I had thought of buying this phone for a long time, but because Nokia Build only currently operates in Europe there were a lot of issues with regard to payment shipping. Luckily I have a friend studying in the UK who bought it on my behalf and brought it over this June. The total was €142 including shipping and VAT (tax), which is approximately $224 CAD or 200 USD. A quick eBay search reveals that the current typical Canadian price is about $190, and that’s without the most important part: the loli custom cover.

Naturally, it’s a little embarrassing to have it out; luckily it came with extra covers that can be quickly interchanged. I imagine for more professional environments I’ll have to think ahead and stick on the blue cover. The green one is plain fugly, but it was either blue & green or pink & white.

The resolution and quality of the custom image are mediocre, if you look closely there’s some obvious distortion from downsampling and I’d have preferred a matte finish over a glossy finish. But, thinking about it, people will either be too engrossed or disgusted over the content to make such observations.

The default ring tone right now is ‘Don’t Say Lazy’ (the ED theme from K-ON) and I made a Mio theme for the menu and startup/shutdown screens. I’m wondering what accessories to put on it, maybe a lace-like string not unlike the Fujibayashi’s hair… whatever you call it?

1:50 Laser-cut anime figures from 3mm basswood

In other Otaku news, I had some extra time with the laser cutter and I decided to cut out some 1:50 scale figures out of 3mm basswood to use in my architecture models. Anime figures are the easiest, firstly because I have a huge collection of images, and secondly because the cel-shading and relatively simple backgrounds call for easy extraction. In many cases I could just plop them into Photoshop, run a few filters, send it to Illustrator and live-trace the outline. I also had my wallpaper which already had silhouetted figures which can go directly into illustrator for a live-trace. I already have 80 or so cuts of about 10 different characters (some anime some non-anime) but I’m definitely going to do this again if I book spare time on the laser cutter in the future.

The following are my source images. I left out a lot of details like kannagi’s hair and shoujo-wand, because I am using these in an academic context and I don’t want it to be totally obvious that I’m using anime characters…

This entry covers the closing episodes of Clannad After Story. I will probably do one last shorter entry for my overall thoughts and opinions, but first I need to set the story straight. I’ll give you a forewarning that this entry is extremely long. A PDF version is being prepared.

I hate this city. It’s full of all the memories I want to forget about. Go to school every day, chat with friends, and then go back to the home I don’t even want to go back to.
Will something eventually change, doing this? Will that day come?

An-pan!
Do you like this school? I really, really like it.
But nothing can stay unchanged.

A girl I’ve never seen before.
The words weren’t directed at me. She must be talking to someone in her heart.

Fun things… Happy things… They can’t all possible stay unchanged.
Even so, can you keep on loving this place?

Just find them. Just find new fun and happy things.
C’mon, let’s get going.

We start to walk up…
…the long… long… uphill climb.

Tomoya & Nagisa, episode 1

The closing episode of Clannad After took us by quite a surprise. The cryptic and puzzling ending, especially with Fuko, could be referred to as the Evangelion of Drama: fragmented pieces, seemingly irrelevant scenes, and an indefinite ending With time travel inevitably in the picture, the issue of ‘what happened when’ arose and aroused.. Many of us have our attention on 2chan’s Clannad Storyline Diagram as presented by Sankaku Complex. I have not played the game yet, so I was half-excited and half-nervous when I saw this; I really wanted to make an interpretation on my own. But I also wanted to see what interpretation was most widely accepted by the community, and I believed there might be some clues to help my own interpretation. Sankaku’s diagram gives an explanation of the entire Clannad series by showing us when each episode actually occurs. According to it, we never watch Tomoya and Nagisa in their first life, until her death after Ushio is born. The story then proceeds with After Story episodes 17 – 21. After jumping back in time, Tomoya saved Nagisa with light orbs gathered by helping the supporting characters as we saw in episodes 1 to After Story episode 16. Aside from completely omitting the Illusionary World, it contradicts with the story as presented by the episodes. This is my train of logic:

1. Tomoya went back in time due to grief over Ushio’s and Nagisa’s deaths.
2. For both Ushio and Nagisa to have died, Tomoya must have married and started a family with Nagisa.
3. For Tomoya to have married Nagisa, they must have dated.
4. For Nagisa and Tomoya to have dated, they must have re-established the theatre club.
5. To have re-established the theatre club, Tomoya (and Nagisa) must have recruited other members.
6. To have recruited other members, Tomoya and Nagisa must have helped them and become their friends.
7. Therefore, if Tomoya did not help the other characters, none of the above would have happened.

