Clannad is one of those anime that just hit at the right place at the right time. Not only was it adapted from a famous beloved visual novel a fairly new production company at the time Kyoto Animation really made an effort to do it justice by adapting it into an anime series that bordered on having 50 episodes. Then again by that time KyoAni already had experience adapting the works of Visual Arts/Key into animation previously though they actually werent the only ones doing so. For some reason Toei got in on it as well though their direction was to adapt them into movies In the case of Kanon they made that into a 13episode series. KyoAni stopped adapting Keys visual novels into animation after Clannad something that didnt sit well with their fans at the time Man remember when JC Staff was first revealed to be making the Little Busters anime? I remember the backlash being sooooo overblown. But Toeis adaptations of Keys work had their merits mainly making them into more bitesized for anyone who didnt want to watch 2050 something episodes of KyoAnis TV versions. Having seen both the Clannad TV anime and the movie I do feel that the movie is the inferior version but I also dont feel it should be completely overlooked. Fans of Visual Arts/Key will already know the story but for the uninitiated heres a general synopsis: Tomoya Okazaki is a delinquent who goes through life in a daze with no ambitions in life detached from everything and weighed down by his own personal demons. Every night he has a strange dream that he cant explain. When he meets a young woman Nagisa Furukawa who asks for his help Tomoya is at first reluctant but humors her as he doesnt have much to do. But the two find themselves interacting more and more and through a series of encounters and events they gradually become friends. Nagisa wants to start up the drama club to put on an original play and Tomoya along with his slacker friend Youhei Sunohara decide to join and help her out. But Tomoyas decision to help her out becomes something far more than even he and Nagisa could have ever imagined enriching his life. If youre hoping the movie will be exactly like both the visual novel or the anime youre in the wrong place. Being a movie it cant possibly adapt the entire source material so changes do have to be made in order to adapt it to a different medium. For one the focus is entirely on both Tomoya and Nagisa with characters like Kyo and Tomoyo reduced to just friends. Kotomi only gets a cameo in one scene and characters such as Fuuko and Ryo are left out entirely. But other characters get their roles expanded such as Kouko who becomes the drama club adviser instead of the elderly man who does so in the game and the anime...though as much as I like Kouko being more of a stern badass than she was in the anime did they really have to pull the whole making her move so fast that she disappears into lines like shes in some Dragonball Z show? That just felt lazy to me. Also whose idea was it to throw in a really random scene where Sunohara urinates onscreen? That was just unnecessary. Plus with the movies length it doesnt have time to flesh out any character thats not Tomoya or Nagisa. But Ill give the movie credit for knowing what to focus on and what to keep limited as it kept the focus on what was important leaving out subplots that would have made the movie feel bloated. It helps that the major side characters such as Tomoyo Sunohara Kyo and Nagisas parents do get plenty of screen time on their own and they get just enough time devoted to them that they dont feel like onedimensional cardboard cut outs even taking into account their different roles and execution compared to the TV anime. Basically the side characters do a great job supporting the main storyline without overtaking it. As far as animation goes the Clannad movie is obviously inferior to KyoAnis take on it but that doesnt necessarily make it bad. For one the character designs are true to the game and while the animation isnt as dynamic or fluid as that of the TV series it still gets the job done. Plus theres something else to consider: This would be the final film directed by one of animes most famous revolutionaries Osamu Dezaki who made a lot of great things during his heyday. He directed famous anime like Rose of Versailles Treasure Island Nobodys Boy Remi Ashita no Joe Oniisama e and various Lupin III specials among many other things. He even did some animation work for of all things Rainbow Brite. He started up and refined a lot of costcutting animation techniques such as split screens And the Clannad movie has A LOT of them filters repetition of scenesstretching them out for dramatic effect and one that Dezaki fans will definitely recognize stark heavily lined watercolor paintings to close out scenes or enhance them for further dramatic effect. His directing style definitely wont be for everyone and his character designs are very much unlike most anime you see nowadays. I dont have as much to say on the soundtrack as half of it is original stuff that I barely paid attention to and half of it is music reused from the visual novel. Both are good and fit the tone of the story very well but thats really about it. Going back to the characters Tomoya and Nagisas roles are very much reversed in the movie. Nagisa is much more assertive and confident than she is in the show and while the change in personality does make her feel a lot less overly cutesy and moe I felt like the movie version stripped away the more realistic character flaws that made her more threedimensional and dynamic in the TV anime. Tomoya suffered the most as hes a lot more angsty and brooding often staying that way for 90 of his screentime even those his reasons for being so are valid Mostly barring the dream sequences which are nothing like the anime or visual novel. Because the movie took away some of his other personality traits in favor of ramping up his angst he loses a lot of depth and character that he had in both the visual novel and the anime which is a shame because hes the main character So yeah dont go into this expecting it to be slavishly faithful to the original source. Clannad The Movie is very much its own entity trying to stand on its own and it needed to make do with what it had in order to tell the story it needed to within its limitations. For what it is though I like to think of it as a bitesized version of Clannad thats perfect for people who dont want to or are unable to commit to watching the 50episode anime. Its not the absolute best adaptation of Clannad there is but it does have its merits so I would recommend it as a nice little time killer for if you want a bitesized quiet romance to watch.