Finally, three months after placing my order, I received my Clannad Visual Fan Book yesterday, shipped all the way from Nippon. And so it is about time I revive TsundereStorm, I’ve been on “hiatus” for more than a month (though occasionally I was finalizing my design for TsundereStorm 1.0 in my sketchbook on the subway).

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.

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Again, I will stress the fact that this is a no-spoiler post, and anything here that may seem like a spoiler is just a prediction. I have not read the manga or seen the movie or played the game so I can only hypothesize about what will happen.
That said, I think Shima Katsuki is the cat. Yes, is; something along the lines of the fox Makoto Sawatari from Kanon. Let me give you the evidence I procured.
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Sorry Tomoya, but I am accusing you for all the preventable incidents occurring this and the previous episode. Mei, you’re partly to blame, too. As for Youhei, doesn’t it just suck to be everyone’s punching bag, especially at times like this? Thank goodness everything turned out okay and that Mei is finally back home and going to school. If you ask me, the insecure Mei and overconfident Tomoya have changed, not Youhei as one may initially think. In fact, I believe that Youhei’s character has not been changed at all by the events of this arc.
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First off, another quick reminder that all of my blogs relating to Clannad After Story are non-spoiling, meaning that I have not watched the movie, read the manga or played the visual novel. Obviously, I will be talking about the episode at hand, but rest assured that only facts exposed in the original series and the After Story series up to the current episode will be mentioned.

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I’ll say honestly that this After Story episode is quite a turnaround from the usual Clannad atmosphere. Aside from the introduction, this episode seems to be a lacklustre compared to the first episode with respect to references. The only thing that really drew interest from me was the Otherworld: It’s becoming more and more prominent, being shown for two minutes, compared to the usual 30-60 seconds. The appearance of the sheep I find unusual, since I believed it to be a world “where everything has ended” and that girl is the only one there. However, the sheep seem to know where they are heading, leading me to think that it is not a world which has completely ended. However, the exact purpose and existence of the Otherworld is one of the biggest mysteries of the series, and I have a feeling that Key/KyoAni will not explain it for us and leave us to make sense of it ourselves.

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.