This review will probably get under the skin of some Clannad fans, I know it’s already bothered one, but really even a broken clock is right twice a day and ANN’s Carl Kimlinger nailed a couple of the salient points about Clannad in a far less clumsy string of words than I could — which is possibly why I resorted to sheer spittle-faced rage just over 3 years ago. Those years of removal from the situation have lessened the sting of actually sitting through the series, and quotes like:
You can see the seams where the plot stitches the heroines’ stories together, and hear the clanking machinery as it maneuvers Tomoya into their lives.
make me scratch my chin and nod slowly in that approving way. He calls into question notions that I might call “reality” and “believability” but without opening the door for Clannad‘s defenders to set up a straw man wherein you’re attacking the “magical realism” of Key works, which is not the same thing. But as much as I liked the gist of this review, it’s also started to make me think in different directions.
On well-rounded characters (see what I did there)
Now, Kimlinger goes on to criticize the internal logic of the lead character putting aside his supposedly cynical and lazy nature to constantly do nice interventional things for random girls, but it’s always a tough call criticizing the Insert-kun because of his blank-faced origin. And then my head started to spin, because the functional question here is: To what length do you step back and say, ok, we have to allow a certain level of contrivance in order for the whole thing to work? You have to have a guy who interacts with these girls, or there’s no story; you have to have a guy who’s reasonably cool or they wouldn’t talk to him (although I enjoy the idea of a dirtbag like Tenchi in one of these Key thingies); and you need some individual tragedies or it’s just a bunch of people hanging out.
But toe-chan, you say, I wouldn’t mind watching people hang out if they were fleshed-out three-dimensional characters instead of collections of tragedies and speech patterns with the same face and different hair! In fact, there are vast amounts of anime consisting of just that and we find some of those quite charming.
Getting results
Well… that’s cool, but that’s not what Clannad or any of the Key properties I’m familiar with are about. A lot of decent works will gladly let their narrative and character elements suffer in service of some other artistic goal that their creators are trying to achieve — even in anime. You have something like an Ikuhara work where the story is a partially-real, partially-symbolic representation of a concept more than it is a sequence of plausible events; or there’s Nisioisin’s characters, really just Pong machines with voices made to spar with one another to achieve some possibly relevant outcome or humorous truth.
In the Maeda/Key tradition, situations are set up to achieve a specific reaction; usually, that reaction is to get wicked sad, but we can simplify and just say that the ultimate goal is a feeling rather than a story. The characters, plot lines, and routes of interaction all exist in service of that final reaction. Can Maeda and co. connect all those threads with a related theme at the end of the day? Sure, of course, and that’s what would elevate a work to a level above a simple cranking tool. That theme, beyond “something something about families” is as vague and gauzy as the atmosphere of Clannad, and probably serves a primary purpose of keeping the whole thing undersexed, but… points for trying?
At any rate, that endgame is the thing, and perhaps the reason to why Kilminger’s review doesn’t read like a bad one, despite the scathing attacks on Clannad’s artificiality, lies in this:
The second thing to know about Clannad is that it is highly effective. There’s a reason it feels calculated: because it is. Every character, interaction, and happening is calculated for maximum emotional impact. And impacted we are. […] Cry, the show may as well be shouting, cry like a little girl.
Which of course speaks to my mental image of Jun Maeda as some sort of twisted scoundrel who requires the tears of virgins to survive and has as such designed superior technology for extracting them. He sits in his Bond-villain underground volcano base, rubbing his hands together and going “yessss… YESSSSS! CRY!” as the fox-spirit in Kanon slowly dies off and dozens of otaku lower lips start to quaver. Nearby is Kyoto Animation’s Tatsuya Ishihara, who just wants to go do more Haruhi, but instead remains chained to the wall of the Maedaplex, drained of tears and forced to adapt the next Key work (which I predict is named after Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains The Same” but with a tilde~) for wider consumption.
oh, the villainy residing inside such a beautiful man
But, I digress. So, where did I end up here? I guess the end evaluation is, maybe — possibly — Clannad doesn’t “suck,” per se (as if that was ever something you should take as a Serious Evaluation, don’t worry I’ll still shout it with vigor), but it has its own goals that didn’t speak to me. Key fans have to be willing to put up a slightly different kind of suspension of disbelief than what is required of most fiction readers and anime viewers. It’s a different animal. And I’ve more or less made my peace with it.
