The Hidden World

The Hidden World is a sub-story that is shown throughout all of Clannad for small segments at a time. It is also referred to as the Illusionary World. It shows at least one segment during each of the main stories, and finished up alongside After Story.

The Hidden World is a sort-of world that Okazaki Tomoya has dreams about. It follows an interesting conciousness who narrates the scenes as they appear, explaining his views on the world, the situations, his emotions, and what he feels about the nameless girl whom he is fixated on.

The nameless girl is the only person living on the entire planet. She has a unique ability to fuse together junk to make objects. She is aware of the nameless conciousness, though she cannot see him; he is also aware of her, although they are unable to communicate. She decides fuses a body together for him out of junk, which looks like a small robot. She teaches him how to walk, and they become friends, making the girl happy that she is no longer alone.

The nameless girl from the Hidden World.

The conciousness, now in the world, spends his time with the girl. Although the robot cannot talk, he communicates through nods and jumps and other bodily expressions. They build various things to enjoy together, such as various playground objects.

The robot seems to have the perspective of a child, being curious about his surroundings. He comes to have the basic understanding of most things and how they work, except the stream of small orbs of light that are constantly floating around. A big deal is made of them; he tries to grab one, and it just passes through his hand. It makes no shadow, either. The girl asks if he is confused about it, and he nods yes; she then simply says that she finds it something she is familiar with.

The girl, the robot, and some sheep they found while wandering.

The world does experience seasons, just as earth does, and eventually winter starts approaching. The girl is becoming unable to move, and as winter slowly comes the amount of time she can move decreases. The robot has been recalling very vague memories of a better world, ones with more people, and wants the girl and him to go there, and to escape from this cold. During the times that the girl is able to move, she puts tries to put together a type of flying apparatus from the parts that the robot collects and brings to her.

The robot collecting materials for the flying machine.

Winter comes upon them in full force before the machine is completed, however, and the girl is now barely able to move at all. The desire from the robot to leave this lonely world and go to the better one he can barely remember is at this point at a peak, and he convinces the girl to muster up all of her strength so they can leave.

They stop several times before the girl collapses and becomes completely unable to move. At this point she becomes aware of the conciousness completely - even to the point of who he is. He wants her to keep moving, but she informs him that she cannot, since she is a keeper of sorts of the world.

She then proceeds to tell him about the lights, and how they are the hopes and dreams of people from the other world that the robot keeps wanting to go to. Then, to confuse the robot further, she tells him that unlike her he is connected through both worlds, but doesn't belong in this one. She wants him to return to his world, and wishes him goodbye, with the final word being, "father", and the world vanishes.

The girl, collapsed, and the robot next to her. At this happens, they are able to actually talk to each other.

The lights are a substory running throughout the main stories of Clannad and After Story, making only select appearances, a couple of which being seen by characters on certain occasion, and the story about what they are being told only once by a character in After Story.

During the game, however, the lights are much more prominent. After each gir's story was completed, a light appears. After a certain amount are collected, the option to play After Story appears. More lights can be obtained during After Story, and are required to see the true ending.

The orbs of light, as the explanation goes, are a manifestation of the hopes and dreams and/or happiness of the people of the town, and appear when a particularly happy moment in someone's life happens.

The story of the Hidden World makes little connection with the story of Clannad, and has little connection to most of After Story. It becomes apparent that the conciousness/robot is the manifestation of Tomoya.

the rest of the explanation for how it ties in will be explained in the article about After Story. That will be up soon.

~Koubo


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