On Key~
Now that we can bring Clannad and Clannad After Story to a close, I can only feel a sense of relief. As much as I like Key, I can’t help but feel a bit resentful of their formula. “Here is something cute but ultimately useless. You love it. Watch it do cute things. You love it. Now watch us do bad things to the cute thing. Feel sad. Next week, we’ll introduce a newer, even cuter, even more useless thing that you’ll love. (uguu~)” It’s something I became only viscerally cognizant of with AIR and playing through Planetarian, It became clear to me during Kanon, and the same formula was applied to Clannad as well. Don’t get me wrong, I think Clannad would have been great if I’d never seen anything else by Key before.
In a lot of different tangental aspects, I enjoyed each series for what it was, but the main underlying formula destroyed them for me. Unfortunately by the time Clannad came around I had become calloused and cynical- their attempts to elicit an emotional response from me fell on deaf ears, and I simply watched as a dispassionate observer. There were plot elements I could appreciate and enjoy, but the foreknowledge of the inevitable result left only a tired sort of acceptance.
Final notes:
Tomoyo is fucking hot.