This alone is enough evidence to disprove the diagram. There are additional discrepancies which I will present, but before I move on, I need to lay out some terms that I will be using.

Back on topic, remember the scene in the final episode of After Story with the following conversation? This is right after Tomoya was sent back in time.

Nagisa…

I was really worried you might be thinking that you should have never met me.
I’m glad that I met you. I had a wonderful life.

Nagisa.

So please. Don’t lose yourself.
No matter what may await, please don’t regret meeting me.
Is that too much to ask?

You’re right…
Thank you.

Nagisa & Tomoya, After Story episode 22

This quote proves two things. Firstly, this undeniably proves that Nagisa is also aware of what happened in the previous world. Secondly, if at the bottom of the hill both Nagisa and Tomoya were aware of their travel through time, they would acknowledge that they have already married. Building from this, there would be no shyness between them in any of the episodes, and would have no motive to suppress or hide their feelings from each other.

Continuing, recall when Nagisa had a mental breakdown the day before the School Festival. If this indeed happened after travelling back in time, Nagisa must have already known that her parents changed their dreams for her sake, and thus would not have been emotionally shocked when she found photo albums and video tapes in the shed.

If Tomoya had known about the seriousness of his father’s condition, he would have done all that he could to prevent it. His promotion was drowned because of his father’s dealings with drugs, so if he had known beforehand he would have done all he could to prevent it. Also, he made up with his father before Ushio’s death. There would be no reason for Tomoya to put off settling the misunderstandings with his father after travelling back in time.

It must have been hard.

Yeah.

Ryou, Kotomi, and Youhei are all worried about you.
We were thinking maybe we should visit you when we got together over New Year’s, but we ended up saying it’d be best to leave you alone for now.

Thanks.

But this means that everything’s settled, right? All the loose ends?

Yeah.

Kyou & Tomoya, After Story episode 20

After Nagisa’s death, Ushio proceeded to attend kindergarten under Sanae and Akio. Kyou was her teacher, and when Tomoya finally readopted Ushio, Kyou mentioned the members of the theatre club and how they wanted to meet him. Nagisa had already died, and Tomoya was friends with the Theatre Club. This proves that Tomoya had already helped the heroines during his first psychological life, again disproving the timeline diagram.

All girls like fortune telling at the genetic level.
Of course, it’s a pity that I can’t get it right, but I think it’s better if I don’t.
If the results come true, it’s as if there’s only one future.
But if it fails, we can think that other futures exist.
We never know how the future shifts because of the slightest change.
I want to believe that in our future there are many possibilities waiting.

Ryou Fujibayashi, episode 18

Now I would like to bring forward and explain my own interpretation. There is no way of knowing how true to the intended plot my interpretation stands, but all the clues I have found have pointed me this way, and I cannot find any big holes in my interpretation.

This is a world that has ended; a world where no one but I exist.
In the room are a small wooden table and a chair.
Outside the window is a vast plain with nothing.
The building is old, and there is no clue of when it was built.
I live here alone.

The play, episode 22

Ushio existed alone in the imaginary world. I am uncertain the exact reason for this, but it definitely has something to do with Nagisa’s disease, which was passed onto Ushio when she gave birth and died. In this world, we have illuminating light orbs. We have learned from various segments that the lights represent memories from another world. We learned in Shima’s arc that these light orbs are able to grant wishes. I will jump to conclude that these orbs are ‘happy’ memories, as I see no reason to consider otherwise. But, aside from the light orbs floating freely in the sky, there is another major phenomenon in the Illusionary World. This would be none other than the junk, whose existence is similar to the light orbs, but have a different implication. If the light orbs are good memories from the Real World, then what is the junk?

I picked up branches, nails, and may other things.
It’s to make a friend.
But, will the one being born be happy?
With some doubt in mind…

The play, episode 22

This world has indeed ended.
No more lives will be born; she’s the only being with life.
Either in the distant past or the dist future, I was in a different place.
It was a very lively place, but I can no longer return there.
I have this body she made for me.

The Robot, episode 22

As you may have guessed, the junk represents despair; they are memories from the Real World that one does not want to keep. And using this junk; using this despair, Ushio create a companion. Tomoya was not born into the Illusionary world by pure coincidence. He existed in the Illusionary World in the form of bad memories, which is precisely what he became after experiencing Ushio’s death. He regretted meeting Nagisa and all the things they did during their senior year. With nothing left, he no longer wanted to live on in his current world, so he was created and born into the Illusionary World. Whether he and Ushio actually died or not is not shown, but that is irrelevant.

