Clannad After Story - Part 1   Starring (voice): Yuuichi Nakamura, Mai Nakahara and Daisuke Sakaguchi Manga Entertainment RRP: £29.99 MANG5265 Certificate: 12 Available 24 September 2012

As Tomoya and Nagisa enter their second semester and head towards graduation, they look forward to a family of their own, though not without facing hardships.

Clannad: After Story continues and builds upon the events of Clannad, with good-hearted, introverted delinquent Tomoyo now firmly committed to his relationship with the lonely Nagisa, after the diverse storylines featuring the other girls to capture his attention in the first series have run their course. While the above summary makes the characterisation seem a little coarse, Clannad was hampered by its source material as a visual novel with multiple storylines, its animated adaptation therefore required to include as much material as possible from each scenario to please fans of the various characters. Thankfully, After Story, following a haphazard set of early episodes, seems to be on track for something much stronger and more definite.

The characters are still present and form an enjoyable supporting cast, though without Tomoya's attention - and thus the audience's - focused on them, the girls who for various reasons didn't win his heart seem a little lost and redundant. After Story fights shy of giving them centre stage in its first episodes, instead opting for breezy comedy revolving around the perennially buffoonish Sunohara's attempts to cultivate a romantic persona - his mock date with Nagisa's evergreen mother raising a few eyebrows - and his devoted younger sister's earnest worrying over her big brother's direction in life. A story involving gang violence seems incongruous and hardly convincing, while the flashback to tough, lovelorn dorm supervisor Misae's school days is sweet but inconsequential.

It's only with the spotlight once again on Tomoya as he graduates from high school, creating tension in his relationship with Nagisa as ill health forces her to repeat a year once more, and makes his first steps into the world of adult employment that the series begins to make good on its initial promise. With so many anime firmly fixed on a narrow and nostalgia-bound depiction of high school life and seemingly unable to envision anything beyond it, Clannad After Story is almost radical in its determination to depict growth, change and personal progress, together with the risk and reality of pain and loss that accompany them. Tomoya's emotional alienation borne of his fraught relationship with his deadbeat father - who, despite his fleeting appearances, continues to cause his son not mere heartache but very real trouble - in turn nurtures a determination to forge a family life with Nagisa, leading to an emotional climax at the close of this first half of the series that's both understated and powerful.

With the success of the first series, producers Kyoto Animation have evidently stepped up the budget for After Story - the credits, backgrounds, and fantasy sequences, as well as much of the character animation, are all more visually impressive than ever. Despite its weak start and continuing elements of melodrama, After Story shows signs of being one of the best genuine drama series in the medium for a long time, and a great improvement on its predecessor.

7

Richard Hunt