Finale: Clannad ~After Story~
Clannad is about family. This is something that sort of gets beaten into you throughout the course of the show. This very important to understanding just what the hell goes on.
I understand why Clannad got split into two seasons, since following year-long shows is kind of tiring, but the two halves of After Story were jarringly different. It might have been better for flow to have kept it all together so that the school life stuff could be put together without it feeling like there were a few extra leftover arcs at the beginning of After Story. In fact, in my mind, I sort of lump the first half of After Story with the first season of Clannad and the actual After Story with After Story.
Visual novel adaptations are hard. Visual novels are not linear and when something like Clannad exploits that structure, serializing it is made even harder. Because my superpower is not caring about spoilers, I’ve read a lot of stuff about the visual novel and what the ending is supposed to mean. And the ending is one of those things that exploits the structure of the visual novel.
Outside of the context of the visual novel and paths and whatever, the ending is very deus ex machina. I mean, we get a’splosion, some talking, and then Tomoya “wakes up” at the critical moment but everything is bright and we get a happy ending. It’s sort of like the first time you go through Higurashi. You become disoriented and wonder what the hell just happened.
So two things are key to understanding the ending. The first is that Clannad is about family. The second is that Clannad is a visual novel.
What we got in the anime was the true end. So what was the bad end? The bad end was if there were no deus ex machina. So in a sense, we got to see both ends. But what’s the prerequisite for the true end? The anime almost makes it look like it was the decision to call out to Nagisa. In fact, what’s required is that you have enough light orbs.
The light orbs are explained as the happiness of others. They also happen to be a gameplay mechanic. Once you finish an arc, you get a light orb. This seems like it’s just a way to get you to play all of the paths. The function of the light orbs isn’t that obvious, since Yukine sort of explains it offhandedly and Ushio seeing the light orb enter Tomoya didn’t really spell anything out. Even after Ushio’s explanation in the imaginary world, it isn’t clear that Tomoya was collecting these things.
After all, why would Ushio’s and Nagisa’s fate be tied to these light orbs instead of meeting Nagisa? Why is it impossible to save Ushio and Nagisa without playing all the other arcs? Remember what Tomoya says and what he’s like when we’re first introduced to him. He hates the city he lives in. He has no understanding of what a family is. He continues to hate the city all the way until the end. Upon your first time reaching the end, in the imaginary world, Ushio sends you back to collect light orbs.
Through collecting the light orbs and finishing the various paths, which we see accumulating in the anime at the episode title screen, Tomoya learns what family is. Only after finishing all the other paths is he able to come around to the fact that the town that he hated, which also happens to be some town that grants peoples’ wishes, is a giant family. And only after he learns all of this is he able to save his family.
Obviously, this isn’t as easy to show in the anime. In the anime, our experience with the true end happens right after the bad end and is fairly abrupt. In the visual novel, Tomoya works his way to the bad end and realizes that there’s no way to avoid it except to collect the light orbs. He is then set on the arduous task of collecting these light orbs, while keeping in mind that he’s working to save Nagisa and Ushio, knowing what will happen if he fails.
All things considered, KyoAni did a pretty good job with the ending. The last episode played out almost exactly how I predicted they’d do it. Now that it’s over, I can see why Clannad is considered Key’s best work. I can safely say it’s the best Key anime adaptation.
Interesting! Thanks for the explanation about the true end — I haven’t played the visual novel, but figured it might have been something like that. ^^
[...] but this grain of salt is taken, and the warm and fuzzy end is nevertheless satisfying (Blkmage, Omni,7 spells out some illogical parts of the [...]
wow,this was fun!
wow! I just saw the whole visual series and didn’t quite get the ending. Now that I just read the full understanding I finally get it. I have to say this was the best novel ever!!!!!!! It was so life like and had many different situations. I would deffinetly recommend this to all of my anime friends!!!!!!!!