Just don’t make me fucking watch it again.
Image Credits
- Kyou by じょんたけ
is that a slang term for masturbation
far better, it’s a portmanteau of “crying + wanking”
You sir are a genius. May the word catch on.
I can’t take credit… I picked it up from some British guys on Twitter.
The coincidental mental leap to the cranks used in Victorian prisons only adds to the effect.
By Clannad are we talking in entirety, or the first batch? Both accomplished different things in my opinion, with the first being much more typical of “harem adaptation of the animated variety.” I liked Clannad, but found more appreciation in After Story, which was more substantial in exposition. I think the trouble with Maeda/Key works is the level of significance we’re suppose to assume. Clannad’s significance is only due to After Story (lol), and After Story’s significance is in family/tragedy. The problem I see is that it doesn’t do a good job of build family values through the narrative. We have to imagine a lot of the feeling through identification, Key-fandom, or whatever; compare to Usagi Drop, where the writing and composition establishes it’s values brilliantly and genuinely. What’s genuine about Maeda’s work, really?
I think what you said is completely right, about feeling vs story, and here’s why. Maeda starts with a bunch of things that are completely fabricated (let’s believe Tomoya is able to meet all these fascinating, quirky girls who are mostly debilitated by the ~supernatural~), it isn’t genuine, and then progresses (through story) in attempts to construct something genuine (feeling). There isn’t anything wrong with that, even if we do end up with realistic feelings in the end. It happens often in fiction, but Maeda’s case is unusual in that we start with completely unrealistic characters, in situation and mannerism.
It’s surprising After Story turned out the way it did, and I think the production values played a huge part of it all.
Afterthought: I wanted to go into Natsume’s Book of Friends for comparison, but mehybe another time.
You know, you’re right, but the feeling I can only describe as being overwhelmed by Clannad-ness had already taken over as After Story went into its first arc, and another however-many episodes was really just too much. I would like to have seen the result of “just trying to do a story” without that. As I responded to Tim below, I think the VN adaptation mechanism is one of the biggest problems here.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all, we could go back and forth on how “valid” those feelings are but I think your word choice of “realistic” is a better one that “genuine.”
I haven’t seen any of Natsume, I do wish you would go into it some time.
There will be a post published this weekend on Natsume, but it doesn’t do a compare-n-contrast to Clannad unfortunately. The basic comparison would be that it is fantasy, starts with a fairly unreal premise, but the characters are realistic from the beginning and continue to be. By realistic, I mean we understand their motives [as humans], just as we understand something natural such as a mother protecting her young.
Validity of creating feelings through natural or artificial characters, is probably another thought, but interesting. And “realistic” is better than “genuine” (vague), but my usage of the latter was: truer to what we know as human / real.
I’ve only seen/read a little bit of Clannad, but this review struck me as absolutely spot-on.
Which is surprising! ANN dances between reviews that I absolutely agree with and reviews that are totally out there. But this one in particular I thought articulated the strengths and weaknesses of Clannad really well. Points for Kilminger in my book (although I don’t always agree with him, to be fair)
yeah he wrote the incredible, definitive volume of anime criticism, ANN’s “Review of the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha DVD set 1.”
I wonder how much of this is amplified because they try to shoehorn all the routes together instead of focusing on the main story or going through all of them Amagami style.
You know, I actually speculated on that before, I think there’s probably an element of it. I guessed that maybe that was the reason why Air and Kanon bothered me less (Kanon’s big mess of girls felt a little more fully integrated), but it’s also possible that I was just immunized after two of these things and that was my limit.
I’m not going to trash the validity of VNs as a medium but they do have vastly different methods of “telling a story” from a linear TV series and “shoehorning” is exactly what it feels like when you try to apply one to another.
There might be a touch of hubris in there, this idea that they can definitely succeed at the most ambitious VN adaptation ever conceived or whatever, that kept KyoAni from going the Amagami route (which is a really low bar for storytelling but effective as entertainment). In a way you end up with the worst of both worlds: a VN story that does a disservice to many characters and a narrative that is stilted and obviously made from the VN.
