Last Sunday, May 18, 2008, I was able to watch the whole series of CLANNAD. I first heard about it from my friend. I was intrigued so I checked it out. Now I am hooked on it.
Here's Plot...
Tomoya Okazaki is a third year high school student resentful of his life. His mother passed away from a car accident when he was younger, causing his father to resort to alcohol and gambling. This results in fights between the two until Tomoya's shoulder is injured in a fight. Since then, Tomoya has had distant relationships with his father, causing him to become a delinquent over time. While on a walk to school, he meets a strange girl named Nagisa Furukawa who is a year older, but is repeating due to illness. Due to this, she is often alone as most of her friends have moved on. The two begin hanging out and slowly, as time goes by, Tomoya finds his life shifting in a new direction.
The Main Characters are:
Tomoya Okazaki
Tomoya is the male protagonist of Clannad. Due to his habit of always arriving late to school, skipping classes during the day, and staying out all night, he has been labeled as a delinquent, or a young person who defies authority. Ever since his mother, Atsuko, died in a car accident when he was young, Tomoya has been living with his father, Naoyuki, with whom he argues constantly. Tomoya was injured during a fight with his father three years ago; since then, their relationship has been very distant. While walking to school, Tomoya met Nagisa Furukawa, since then, his life changed. Nagisa describes him as someone who is mean and bad-mouthed, but actually kind-hearted.
Nagisa Furukawa
Nagisa is the main heroine of Clannad. Although she is in her third year in high school, as is Tomoya, Nagisa is actually one year older since she had to repeat her third year after an illness that lasted nine months. On the first day of school, She meets Tomoya on a long hill path in front of the school. She has a strange habit of muttering the names of food that she plans to eat as a way to motivate herself, such as anpan. She wants to reestablish the once-disbanded drama club. She does not have much self-confidence so she often needs help in order to motivate herself through the day.
After Tomoya befriends Nagisa, she tells him of her dream of joining the drama club. They soon discover that the club was disbanded, and has no members anymore. While attempting to recreate the club, Nagisa and Tomoya discover that they cannot advertise for new members, having missed the deadline to do so. In order to create an officially recognized club, they find they need at least three members and a sponsor teacher for the club, and the only one left is Koumura, who asks them to discuss with the chorus club members. After listening to Rie's story, Nagisa gives up reestablishing drama club. Youhei is furious about the story, and decides to have a 3-on-3 basketball match with the basketball team to prove that the chorus club members cannot hide behind their handicap. This happens to be a success, since the chorus club members decide to share Koumura with the drama club.
After Tomoya had a falling out with his father, Nagisa offers to have Tomoya move into her house until things settle down, to which Tomoya agrees. Curious about Nagisa's play which is the same as the illusionary world he dreamt, Tomoya tries to find about the story, which leads him to learn about the secrets behind Nagisa's sickness. Nagisa later also learns of the secret and becomes guilty about unknowingly forcing her parents to give up their dreams. However, this changes once her parents tell her that since that day, they had changed their dream to hers, and with the help of Tomoya, Nagisa regains the mental strength to act out her drama. Nagisa later succumbs to her sickness again, and is forced to repeat her third year again in After Story.
Kyou Fujibayashi
Kyou is a bad-mouthed and aggressive girl who is also well known as a good cook. She was in Tomoya's class in their second year, and has maintained a steady friendship with Tomoya even though they are put in different classes on their third year. She is currently the class representative of her class. She has a pet baby boar named Button (ボタン, Botan?) after Japanese food botan-nabe, or wild boar nabe. She even has her own motorbike (in this case a scooter), which is known only to Tomoya and her sister, as Kyou does not want the news of her possession of it to be known, as she fears suspension from school because she is not allowed to ride a motorbike to school. Her favourite weapon is various types of dictionaries, which are thrown at anyone she gets furious with, typically Youhei. In the anime, Kyou uses various books as weapons more often, and while Tomoya almost always avoids them, Youhei gets hit almost every single time.
Kotomi Ichinose
Kotomi is another schoolmate of Tomoya's in the same year, but, like Kyou, is in a separate class from Tomoya. She is in the top ten for every subject throughout the whole country in standardized exam results—she always goes to library to read extra materials, especially books in foreign languages. Kotomi is a very quiet girl and it is quite difficult to communicate with her. In her spare time, she plays the violin, although she is very poor at it to the point of causing pain to those who hear her play.
