Clannad Series 1 - Part 2   Starring (voice): Yuuichi Nakamura, Mai Nakahara and Mamiko Noto Manga Entertainment RRP: £29.99 MANG5264 Certificate: 12 Available 30 July 2012

Tomoya Okazaki is a third year high school student resentful of his life. His mother passed away from a car accident when he was younger, causing his father to resort to alcohol and gambling. This results in fights between the two until Tomoya's shoulder is injured in a fight. Since then, Tomoya has had distant relationships with his father, causing him to become a delinquent over time. While on a walk to school, he meets a strange girl named Nagisa Furukawa who is a year older, but is repeating due to illness. Due to this, she is often alone as most of her friends have moved on. The two begin hanging out and slowly, as time goes by, Tomoya finds his life shifting in a new direction...

Part two of Clannad resumes with the unfolding of the hidden tragedy of Kotomi, the girl Tomoya dimly remembers from his childhood and whose extremely trauma-filled background - even by the heightened standards of this series - accounts for her anguished breakdown at the close of part one. Much as with Nagisa and Fuuko in earlier storylines, it falls to Tomoya to take responsibility for helping Kotomi to accept being in a social setting, come to terms with her past and find happiness and closure. While this somewhat artificial plotline is an inevitable consequence of Clannad's origins as a multiple-story visual novel, the anime does better with its adaptation than might be expected.

One key to the success of Clannad as it moves into its second half is its use of the gradually expanding cast. While Tomoya's dogged determination and hard-working steadfastness remain unchanged and are deployed to typical effect in his determination to help Kotomi, the characters established in the first half rally to her support, insisting on her importance to them as a friend rather than merely playing handmaidens to Tomoya. The interaction between them as they go about the business of cleaning Kotomi's neglected house and garden is unforced and enjoyable, even if the eventual resolution of her story depends on some fairly unlikely coincidences.

As the series moves to its conclusion and returns to the question of Nagisa and her eccentric parents' mysterious past, the themes of youth, ambition and choices move to the foreground. With the characters in their final year of school, the idyllic setting is undercut with the knowledge that their friendships are ephemeral and will soon have to cede to the demands of college and work - something that Tomoya, with his prospects stunted by his past as a petty delinquent, feels most keenly. Indeed, it's Tomoya's scenes away from the other characters that provide part two of Clannad with its bleakest moments, as his strained relationship with his alcoholic father is perhaps the only element of the series where unhappiness is not soon smoothed over with laughter or emotional comfort. With more scenes like these, the series might really have attained the dramatic status it shoots for; as it is, the resolution of Nagisa's story, while enjoyable and satisfying, feels like mere melodrama in comparison.

Clannad season one closes with an odd pair of standalone episodes: one progressing the story of Tomoya and Nagisa's romance with some light comedy, the other telling a what-if tale of a relationship between Tomoya and Tomoyo, the tomboyish 'champion of justice' who remained a side character through most of the series, but here is promoted to a romantic prospect. It's self-evidently an attempt to appease fans of the visual novel who might be anxious to see their favourite character get more screen time, yet tells its story well and revisits the series' themes with sufficient conviction to make for a satisfying conclusion. While Clannad remains an uneven and sometimes mawkish attempt to translate a multi-part narrative into a single convincing storyline, it comes up with enough goods in its second half to make for a decently enjoyable anime.

6

Richard Hunt