>although I enjoy the idea of a dirtbag like Tenchi in one of these Key thingies
Not sure if I actually believe your “complete” for Tenchi Muyo Ryo-Ohki on MAL based on this sentence.
That aside. I’m still not sure why attempting to make you sad or feel catharsis is a bad thing. Why it doesn’t constitute a form of art. Half of art is about evoking a visceral reaction. Take Franciso de Goya’s painting Saturn Devouring his Son. Sure there are arguments on the meaning of the painting old vs. new or some such, but just as striking is the strong disgust or fear or whatever emotion that inspired by his depiction of this grotesque monster. It’s masterfully done with use of shading and light that add the desired darkness to complement the naked corpse dangling from his hands and mouth. Arguably the painting is more famous for its aesthetics than it’s interpretive meaning.
I feel like a lot of problems people have with Clannad and similar works arise from the perception that it was designed in a dispassionate matter. Like you said the perception that Maeda is hidden in his lair fueling himself on little girl tears. Most people can’t write about emotional things without experiencing and understanding them. Jun Maeda is not a robot. George RR Martin wrote the scenes in his novels that were particularly emotional after everything else in the novel was finished because they were so difficult to write emotionally. The feeling of calculation mainly comes from being immersed in an artists work to the extent that you can predict events and how an artist will resolve conflicts. To make the comparison to paintings again we generally have little indication how calculated or uncalculated a given work was based on a single painting.
Here’s the question. Why does something that is calculated to create an emotional response make you feel used when it evokes that response? Is it because you feel shame that you could be so duped? He admits it’s unfair and irrational so why does it irk him so much? It’s not like the show is a con man that duped you out of your life’s savings. All it did was elicit was a genuine emotional reaction and it did it well. The problem comes not from the show itself but from the reaction to the show. An emotional reaction to the emotional reaction. Which let me tell you is as unproductive as it is irrational. This is not valid criticism of a work of art. Does this sound like a valid criticism? “I hated Pablo Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” because it made me feel sad.” This is the inability to rationalize the emotion that the show made you feel. Can you really call it a flaw in the show or a flaw in yourself?
This was much longer, but I decided to get to the core. Artistic intent is, of course, a dead end road, so whether Maeda is a robot or just some sexy guy who likes sad things is not really my concern. The question of manipulation is sort of a side issue as well, but I think I can address it by hitting what I feel is the core.
Now, this is basically speculation because I don’t know what happened in Kilminger’s mind during any of the key parts of Clannad’s run, but I have my own experience to draw on. I think the key point is in that “genuine.” If Kilminger really thought his reaction was genuine then he wouldn’t be dragged out of his suspension of disbelief and would be free to enjoy the reaction.
And the reason why I feel that it’s not “genuine” is a bit circular, so bear with. Because the artist has constructed these situations from what I called a series of mannerisms, hairstyles, and past tragedies (as I mentioned, all in service to the Ultimate Goal of reaction), they don’t read like real characters. And so that sympathy for them doesn’t read like a real emotion. It feels like a facsimile. It’s like, “pay no attention to the series of attribute checkboxes behind the curtain.”
Flaws in the reviewer versus the work, well, neither one of those are a useful street to start walking down either.
Here’s an analogy, and I think it works but I am not a rapper or other metaphor artist, so it’s not too deep. But it does put aside notions of motivation, flaws, and all the other horse hockey:
Over here, there is fruit, say an orange. Oranges are tasty, but they have some issues, you have peel them and the juice gets all on your chin and if you don’t clean it up properly it gets all sticky. And sometimes the orange is sour, and that really sucks for the whole orange experience.
And over there, you have a piece of orange candy. It’s consistently sweet, it’s orange-flavored, there’s no mess, it’s very tasty. It’s not quite a real orange. It’s much sweeter, and it reminds you of the real thing without all the hassle of that real orange. It’s different. Sometimes, even often, that’s what you want.
But there is an issue with the orange candy. First, if you really crave the real thing, you’re not gonna get it. That orange just reminds you more of the real thing. And if you start shoving more of it into your mouth in an effort to create a real orange, you’re gonna eventually get sick. This was my problem. Taken simply in terms of episode count, if Air was a couple pieces of orange candy and Kanon was your whole take-home results for this year’s Halloween, I was already pretty much done with that candy when Clannad walked in my house with a garbage bag full of the shit. And my original Clannad posts were just me puking after eating it all.
