Collection Clannad

Clannad has a reputation, and the reputation is accurate. It begins as a school romance about a delinquent who can't be bothered and a shy girl who can't finish a sentence, and it ends somewhere else entirely.

Key's writing works by patience. The first half is slow, warm and often very funny, building a cast of ordinary people with ordinary problems - a bakery, a drama club, sisters who bicker, a father who doesn't know how to talk to his son. None of it feels like setup while you're in it.

Then After Story arrives and the show becomes about adulthood: jobs, rent, illness, and the specific loneliness of a family that got smaller. Very little animation has attempted that, and almost none of it has landed the way this did.

The Furukawas are the emotional core. Akio's gruff nonsense and Sanae's bread are the show's running joke and, eventually, its thesis about what a family actually does.

This collection covers Tomoya, Nagisa, Fuko, the Fujibayashi twins and the Furukawas. Handle with care.