Clannad: Tomoyo After

Tomoyo After is a spinoff of Clannad, based off of a visual novel. Instead of Nagisa being the winner of the harem, Tomoyo is, and this manga tells about the trials the pair faces. It's also as rushed as hell.

Tomoyo After is very episodic in nature. The chapters barely connect at all, and each chapter seems to have about five chapters worth of materiel in it. Like Clannad, Tomoyo After has the goal of making you cry. However, due to its rushed nature, you don't get that chance. I never felt any connection to any of the characters, and due to this the drama felt very force. Actually, the drama is forced, and all of the situations that appear are dumb and have no build-up. Two of the side characters also look exactly the same. The art itself is okay. Nothing special, but nothing really memorable either.

Tomoyo After is a very mediocre manga. Fans of the game might want to check it out, but if you've never played the game like I have, then there's really nothing special here.

If you've read the Tomoyo After visual novel then this will be a disappointment. This manga adaptation is more of a truncated story than a full experience. Whilst the characters maintain their personalities, one of the main character's storylines is entirely cut, and all the other characters have their storylines shortened dramatically. It is hard to get attached to characters when they aren't even present for the majority of the volume. Even if this was just one chapter or volume longer, it would have been a more fulfilling experience, but as it stands you just get the bare minimum story required to know what is going on.

There are some entertaining moments that weren't present in the visual novel, and the art is fairly nice. For what it is the story is put together decently, but if you have to choose one experience, choose the visual novel.

I must say this was very enjoyable read despite its short length.

Story: Simply outstanding story, as expected from KEY. An excellent story from start to finish, however I did find a few things confusing such as Tomoya's memory loss, like many of KEY's works, its a finely tuned story.

Art: I wouldn't say it is a masterpiece in artwork, but the drawing is well done nonetheless. A good mixture of fights, touching moments, and chibis here and there.

Character: A small cast of characters, but definitely one that I loved very much. However, from what I have seen in the Clannad anime, Tomoyo's personality has changed alot, for better or worse it depends on how much you liked her in Clannad. The cast is diverse and I enjoyed each's character's appearance and the impact they have when you read through each chapter, an element of becoming strong.

Enjoyment: Like I said, short, but awesome. It has become one of my favorite manga of all time and I hope that it will be made into an anime, as it could be very promising.

Overall: Despite not getting a perfect score, I absolutely loved this manga. I was pretty skeptical at first why Tomoyo would even have spin-off series for herself instead of continuing her arc in Clannad. But I see Tomoyo's character in a different light now, and become one of my favorite characters in this manga and in Clannad as well.

Alright, if you want a TL;DR, the manga doesn't do the VN justice, because of it's rushed nature, but when it hits, it hits good


Now, for the bad points of the manga:

- The art isn't like the source material, the girls look fine, but tomoya and takafumi aren't recognizable at all

- The plot is very rushed, to the point of skipping a major player in the VN (Takafumi) and just setting him as an incidental character, furthermore, it barely fleshed out the tomo route, which was a huge part of the VN. Her chapter was so rushed, one could barely feel attached to the character's interactions, unlike the VN which handled it perfectly.
-No music lol but that's because of the medium. The VN's music were really a great part of the experience, and could bring you down to tears, specially at the ending.


Now, for the good points of the manga:

-The first chapter and last chapter really are the best of them, with the second chapter following at 3rd place. The first chapter really captured the silly nature of the VN's prologue and the game's sense of comedy, while the last chapter did hit me very hard in the feels (all tho not as much as the VN, that shit left me crying like a baby) it really manages to capture Tomoyo's suffering and determination like in the source material.

-The characters, all tho not very fleshed out, are very true to the source material, Tomoya is a blun and kind jokester, Tomoyo is obsessed with being girly and strong, kanako is silly girl that put on an obnoxious mask to hide her dark past.

Tomoyo After ~Dear Shining Memories~ is a 4 chapter-manga spin-off of the original Clannad series based on the events of the visual novel Tomoyo After~It's A Wonderful Life~ narrated from Tomoyo's perspective.

As the title suggests,Tomoyo is the main heroine here and gone are the original Clannad cast excluding our main hero Tomoya. The story takes place after their dramatic reunion under the sakura trees where they decided to be lovers once again (Episode 24 of Clannad or if you've read the Clannad visual novel). And so,their new life begins.