Tomoya meets her for the first time when he skips class. He enters the library and finds Kotomi sitting on the floor barefoot (she is often seen with her shoes removed), reading books with scissors in her hand. Tomoya stops her from cutting the book with her scissors, then strangely, Kotomi offers her bento to him, and asks him to come again the next day. When they meet again, Tomoya asks her whether she likes to skip class, which Kotomi agrees. One day, Youhei meets up with Tomoya, and is told that there is a girl who offers free food. Youhei enters the library but he gets ignored. Youhei is surprised that Tomoya knows Kotomi as she is an academic student who got top ten in the nation-wide, and is exempted from lessons. Tomoya starts skipping the fourth period and spend his time with Kotomi in the library. Tomoya later decides to have Kotomi make friends to make her more sociable.
Just when Kotomi becomes more sociable, a bus accident causes her to breakdown in front of everyone and has to return home later. Tomoya visits her in her dark house and learns that he and Kotomi were childhood friends, but lost contact with each other after Kotomi's parents died in an air-accident as their plane malfunctioned. She does not want to lose anyone she loves anymore, and asks Tomoya to leave her alone. Wanting to bring Kotomi away from her past, Tomoya decides to renovate her garden. The drama club members want to gift Kotomi a violin, but it got destroyed by a speeding biker. After renovating Kotomi's garden, Kotomi appears to Tomoya, and after some poignant conversation, Tomoya brings Kotomi out of her house to see the outside world inside her heart and returns to her usual self. The next day, her guardian presents Kotomi her parent's briefcase that has traveled all the way to Japan, and inside is a teddy bear and a letter, asking Kotomi to live the way she wants and grow up to be an adult. Kotomi realizes she is still being loved by her parents and cries. After this, Kotomi becomes more mature, and the drama club members finally give Kotomi a violin.
Tomoyo Sakagami
Tomoyo transferred to Tomoya's school as a second year student during spring. Although Tomoya is older than her, Tomoyo does not show him his due respect as a senior student. She has a younger brother named Takafumi (鷹文, Takafumi?).
She is rumored to be violent and to have a misconduct record for fighting. These rumors are later confirmed, first when she beats up several students from her previous school one day at her new school during school hours. Unable to believe it, Youhei checks on her along with Tomoya, who tag along with him to kill time. The next day, Youhei provokes Tomoyo to a match, Tomoya recalls a legend in his town, an incredibly strong girl who wanders at night beating up bad people who bothers the ordinary. After recalling, Youhei is immediately defeated. Youhei refused to accept defeat, and upon meeting her the second time, even after Tomoyo warns him, he attacks her and is defeated again. Tomoya later learns from Tomoyo that she wants to be a student council president.
Fuko Ibuki
Fuko is a first year student at Tomoya's school. She is always alone, making wood carvings of starfish with a small knife to give to others as presents. This hobby completely drains her concentration and awareness of her surroundings.
Fuko's story has several connections with Nagisa's story. In the beginning, Tomoya finds Fuko in an empty classroom, carving a block of wood with a knife. Tomoya confiscates the knife after noticing she is hurting herself, but eventually returns the knife the next day, after Fuko nudged him. Some days later, Tomoya learnt from Fuko that she is carving 700 starfish to be distributed to all the students in the school, wanting them to attend her sister Kouko's wedding. The main problem is that no one in the school knows about Kouko, who had retired 3 years ago.
After learning about Fuko's accident and her unknown existence, both Nagisa and Tomoya decides to assist Fuko to accomplish her dreams. Just when they thought everything goes well, Fuko starts to disappear from everyone's heart, due to the fact that she is a ghost and her spiritual power is disappearing, as the real Fuko had stopped breathing in the hospital. Wanting Kouko's wedding to happen, Tomoya asks Koumura to organize the wedding ceremony at May 18th. Through many struggles and hardships, Kouko's wedding turns into a success and everyone that was given a starfish carving came to the wedding. After the wedding, Fuko thanks Tomoya for everything he did, and then appears in front of her sister Kouko to congratulate before disappearing, leaving behind a crying Tomoya. After the wedding, Kouko and Yusuke decide to thank Fuko in her hospital room, and leave the city. Although everyone forgets about Fuko, they certainly want to become friends with her.
