Clannad’s message, sojourner tell us, is “[w]hen empowered by strong emotions like love and friendship, a person’s thoughts are able to shape the future.”
With that in mind, CLANNAD strives to present itself as a subtle and simple philosophical discourse on how we ought to live our lives, and it mainly preaches that happiness is obtainable through positive thinking.
Yes, we know Clannad is not at the pinnacle of art. It does not make Homer weep tears of joy at the marvels of modern-day “literature”. In a word, “Clannad the anime is bullshit.” But that’s redundant; indeed, it is tautological.
Clannad is a VN, and, according to the structure of the VN, scrunching it into a linear anime form while staying true to the original material will cause all sorts of problems (i.e.). So we can just say that Clannad is an anime [therefore it is bullshit]. Clannad the anime. Did you get the rest? But what about “Clannad the visual novel”. No tautology there, unless the content of the original truly upsets you; in that case, we can just say “Clannad” – and any further extrapolation is tautological.
Or, it’s not the anime that’s tautological, but the fandom, and when an anime is produced according to a speculative reception of the fandom or a specific niche within it, well, you get the picture.