A Challenger Appears!

Clannad’s cast is growing larger and larger each week, which in itself isn’t a bad thing, but I hope this isn’t just cast building for the sake of cast building. If all these characters serve a purpose, no matter how seemingly trivial, then all is well, I just don’t want to see the series end and have to ask myself “Hey, whatever happened to that random electrician we saw in episode three, he never showed again did he?”. Other than that, KyoAni is taking their sweet time getting to the plot, but meh, 21 episodes left, no need to worry just yet.

Episode Rating: 8.5/10

Tomoya goes to the Furukawas to check up on Nagisa, only to be greeted by her dad instead who thanks him for coming but she’s sleeping. Sanae comes down and also thanks Tomoya for coming, explaining that Nagisa’s doing fine, just a slight fever, but she’s always had a weak body to begin with, so as a precaution they’re keeping her in bed for now. The two thank Tomoya for carrying her home that rainy day, keeping the damage minimal. Akio offers him some bread as thanks, but Tomoya isn’t really interested, Akio insists, saying that there’ll be leftovers anyways.

However, soon after saying that, Akio realizes what he’s done, he looks over his shoulder only to see Sanae in tears, apologizing that her bread is no good and runs out of the store in tears, Akio shoves a couple of her buns in his mouth and chases after her. Then a random woman comes in looking for the Furukawas, Tomoyo tells her they just ran out and gives her Akio’s free bag of bread.

On his way back home, Tomoya is grabbed by a random passerby who tells him that an electrician dropped his tools on his car, denting it and he wants Tomoya to be his witness. The electrician claims that he’s not at fault, but agrees to pay repair fees if that’s what’s necessary, spouting a bunch of pretentious, corny lines about living an honest and full life. In the end, Tomoya inspects the dent and concludes that it was probably a cat that jumped down from the fence that caused the dent, and sure enough, a fat cat walks out from under the car, as if on cue. The electrician introduces himself as Yuusuke Yoshino and thanks Tomoya for his help, telling him to call when he has some free time so he can properly thank him.

When Tomoya goes to Sunohara’s place and tells him what happened he’s surprised to hear that Yuusuke is a famous musician who had thought to have gone missing a while ago.

The next day is business as usual, starting with Sunohara’s daily confrontation with Tomoyo. But this time his motive isn’t to fight Tomoyo, Sunohara has come to the conclusion that since a girl can’t be that much stronger than a guy, Tomoyo MUST be a man in disguise. He makes up a story about needing a razor to try and trick Tomoyo into indirectly admit she’s a guy, but ends up getting kicked around again for saying such stupid things.

At lunch time, Tomoya spots Nagisa from a window, eating bread at their usual place, Nagisa notices him and manages to smile and wave. Nagisa apologizes to Tomoya for causing him so much trouble and bringing up memories of his painful past, likewise, Tomoya apologizes for letting her get sick. Nagisa starts to cry, relieved they made up apologizing for being such an idiot, but Tomoya sees no problem with that, as he’s an idiot too, neither of them like those who have the courage and take the world head on.

Suddenly, Tomoya notices he’s being felt up by a certain puppy like girl, Fuko is looking for her knife. Tomoya asks if her hand has healed and she responds yes. They go through the handshake and high five routine again, Fuko doing a commendable but poor job of hiding her pain. Tomoya suggests they play boxer training with Fuko holding up her hands and Tomoya jabbing at them in a one-two pattern. Fuko is scared out of her mind but wants her knife back, so she agrees, when she snaps out of her one-two-one-two chanting, she notices that Tomoya hasn’t hit her at all and finds her knife back in her hands. As thanks, she gives Tomoya the star she was carving and warps away.

After classes, Sunohara and Tomoya are wandering around together when Tomoya spots something weird from the window. It turns out to be a ridiculously cute baby boar who seems to have taken a liking to Tomoya. But the can’t be said of Sunohara, as it struggles to get away from him when picked up. Then, the threatening voice of Fujibayashi Kyou roars at Sunohara followed by her usual book projectile and then a diving kick. But Sunohara’s torture doesn’t stop there, stupidly noting that he saw a flash of something blue accompanying Kyou’s kick (lol, pantsu) she orders he erase it from his memory and follows up with a roundhouse kick. Turns out the baby boar is Kyou’s pet, Botan.

