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Clannad: After Story should have stuck with the bad ending.


Raven
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It fucked with my emotions for the last 8 or so episodes only to essentially say at the very end "lol jk everything's fine. disregard everything from episode 16."

Not fucking cool, man.

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Nagisa dies, my heart explodes with sadness, and the story would have been a memorable tragedy if it ended there.

But then the universe says "n/m lol" and she comes back to life.

Instead of that stupid alternate universe thing with the girl and the robot, they should have just expanded on Tomoya and his daughter growing up and left it at that. It could be a sad but memorable life lesson, like "People you love die, but you find others who can fill that hole, no matter how big." anything besides "People you love will eventually die but then flip a bitch and go all Jesus H. Christ on your ass and come back from the dead."

Still one neat thing about the show's end is it gave us this.

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You had to work for that good ending like all hell in the VN.

It would have been sorely disappointing for many fans if that whole "Disney" feel was just gone.

Instead of that stupid alternate universe thing with the girl and the robot, they should have just expanded on Tomoya and his daughter growing up and left it at that. It could be a sad but memorable life lesson, like "People you love die, but you find others who can fill that hole, no matter how big." anything besides "People you love will eventually die but then flip a bitch and go all Jesus H. Christ on your ass and come back from the dead."

Call me naive, but I *want* to believe in unrealistic miracle good endings like that.

Not to be Captain Obvious, but anime isn't exactly realistic and has to teach you lessons of realism. "Love conquers all" is an idealistic idea that was expressed in that ending, no matter how impractical you say it is. I for one advocate that Deus Ex Machina decision.

Edited by shadowofchaos
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The topic says "Clannad" and "ending". If that's not a big enough spoiler warning then people should have their head checked :/

Touché. Missed the ending in the title when I posted.

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Where was this complaint 5 years ago?

But it didn't disregard anything, and anyone who thinks it did didn't pay enough attention. Everything that happened from episode 16 on was important and yes, it all still happened.

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I've always felt that it should have ended with the bad ending. It was nice to see everything end happily ever after, but again I suppose for me it's the journey that makes the anime, not the end.

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You had to work for that good ending like all hell in the VN.

It would have been sorely disappointing for many fans if that whole "Disney" feel was just gone.

Call me naive, but I *want* to believe in unrealistic miracle good endings like that.

Not to be Captain Obvious, but anime isn't exactly realistic and has to teach you lessons of realism. "Love conquers all" is an idealistic idea that was expressed in that ending, no matter how impractical you say it is. I for one advocate that Deus Ex Machina decision.

I actually agree in that good endings are preferable, but in this instance, the instance of Clannad, it keeps doing that thing throughout the series where the saddest, most heartwrenching thing happens (Adorable kawaii moe girl dies) and then she inexplicably isn't dead later on. It majorly reduces the impact of those scenes. Remember starfish girl? (Always, I forget her name) She dies, because what Tomoya and Nagisa saw was just a spirit floating around. It's insinuated that she is dying in a hospital bed and that when she actually dies, her spirit leaves. I cried hard when she "died", but then not many episodes later on... she just appears and starts babbling about starfish, as if the whole escapade never happened at all.

Then, same thing with Nagisa. It builds up to the horrible tragedy of her death, and we see Tomoya's anguish, his sheer sadness that his beloved wife had finally succumbed to her weakness and died, far too early. It's a sentiment many of us have felt as our own loved ones died. Then something great happens, he starts drawing close to his daughter whom he hadn't seen for years because of his return to alcoholism. We witness him building a relationship with her and get those tingles of "Wow, he made it past the sadness, I feel so good for you, Tomoya!" and then... TRAGEDY! She falls over in the snow and our hearts flop, thinking "Oh god, can it get any worse for this poor guy?! Please let her LIVE!"

Now, here's where the anime goes wrong. Right up to the daughter falling over in the snow, the show was going pretty much perfect. It had established a theme of people close to Tomoya dying (They should have left Starfish girl dead for the sake of keeping this continuous but I know that she wasn't in the VN, so whatever) and him having to cope with this loss. This is the part where he could have done something heroic, like saved his daughter by getting her to a hospital or something, and then we, as viewers, would be able to say "Even though he experienced the loss of Nagisa his beloved wife, he has moved on and he can share a long life with his daughter."

