Clannad

A Big Mess o’ Moe

Like Kanon and Air before it, Clannad is a Kyoto Animation production based on a Key/Visual Art’s visual novel.  And like those, it follows a single male protagonist on a journey through the lives of multiple girls until he finds… I don’t know what. Usually death and tragedy. And more importantly: it’s over!

Blog Posts

Story

No really. That’s all it is. One guy, many girls, in their final year of high school. Plus a usually-incidental male friend. They do… stuff.

Characters

clannad_okazaki.jpgTomoya Okazaki
I shit-talked him early on, but this particular mop-haired hero has grown on me like a wart you just get used to. He’s a self-described delinquent, though his biggest crime seems to be slacking, and he’s an all-around nice and swell guy. So far there hasn’t been much of the old “horrible tragic past incident,” save for the Kotomi arc, and his baggage seems to be minimal. If he escapes this show without horrible amnesia-inducing tragedy in his past, my hat is off to him. He does have an injury in his right arm that keeps him from playing basketball, which is apparently what led him down his current aimless path.

clannad_sunohara.jpgYouhei Sunohara
The best friend. Poor guy not only went a whole season as nothing more than comic relief, he went 15 episodes without a first name. He too was booted from sports, but for fighting (I think) in soccer, so he’s a lazy slacker along with his buddy. He’s become quite the noble sidekick in the second season, but in the most recent episode (18 as of when I wrote this) he’s back to just being an easy target for the bored abuse of the suspended Okazaki.

clannad_nagisa.jpgNagisa Furokawa
The real love interest here. Not a lot to say about her, as she’s a bit lacking in the personality department until really recently, even if it’s always been pretty obvious she was the focus. She really wants to get the theater club back up and running, which is what sparked Okazaki to get on his good-deeds wagon to begin with. She’s been riding that wagon along with him, but now the series is winding down and other girls have fallen by the wayside as Tomoya gradually comes to terms with the fact that he’s got himself a moe princess that he likes. Oh by the way, she has a mysterious illness. Now you know where this is going.

clannad_twins.jpgKyou and Ryou Fujibayashi
Twins, although Ryou is apparently younger by some amount of time, and acts like the little sister. Kyou is the internet’s current favorite hug pillow fodder, thanks to her bright personality, firey temper, and sort of general tsundere factor. After she stopped throwing textbooks, she spent a great deal of time trying to fix up Okazaki with the personality-handicapped Ryou, but in the process came to dig him herself. Sadly for fanboys everywhere, both have recently had their hopes crushed to pieces.

clannad_kotomi.jpgKotomi Ichinose
The show’s concession to the bad memory/tragic past incident, Kotomi knew Okazaki as a kid. Now she’s a quiet genius who’s also a space cadet, and whose parents died in either a plane crash or time-traveling incident, I’m not sure. After her arc ended, she’s been pushed off to the side pretty effectively, even though she had a bit of a girl crush on Okazaki since childhood. She’s so dippy and air-headed, I’m reminded of Azumanga Daioh’s Osaka.

clannad_tomoyo.jpgTomoyo Sakagami
A freshman ass-beater who, as of #18, is now student council president. She is a walking Capcom fighting game character, who spent all the first half of the series mercilessly pounding Sunohara as he tried to prove she was a dude. She’s mighty in Kung Fu apparently, because she exudes wisdom beyond her years and a calm temperment despite her violent abilities.

clannad_fuko.jpgFuuuuuuuuuuko.
Fuko’s in a coma, I know, I know, it’s serious. Early in the show, quite a few episodes were devoted to Tomoya and Nagisa helping the comatose Fuko orchestrate a nice wedding for her ex-teacher sister, before her ghostly presence faded from everyone’s memory. If a comatose girl’s ghost-type-thing wandering around makes you think of another Key/Kyoto show, you’re not alone. In the end, Fuko was a compilation of Kanon’s dirtiest emotional tricks, but now she periodically returns as “comic” “relief.” I feel neither relieved, nor particularly amused. Unlike Kyou, Fuko is a highly divisive topic on the internet: either you think she’s funny and kawaii, or you want to find her hospital bed and snuff her.

Dangers of Watching

  • It may make you dumber. Still researching this.
  • Feels a lot like a more light-hearted retread of Kanon
  • Characters tend to be variations on worn-out archetypes
  • Nagisa is probably going to die. Just saying.

Benefits of Watching

  • Simply great animation and almost soothing pastel palette
  • A hero that’s not real bright but tends toward charming
  • Minimal mental commitment required
  • Inevitable tragedy!

In Short

I can’t quit now. That’s all there is to it. Two seasons, eighteen episodes in, what are you gonna do at that point? The overall feeling of Clannad is lighter and less reliant on emotional gut punches than Kanon, but I’m afraid it might have made the impact a little lesser so far. There are still a few episodes left, and I doubt they’ll continue to leave us tragedy-free. If nothing else, you can watch weekly with a guarantee of a reasonably decent protagonist and some of the finest quality animation there is, in movies or TV. Just try to forget that this show is the reason we’re still waiting for season 2 of Haruhi…