Podcast XI: Clan Aid!

Professor Irony

Professor Irony

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Podcast XI: Clan Aid!

By special request of Otaku-san, we take time out from our usual diet of blood, guts and carnage to discuss popular visual novel adaptation, Clannad. Along with the original series we'll also be talking about Clannad: The Motion Picture and AUKN's number 2 series of the past decade, Clannad: After Story!

Joining us for this episode is MaxonTreik, who will be helping us avoid nice boats and doing his best to explain all that is good about the clan, while our own VivisQueen will mostly be expressing her displeasure at the whole thing in no uncertain terms.

This episode contains strong language from the outset, mostly due to the inclusion of a... 'unique' remix as our opening theme. There will also be spoilers, but they all happen after the 29 minute mark and there will be a final warning before we get into those.

00.00 – Intro - Clannad's Dango Daikazoku Rap Remix ft. Busta Rhymes

06.55 – The Review! We give an overview of our thoughts on Clannad as a whole, touching on its place in the AUKN poll, the Japanese idea of a delinquent and the most kawaii shape of skull.

29.00 – The Discussion! We get down to brass tacks and think about why it worked (or not), focusing more on the developments of After Story, the show's supernatural element and how much better it all would have been with more tigers.

1.13.00 – The Motion Picture! In which I talk briefly about the final film Osamu Dezaki directed before his tragic passing. May contain burning passion.

1.28.00 – Outro - Dango Daikazoku Rap (Reprise)

Massive thanks due to Sy for his help with the editing on this one.
 
Clannad...:(

I will listen, but only because I'm fully expecting you good people to bash it. Bash it almost as good as I, a man who has never and will never watch it, bashes it.
 
Only 10 minutes in and the Clannad bashing does not disappoint. I loving the slaying Vivi is giving it :lol: "I don't think it would be in any of my top tens, except maybe top ten worst shows".
 
Good job guys you did me proud, you really made Clannad sound like a steaming pile, and I now feel that all my pre-judgemental Clannad (and Kanon) bashing has been vindicated. But considering the amount of praise and glowing reviews I've seen the show receive on this website over time, I'm surprised at just how unequivocally rubbished Clannad got by you guys.

Sounds like I jumped the right gun back in January 2011:

As for Clannad I've never actually heard of it, but my very brief google search didn't fill me with hope. Wasn't it based on a video game, and doesn't the maker of said video game usually make erotic games? Then there's the creepy looking school girl with insect antenna's, and then there's this picture:



The "Dodge" flag is well and truley raised for me, this is the second best anime of the decade? But then I am being completely Judgmental and jumping to conclusions in my usual style.
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On a more serious note, I thought the point about just why a show like this gets so highly rated by both anime fans and critics, was interesting. I genuinely do think that the bulk anime fandom hold lower standards of expectation (and are a lot more easily pleased) than enthusiasts of other storytelling mediums. I can't seem to work it out, sometimes it's like if you take a script that would barely pass as one of the straight to TV American films Channel 5 often show on weekday afternoons, but instead animate it in Japan and add a bunch of deformed looking school girls, and you have a real shot of a major hit. I don't think I'm exaggerating, I've actually sat there and watched a cheesy channel 5 five afternoon movie and thought "you know what, the storytelling and characterization in this is actually better than the last popular anime I tried watching on CR".

Don't misunderstand my rant, there's an awful lot of great anime too, but I do think in some respects anime is often held to a lower standard. A bit like Video game writing is too.
 
By special request of Otaku-san, we take time out from our usual diet of blood, guts and carnage to discuss popular visual novel adaptation, <em>Clannad</em>. Along with the original series we&rsquo;ll also be talking about <em>Clannad: The Motion Picture</em> and AUKN&rsquo;s number 2 series of the past decade, <em>Clannad: After Story</em>!
Joining us for this episode is MaxonTrek, who will be helping us avoid nice boats and doing his best to explain all that is good about the clan, while our own VivisQueen will mostly be expressing her displeasure at the whole thing in no uncertain terms.
This episode contains strong language from the outset, mostly due to the inclusion of a&hellip; &lsquo;unique&rsquo; remix as our opening theme. There will also be spoilers, but they all happen after the 29 minute mark and there will be a final warning before we get into those.
<strong>00.00</strong> &ndash; <strong>Intro</strong> &ndash; <em>Clannad&rsquo;s Dango Daikazoku Rap Remix ft. Busta Rhymes</em>
<strong>06.55</strong> &ndash; <strong>The Review!</strong> We give an overview of our thoughts on Clannad as a whole, touching on its place in the AUKN poll, the Japanese idea of a delinquent and the most kawaii shape of skull.
<strong>29.00</strong> &ndash; <strong>The Discussion!</strong> We get down to brass tacks and think about why it worked (or not), focusing more on the developments of After Story, the show&rsquo;s supernatural element and how much better it all would have been with more tigers.
<strong>1.13.00</strong> &ndash; <strong>The Motion Picture!</strong> In which I talk briefly about the final film Osamu Dezaki directed before his tragic passing. May contain burning passion.
<strong>1.28.00</strong> &ndash; <strong>Outro</strong> &ndash; <em>Dango Daikazoku Rap (Reprise)</em>
Massive thanks also due to Sy for his help with the editing on this one.
<strong>Download it from iTunes</strong>.
 