Of course not, let’s not be hyperbolic, but for some people who might feel duped or less-than-entertained by the result of Clannad, they will feel take for upwards of 50-60 bucks, and Kilminger’s role as the reviewer is to prevent that. I think he did a much more reasonable job of sounding balanced than some of his previous steaming piles of words (Nanoha).
I still argue that someones reaction to a reaction is not the authors responsibility and not a valid criticism.
I don’t have a problem with the term genuine if the show never in any way or form evokes the desired response.
I have a problem when it evokes the desired response and people immediately reject it as contrived.
I watched Another. I know how hard it is trying to be creepy. It wasn’t the least bit creepy to me. That’s clear failure.
My argument isn’t that Clannad isn’t rather bereft of substance due to Tomoya’s nature or whatnot, but that even despite that lack of substance it evoked the desired emotional response. That to me is valid. What isn’t valid is the devaluing of a work because it managed to do what it set out to do.
Does the argument really boil down to whether one thinks emotions are easily fooled versus difficultly fooled? In my mind an emotional reaction is an emotional reaction. None is more or less genuine than the other and all can be labeled rational or irrational. You felt it. It happened. You didn’t like that it happened. Which again I think is fine but also not a valid criticism against the work itself.
Also should note: Feeling manipulated is not a feeling. Feeling angry (ranging from mild to extremely) that you were manipulated is.
Well, none of these points really address my response to you. But here’s all I can over this:
1. I liked Another, I thought it was creepy. A little ham-fisted, for sure, but you can be clumsy and still spooky — no not a “failure.”
2. Clannad, did, on the other hand, fail to elicit a response from me. So it is a failure. A clear one.
So to me that fact signals a breakdown of this supposedly “objective” evaluation of things. I thought we anibloggers were past any semblance of objectivity. The reason why I like J’s statement that “the sky is blue and Clannad sucks” is 50% because of its obviously trollish humor, and 50% because it speaks to how there is no obvious truth. It’s opinion, and you can’t argue your way out of one. I fucking hated the anime.
I can only “defend” Kilminger and his positions up to a point. All I can do is boil down one thing about this genuine/not genuine/whatever thing:
I think (me, otou-san, not Kilminger) that manipulation is a fine thing, as I stated in the post, it’s fine. It’s a different end goal than some other forms of narrative have, but it’s a valid thing.
BUT if the manipulation is not fully transparent, i.e., if you feel yourself being manipulated, then it’s not a complete manipulation. I would argue 100% against the fact that “feeling manipulated is not a feeling.” That’s ridiculous. The anger is a secondary, reactionary emotion. If the manipulation is full, complete, and perfect, it’ll leave you only with the desired emotion and not the “I got played” side effect.
So… end result: manipulation: good. Clannad: not spectacular at manipulating (me).
That might be where he came from as well. He said “it works,” so maybe I’m wrong, but again — me speculating on what he thought doesn’t get us anywhere.
So you’re just saying transparent manipulation is better than non-transparent manipulation. Which I guess is typically the case.
But that is kind of like “Clannad sucks” in that you’re stating your opinion and not some kind of framework (ie., why can’t non-transparent manipulation be just as good or better than transparent manipulation). Words like clumsy and hamfisted are a good start.
Taka does mention one framework which may be worth examining, which is about the means-end nature of the method in which justify. If the end result was partial manipulation and the goal was partial manipulation, I guess that would justify the means? Only to a degree further stipulated by some other intervening factor, I suppose.
I take it back. Feeling manipulated is a feeling. It is not however an emotion. In addition anger is not secondary. Feeling manipulated is a type of feeling that comes from emotions. You can’t feel manipulated without first experiencing an emotion. You can however think you are being manipulated. Maybe that’s too semantical, but I think it’s an important distinction.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=feeling-our-emotions http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-feelings-and-emotions/
What little experience I have comes from mindfulness sessions that focus on how you manage helpful and harmful emotions. What’s integral is to understand that feeling such as the one you described arises from a specific emotion. Knowing this distinction is exactly the kind of thing I was referring to as flaws of the (re)viewer.
omo: well since I pretty much said in the post that the end probably does (or at least can) justify the means, yes I agree with that.
taka: that’s fair, but I’m still standing by what I said about “transparent” or “complete” manipulation (the goal) versus “incomplete” or “obvious” manipulation (what I feel is achieved by Clannad, but that’s a subjective thing that only explains my own reaction).