In the Illusionary World, Ushio eventually comes to realize who she and the Robot are. She tells Tomoya, and then sends him back in time to the moment where he and Nagisa first met at the bottom of the hill. Having learnt everything he needed, he grabbed Nagisa and re-lived his life. The second third of AS episode 22 shows his second life, the surreal light and slow-motion are fast-forward representations of what happened between metting Nagisa the second time up to Ushio’s birth. Tomoya’s second school life is represented in the episode, but beyond that we don’t know any details. This leaves all but one section covered, which is the final third of AS episode 22: Clannad’s final closing scene.

So what’s the deal here? Fuko again? As moé as Fuko is, doesn’t KyoAni realize they already budgeted too much time on her? Why would they use the most insignificant, childish character for the closing scene to an otherwise great series? It seems like they tried to put so much emphasis on her, too. Aside from her screen time, she’s second in line in the ending sequence of AS episode 22, and fourth in line when he have the achromatic fly-by right before Ushio sends Tomoya back in time. But… why?

The city will change. But there are many people who treasure these sakura trees. Not just me. Many people who live in this city feel that way. No matter how depressing a place may look, the most important places don’t change. I think there’s a similar aspect to family, too.

Tomoyo Sakagami, episode 18

The answer is clear. At least, it will be by the time you finish reading this entry, to which I must inform you is not even halfway to the end yet. Let’s first run a background check on Fuko. She was involved in a car accident in her freshman year and has been in a coma ever since. Because of this, Fuko’s sister, Kouko, was thinking of putting off her plans to marry Yoshino until Fuko awakened. Fuko knew she would not wake up anytime soon, so she created a second existence in her high school and tried to convince the students to give their blessings to her sister and fiancé. She met Tomoya and Nagisa, and together they convinced Kouko and helped her carry through with her marriage, and they even gathered many students to give their blessings and wishes to the newlywed couple. Fuko would be forever grateful towards Tomoya and Nagisa.

After her main arc, Fuko had some random appearances. Although these sequences were awkward yet light-hearted, she continued to try to help Tomoya and his friends whenever they encountered difficulties. Whatever her actions were, we can say for sure that Fuko has a strong ability to transverse between the worlds and to re-manifest herself in a secondary form. This must have been the result of the accident that happened to her on the first day of her freshman year.

Let’s take a more detailed look into Fuko’s arcs. In her first main arc, Fuko had one major contribution: She brought Nagisa and Tomoya closer together, both mentally and physically. She made Tomoya and Nagisa call each other by first name and made them comfortable sleeping on each other’s shoulders (episode 9). Helping Fuko also acquainted Tomoya and Nagisa with some of the other heroines, and without her help Tomoya and Nagisa may have never taken the first step towards their dating. We also have the appearance of Fuko towards the end of After Story; her second main arc. She fell in love with Ushio, but more importantly, Fuko recognized that Tomoya was still grieving over his deceased Nagisa. She kept asking Tomoya if he saw Nagisa in her, and was troubled when Okazaki started crying after hearing Ushio talk about her mother (AS episode 20). She must have remembered, subconsciously, what Tomoya and Nagisa had done for her and her sister many years ago. And because of that, she felt the need to repay Tomoya for his good deeds.

Shall I… Shall I take you?
To the place in this city where wishes come true?

The play, episode 22

Ushio had a habit of walking to the hospital; this is the field Akio brought Nagisa to after he found her collapsed in the snow. Nagisa dreamt of the imaginary world and linked with that field, and when she died giving birth she passed that link onto Ushio. In the final scene, we watched Fuko find her way from the hospital to Ushio by way of scent. When she first arrives, she sees Imaginary World Ushio, but we know from the subsequent sequence that it is the Real World Ushio. Maybe Fuko does in fact see Ushio as she is presented in the Illusionary World? Whatever the case, knowing that Fuko had a glimpse of Imaginary World Ushio is further evidence to support the theory of her hidden world abilities.

Now, brace yourself while I present my biggest conjecture of this article.
Recall Fuko in the earlier episodes. More precisely, recall her attire. Aside from the standard school uniform, she had black knee-socks, and a ribbon that tied her hair into a tail. Black feet, black tail. Does that ring any bells?

