Key Visual Arts

Mia Touma from Duel Savior. She is a horrible, horrible person when she gets a little focus. And yeah, Takumi was the other guy.

@Bokhura Burnes

I think you are seriously overlooking Nagisa's actions on After story. I am fairly sure that Nagisa did a decent job on her speech( according to her but Nagisa is more likely to underestimate her abilities) but there was no interest in a drama club( It was already disbanded last year due lack of interest). She also took the initiative to help Tomoya making up with his father, to get a job and in Fuuko's arc, to help Fuuko. She improved quite a bit in the story and she even helps Tomoya a lot. She was meant to be clueless and useless but determined at first( hence waiting Tomoya on a rainy day or not having courage to recruit people).

His father was a dick who gave him a permanent disability, caused him to nearly fail to graduate, socially isolated him and treated him like a stranger. Screw him.

^I humbly disagree with that silly opinion.

You can disagree with my conclusion, but it's not a silly opinion since everything I said was true.

edited 5th Jun '13 8:51:21 PM by Arha

Let's agree to respect each other's opinions no matter how wrong yours is. <3

I have objectively true opinions though.

Hey, it's not like Tomoya doesn't do the same thing for a while.

edited 5th Jun '13 10:36:34 PM by Zakamutt

Sure, and when he's doing it he's an irresponsible dick too. The difference is that he improves his behavior. And he does it before causing irreparable damage too.

@Ozaniel: But what, exactly, leads Tomoya to make those steps you mentioned? He doesn't make up with his father due to Nagisa, he makes up with him after meeting his grandmother on the trip with Ushio. He doesn't get a job due to Nagisa's help, he gets one due to his connection with Yusuke. Nagisa does help Fuko out, but Tomoya is the one who befriends her in the first place and gets the plot rolling; Nagisa is merely along for the ride.

In all these cases (with the slight exception of Fuko, but even here she isn't doing anything more that, say, Sanae or Sunohara), her role isn't an active one. Instead, it's to serve as the passive motivation for Tomoya to take action by offering support. There's an implicit attitude of "if you truly care about me, you'll man up and take control of the issues in your life, because I can't be protected by someone who has big personal problems" here (as opposed to one of "we can help each other out and be there for each other") that just rubs me the wrong way.

Which is why I find the whole drama club plot so annoying. Maybe no one was interested in the drama club initially, but it would have been nice to see Nagisa win people over to being into it through her performance, or be able to use the confidence she gained in the first year to attract members in the second year, or SOMETHING to show that she could be effective. The fact that she's unable to attain this just contributes to her sense of artifical uselessness.

@Arha: And yes, Tomoya's father is a dick. Not that it wasn't worth Tomoya trying to make things better years after the fact, but there was a bit of easy redemption there.

This is going to sound like sappy bullshit but I'l go with it anyway. I think a big point of the story is that you're not always strong enough to deal with difficult situations on your own. That's why Nagisa needs Tomoya's help with the drama club. But it's not just Nagisa. Tomoya pretty much explodes when his father is imprisoned, and NEEDS Nagisa's help to calm down. Before he meets her in the first place, he's disappointed in life itself.

I totally understand that it's frustrating to see her fail to do anything on her own, and she is a 'weak' person. But that's why she and Tomoya are paired together. So that they can support each other.

I don't like weak people like that, though. A person needs to be able to do some things on their own. Especially if they're to have a relationship with someone else as equals. That's why I feel that Tomoyo has the best relationship in Clannad despite her not necessarily being my favorite of the girls. It's also why I think the Rin/Riki relationship in Little Busters sucks despite actually liking Rin. True, I think it's bad for a slightly different reason, but that reason is still related: Nagisa is completely weak and passive and Rin is all take and no give.

Also, Tomoya clearly doesn't need Nagisa because he can get some real emotional support with Kotomi and Tomoyo if no one else. Probably Yukine too, though that's not explicit. Even Nagisa herself isn't really the biggest attraction to Tomoya so much as her healthy, happy family.

edited 7th Jun '13 7:18:49 AM by Arha

Nagisa is the reason I don't call CLANNAD one of my favorite romances.

But wow Arha, Tomoya's interest in Nagisa may stem almost entirely from the sense of family he gets from the Furukawas (well that, and Sanae)? That's a way of looking at it I hadn't considered, and it's kind of amusing.

edited 7th Jun '13 7:59:06 AM by UltimatelySubjective

I agree that it's a good thing to show characters with weaknesses who need to rely on others at times. In fact, the one character type that I dislike as much as the 'helpless moeblob' type is the 'ice-cold badass with no doubts, emotions, or inner life'. Both these types are, in a word, boring. I much prefer seeing interactions between characters with both strengths and flaws, who can help each other out and be helped out in turn.

The problem with Nagisa was that the scale was too imbalanced. It wasn't just that she was weak in certain areas, it was that (as Arha said) she could barely do anything on her own. Thus Tomoya was always falling into the 'strong' position while she was in the 'weak' one, which got annoying.