Everything is checkboxes; everything can be databased; the finest of literature (that medium so revered and celebrated that few have the testicular fortitude to ever criticize anything within it) can form a database. Enough of this shit. Azuma didn’t say anything remarkable. In fact, this isn’t even what Azuma was talking about… but we’re not here to talk Azuma or databases.
I’m here to talk your busted fruit analogy. Sweets aren’t sad emotive works. Sweets are the entirety of fiction. The orange is reality. No fiction, no matter how well developed, stands next to reality. The best artist is still no god. If the candy manipulates you, fiction manipulates you, and that means not only do sad emotive works manipulate you, but also intellectual & reserved works manipulate you… and then what the hell happens to the critical use of the word ‘manipulative’ then? It becomes a dead word once everything does it.
(To complete the analogy, you need to compare candy against candy to see which one tastes the best, on the merit of candy.)
If you got sick of a particular type of fiction, how is that not the most obvious bias on the internet? You’re not a ‘bad person’ because you have that bias, but you sure as hell are a bad reviewer if you bring that into your review and try to disguise it as objective fact (‘X is manipulative’ vs simply ‘X is something I can’t appreciate’). The wording is key.
“Flaws in the reviewer versus the work, well, neither one of those are a useful street to start walking down either.”
No, that street needs to be walked. We need to take a nice long stroll down that street. I called that street ‘on narrative’.
Whoops, I attempted to talk about things other than what you wanted to talk about on my blog! Is my face ever red. Actually, Azuma talks pretty specifically about this (“this” meaning “Clannad” and “Key”) so if anybody here wants to talk about that, they are free to do so. (In fact, I heard a rumor just recently that he named his daughter Nagisa after the game, but that’s unfounded for the most part so I dunno). And his “grand nonnarrative” thing speaks very directly to VNs.
And, as I’ve said numerous times in the post and comments, the mechanics of porting a VN to a linear story is more than likely a root cause of this “clanking machinery” that Kilminger feels.
Also, relentlessflame (below) raises a great point about how Maeda, as a soundtrack composer, may treat his writing in a similar way as he treats musical cues. That’s the kind of speculation I find useful, because it’s interesting and could explain some things, and as someone who’s done soundtrack work I understand it.
Of course it does. I believe I said that. I just want it to do a good job, and if it does a good job, I won’t notice it. Of course, that’s subjective, and your mileage may vary, etc.
And again, if you’ll step out of the hyperbolic chamber for a minute, Kilminger is providing advice to people who want to know whether to spend $60 of a plastic disc, he’s not engaging in literary criticism, and he’s surely not out to “destroy art.”
If the machinery is clanking, then it’s working, but not smoothly; technically, but not wholly artistically. There we have it: Clannad works- it produces the tears -but it does not work with a pristine beauty- the structure of the work is problematic (and we both agree on this point).
But then, does this qualify as ‘manipulative’. I don’t see how you go from ‘clanky’ & ‘flawed’ to ‘manipulation’. The words don’t match. ‘Manipulation’ has its own negative connotations that have nothing to do with Clannad’s structural issues, yet we bring in those connotations to describe Clannad… why?
Laziness & ignorance when it comes to language? Maybe.
Harmful bias & slander? Considering the ANN author’s Nanoha review…
Or is this Azuma’s fault? A misreading of a misreading of poststructuralist theory; a database concept itself flawed, regurgitated in an even more flawed manner; but then, it seems to me these words of his are twisted beyond his own twisting to suit an already held bias, which we’ve already covered.
