easier than ever for people to destroy their personal privacy and post up their biggest, darkest secrets all over the Web, where nobody – except everybody – can see it.
As such budding paparazzi such as myself consider the blogging scene a veritable goldmine for digging up the dirty, the dorky, and the dunce-headed on the most popular or intriguing idols of today, and this isn’t any exception when it comes to the anime community.
No, I’m not talking about the anime blogging community, as many iconic characters as it has. Rather, there’s a lot you didn’t know your favorite anime character was up to on everyone’s favorite romantic holiday, and I’ve taken it upon myself as a freelance reporter to peruse the masses of entries every day for the most exciting, interesting, and controversial stories of what “everyday” life shapes up to be for the biggest names in harem, magical girl, and straight-up romance anime. I think you’ll be very surprised at what dirt I’ve got on them.
(Disclaimer: As you may have guessed, this is a fictional entry based on fictional characters, and a lot of the preceding was patent nonsense. I’m not part of the paparazzi nor a reporter, and if you see any blogs by anime characters I think you need to pinch yourself a bit harder. This is just a fun little idea for a Valentine’s Day post, based off this similar Christmas idea by Stripey, in imagining the (likely much more exciting) happenings of some popular anime heroes and heroines. Please enjoy.
Oh, and yes, I’m trying to inject a little analysis into this as well; these shows all have ties to romance in some way – although most of them, as predicted from someone like me, are harem – and I’ll be commenting on why this show might be something interesting to watch for someone in the mood for a little lovin’ on a day like today.)
(Yeah, I kinda minorly spoil KimiKiss, ef, and Clannad, in a roundabout way.) Read the rest of this entry »
Clannad and the Moé-volution (but really why I’m not in love with Kyou)
Feb 10th
“Why the heck” I’m not in love with Kyou, maybe?
It must be “The Kyoto Touch” or something. It seems sometimes that everything Kyoto Animation lays their hands on turns to moe. Or gold.
Maybe both.
This magic seems to continue with Clannad, which has recieved pretty universal praise, more so than Kanon or maybe even Haruhi. Naturally, there are still naysayers both of the legitimate and the “it’s cool to hate” kind, but among fans of visual novel / harem anime, Clannad seems to be top-notch, and it’s even snared some of the lighter, slice-of-life fans with a surprising amount of humor for a show of this type.
It’s funny to see something like this happen, because to be honest, for all the praise about how Clannad is different, it’s surprisingly similar to the tried-and-true formula that we’ve seen from Key. I think what really ensnares people, and why I enjoy this show, is not how it really brings much incredibly new to the genre, but rather how it manages to mix together many solid concepts in a way that pushes the buttons of pretty much any viewer that comes within fifty miles of the target audience. It’s pretty much a jack of all trades to me – it’s not a masterpiece, but it spans enough character and plot archetypes that it’s an enjoyable and entertaining watch.
I should note two things here, one being that “pushing buttons” doesn’t always refer to physical turn-ons, and two, that I don’t mean to be saying anything wholly negative about Clannad. I think that the characters are incredibly entertaining and enjoyable, and the story is passable and not completely the “sad girl in stuff” fare that many dislike, but anyone who’s hailing this as the second coming of…the first thing you thought was incredibly godly, is overshooting the mark a bit. Read the rest of this entry »
Track Two: Clannad
Jan 27th
Clannad is a visual-novel by the famous company Key, turned anime by the famous animators Kyoto Animation. It’s a mix of the same tear-jerking emotion typical of this company and genre, and a large amount of humor that rivals the best comedies, making Clannad a good combination of genres. In this story, we follow nice-guy delinquent Tomoya Okazaki as he becomes friends with Nagisa Furukawa, a soft-spoken but strong girl, and many other interesting characters in his school. These include Fuuko, a strange and small girl who always seems to be at school, Tomoyo, a strong fighter who just wants to be seen as a girl, Kotomi, a socially inept genius with a taste for the violin, and the ever-appealing twins Ryou and Kyou. What secrets do they all hide, starting with Tomoya himself…?
1/26/08: Episode 15
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1/20/08: Episode 14
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Click here for more information on Track Two.
-CCY
Moé Rising: The line between cute and characterization
Jan 21st
(I like Hisui, but the ol’ line about “So moe I might die” comes to mind)
Moe: is it in your anime, killing your enjoyment?
Recently I’ve been in a bit of despair over Clannad, the third installment in Key’s sad-girls-in-noun series that has been animated by high-quality animation studio Kyoto Animation. By all means, I like to consider myself a Key fanboy (I believe the official term for this is “kagikko”) like the best of them; look up at my banner (might need a couple refreshes, admittedly) or down at my posts, and you’ll see a whole lot of raving, ranting, and allusions to vanilla ice cream, among other catchfoods.
But with the advent of decidedly more real, down-to-earth visual-novel type stories in anime, for example, the highly lauded KimiKiss, it seems that some of Key’s works could almost be growing stagnant. Even other shows with what could be considered mildly moe characters, take a more realistic, balanced view, as the infamous quote in ef – a tale of memories goes: “If the girl is thought to be cute, it means she isn’t being described properly.”
There are a lot of instances of concentrated moe in anime nowadays, but Key works are generally among the genre-leaders in this regard. Just look at Kanon, and Yuuichi’s four childhood friends. Clannad is a bit more even-keeled in terms of characters, but Kotomi’s recent arc is what really tipped the scale for me, and led me to this post.
It made me wonder – is there a sort of divide between moe characters and strong characters? Is a moe character, by definition, one that has to be shallow? Or is this just a false dichotomy?
Read the rest of this entry »