Interestingly enough, while I liked Tomoyo's character ok, I didn't think that hers was the best relationship with Tomoya, because it seemed like she was too much of The Ace in comparison to him. While I definitely think their affection for each other was genuine, I also think the school had a point that they were destined for different places in life and they wouldn't be compatible in the long run. (It's kind of the same issue as the much-derided Elizabeth/Anthony relationship in For Better Or For Worse.) From what I hear about Tomoyo After, this seems to be not unfounded.

When it comes down to it, I liked Tomoya best with Kyou — they might not work out for ever and ever, but they could have a good compatible high school relationship built around snarking at other people from the sidelines. (On the other hand, Yukine might have been a stronger, more dynamic partner for Tomoya had her character been developed more.)

IMHO Tomoya and Tomoyo's couple relation in Tomoyo After is fine, as is their commitment to staying together. That's why it had to resort to giving Tomoya a Key disease and killing him off for drama. But their dynamic in Tomoyo After is also not the one I liked from CLANNAD.

Actually the girl I thought the difference in direction was too big with was Kotomi. Her intelligence and academic qualities make me wonder what would even keep them together as a couple. Wouldn't their discussions be on completely different levels? Aren't the academic world and the scientific world where Kotomi appears to be headed the exact opposite of where Tomoya is headed? Not that the idea of two people of differing I Qs dating is strange but I feel it was somehow unaddressed in the VN.

edited 7th Jun '13 6:44:51 PM by UltimatelySubjective

I haven't actually read Tomoyo After, so I wouldn't know (I've just read summaries of the basic plot). How does it reconcile the driven personality Tomoyo has in Clanand with her taking on a housewife role?

And yes, I felt the same thing (probably even more so) with Kotomi.

edited 8th Jun '13 12:56:04 AM by BokhuraBurnes

That's not really the big problem I see with that relationship so much as Kotomi being pretty emotionally fragile.

Also, I assumed that was basically the whole point of the Nagisa relationship. She does represent a place of stability and belonging that Tomoya lacks.

Never read Tomoyo After since I've already heard how it ends. Don't need that.

edited 8th Jun '13 12:59:23 AM by Arha

Well, they handled it pretty well on that front, with Tomoyo being a girlfriend figure, big sister figure, mother figure and generally mature and responsible for her age.

Tomoya and her appear to be equals in the relationship and she comes around to his place because she wants to spend time with him (she's still going to school and technically living at home). It's not as though she became suddenly submissive, not anymore than that time she cooked for him at home in CLANNAD. And she's still a better fighter that Tomoya, not that it comes up more than once. Also the ending, as you may or may not know, requires her to be tremendously strong without Tomoya.

But, I think the worst part is making Tomoyo the focus of their poorly timed gags. Or more likely, the gags themselves are just bad.

Tomoyo's characterisation as someone mis-interpreting the importance of femininity in CLANNAD becomes gags about her comedically collapsing in some kind of sulk from not being seen as feminine by Tomoya, who is - in a show of slightly more accurate characterisation - kind of trollish and less than serious about the whole thing.

It's one of the reasons I think they got the characterisations wrong for Tomoyo After.

edited 8th Jun '13 3:06:29 AM by UltimatelySubjective

Thanks for the info. I was going off of statements like (from the Clannad wiki):

"Tomoyo has destroyed her promising future. She has given up on going to a good university and doing many great things. She is dragged down by Tomoya but seems to be satisfied with just being his housewife."

Nice to know that this, at least, seems to be an overstatement.

Actually, I take that back. Kotomi and Tomoya have pretty much nothing in common. I could see a relationship sorta maybe working but I'm not sure I'd consider it... healthy isn't quite the word I'm looking for, but it's close.

I'm told that Tomoya in Tomoyo After is kind of obnoxious. Is that true?

Yeah, kinda.

You're going to get a pretty biased view of Tomoyo After if you keep listening to me, but if you take CLANNAD Tomoya and make his gags kind of lame but still as potentially harmful to others, the result isn't going to be good. What he says for jokes can seem a little insensitive in the beginning, particularly to Tomoyo.

Later on, some of the decisions he makes (which are of course couple decisions, and involve Tomoyo) seem harsh too (though there are reasons and so forth).

I wouldn't go so far as to say obnoxious though. Barely even smug or insufferable (just a little).

Having a biased view isn't really a big concern since I don't intend to read it. I know how it ends and that just doesn't sound appealing to me. But yeah, I get your point.

I am haven't finished the VN, but I did finish the anime and I don't quite feel like necroing that thread up so I will be just posting here.

When Nagisa died, I actually thought that he would get remarried, possibly with Kyou, simply because we see her interacting with him in AS (at least that was how it was in anime). Of course, it wouldn't be reall y in character; Tomoya was far too crushed to even think of anything like that. I guess it was just my wistful thinking.

It might have been an interesting idea. He did seem to be moving on, but then the story crapped all over that so it's kind of a moot point either way.

There's an Air patch out, apparently. It's only a beta, though.

edited 11th Aug '13 12:42:10 AM by Arha