Now does that ring any bells? Fuko is the sheep we see in AS episode 2. But it’s not only in the appearance where I have proof. Remember how the Robot got lost, and the sheep somehow led him back to Ushio? The sheep must have been able to instinctively lead the Robot back to Ushio. Fuko stated in episode 20 that she had memorized Ushio’s scent; that’s how she found Ushio by the hospital two episodes later. The field by the tree, where Nagisa was brought by Akio, where Ushio instinctively wanders, and where Fuko saw Illusionary World Ushio, is the place that links Nagisa, Ushio, Fuko, and the Illusionary World together. Here, Fuko, after recognizing Tomoya’s grief, showed the Imaginary World Ushio the dream where she learned who she and the Robot were in the Real World. Just like how Nagisa dreamed of the Illusionary World at that place, Ushio in the Illusionary World dreamt of the Real World because Fuko and Ushio were there. That is the place in the city where dreams come true. Ushio’s revelatory dream in the Imaginary World was what Fuko meant the by closing statement “This is where the fun begins”.

So you’re saying that this world and the hidden world are related strongly at a deep level?

Yes. Time, space, and people’s minds echo in a strange way to recreate both worlds or create whole new ones. They might be affecting each other like that. That’s what I wanted to say.

Could our lives be tied to that world, too?

Maybe, then yet again maybe not.

Kotomi Ichinose, After Story episode 16

Fuko holds a key to the Clannad series. In fact, I believe she holds the key, the key to Tomoya’s time travel and consequently his second joy-filled life. That is why Fuko is so strangely emphasized throughout the entire series. Without Fuko, Nagisa and Tomoya would have never gotten that first push needed before they could start pursuing each other. Without Fuko, the Robot would have gotten lost in the Illusionary World. Without Fuko, Illusionary World Ushio would never come to realize who she and her creation were, and thus would not have been able to send Tomoya back in time. Without Fuko, Tomoya would forever live in grief like his father. When Tomoya and Nagisa decided to help Fuko and her sister’s wedding in their senior year, they had created a foolproof plan towards their ultimate happiness. If anything went wrong in the future, Fuko would restructure the worlds and send Tomoya back in time with knowledge of the abilities of the Illusionary World.

Like we can see people’s feelings from the other world as light in this world,
my feelings will become many lights in that world and shimmer.

Illusionary World Ushio, After Story episode 22

There is one more piece to put together before the entire picture is complete. This is Ushio’s role. We learned that Ushio is the Illusionary World; she is the container of memories. We know the rumour about light orbs granting wishes, but: Can one’s wishes be granted if they are unaware they are in possession of any of these light orbs? Simply put, no. We know this because Nagisa had died. If Tomoya was aware of the Illusionary World’s abilities the first time around, (remember that Ushio is the Illusionary World) we would have had a happily ever after and AS episodes 17 – 22 would not have existed. So the only way the light orbs could be used is if one is aware of their existence, and the only way Tomoya could be aware depended on two conditions:

1. Nagisa and Ushio must have died, causing Tomoya to despair over his entire life and subsequently be delivered into the Illusionary World;
2. Fuko must have revealed to Illusionary World Ushio who she and the Robot were in the Real world.

After reawakening at the bottom of the hill, Tomoya knows exactly what his, Nagisa’s and Ushio’s roles are. With this knowledge he is able to live the happy life which formerly was only a fantasy.

There may be more than one hidden world.
There’s a theory of multiple worlds existing, too.

Fujibayashi, I remember you saying something like that when you were talking about fortune telling.

Yes. There is no one future, but there are many possibilities. I still think that.

Kotomi, Tomoya & Ryou, After Story episode 16

This concludes my discourse. I will now summarize my interpretation of the entire plot of Clannad; please refer to this timeline diagram.

Everything up to AS 21 happens as we perceive it. This is the first psychological life; Nagisa dies, but Tomoya can’t save her; he is unaware of Ushio’s abilities. Upon death, Nagisa’s ailment is passed onto Ushio. Fuko, who has frequently transcended the worlds during her unconsciousness, is able to rouse Illusionary World Ushio and reveal her role in the Real World to her. This is the final scene if AS episode 22. Real World Ushio and Illusionary World Ushio are now connected. Ushio eventually dies from Nagisa’s ailment. Illusionary World Ushio creates the junk doll and brings the despairing Tomoya to her world. Since time does not exist in the Illusionary World, this occurs before Ushio’s dream and contact with Fuko. Illusionary World Ushio’s powers slowly start running out. Because of Fuko in the Real World, she dreams about who she and the Robot are, and she uses the last of her strength to send Tomoya back in time. This is the first third of AS episode 22. Tomoya awakens at the foot of the hill and dashes to Nagisa. He goes through his senior year similarly as we have seen in his first psychological life, but this time through, he is aware of Ushio’s abilities and is able to save both her and Nagisa. We don’t see this in detail; this is represented by the blurred surreal monochrome sequences in the second third of AS episode 22. As per the middle section of AS episode 22, Nagisa and Ushio are alive and cured from the ailment, and Tomoya, Nagisa and Ushio live happily ever after.