I think it's the money-making demographic. The anime industry significantly relies on the tweens with parents who will buy all the money-making merchandise. It then also relies on the older folk who fell in love with **** they watched when they were tweens and now have the money to buy even more expensive merchandise. Beyond that, it relies on gamers and toy collectors and the like.

In almost none of those demographics is a high quality plot vital to their continued fandom. If you look specifically at the VN/Erogames subset, you are in an even deeper cesspool of low expectations. That is my theory.

Consider, in contrast, the Hollywood industry, which is not beholden to kids and merchandise-selling, but has the luxury of catering to a wide group of people through its main medium, the cinema screen. Yes, you get a Transformers every now and again, but big blockbusters can often enough be superbly crafted films e.g. ET, Terminator, Avatar, Batman II.
 
Key have only made one good thing and that was Angel Beats (and even then they couldn't quite get that right what with only getting 1 season for that).

Everything else is pandering garbage that turns women into babies and often kills them with a level of sadistic glee that Gen Urobuchi could only hope to achieve. The majority of the good parts of each series can be put onto a single YouTube video, two at a push.

Like this one here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_qYisUhIVQ
 
VivisQueen said:
I think it's the money-making demographic. The anime industry significantly relies on the tweens with parents who will buy all the money-making merchandise. It then also relies on the older folk who fell in love with **** they watched when they were tweens and now have the money to buy even more expensive merchandise. Beyond that, it relies on gamers and toy collectors and the like.

In almost none of those demographics is a high quality plot vital to their continued fandom. If you look specifically at the VN/Erogames subset, you are in an even deeper cesspool of low expectations. That is my theory.

Consider, in contrast, the Hollywood industry, which is not beholden to kids and merchandise-selling, but has the luxury of catering to a wide group of people through its main medium, the cinema screen. Yes, you get a Transformers every now and again, but big blockbusters can often enough be superbly crafted films e.g. ET, Terminator, Avatar, Batman II.
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Yep good post, I would agree this. Though, somehow we do thankfully get some pretty high quality shows still, so we do have something to definitely be thankful for.
 
Eh, I like to think we were pretty even-handed with Clannad. Although none of us came away as huge fans of the franchise, we could all point to things we did like about it and did enjoy. Even if there were no burning motorcycles.

VivisQueen said:
In almost none of those demographics is a high quality plot vital to their continued fandom. If you look specifically at the VN/Erogames subset, you are in an even deeper cesspool of low expectations. That is my theory..
Click to expand...

I get where you're coming from, but I'd be wary of generalising VNs as being a worse example than anime. At the very least, I think it's worth distinguishing between games where the sole focus is on sex and those with an emphasis on story.
 
You can make good stuff out of anything, it's just most companys choose to make utter hash out of VN's.

That and you can't trust post-Kanon/Clanad KyoAni to do anything but make an utter mess of thier trousers when spending more than five minutes with a property.
We will never forget, nor forgive, the travisty that was Endless Eight.
 
Maxon sounds much more cuddly on the podcast than he does on here. From now on I'm gonna read all his posts in that voice, and just like that he won't seem so angry any more.

I will confess to not having listened to much of the podcast yet--an hour-and-a-half while I'm knee-deep in Skyrim is a bit much to ask--but for now (because I'm an ****) I feel compelled to say that I don't like Clannad very much. We got off on the wrong foot with Fuko; I'm with VivisQueen on this in finding her utterly intolerable, and her arc dragged on and on. Its conclusion was perhaps the most cringeworthy moment I've ever witnessed in anime, beating out AnoHana's final episode scream-a-thon by a large margin.

And while it got better from there (let's face it, the only way really was up), it never stopped being cheesy and overly sentimental/melodramatic. And it's weird because while I got emotional at a couple of Kanon's arcs, Clannad was never able to get to me at all. Except in the "make very angry" sense.

I did enjoy the Kyou and Tomoyo OVAs, though, probably because they were the only two girls I liked and all the flab was cut away.

Oh, and lol at the podcast image. That's gotta be the Prof's work.
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
Maxon sounds much more cuddly on the podcast than he does on here. From now on I'm gonna read all his posts in that voice, and just like that he won't seem so angry any more.
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Oh come on. I'm not that bad.
 
MaxonTreik said:
Oh come on. I'm not that bad.
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Not any more :p

(I knew I should've used that wink smiley...)

Listened to the whole podcast. Very entertaining, not least for the vision of "Clannad goes Dezaki" that is now lodged in my brain. It seems I'm in the minority with my opinions of those god awful freeze-frame postcard memory shots of his (which is that they're god awful).

I'd just like add that if any show deserved a top ten place on the basis that it explores the issue of being a single father then for my money that show would be Bunny Drop (ignoring the second half of the manga of course) instead. I think Clannad could do with some of that subtlety and understatement.
 
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