Now that the long-winded intro is done,here's how I feel about the manga and how I found it. Yeah,I know I'm late..

*Slight spoilers ahead,continue only if you've read the manga or the Tomoyo After VN*

Prior last week,I've been in a long hiatus in regards to anime-related stuffs. To make things short,I chanced upon a visual novel (Saya no Uta).It was my first VN,I enjoyed it and went to search for more. Then,I found Clannad which I have vague memories of. I started with Nagisa's and Kotomi's storyline first and thought it was good but not groundbreaking. It wasn't until when I started Tomoyo's path that finally my emotions started kicking in. I loved every bit of it,as much as After Story. Needless to say,I went to check if there is a continuation and so,here I am. Of course,there's the Tomoyo After VN as well.

Aforementioned above,this is a manga adaptation of the visual novel -Tomoyo After~It's A Wonderful Life~-. All I could say is that it did its VN counterpart no justice by trying to clump everything into 4 mere chapters. I've only read the point-form summary of the VN and some raw parts of it but even so,I honestly felt that the manga lefted out ALOT of stuffs. It's still a good read though and yes,the Tomoyo After VN has yet to be fully translated. While I didn't like the art,anything decent would suffice for a great story.

Overall,it was a short bittersweet continuation for the Tomoyo-Tomoya fans/hopefuls and for those who fancies a twist away from the original plot. I won't exaggerate much but if this manga already got you teary,be prepared for a cry-fest when you read the VN. You know the deal with these Key's stories.

P.S I would also recommend you to not read this manga if you haven't read the Clannad VN or watched episode 24 of Clannad. For those who's interested or understand Japanese w/o english subtitles,you can search in youtube for the raw version of the VN or just google in general. Just type "Tomoyo After" and there you have it.

P.P.S If you already read the Tomoyo After visual novel,you might not want to read this watered down manga version. Just how I feel.

What can I say...Very short, and very satisfying. A very well done manga with a story that we might never see animated.

I myself, have not played the game that this is based off of. To see it in the form of manga was surprising to me, but still a very good experience.

Tomoyo and Tomoya are stars of this manga. No where to be found are the other characters from the anime. But this does not take away from the experience. This is a side of the anime many people might not see, and is defiantly not worth skipping out on. To those who are looking for a quick and satisfying manga, then this one is for you.

Short. That was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this manga. A game that's as long as Nagisa's story line in Clannad is condensed into 4 chapters? Let me tell you now that if you have played Tomoyo After already don't bother reading this manga.

Admittedly, when I first read through it, I thought the manga was a poor adaptation. However, taking the merits of the original game and the length of manga into consideration, I can say that the author did fairly well.

Storyline is entirely hit or miss depending on whether the reader has played Clannad and Tomoyo After. The story moves way too fast with not enough transitions for a reader new to the series to fully grasp the situation. Having watched/played Clannad isn't a necessity, but it does help flesh out the story background.

If you've played Tomoyo After, though, that's another story. Taken on its own, before or after Clannad, the story is anything from good to great. However, if, like me, you have already played the game you'll be glad that it's only 4 chapters and didn't waste more than 30 minutes of your life. Some events are added in manga that doesn't really add anything to the storyline. Not only that, due to the extremely short length of the manga, many events and even characters are outright missing.

Speaking of characters, this is probably the strong point of the manga adaptation. Even though a main character from the game is missing, the rest of the characters do have some depth despite the length deficit. Both Tomoyo and Tomoya will grow on you, each with their own distinct personality, problems, and viewpoints.

Stylistically the manga stayed pretty close to the game, which isn't a bad thing at all. Especially, the manga does a great job portraying fear and insecurity each person felt at different points of time, which really helps convey some of these experiences and emotions and make readers feel for these characters.

Did I enjoy the manga? Definitely not when I first finished it. However, this is not the fault of the manga alone. Annoyances like missing characters aside, I never liked the ending in the original game either. However, it is a very moving tale, and all in all I enjoyed the story's progression towards the disappointing ending.

As you can see from the overall score, even though I pointed out a lot of the negatives, my lasting impression is still a very positive one. There are far more people who hasn't played Tomoyo After than those who has. Taken on its own, the manga is still a great story with memorable characters, and as such I recommend to the majority of people who read manga. The only gripe I can see is the brevity. Four chapters is definitely not enough to develop these characters, and the events seem rushed. That, and don't play the game before you read the manga.

