FreddyCrab

Story: Despite giving it a rating overall of an 8, I have to say I was still dissappointed with how Clannad played out. I knew what the general gist of the story concerned, but sadly I found watching Clannad to be a bore. 

Tomoya Okazaki stumbles accross a girl by the name of Nagisa Furukawa- and over the duration of this anime he helps her to get the drama club set up. Clannad is a bit like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in this respect, as it mentions a club, yet soon the club is forgotten and other stories take centre stage, however, unlike Haruhi Suzumiya, the stories what take place in Clannad can only be explained as dull, uninteresting and lifeless. Fuko's story arc was sweet at first, but it got old. Ichinose's arc was rather dull also. And all the story arcs continued at this slow, laborious pace till it slightly improved at around the 20-episode mark. Thankfully the ending improved due to some sweet love confessions what I admittedly didn't think would ever happen, so that raised my rating of this anime to the 8 just barely. 

But overall the story of this anime is pointless- each episode is full of nothing of mild interest, it was a drag to keep on watching.

Animation: Animation in Clannad is very nice at least, although a little too typical of that studio.

Sound: I liked the opening, but the ending I disliked. There wasn't much music used throughout the show either.

Characters: The characters in this show were memorable, but there were a few too many girls for you to be able to process. Nagisa, although a sweet girl, is ALWAYS crying. Which, of course got extremely irritating with each progressing episode- I really don't see what Tomoya sees in her, because at the best of times shes just a wreck. Tomoya was an interesting character, his relationship with his dad was one of the only interesting story plots to actually be mentioned- but it wasn't even developed.

Along with these two protagonists are a folly of other women to suit every guys' need; the shy twin, the bold twin, the tough girl, the smart bookworm girl and the lolita girl. There were lots of characters, but none of them really stood out for me, other than Tomoya's pervy friend Sunohara.

Overall: I really wish I could have understood the genius of this show, but the end was the only interesting part of it, I only hope that the sequel is as superb as everyone else is saying, and not exactly like this, because I don't think I could stomach another series like this again.