Clannad/YMMV

• Big Lipped Alligator Moment: Tomoya's very strange Dream Sequences.
  • Fuko's random appearances later in the anime. Even more so in the game.
  • They Lampshade those most of the time.
• Cliché Storm: Yes, Clannad is about as clichéd as they come. No, that doesn't make it any less wonderful an experience.
• Ear Worm:
  • Dango, dango, dango, dango...
  • Kotomi's theme
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Tomoyo. She even gets the sequel visual novel, Tomoyo After.
  • Especially when in the Anime, before the Bonus Episode, she's one of the characters who doesn't get her arc completed properly.
    • The same could be certainly said for Kyou, who now has the same status as Tomoyo in the fandom — incomplete arc becomes an OVA.
    • Not to mention that (in)famous gym locker scene. Yes, please.
  • Sunohara also qualifies as an ensemble darkhorse due to his large popularity with the fanbase.
    • He certainly qualifies, apparently the only place where he has little to no fans is among his creators themselves; even tough he has haters or people who finds him to be of little importance, you better believe that are many image boards that hate everything about Clannad, except for Sunohara.
  • Nagisa's dad, Akio, has a pretty large fanbase as well.
• Fandom Nod - The Clannad After Story anime answered a much speculated question in the fandom: What happens if Sanae's Bread meets Akiko's Jam? "It's the ultimate combination!"
  • Fun thought experiment: ignore context for a moment, and read that sentence again.
  • You get knocked out members of Kazuto Miyazawa's gang. Sanae's bread and Akiko's jam is a WMD, even in the, or perhaps especially in the hands of Nagisa.
• Fridge Brilliance: The ending theme because the two dango that made the baby dango are slightly different colors than the two dango that are holding it(a pink and blue pair followed by a more reddish/orange and green pair). However this actually makes sense since Akio and Sanae end up raising Ushio instead of her real parents, Nagisa and Tomoya
  • For those who don't quite get the symbolism in the last part, the blue dango = Tomoya; the pink dango = Nagisa; the baby dango = Ushio; the orange dango = Sanae; and the green dango = Akio.
  • Sanae tells Ushio that the only places where you can cry are in the bathroom and in her father's arms. Guess when was the first time she ever cried? Seconds after she was born...being held by Tomoya, because her mother was dying.
  • Nagisa's play, based on a story she only partially remembers, obviously parallels the plot of the girl and the garbage doll in the Illusionary World. In the end, Nagisa recalls that it ends with a song, which she improvs in her performance. Tomoya chides her that the song at the end of the story probably isn't "Big Dango Family". Actually, it is! It's hummed by the girl to the garbage doll as the Illusionary World is torn apart at the end of ~After Story~.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: On one Crowning Moment of Funny. (for those curious, the Drunk Nagisa Scene) Tomoya says something along the lines of "What did I do to deserve this?" Three episodes before the one where he should have said it. Even when you know about that episode, it feels like the line sums up the later episodes of CLANNAD in five seconds.
• Growing the Beard: There's a reason ~After Story~ gets consistently better reviews than season one — and it's not because of the first quarter of the season, which is more or less just a continuation of the first season. Then a whole series of Wham Episodes simultaneously push the time frame into fast forward while pushing the material itself into darker and darker thematic territory — without losing its sense of humor.
• Hey, It's That Voice!!- You find it much easier to believe Tomoya's assessment of his father, when you know that he was a certain officer on Senten Island.
• Ho Yay: (Visual Novel) Kappei with both Tomoya and Sunohara, having dropped Bridgets on them. Sunohara, in denial, still pursues what Tomoya calls "unrequited love."
  • Tomoya was just confused on Kappei's gender at first but he was never actually interested, Sunohara on the other hand...
    • Though if Kappei really had been a girl, he/she would had undoubtedly be part of Tomoya's romantic harem.
  • Played straight in the "Bad End" or "Sunohara route." In the end though, the "route" is just making fun of the fact that Tomoya made all the girls fall for him but rejects all of them; he just isn't interested in girls. Though his rejections were subtle, you still feel bad watching the girls' reactions.
• Les Yay: The "misunderstanding" between Ryou and Nagisa on the rooftop. In one scene Kyou also appears to like Kotomi a lot, leading to the famous Glomp.
• Moe: Oh, heavens. Pretty much every female character in the franchise. especially Nagisa.
• Mood Whiplash: Well, Nagisa just died and Tomoya fell into the Despair Event Horizon. Cue the happy ending theme!
• Periphery Demographic: The series was originally aimed at older men. However, it is watched by women too. Not only adults, but teenagers as well.
• Player Punch: And how! Late in Fūko's storyline of the game, Tomoya and Nagisa come up with a plan to see if Fūko, who thus far appears to be a spiritual projection from her comatose, in hospital body, can be seen by her elder sister; something she was very uncertain about and required great assurance from her friends it would work. The plan is interrupted, brutally, as when Nagisa brings Fūko out in front of the elder sister whom Tomoya is chatting with at the festival, the sister comments almost nonchalantly to Tomoya, and in front of Nagisa and looking straight through Fūko, 'That girl stopped breathing yesterday.'.
  • And how again! Nagisa's death, no matter how you look at it, was meant to be this in every aspect. After all the Character Development she went through, no doubt because of Tomoya's presence with her, we're then reawakened to the fact that, even if she's a strong person, she's still physically weak. When she insists on home delivery, the alarms were already being raised, and when we find out that a heavy snowstorm occurs on the day she gives birth, it's really no surprise that she was going to die anyway. And yet, knowing this, it's still a Player Punch.
• The Scrappy: Ryou is easily the least popular of the main characters. Common complaints are that she's never given a reason to love Tomoya and that there are several things that contrast with her supposedly shy personality e.g. holding plenty of regular conversations with Tomoya and being the Class Representative (though the latter can be explained rather easily).
• So Bad It's Good: The 2006 Toei Animation movie can be unintentionally hilarious to someone who's already seen the Kyoto Animation series.
• Subbing vs. Dubbing: Anime News Network recently announced that CLANNAD will be dubbed by Sentai Filmworks and Seraphim Digital Studios, the talent of the once-prosperous ADV Films. It has also been announced that there will be an "upgrade program" for fans who want the dub but already bought the subbed DVDs.
  • The first two dubbed episodes will be available online for free starting March 26, 2010.
  • Full list announced.
  • The dub can currently be found on Netflix Watch Instantly. Their copies on DVD, however, are sub-only, it seems.
    • If anything, the dub received mixed reviews so far.
• Tastes Like Diabetes: The season one ending, "Dango Daikazoku," for those who don't find it a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
• The Woobie: EVERYONE.
  • Special mention going to Tomoya. First, he lost his mother, then pretty much lost his father too which indirectly led him to lose the ability to play Basketball, and thus probably the only dream he ever had. Later, he loses his wife, and becomes estranged with his own daughter. Five years later, they reconcile, but after a few months, the daughter falls ill and dies. Tomoya then dies from despair. He got better, thankfully.
  • Which, according to this, lets the original timeline go to pot when you consider the horrible possibility that in at least one universe, Nagisa and Ushio were able to meet in the afterlife after they died but would never see Tomoya again; he was effectively erased from that timeline due to being sent back in time to the Illusionary World after he died, a la The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time's Link, only more depressing. Considering this show's view on multiple parallel worlds, this is hardly a farfetched idea.
    • World of Woobie: Life sucks if you have a name in this series.