Key (adj) k-ee

Any story described as "Key" starts in a happy and sweet manner, then suddenly throws the reader in heart-aching despair, then whole-hearted admiration for the strong characters who over-came that despair.

This is what I think of Tomoyo After.

Alrite, most ppl who would want to read this are mostly affected by Clannad in its many forms (Manga, Anime, Movie). For those who are not in this group, do not fret. You can still enjoy this manga equally.

To put it simply,"Tomoyo after story" is set one year after Okazaki Tomya graduated from high school where Tomoyo is his girlfriend (Think the Clannad Game where you went the Tomoyo Path.)

*SPOILER-ISH*
Like most other stuff Key made, the start of the story (or arc) starts off with heart-melting sweetness that magnify GAR and MOE by like infinity. Then the main characters will fall into a tragedy. Given that their GAR and MOE is really strong, it is really painful to read (emotionally) After the tragedy, the characters would have become emotionally stronger and continue with their life, which wraps up the story with satisfied readers.

I have to admit, i actually cried (internally) for this manga on the last chapter. This is one of the saddest ending I've ever seen, yet it is also beautiful. One word: Bittersweet

Recommend to anyone who enjoy romance

I like Clannad, and I absolutely love Tomoyo. That's why I madly loved the Tomoyo Route OVA too, despite it being reaaaally short, then what went wrong with this Tomoyo After manga adaptation? In short, everything. I repeat, I love Tomoyo After with all my heart, nonetheless I really think this adaptation was a mistake.

Art: when I started reading it I thought it was a joke. A really bad joke. While Tomoyo is let's say acceptable, what the fuck is wrong with Tomoya?! I think the mangaka was on drugs when he drew him, because I don't think anybody would make it to draw a character so different from its real concept, not even if they tried. Same goes for the other characters, even though they are still not that bad.

Characters: Despite the short length of the manga, it still managed to
characterize Tomoyo and Tomoya quite a bit, STILL the other characters just look like a parody of themselves, and Takafumi wasn't even introduced! He appears in like 3 panels and his face isn't even entirely shown, but I think it's better off like this, at least he didn't ruin even his awesome character design.

Story: Tomoyo After strong point, despite it being a slice of life, is its story. It is brilliant, perfectly paced and it makes you cry like a baby even when you only think back about it. In this manga though the story is inexistent, it's literally just Tomoya punching 4 guys, an abandoned random little girl showing up just to get taken back to her sick mom that regretted abandoning her and Tomoya getting hit by a car and losing his memory to then die 3 years later after telling Tomoyo to be strong. Now, the story is obviously really different from the visual novel but it's normal, it's too long to get compressed in 160 pages. Though there's one part of the story, the ending, that is really similiar in both the novel and the manga. If it wasn't for it to be plain crap in the manga. What made the visual novel ending so good was the mood of it. Tomoya losing his memories isn't some simple accident, it's a tragedy. Tomoyo throws his life out of the window just to help Tomoya regain his memories even knowing it's impossible, because for her a life without him just isn't conceivable, that's why she is forced to get strong by herself in these 3 years and walk on. This is beautifully shown in the novel, but in the manga it just doesn't work. It just skips to 3 years later where Tomoya just tells her to get stronger and dies, with a simple as heck goodbye, while his goodbye in the novel is pure art. And even the flashbacks are terrible. When Tomoyo finds out Tomoya lost his memories she just gets angry and takes Tomoya for a walk to make him regain his memories, but for how it's shown it almost looks like it should be a comical scene, while there's nothing to laugh about. Tomoyo is deeper than that, when she finds out about Tomoya she is completely broken, while in the manga she almost takes it as a joke. It just looks stupid. Not to talk about the very end, where Kanako just doesn't give a fuck about Tomoya's death, which hurts me since she has a beautiful relationship with him and she even has a breakdown in the novel. Even the fact that Tomoyo just keeps on living his old life instead of completely changing it like in the novel since she found another reason to live is just stupid. This adaptation was a complete mess.

TL;DR: In comparison with the novel this adaptation is a little shit, but even taken alone it still pretty much sucks. As a big fan, I'm disappointed by this manga and I refuse to consider it part of the Clannad franchise, because it has nothing to do with it.