Clannad has taken quite a big turn from the standard visual novel genre, as I watch on it seems to be shifting towards those Korean dramas where peoples’ lives grow and fade intermittently. The characters and we, the audience, are caught between emotions. The coinciding uncertainty as to whether one should smile or cry is a very hazy emotion, yet Clannad is able to capture it spot on.

However, as accurately as Clannad captures these emotions, I find it harder and harder to sympathize with the characters—the transition from love story to life story is leaving me behind in my youth. Unrequited love is something I am familiar with (and surely most others, too) and in the situations they presented to me my mind jumped through my past experiences and absorbed itself into the Clannad world. But as the story progresses from unrequited love to mutual love, from mutual love to marriage, and from marriage to family, the situation drifts farther away and I no longer have a vantage point from which I can get a clear, close view of the situation. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but Clannad’s cohesion with my own life that was so eminent in the former parts slides ahead of me. It seems like these closing episodes will be something I will learn to understand over time, as I progress forward in my own life and gain the experiences necessary to make the connection. As it stands now, Okazaki & Co. have grown up ahead of me and show me how much more I have to go through.

It’s strange, however. I know that if Clannad had started at this point, I know would have no interest in watching it whatsoever. I have no recollections of ever going though marriage, supporting a family, having a child, and losing one dear to myself; in this case the relevance of this hypothetical Clannad naught but zero. Yet I watch on, knowing but not understanding; seeing but not feeling. Why does Clannad, which has advanced from the relevant to the irrelevant, still hold my interest?

I believe the answer is because it advanced, as opposed to starting somewhere already out of reach. I laughed with the characters and I cried with them, while they initially were walking alongside my memories. I got to see their deepest secrets, and in doing so I revealed my deepest secrets to them. The Theatre Club became a family, my family. So as it moved forward, although it surpassed the realm of my memories, we were still attached, holding on to the unbreakable thread also known as family. Now, as a spectator from behind, I get to see everything by the third eye, and even though I can no longer sympathize with them, I can still see how their actions led to them arriving at their unstipulated destinations.

This path they lay down before me is now a trail for me to follow or avoid. Now it is my turn to make the move forward in the footsteps of they who have left before me. I cannot feel what they feel now, but I know that by pursuing their tracks I will gain the memories that are needed to return me to their sides. Clannad is becoming a guide; a guide I can choose to follow or avoid to help me reach my own aspirations. I have pushed this argument quite far, but the bonds I have with the characters that have outgrown me stand as strongly as it did when the characters were within my grasp of maturity. I think it’s unarguable that I will enjoy the first season much more than the second, but After Story is making me face the reality of growing up everyone has to do so sooner or later in life.

Because I have yet to advance as far as the After Story characters, I have no memories, so I lose the ability to sympathize. However, this new observation deck offers me another activity: thinking. Watching these episodes triggered me to think about what life and love mean to me, what sacrifices are necessary for either and what I would do if I had to choose between the two. Do love and happiness equate? Do life and happiness equate? What action should we take when we advance along one path believing it leads to the best, only to discover in vain that tragedy lies ahead? These past few episodes have taught me nothing directly, but have made me think and analyse what it means to be alive and what it means to live.

I’m going to use this popular image for the characters an this picture I took myself for a backdrop.

Open up the photo in Photoshop and apply some artistic effects to make it look illustrated, since we want to loose the photograph feel. I used the Cutout filter in addition to some Poster Edges and Sumi-E.

Paste on the characters and erase away all of it’s surroundings. The magic wand and polygonal lasso tool can helpful here. Be sure the edge lines are clean so that it looks very smooth and clean.

After pasting the character’s, create a lens flare over the background, because it look’s so cool

Duplicate the Character layer, zoom in on it with the Transform tool and set the opacity down to 50%. This gives it a nice affect of depth and puts a big emphasis on the character.

Lets add some text now. We should make sure to write the names of the characters because the person that download your wallpaper may not know who she is. Comic Sans MS seems like a nice popular font, so lets use that. Add some layer affects if you want, I had to and white glow around it becuase otherwise the font would be unreadable with my favourite colour.

It was created in the image, please do not forget to write your name people know it. Also, make sure to put your name over a important part of the image so that every time they look there they know who created the awesome wallpaper. Also it’s very importance to don’t forget the name of the company that made the characters because for copyright issue’s.

Save the file, and dont forget to make for different monitors resonations. Now all we had to do is to upload them somewhere so that people can download them and easily too.

