Clannad

Clannad is the title of the third game released by the company Key, and is arguably one of the most prominent visual novels for Visual Arts released in Japan, having repeatedly placed in top sales lists. Additionally, in a poll taken by japanese gamers as to "which game moved you to tears", Clannad placed second, above Final Fantasy VII and even the previous titles by Key.

As stated earlier, Clannad is also Key's second longest work. It is large enough that once the player unlocks all the alternate endings in the game, another game - titled After Story - unlocks, and continues on telling the story of the two main characters right where Clannad itself ends off. In addition, one of the paths in the game was so popular that a new game was made focusing on the continuation of that path, titled Tomoyo After: It's A Wonderful Life.

The anime is nowhere near small, either. Clannad was 49 episodes long, half covering the first part of the game, and the other half covering After Story, with two of the episodes giving alternate universes. The anime, with only a handful of exceptions, uses the same or remixed versions of the music used in the game.

This article will be about Clannad itself, and an article covering After Story will come at a later time. Clannad revolves around the high school life of each of the main characters.

Okazaki Tomoya, the main protagonist of the story.

The main focus of Clannad revolves around Okazaki Tomoya, who is in his third year of high school and has been labeled a delinquent by just about everyone who knows him, even the people who consider him a friend. He and his best friend, Sunohara Youhei, constantly ditch classes and/or show up late for classes, doing nothing but bum around Sunohara's dorm room.

Tomoya has a horrible relationship with his father, due to a fight they got in prior to him entering high school. The fight escalated to a point of grappling, and ended with Tomoya's shoulder becoming injured. It never healed properly, and resulted in Tomoya never being able to raise one of his arms above shoulder height again. Since their fight, his father has distanced himself, resulting in a separation of family connection; his father greets his own son now as if he were greeting an old aquaintance, and this impacts Tomoya obviously when the topic is touched upon.

However, although he occasionally dwells on this, it is not the center focus of his activities. It rarely even comes up in the game or anime itself, except at a small amount of critical moments.

At the very start, he is walking to school complaining about how he hates his life and the town he is in. As he arrives at the path to get to school, he stops and sees a girl standing there, Furukawa Nagisa, radiating obvious signs of lack of courage and emotional struggle. He hears her talking to herself about how she may never come to like school, due to at least one reason being, "nothing ever stays unchanged." Before she gets too far into depression, Tomoya stops her and tells her that although nothing remains unchanged, it is a good thing, and that she should find new things to be happy about. She took courage from that, and Tomoya took some strength from it too, and they walk up the path to school together.

Tomoya and Nagisa, at the bottom of the slope.

The focus of the entire series, both game and anime, ultimately ends up being on the relationship between Tomoya and Nagisa. Since the boost of courage, Nagisa begins changing from one without courage to someone who is capable of many things, despite a physical condition that makes her naturally and constantly weak. Throughout the story of Clannad she is trying to reestablish the theatre club, which was disbanded at the end of the previous year due to lack of members. She, like Tomoya, is also in her third year, although she has had to repeat it, thanks to her weakness ending up keeping her out of school for over nine months. Nagisa has not been alone, though; her parents are people who run a bakery from their home and make a living off of that to support their family. A recurring theme for Nagisa is the "Big Dango Family".

The focus does not, hovever, stay solely on them. There are four other main female characters, and each of these girls has a very intricate bacground. As usual for products made by Key, all of the characters are introduced within the first couple of episodes. Detailed information regarding their personalities and relationships with others is set pretty quickly, and it does not deviate.

One character, as is now expected, is experiencing a form of autoscopy. This situation is significantly different from the other two. The character's name is Ibuki Fuko. She is roughly the same age as Tomoya. During her first year, right after the entrance ceremony, she got into a horrible accident, and was hospitalized. Tomoya finds her carving a block of wood, which she claims is going to be a starfish. She intends to give one to each person of the student body as an invitation to her sister's wedding. Her autoscopic situation is different in that as time moves on people end up forgetting about her and that she even existed, this even eventually happening to Tomoya, who was the closest character to her.

The main females of the story. From left to right: Ibuki Fuko, Ichinose Kotomi, Fujibayashi Kyou, Furukawa Nagisa, and Sakagami Tomoyo.

The second girl who gets focused on is Ichinose Kotomi. She is a super genius, yet has a level of extreme social awkwarness. Tomoya finds her in the library reading some very advanced books about a Hidden World, which it turns out that her parents were studying the same topic in intense detail before they passed away. He originally asks her to help him and Nagisa, but then that plan changes into him trying to get her out of her shell and having lots of friends.

Sakagami Tomoyo is another story focus. She is trying for student council president. However, she has a past of being involved in gang and street fights, of which she has always easily and quickly won, and that becomes an obstacle for her goal more than once. Her first appearance is her ending up in a fight from some people who broke onto school grounds looking to make trouble. She gave that life up for family reasons, and has has made several personal focuses take its place.

Tomoyo is one of two girls that has an alternate universe revolve around her. The last episode in the set titled just "Clannad" is an episode focusing on her path in the game, and plays in the anime as a "what if" scenario. It covers the highlights of her story arc from the game, and although it rushes through her multi-hour story in a matter of 22 minutes, the point is crossed enough that one can understand what is going on.

After all these girls have their stories wrapped up, it focuses on the first major story of Nagisa and Tomoya. Nagisa has achieved at reinstating the theatre club, and is focusing on the play her and her friends intend to show at the founders festival. As the play completes and the festival is winding down, she and Tomoya, after all the pre-relationship awkwardness that typically fits in an anime like this wraps up, finally become a couple.

The only girl that didn't really have her story focused on in the bulk of either Clannad or After Story is Fujibayashi Kyou. It becomes obvious that she and her twin sister, Ryou, have quite strong romantic feelings for Tomoya, but that story regrettably does not get much light of day. Her story gets touched on at various times during the bulk of the series, but the only time it gets true focus is in the other alternate universe episode, which resides at the end, when After Story has finished. It focuses on Kyou specifically, and covers the end of her story arc in the game. Throughout the entire series, she is probably most noted for having a pet baby boar, whom she has lovingly named Botan.

Kyou's pet boar, Botan.

After Story is only obtainable in the game after completing every story arc in the main game. It will be introduced and explained in an article that will come later. The next article that will be posted is about the Hidden World, which is introduced in Clannad, but plays no part in the story until the main segment of After Story is in full force.

Clannad can stand as an anime by itself. It is a story that wraps up all of the parts it presents (except the story of the Hidden World). It is a very detailed and beautifully written story. The story completely wraps up in After Story, which is also where the reason for why it is considered to be one of the saddest stories out there resides.

The Big Dango Family, or Dango Daikazoku.

Enjoy the read. The next articles may end up being just as long.

~Koubo

The Clannad afticle list
Part one: Clannad
Part two: The Hidden World
Part three: Clannad ~After Story~