Instead, complete and utter bullshit happens, some sparkles and magic, then time travel (?????????? WHAT ???????????) and he gets Nagisa back. And they're in High School again! As if nothing we saw ever happened or mattered!

Now for me, the impact if the deus ex machina hadn't happened and my version had occured would be tremendously amazing. Instead of rewatching everything in afterstory and knowing none of it would matter (Because none of it actually happened LAWL) I would know that it did matter and that Nagisa and Starfish girl would actually die. The Deus Ex Machina in this example only hurts the story. It removes the effectiveness of every other thing that happened before that. THAT is why I don't like it.

Edited by Klok
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On the other hand, the VN had lots of endings so they could have used an ending for the anime that actually made sense. I think the person who wrote the VN was actually part of the Anime team though and it was their decision to go with the ending they used. Probably why it was such a lame ending.

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On the other hand, the VN had lots of endings so they could have used an ending for the anime that actually made sense. I think the person who wrote the VN was actually part of the Anime team though and it was their decision to go with the ending they used. Probably why it was such a lame ending.

They took the "true" end. The same end as the anime.

Klok, why are you ranting about this again, NOW?

After Story wasn't able to compete with Haruhi for rankings for a few... weeks, I want to say... for nothing.

You think it's the worse decision they could have ever done... I don't think so. And a lot of people here are "meh" about it.

Just accept that.

Edited by shadowofchaos
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I really loved the music who was played during the true ending.

I liked it, and starfish girl (Fuuko or Fuuka, not usre) was funny so I didn't mind.

This would have made a wildly different anime (also, if they kept out all the filler ending to developp the main guy life after school, relation with his daughter and with his own father).

Clannad... doesn't have this much ambition. It just want to adapt with as much fidelity as possible a famous VN.

It's a problem that all VN adaptation have anyway, not just Clannad, after all.

It's still far better that this useless anime that had a ED by Marble, for example.

BTW, have you tried watching White Album 2 ?

Anyway, I had discovered that I don't really like this kind of story anymore.

And best love stories are still in Hyouka and Kimi to Boku (2).

(video for no particular reason, except that it have Mary and Chizuru)

Edited by Edea the Brave
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I think the True End was fine in the VN. It took me nine months (of non-continuous reading) to get all those Orbs of Light and unlock the True End of the VN, and it also gave me a "help others find happiness and happiness will find you" feeling. That being said, I don't think that kind of ending would have been appropriate for the anime, and I agree with Raven and Klok in that it looks like a Deus Ex Machina, where they passed up an opportunity to give us another message in "coping with loss" (which was already there in the flower field scene) and instead chose to escape from that scenario of Ushio dying. I watched the anime first and the ending did piss me off a lot, but when I read the VN, it seemed to work really well.

Also, Klok, the Starfish girl (Ibuki Fuuko) was actually in the VN as well, and yes, she does recover in the future after Ushio is born. I don't know where you got the idea that she died at some point though, because I don't recall that ever happening.

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I haven't played the VN (Much, anyway. I played it but I disliked the general "style") so I base my opinions on the anime as the story standing apart from the VN. I assume the VN's storytelling worked really well for it but didn't translate well into the anime with regard to the anime's ending.

Of course no matter how much I complain, the damage is done for me and it can't be fixed anyway, but somehow I keep hoping my criticism will traverse time and alter the anime as I watched it in the past or someshit.

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And they're in High School again!

This part definitely did not happen.

The only problem I had with After Story is that it didn't explain everything well enough. Sometimes it's just "the viewer didn't get it," but in this case it really is more confusing than it needs to be. Still, it does all make sense. I'm not the best at explaining it, though, so I don't want to try and fail. Basically it has to do with the orbs of light.

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It was clearly Nagisa wearing a school uniform and it was the same point in time where he first met her, when he runs up to her and hugs her. I don't recall if we timewarped forward after that but I didn't remember a timewarp so maybe I'm wrong about that.

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