The Ephemeral SoL

Alright, I did mentioned I was only watching two series in my previous post, but that was just a ruse to hide my mainstreamity with Clannad. Today was an off day for me, so I was too quite free. Managed to catch the final episode of Clannad, episode 22.

I liked how the series has ended. It wasn’t very romance oriented, rather, the theme was more on family. I got rather shocked when Tomoya confessed to Nagisa in the end though. He didn’t seem like that kind of a person!

On a side note, I managed to get my copy of KOTOKO’s Blaze today! Blaze sounded good to me, just a bit mellow for my taste. Sociometry was kinda a love hate song. I thought it sounded a bit too disco-like(can’t find a better word), but I did like the tune of it.

On another side note, Mami Kawada’s Savia is gonna be released tomorrow, but it won’t be till 2nd April( or later) before I receive it, because I ordered it with Eiko’s Hikari Nadeshiko. Yeah, I’m scrimping on shipping, and I’m pretty broke already! No matter, I’ll download preview Savia first thing tomorrow!

Crap, I forgot. There’s work tomorrow.

It has been a long time since I’ve written an entry over here, but what Aibu mentioned to me this afternoon got me thinking.

Was watching CLANNAD and SHUFFLE! today
and it gets depressing when the main character has to choose which girl he goes with

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As soon as I had started AIR (which was about halfway through watching Kanon, the week-long waits in between new episodes of Kanon were driving me insane like an addict desperate for a fix), it struck me that there were a good number of similarities between the two shows. In fact, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Key was ripping their own work off when they wrote AIR (unlike the anime versions, with the visual novels AIR came after Kanon). And, unsurprisingly, many of those same similar plot elements carried on over to CLANNAD: but, you might be asking, what exactly are these recycled plot elements I’m talking about? Or maybe you’re wondering “if the stories are all so similar, why one would want to bother watching more than one?” Well, I’m answering both of those questions in this installment of Fairy Tale Love, so just click on that there “Read more” cut and all will be revealed.

(Note: I tried to keep things fairly spoiler-free, but some important plot details of AIR, Kanon and CLANNAD are discussed within. You have been warned.)

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I find that some of the choices in Clannad, along with other visual novels I’ve played before, are somewhat iffy. A single wrong choice could stray you from a story path, and lead you to another, which would unfortunately have a bad end. However, the choices are cryptic, and what happens is somewhat unpredictable at times. Sort of like life, I guess, but it does get a bit annoying at times. Especially when you spend 10 hours playing through a story arc just to find out that you did something wrong in the beginning and have to restart it.

Just a bit of a rant here.

I’d be lying if I said I had even the slightest clue what I was getting into when I watched that first episode of Kanon. I was interested in the series because of Kyoto Animation’s involvement (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya blew my mind) and also partially because Fred Gallagher of Megatokyo was a fan of the original game, but aside from knowing that it was largely responsible for the sad girl in snow meme I can’t say I really knew too much about Kanon itself. Certainly the last thing I expected was for this show I was really only watching because nothing else that season interested me to turn into some sort of sick obsession with Key’s seasonal romances, but by the time the ending credits on Kanon episode 1 finished rolling I knew there was no going back.

But why? What about Kanon made me so obsessively keep coming back for more?

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Is it just me, or does the idea of Kotomi being taller than everyone seems weird. She’s always sitting down, so I had no idea how tall she was. I always imagined her being a small cute girl, maybe shorter than Nagisa. Kinda shocked. Height should be reserved for cooler people, like Kyou and Tomoyo, no?

Slugging through 3 episodes of Genshiken 2, 2 episodes of Bamboo Blade, 2 of Hayate no Gotoku and the latest Shugo Chara and Clannad is no easy feat, considering the fact that I’m watching it back to back. Now all the anime plot and characters are intertwined in some crazy mix in my swirling head, no help from the fries and coke which I’ve only been chomping on these few hours. So I’m gonna write some thoughts while I still have somewhat a fuzzy rememberance of the episodes.

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