Download for standard screen resonation: 1024×768 | 1280×1024 | 1600×1200
for wide screen resonation: 1680×1050 | 1920×1200

…I decided to write this article because my previous wallpaper was getting out-dated, it featured Kagami Hiiragi and the Yuukos from Dennou Coil. I have three monitors, so that’s why it’s in that extremely widescreen resolution with the edges chopped off.

As I was looking for suitable replacement, I came across some more “Very Bad Wallpapers”. After a certain point I decided to start saving the bad ones and write an article about them. To the artists: if you ever read this, I don’t mean to insult you. Everyone has to start off somewhere and everyone takes wrong steps sometime or later, and I’m sure you nowadays you can create much better results, even before reading this un-tutorial.

In the end, I decided to make my own wallpaper, to keep a similar style to my previous one, and at the same time, I wrote this tutorial on some elements one should never do in making wallpapers, or at least be very vigilant towards. My drawing and digital illustration skills are far from impressive so I can only work from scans pre-existing and user creations. You may recognize some of the sources immediately, for others it might be a bit tricky because I did quite a bit of leg mix-and-matching, in addition to some minor redraws. Anyhow, as I promised, here is the wallpaper I made. It’s eerily simple compared to TsundereStorm, since it’s only some outlines with light layer effects. The characters are all major characters of the year 2008, and I have a slightly modified version for myself where I replaced Kyou with Nagisa, since, well, Kyou > Nagisa. Nothing fancy and no completely original illustration, but hey, it works for me. I do watermark my own creations but I do it in such a way that it’s not intrusive and really easy to remove.

1024×768 | 1280×1024 | 1600×1200 | 1680×1050 | 1920×1200

Can you distinguish the characters? I can’t give a good measure of how well one can recognize these silhouettes since I created the image myself. Good character design should have immediately recognizable outlines, I’ll hope that that’s the case.

I think in Episode 09 was the first time we see Okazaki cry. Despite his poor academic performance he’s quite stable emotionally, so I was really quite surprised to see him cry because he graduated. That’s really awkward if you think about it that way, ne?
But, Tomoya and Nagisa’s characters have been changing a lot since they started dating, and everywhere we see hints of Tomoya finally maturing and taking responsibility for his own life. He doesn’t want to end up like his father, after all, so this character development is only natural.

There are two types of academic delinquents. There are those that don’t have any valuable skills and thus can’t get a good foothold on the society, and there are those that do have valuable skills and start climbing up the ladder of social leadership and responsibility. I’ve always argued that Tomoya is the latter, he is not academically gifted and does not possess talent for any particular trade; rather what distinguishes him from the failures are his good social skills. I’ve had a lot of trouble pinpointing exact moments to help my argument, until now at least. Episode 11 has two instances of extreme wit that left me thinking “wow I would never be able to think of that kind of answer even if you gave me a minute, and he answered it in a snap!”

But of course the childish playful side of him is still there. (facepalm)

Episode 12 was quite a thought-lifter for me. I never imagined Tomoya’s father playing the role of an antagonist, at least not significantly. I always thought that Nagisa would drive a revolution between that his condition with Tomoya, since she’s been pressuring him since the first season to do so. One thing I don’t understand about Tomoya is how come he doesn’t try to make up with his father, they did fight but apologizing or to asking for an apology doesn’t seem like something out of Tomoya’s reach especially seeing how much he has matured by Nagisa’s side. So once again I point my finger of blame towards Tomoya for the drug abuse/career setback. From what I have seen it should have been possible for him to help his father find his place again. Check out these screenshots from episode 18 of the first series and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

I somehow felt that the moth was some sort of omen, but after some quick research I can’t seem to find anything connecting moths with drugs. It’s really bugging me, the unknown significance of the moths…

Episode 13 is almost done downloading. It feels good to be caught back up!

Yeah, working in retail is busy, especially before the Christmas season. I finally got back into the animanga business after the New Year. Good timing for the arrival of my Clannad book!

The first page of the book is a delicious Kyou Fujibayashi conveniently locked in the gym equipment storage room.

This softcover artbook has 144 full-colour pages. The first 38 pages is a gallery of images of Nagisa, Kyou, Ryou, Kotomi, Tomoyo and Fuuko, these are the scans you frequently see on high-resolution wallpaper and scan imageboards like konachan.com and moe.imouto.org. As beautiful as these illustrations are, they arn’t the reason I get these artbooks, since these images are readily available for download from the aforementioned sites.