With the open house for the revival of Nagisa’s drama club fast approaching, Tomoya takes her to the school’s secondary library to find her some books to help practice her speech to the newcomers. There, they run into Miyazawa Yukine, the self proclaimed keeper of the run down library. After helping them find the books they were looking for, she makes them some coffee and tells them about the place, Tomoya noting that this school certainly has a lot of unique people, or perhaps the town in general does.

As Tomoya helps Nagisa plan the drama club’s open house, he soon comes to realize that Nagisa doesn’t know much about theater. Not only does she not have any acting experience because she was always sick and unable to participate in school plays, she’s unsure about the type of play she plans to put on, and can’t even describe the one she had in mind beyond “It’s a really really fun play”. But once Nagisa explains that when she was growing up she couldn’t be a part of school run plays because she was absent during practices and performances and that the reason she wants to act is because she thought it would be fun to put on a play with friends, Tomoya is convinced that she’ll do fine as the club’s president.

However, their problems are far from over, when passing by the school bulletin board and noticing that their poster is gone, Yukine passes by and tells them that the student counsel took it down, probably because they didn’t get permission. And sure enough, Nagisa is called to the student counsel’s office not long after.

Thoughts

I dunno about the rest of you, but so far, Clannad is coming off as more of a comedy than anything to me. A far cry from the depressing KeyAni melodramas like AIR and Kanon, Clannad is looking more like a school comedy than Key’s typical sad girls in the ______ template. Tomoya’s interaction with the girls sets up so many jokes due to his upfront and joking nature. Scenes ranging from Yukine making them coffee on demand to Fuko’s retard moe display, Clannad has made me laugh more than anything else so far. It comes off as even more gag comedy-ish when you have random scenes like Akio running after Sanae with bread stuffed into his mouth, or Yuusuke’s FABULOUS speech and the dent being a misunderstanding caused by a really REALLY fat cat

Speaking of gag comedy, Sunohara is the best Key male side character ever, 10x better than Kanon’s Jun. From getting beat up by Kyou and Tomoyo on the same day to playing along with Tomoya’s hologram/cyborg Armageddon ploy, I find him pretty hilarious. For a side character, he certainly is getting a lot of screentime and dialog, even the preview for next episode suggests that he’ll be the centre of focus. And despite having his ass handed to him by her on a daily basis, he’s totally in love with Tomoyo. I also heard a rumor that he had the most lines in the Clannad game, which is made of lulz and orz at the same time.

Character wise, I’ve already expressed my fears, Clannad’s cast is growing by the episode and isn’t doing much to separate the main characters from side characters, nor are they developing any of them to much of an extent, besides Tomoya and Nagisa. If Clannad even is a harem, I have no idea who out of the female cast has interest in Tomoya, nor if he has any interest in them, this compared to Kanon, which had a very distinct 1 girl per arc progression where Yuuichi speed dated his way through the cast and picked Ayu at the end. Clannad has a vast sea of ambiguous characters, ripe with potential but with the looming threat of failing to cover them all. But I suppose KyoAni of all production companies should be well versed in character central stories.

As for the story itself, I’m still not sure where we’re heading on that front. Much like Ayu’s dream sequences in Kanon, all the episodes have included an aside that shows the alternate world inhabited by a single girl and her junk composed robot, but no explanation as to its significance has been given. And even in the real world, the events so far have been disjoint and random, beyond a bunch of character introductions, there’s no indication of a concrete plot. I’m guessing there’ll be a revelation episode or two where everything comes together in a retrospectively brilliant meshing of plot elements, but until then, I’m just confused. And realize when I say all this, I’m talking about canon plot elements, not subtly implied build up that is to be interpreted at the viewers leisure. Although it is fun to read the theories of commenters, keep those coming.

I guess that’s it until next week, which the preview suggests is a Sunohara centric episode where he gets beat up by Tomoyo some more, but ends up falling for her, lol.

Oh, speaking of Tomoyo, her combo counter seems to be cumulative, seeing as it started from 5xx this week.

Doriboru, shuuuto!

~ Shirukii ~