Kilminger is doing his job of telling us whether or not to shell out sixty, sure; but he is doing his job poorly. (Oh, and let us not forget that art of this medium requires money:-)
So now you say it’s not manipulative? I’m really having a hard time pinning down your position other than “I’m right, you’re wrong,” because you seem to be moving the goalposts on me. I thought we’d established that all fiction was manipulative. Not sure I want to continue that line of argument though because it feels continuously more and more tangential to the center of this post and I get a little bummed thinking about further interesting commenters that will be turned off by the tone and length of this rabbit-hole.
The whole “it works” assessment is problematic in itself because it didn’t work for me which is part of why this whole line of conversation is really tough for me to go down, I have to continue speculating on what Kilminger — or anyone else — is talking about.
I’m glad you’re the arbiter of the quality of work this reviewer is doing though; can’t say I agree there either. You take issue with his position here, but anyone who agrees with him probably wouldn’t like Clannad. That’s why I say that some idea of “quality” criticism and a review of a DVD are not the same thing.
Denotation versus connotation; the goalposts have not moved.
By your logic of ‘agrees with him’, the Nanoha review was also a good review.
Does anything about this conversation seem not futile? What are we even talking about anymore?
As I said the other day, the sky is blue and Clannad sucks. I can’t really accept being able to manipulate emotions effectively as a sign that something is good. Otherwise, critics would be praising Human Centipede because it literally makes people ill. Actually, that’s the standard Jun Maeda should shoot for next.
I’m trying to imagine this scenario and it’s just too difficult, but I would definitely watch it.
I’m sure somebody has already made a doujin where Kyou has her mouth firmly attached to Ryou’s ass, and Ryou has her mouth firmly attached to Tomoya’s ass.
commenting for this comment
One tangential thing to keep in mind, perhaps, is that Maeda is a musical composer as well as a writer, and I think I could argue fairly convincingly that he composes stories in much the same way as one would compose music (particularly soundtracks).
It probably goes without saying that music is extremely logical and structured, and features some very defined patterns and rules that govern the emotional cues people generally draw from it (both in the instrumentation and in the composition itself). And yet, when we listen to music, we can still be moved by someone else’s composition; part of this is inherent to the composition itself, but part of this is also in the emotion of the performance. Allowing yourself to be swept up in the performance — in the emotion of the moment — is, I think, essential to enjoying music (especially certain kinds of music).
But even with that said, not everyone enjoys the same genres of music, and even music that is deliberately composed to be moving and performed with emotion won’t necessarily manage to move everyone. I think that enjoying Clannad, and other shows of its kind, essentially comes down to whether you are partial to that “style of music” and can allow yourself to be swept up in the emotion of it.
(As an aside, if I look at my musical library, a disturbingly large amount of my 5-star favourites are emotional J-Pop ballads and emotive instrumental pieces from soundtracks (with a heavy emphasis on strings). So yeah… I think a show like this is right up my alley. ^^; )
As a related point, there are also certain songs which aren’t necessarily that emotive on the surface, but become moving to people because of the circumstance in which they first heard it or the way it triggers certain other memories. Keep in mind that a large part of the audience for the Clannad anime was people who already had memories of having played the game. It’s little surprise that the Clannad anime quite literally used the game’s soundtrack. For most of the English audience, the Clannad anime was their first exposure to the story, but the anime gains a whole other meaning for those who already had a deep emotional investment in the game; its biggest claim to fame is arguably the way it manages to “strike the same chords” as the original game and so resonate with existing game fans. That isn’t by any means to say that you had to be a game player to appreciate the anime, but I think it probably causes that portion of the audience to view the anime in a slightly different light. (I wonder in particular if it causes the viewer to be more understanding/forgiving of the little narrative conveniences that were necessary to tie all the stories together.)
On your point about the Visual Novel:
I’ve said it numerous times, but the adaptation of the VN game mechanics is part of what causes me, and presumably people like Kilminger, to see the “stitches” and “clanking machinery.” It’s such an obvious adaptation of that model that it’s hard to take it too seriously (speaking for me). VN players probably are more forgiving.
No one wants to see how the sausage is made, so to speak.
Ryan might be on to something in his comment: maybe if we isolated the part that is more story-centric, we could maybe see a stronger anime. Unfortunately, that part doesn’t stand alone, and I’m already ruined, so I can’t try that out.
