Clannad: Tomoyo After
Tomoyo After ~Dear Shining Memories~

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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.

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 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.