The following 34 pages are character bios and gestures. There’s a lot of Japanese text here, a lot more than I had anticipated. I’ll have to get my friend to translate it for me or teach me Japanese. The only information I can get out of it are facts that have to do with numbers, like bust/hip/waist measurements, birthdays, etc, but the sketches and miscellaneous illustrations are the main reason I get artbooks, since it gives a bit of insight into the design and development process of the series.

There’s a surprising amount of detail put into the character design, it is to be expected for a character-based show to have highly detailed characters but I didn’t know they would go to the point of making separate illustrations for Tomoya’s wristwatch, Nagisa’s shoe, etc.

All the supporting characters are accounted for and there’s also a section that goes step-by-step through each of the main characters’ stories. Again there’s a ton of text here and I wish I could tell you what all this text is explaining. They numbered each episode by character episode and by airing episode. For example, episode 10 is the 3rd part of Nagisa’s and Kotomi’s arc, the 4th part of Kyou/Ryou’s arc, the 2nd part of Tomoyo’s arc. I’m not really sure how this would be of use, but I might find it interesting when I start playing the game (which will be when After Story finishes airing.)

The Story section of the book is 56 pages long and covers the season on a per-episode basis. There are storyboards for the major parts of each episode. I find it amazing how the producers can show so much emotion in the characters from such simple sketches.

A small part of this section details the architecture used in the animation. As architecture student, it was this section that made me decide to purchase the fanbook (I glanced at scans I found online) as there are very detailed hand-drawn perspective illustrations of the school, the houses, and the rooms in the world of Clannad.

The last 16 pages is a staff and cast interview, unfortunately this is almost all text so again I can’t give any details here. But there are nice portrait photos of the main cast.

中原麻衣 Mai Nakahara (left, Nagisa Furukawa) and 野中藍 Ai Nonaka (right, Fuuko Ibuki)

At the very end there’s a small gallery of official collectible goods, like postcards, cell phone dangly-things, calendars, and other small miscellaneous accessories. I think the little card that comes slipped in the middle of my book is an order card, but since I don’t live in Japan it doesn’t really do me much good.

Another artbook review should be coming soon!

"It's just that someone said a similar thing to me in the past."

1. voice acting
No, the cat doesn’t actually speak like Shamisen does. But at the scene at 11:17 where the Okazaki hears voices when looking at Nanashi, I assume that’s the cat’s thinking voice. Although there are some heavy post-processing effects on this sample, the pattens are very similar to Shima’s voice in the sequence directly after.

2. physical appearance
Nanashi: yellow-green eyes, light brown fur.
Shima: yellow-green eyes, light brown hair.

3. camera presence
Nanashi is making his way into a more scenes than otherwise necessary, for example when Misae is remembering the one who told her she yells because she worries.

As for the wish, if the above were true, it would probably be something the lines of “I wish I could always have you around despite the fact you have a chronic illness.”¹ (Otherwise why bother transforming into a cat and just stay human?) What I wonder now is why Misae became so attached to Shima, and also the significance of Tomoya both at when he heard those lines about the light and the charm (at 11:17) and a little earlier when Misae said she had to take care of them younglings. For an instance I thought this was related to Tomoya and his father (hair colour, avoiding some certain history, and having to visit her mother in the hospital) but I think it is too unlikely that she is Tomoya’s elder sister. Could those lights Nanashi mentioned possibly be the ones from the Afterworld? There is a resemblance in voice between the Junk Robot and Nanashi as well.

That’s all I can make out of this episode. I don’t really see how this fits into the big picture, but I guess the same could be said about the first episode of the Mei/Youhei arc. I can feel myself growing a little tired of the side characters though; hopefully we’ll get back to the main characters soon afterwards. I also don’t really like the supernatural elements in Clannad, since otherwise it is a completely down-to-earth story about the lives of a handful of high school students.

Never underestimate how much your friends trust you.

Dear Tomoya,
I must stress that you cannot rely on deception as a method of communication. It may be alright to do this just for fun, but this isn’t the approach you should take when dealing with family issues. If you had just brought both Youhei and Mei to me I’m sure we could have settled this quickly and promptly. You put Mei in a lot of danger by involving her with the school affairs, and it’s not like you didn’t know what kind of attitudes they have. Somewhere along the way you forgot that you are a better friend to Youhei than to Mei, underestimating what he thinks of you and only looking at things in the shoes of Mei. Of all people to provoke Youhei you would be the last he would respond to. Youhei had absolute faith in you, whether it was in taking care of Mei as her boyfriend or something else. You thought he was heartless but he was worrying the whole time; you thought he wasn’t paying attention but he was silently watching the two of you the whole time, to make sure you lived up to his expectations of his best friend. You should try to learn more from your girlfriend, you have taught her many things over the last year but you seem to be unwilling to listen to all her concerns about you. As her boyfriend you should be taking into serious consideration her opinion of you, in a relationship it is not enough for only one to be changing and the other to be making the changes.