On your point of Maeda being a musician:
I hadn’t really thought about things in those terms, which is funny and embarrassing because I have done some soundtrack work and I’m 100% familiar with the process of manipulating emotions through the use of well-timed cues and tried-and-true formulas. I think it’s a great point and probably something worth considering if you want to analyze his creative process.
I mean, I still like my version of it…
It wasn’t too long ago that I read an annotation of the Otaku over at SuperFanicom. A bit of Azuma’s database consumption theory loomed over my head as I read this. Specifically the reference to Key works that deliver maximum “emotion porn” (as Pontifus put forth) through formulaic means. It’s the reason why it feels artificial because it’s a conglomeration of moe-elements that draw the most tears out of the database animals (aka otaku, the native ones) but a good combination nevertheless.
And that’s even if said otaku are aware of it. Kinda like Keima from TWGOK, they like stuff like this despite a seemingly lack of a coherent grand narrative. All that matters was that it made them cry and that’s why they like it.
That’s what Clannad does, it satiates the various fanservice that also goes beyond the ecchi stuff. It services to the need to be saddened by a wandering soul. It services to the need of a male character who seems to know what to do despite his default characteristics. It services to the need tsunderes and frail girls that deem attention from the main chara. Elements that have worked before in the past, are brought together in a good combo that nourishes our overseas bretheren. And perhaps the proponents Clannad from outside of Japan too.
Kinda scary to think of it this way, that secretly in the depths of his lab Maeda has crafted such a devious formula for “emotion porn.” That Clannad in reality is nothing more that a bricolage of elements that sell. What’s even scarier might be that we’ve been Key’d into new moe-elements that we never even knew we wanted to have.
Lol I have absolutely no idea where I wanted to go with this. You might actually want to just head over here, if you haven’t already done so.
I don’t think it’s that devious, I mean a lot of love can go into creating porn too, no?
I elected not to quote Azuma here because (a) I haven’t finished that book and (b) I literally have so many passages highlighted I’ve screwed myself from being able to easily reference any of them.
However, I did think of the concept of the loss of the grand narrative, and visual novels are pretty much the obvious way to illustrate that (and in fact he does it).
People like Carl Kilminger are still wrestling with Azuma’s theoretical shift away from the grand narrative and into the grand nonnarrative “animal” style of media, so that could have something to do with his overall discomfort.
Then again, by Azuma’s theories we also have to consider the simulacra as valid components of the Clannad media experience, and thus JP’s doujin of a Kyou-Ryou-Tomoya Human Centipede is, of course, canon.
I was actually half-expecting a reference to Azuma but that makes sense why you didn’t. Maybe I should have refrained from doing so too, no? Lol because I sounded a little more paranoid that I would have wanted to by the end.
Clannad was that one anime that really rolled me deep into the otaku subculture so it is forever memorable and from what I remember of it was nothing but beauty. So to have read a little of Azuma and saw his reference to Key stuff, I felt a little betrayed because it made a lot of sense. Lol I kinda buy into his pomo mumbojumbo, if you haven’t already notice.
Ha, maybe not devious but ingenious. I do acknowledge his orchestration of emotion porn. So when it comes time to rewatch this series I do kinda have to resign to the Maeda-hypereality of it all. And when I do I will just look to appreciate his execution of these elements that make up the Clannad simulacra.
I suppose I do too, to some degree, otherwise I wouldn’t have sat through however many pages of him setting it up. :3
I think that’s really a good distillation of my feelings. I also like the term “orchestration,” that gets us out of the weeds of arguing about “manipulation.” I think Pontifus is right, as are you, that obviousness is not necessarily a problem, and I’ve used the term emotion porn as well, with the definition that it’s “something that gets an intended psychological and/or biological result, and requires tissues.”
People get a little bent about the “emotion porn” thing but if you’re playing Clannad with the goal of getting sad, and going through this contrived and constructed situation that leads you there, that’s a similar experience to porn and let’s face it — who doesn’t like porn? (And yeah, I think the fact that Clannad the anime is a viable and semi-popular license confirms that it’s not just our overseas brethren).
People often suppress their emotions to the point of needing a “release” so to speak, a way to feel something stronger than what you get out of everyday life. What’s funny is in the comments of a stupid aniblog we can argue all day about whether that response and release is “genuine,” but the proverbial Keima doesn’t care. :3