Success!

*insert typical comment on Clannad being a great standalone comedy*

*insert equally typical comment on how, despite the aforementioned point, drama is being built up well*

What else can I say. Week after week Clannad continues to make me laugh while giving subtle hints that down the road I’m probably going to be fighting back tears, a very difficult balance to attain. If I had to complain about something in the series so far, it still lacks a bit of directional plot, but even that’s a weak point seeing as Fuko’s arc is progressing well.

Episode Rating: 9/10

Tomoya heads over to Nagisa’s house to pick her and Fuko up, only to be greeted by Nanae who pridefully shows him her new creations, bread shaped like star(fish). Tomoya doesn’t hesitate to heavily criticize them, sending Nanae into a tear filled speech about how Akio reacted the same way but she still pulls herself together and offers him one, which he doesn’t hesitate to turn down.

But at least one person in the house likes them, when Fuko comes downstairs to see the shop filled with stars, she goes into one of her space outs. Tomoya sees his chance and grabs a box of juice from Nagisa’s fridge and succeeds in squirting it up Fuko’s nose.

At school that day, Fuko continues her campaign handing out stars to random students, now having covered quite a number of the student body. Nagisa continues to be in awe at how hard Fuko tries and rushes off to the art room to get her some more scrap wood. Suddenly, Fuko comes diving into Tomoya’s arms seeking protection from a bunch of weirdos like him. Apparently Fuko has become quite famous around the school and has managed to build a small fanbase who, despite Fuko saying she doesn’t need it, say they’ll do their best to help her out.

Later, Fuko, Tomoya and Nagisa meet up to make a plan on what to do to make the most out of Fuko’s campaign, he suggests that the upcoming Founder’s Festival is the perfect place to hand out more of her stars. Similar to the Cultural Festival, the Founder’s Festival has all the students in high spirits and a lot of outsiders visiting the school as well, a perfect place for Fuko to gather people for her sister’s wedding.

Overhearing the conversation, Sunohara offers his help as well, but Fuko turns the weirdo with funny colored hair down. So Sunohara challenges her to a contest, to make it fair, the contest will be wood carving, a suitable handicap for Fuko. Sunohara states the theme, nue, a mythical creature with the head of a monkey, the body of a raccoon dog, the legs of a tiger, and a snake instead of a tail (lol @ Nagisa thinking it was real). But since Fuko has no idea what that is, she ends up carving a frog instead, since it’s off theme, Sunohara declares it his win. But during his victory speech, his hand slips and he stabs himself in the hand, Tomoya declares DNF and Fuko wins by default!

After school, Nagisa and Tomoya send Fuko home by herself to carry out their plans to invite Ibuki-sensei to the festival so the two can meet. When they get to her house, Tomoya recognizes Yuusuke coming out and realizes he’s the Yuusuke that Ibuki-sensei is engaged to. They tell them their plan to invite her to the festival, he thinks it’s a great idea and gives them the go ahead.

Ibuki-sensei is a little wary at first, but when she remembers that she made a promise to go to the festival when her sister was accepted, she thinks it would be a good idea to go in her place and tell her what it’s like. At this point, Nagisa is holding back tears thinking of Fuko and Ibuki-sensei reuniting, Tomoya tries to cover for her by saying she needs to go to the bathroom really badly, but Nagisa can’t take it anymore and runs off in tears.

Finally, the day of the festival arrives, however, Fuko worked so hard to make enough stars that she passed out at the table. With no other choice, Tomoya tosses her on his back and piggybacks her out of the house. Nagisa thinks she looks really comfortable, but Tomoya bets that when she wakes up she’ll say something like “it was horrible”, and sure enough, when Fuko wakes to the realization Tomoya has been carrying her, she says it’s “vaguely horrible”.

When the three of them arrive at the festival, the first thing they notice is that Fuko’s fanclub has gone all out, setting up a booth with various “Fuko” branded and starfish themed merchandise. Seeing all of it makes Fuko go on one of her space outs and when she wakes up she finds herself dressed in a meido costume , helping out Ryou and Kyou’s classes at their meido cafe, doubling as a good place to hand out some stars. Since they’re short on staff, Nagisa also lends a her services as a waitress.