Yours,
Yukine Miyazawa.

Would Youhei really want to play soccer with those people?

Why Yukine? Of all the characters in the show, Yukine seems to be the one who is most capable of looking at social situations from a very broad point of view, being able to understand all parts of the situation simultaneously and objectively. Aside from her, Ryou Fujibayashi is the only other in the main cast that also excels at this, but her naïve nature would bias her opinions and suggestions (Maybe Sanae too, but we don’t know enough about her to say for sure). After even a short consultation Yukine was able to understand Youhei’s reasoning for leaving the soccer club, and his reservations against joining them again. She did address this, but Mei and Okazaki were both too stubbornly single-minded to pick up on her hint.

That aside, the supporting characters in Clannad just keep getting stronger and stronger; the curiosity around Yukine and her brother (I’ll assume that the guy that she was harbouring in episode 02) is building, but at the same time I really wish KyoAni would slow down with the character introductions and focus solely on Tomoya’s past and/or his relationship with Nagisa. At this point we don’t know how strong Tomoya and Nagisa’s relationship is, and the matter between Tomoya and his father is still unsettled. It’s strange how both of those are unaddressed since if Tomoya was still staying at the Furukawa’s the relationship should be more intimate; else he would be staying back at home meaning he settled the matters with his father.

An unusually powerful aura for a supporting imouto character.

Episode 03 was a good turn-around from episode 02 and feels much more on route. I was not too impressed with the first bit of the episode where the two going out since it seemed a dry carry-through of the previous episode, but it really did illustrate Youhei’s awkward social manners and overall immaturity and depression. The story finally starting to kick itself back in in the playground scene through parallel events where Youhei and Mei’s histories start revealing themselves. We are reminded of the certain issue that prevents Youhei from playing in the soccer team, this was only mentioned once in a brief scene in the first season. The tensions further In Mei’s rant in the dorm at 11:11, I believe that it is none other than her brother that she is referring to, or at least the version of her brother that now exists only in her memories. Like I complained before, this arc is focusing on the minor characters, but even as minor characters I am finding Youhei as a character with a reason of existence for purposes other than comic relief, and Mei as a more and more powerful individual and no longer just “Youhei’s random sister” like she was in the first season.

I noticed both Mei’s voice actor and KyoAni’s use of camera angles to be superior this episode. I’m not an experienced seiyuu critic, so I’ll just point out a few lines I found particularly effective. At 14:14, Mei’s line “Gosh, he’s so hopeless…” is one of the most emotional lines, perfectly expressing the feeling of laughing one’s problems off. Compare to the same line at 10:19 which is said much more neutrally. Another particularly good script sequence is at 11:11 in Youhei’s dorm: “That’s right. But that’s not all” and the crepe/photo-booth lines are full of imouto goodness. I think the breathing has a lot to do with effective voice acting, I’m noticing a lot of little gasps and puffs and hiccups that make Yukari Tamura’s voice acting (for Mei amongst many other roles) much more effective and realistic.

On towards the camera angles, I find the choices excellent for isolating characters to show the feeling of being left-out. This is mainly Youhei in this episode, and going through these snapshots it really provokes one to think about how much he is hiding when he is his usual perverted smug self. I disabled the subtitles since I want to focus on the animation only; these are presented in chronological order.

Ending remark: What’s Ryou doing in the next episode preview? Everything so far seems unrelated to her…

Another mystery character has been revealed at 13:15, the name is not mentioned but it is clear that he has some sort of close relationship to Yukine, as well as at least one additional person since he referred to Yukine as “Our Yuki-nee”. No details are given, other than the fact that the unknown character is hiding from a perpetrator or something of the sort. In the ending sequence he is the one seen after Sanae and Akio. (#4 according to the list in my previous Clannad After Story post.)

Hopefully they’re using this shallow comedy to set up for something big, but Kyoto Animation usually manages to do this without straying from the primary plot. I have to remember that Sunohara’s arc continues onward after this; I hope that this will not end up awkward like Fuuko’s (even though I predict that Fuuko’s arc will all make sense by the end of this series). It’s not a problem with Key/KyoAni focusing on a secondary character, however in that process I expect something to be revealed that can be relatable to the plot or the primary characters.

This is all for Episode 2. I wasn’t happy with it; I hope the upcoming episodes will be back up to and exceeding par like After Story 01 did.