Clannad and Endings

Clannad is one of my defining anime, what I consider to be a show that’s so influential on me on a fundamental level that I don’t think I would have the same taste nor be the same person without.  It’s a beautiful love story that can be everything to everyone at any given moment.  Both infinitely sad yet simultaneously one of the happiest stories I’ve had the pleasure of viewing.  It reaches into the deepest and most intimate places within our hearts with truly empathetic characters and events to give us heart crushing lows or soaring highs, usually at the same time.  I watched it in highschool and Fuuko’s arc was the first time I remember legitimately crying because of a tv show, and upon rewatching it as an adult, that arc only made me cry harder as I had grown in both depth and breadth as a person and thusly Clannad was able to reach deeper and farther into me and deliver what is my definitive bittersweet arc climax.  All the while it delivers us lessons and themes on growing up, falling in love, loss, change and fear, showing us that all these things are natural and unavoidable, yet, despite our apprehensions, are not bad.  The nostalgia and subsequent pain felt looking at the field you played in as a child, the street where you walked with your friends from school or your family’s old home knowing they’re not going to be here much longer is natural, but nothing bad.  That field is becoming a hospital in an area far from medical help.  That street is becoming a mall, which will bring much needed jobs and economy to a degrading part of town.  Your home belongs to a new family, full of opportunities and hope.  Clannad is truly, without a doubt, one of the greatest anime I have ever watched.  However, it has one flaw that is impossible to overlook:  It has what might outright be the worst ending I have ever seen.