Afterwards, Fuko continues to hand out stars while Nagisa, Tomoya and Sunohara watch her pour her heart into it. Inspired by Fuko’s determination, Nagisa says she’ll copy her spirit and succeed in bringing back the drama club. Sunohara says he’ll help out for the sake of his ‘beloved’ Nagisa-chan, emphasizing how serious he is. But when Tomoya points out a cute single girl walking by, he ditches them to go flirt. But as he’s chasing her down he’s stopped by someone in a bear costume, after it refuses to move out of the way, Sunohara attacks it, only to be dodged and roundhouse kicked out of the window, which can only mean that the person in the suit is none other than Tomoyo.

She explains that she’s been assigned as a patrol to take care of trouble makers, but since there are a lot of locals that would start a fight with her on sight, she’s forced to wear the bear costume as a disguise. Then, Fuko approaches her and offers her a star, Tomoyo says she usually doesn’t accept such things, but she notices the effort Fuko put into making it herself, she gladly accepts it.

Soon after, the three of them run into Mitsui-san, who had rejected Fuko’s offer before. Fuko once again presents her with a star, and surprisingly, Mitsui accepts it. Probably having heard the rumors of how hard Fuko has been working to get people to celebrate Ibuki-sensei’s wedding, Mitsui thoughts on the matter changed and she says she’ll even attend the wedding as long as it’s after exams.

Later, while Fuko continues to hand out stars outside, Ibuki-sensei finally shows up to the festival. She happily walks up and greets them, going on about how despite not having changed in appearance, the school seeming like a completely different place. Nagisa and Tomoya eagerly wait for her to comment on Fuko, but realize something is wrong when she begins to address them as if only the two of them are there, not even acknowledging Fuko…

Thoughts

Great episode, another perfect mix of teh funny and some hints at drama to come. The only danger I see Clannad facing is getting stuck between its newfound comedy and its underlying melodrama roots. Either or is appropriate at the right times, I just hope they don’t make the mistake of mixing them inappropriately. But KyoAni is pretty good at using comedic relief and drama climax, so I don’t think that’ll be an issue.

While the premise of Fuko’s arc is something we’ve seen before, I’m really taking a liking to it. Fuko is a great character, full of energy and with a very blunt and idiosyncratic manner of speech, not to mention her random space outs. A few dimes short of a dollar, yes, but retardmoe is still moe!

Speaking of moe, oh God Nagisa’s crying scene was win. Watching her struggle fruitlessly to hold back tears was hilariously cute. It also really did sound like she was on the verge of tears, Nakahara Mai did great job with that.

Changing topics to KyoAni’s odd style of humor, what’s up with these random dream sequences. The one with Fuko is a understandable as it was just a normal fantasy sequence, albeit a little weird in content. But the first one with Tomoya’s whole story about Fuko being unsealed hundred of years into the future was weird, am I missing an RPG reference here? And on that note, KyoAni sure is taking the whole RPG theme pretty far, what with the numerous skill mastery scenes. They’re pretty funny, but I can’t help but think that I’m missing some really obvious deeper reference.

Speaking of missing things, there are two things that we haven’t seen for a couple episodes, one that is getting a well deserved rest, but another that I’m anxiously waiting for an explanation on. The former is Tomoyo’s hit counter, despite giving Sunohara another well powered kick, it wasn’t shown. It wasn’t there last week either as Tomoyo didn’t get any screen time last episode. I’ll take it as a good thing though, in moderation it’s funny, but the first four eps overdid it.

The second are the alternate reality scenes with the junk robot and the yet unidentified girl. I’m sure it will play an important role eventually, but it would be nice to have some sort of hint as to where that’s going, rather than giving us some sneak peaks and then letting us hang for numerous episodes without so much as a mention.

But meh, this is just me reaching for things to criticize so I seem neutral, if they had done an cut away to the alternate world I probably would have complained that it disrupted the flow of the episode XD

I’m looking forward to seeing where Fuko’s arc goes from here. With Fuko being a tangible existence to the rest of the world, I can’t help but think that maybe it’s Ibuki-sensei that’s the crazy one here, maybe having been so traumatized from Fuko’s accident, she shut out the possibility of her recovery. That would certainly be an interesting twist, but it seems like a bit of a stretch, and it’s not like Key hasn’t made ghosts/spirits physically “real” before, ie. Ayu. But in any case, it’s shaping up to be a great arc, and if KyoAni’s past works are any indication, character arcs only get better as the series goes on.

Fuko may be awesome in her own rights, but meido Kyou reinforces her position as my fav Clannad girl. A Ryou is fine too :3

~ Shirukii ~