Clannad Movie Review

Hot on the heels of KyoAni’s Clannad TV adaptation, Toei brings us their version of the Clannad story. Toei’s adaptation of Clannad is an abridged Nagisa arc with all the needless filler secondary girls’ arcs removed. Liberties are taken here and there with the story, but unlike the Air movie, the Clannad movie remains much more faithful to the original story. Toei and KyoAni can’t seem to agree on who should voice Key male leads, because the movie has a different seiyuu voicing Okazaki while everyone else retains their original voice. Obvious spoilers and lots of pictures after the jump.

Summary:
The story is told eight years after the initial meeting between Tomoya Okazaki and Nagisa Furukawa. Okazaki is much darker and somber than his TV personality and is severely depressed as he recounts his journey with Nagisa that explains the first 2/3 of the movie. He slowly opens his closed heart as he, at first reluctantly, helps her re-establish the disbanded Theater club. However with the time constraints of a movie, the club only consists of himself, Nagisa, and Sunohara. The trio have their share of struggles as Tomoyo and the student council put up resistance to the club’s formation because of a deadline technicality. Kouko Ibuki eventually decides to advise the club activities after seeing Nagisa’s strong determination.

Unbeknownst to Okazaki and Nagisa, they both share the same dream of a world of nothingness since their childhoods. Both have been looking for their missing half in the desolate dream world. Their dream is finally realized when Nagisa performs her monologue based on the dream at the school festival. The audience is enamored with the story, and as the narrative goes on all of it begins to sound very familiar to him. He finally realizes that they are soulmates as he watches her dazzling performance come to and end.

After high school the two get married and live together. During this span, it is revealed that Nagisa’s body is too fragile to give birth to a child. Akio, Sanae, and Okazaki try to persuade her to not go through with the birth, but Nagisa’s mind is resolved and has even picked out a name for the baby. Their happiness doesn’t last long as Nagisa dies shortly after giving birth to their daughter whom she names Ushio.

Return to a flashback. Nagisa had repeat her senior year because of illness, so she graduated a year after Okazaki. Then I believe Okazaki and Nagisa were married for a year before she died. So the story picks back up six years after her death. Everyone is living their lives while Okazaki still mourns Nagisa’s passing and has reverted to his former self as he wallows in despair.

Okazaki is stuck in the past as he continues to think about the brief happiness he shared with Nagisa. To distance himself from his daughter, Ushio has been left in the care of Nagisa’s parents, Akio and Sanae Furukawa, during this time. After a surprise visit from his father, Okazaki realizes that he has become just like his father. The senior Okazaki, now wanting his son to repeat his mistake, asks for Yusuke and Kouko to reunite Tomoya with Ushio so the cycle doesn’t repeat itself. At the train station, Ushio bears no grudge against her father and the two are lovingly reunited as they also see Nagisa’s spirit with them.

Thoughts:
Sorry in advance to the Kotomi, Starfish, and Ryou fans out there. Kotomi has a couple cameos with no speaking lines, but Fuko and Ryou got completely snubbed. Most other minor characters were cut for time and story convenience.

Sunohara remains intact and plays the comic relief early in the movie. Tomoyo and Kyou show up in lesser, somewhat antagonistic roles at the beginning. The entire dynamic between Sunohara-Tomoyo/Kyou is gone but don’t worry. You’ll be surprised when he finally does get his ass whooped by one of the most unsuspecting characters.

While these roles were heavily cut, it’s odd that other minor characters received much bigger roles; Namely Kouko Ibuki, Yusuke Yoshino, and the Furukawa parents. All of these characters play the adult foils to the story by portraying the stark contrast between mature relationships and high school love. Though on the surface level Akio’s juvenile behavior sure could have fooled me…

The characterization was a strong point in the movie. The core characters were the main attraction as the story heavily revolved around their interactions. I really thought that Okazaki and Sunohara came alive and had good showings. Sunohara in particular showed more of his caring side towards Okazaki and Nagisa.

The Clannad movie’s world of nothingness was pulled off to reasonable success. Instead of the “nameless girl” and junk robot we have a masked puppet to portray Okazaki and Nagisa portrays herself in the dream world. The story was paced well enough at the beginning but felt horribly rushed in the final ten minutes.

All in all, the Clannad movie was good. It’s pretty much an abridged Nagisa Arc with a very rushed after-story modified to portray a happy ending. The movie did hit on the basic points with embellishments for the sake of time constraints. You’ll either love or hate the waterstyle scene cuts that were also present in the Air movie. While Clannad movie was good but not great. You must like Nagisa to fully enjoy the movie. It’s worth a watch if you want to see Toei’s take on the story.

Rating: 7.5/10

Tagsclannad, Movies