Episode 23:
We return to the school life portion of the story, a year before Tomoya and Nagisa met, with Tomoya beginning his junior year and Nagisa her first senior year. The shy Nagisa desires to make some new friends but is tentative about being proactive. Meanwhile our two favorite delinquents, Tomoya and Sunohara, are forced to make welcome signs for the new freshmen with their class rep, Kyou, as punishment for trying to sneak out of class.

One of Nagisa’s old classmates invites her to hang out after school with a new friend. Akio later gives Nagisa some advice to help make more friends, but Nagisa still has trouble taking the initiative. At school, Kyou catches Tomoya napping on the grass and upon taking a closer look at his sleeping face starts to fall for him. Sunohara rushes in sensing his dear chum is in danger and soon gets a trademark Kyou punch.

Sunohara soon schemes up a plan to get back at Kyou for her transgressions, and the duo leave a fake love letter in her shoe locker that sends her all over the school on a wild goose chase, which consequently gets them beat up. Sunohara then tries to vent his frustrations on weaker prey, and the idiot duo leave a very obvious trap at the school gates after school. The weary students avoid it, but one very special girl falls for the trick, our favorite dango daikazoku aficionado, Nagisa. A bath pan bonks her unconscious, and she is taken to the nurse’s office accompanied by a fellow classmate of hers, who soon becomes a new friend. Nagisa returns home and recounts the experience to Akio and Sanae. She also elects to keep the banner from the prank that contains some inspirational words from a then unknown Tomoya, telling her to overcome life’s obstacles.

Totally unnecessary Ryou fanservice.

Totally unnecessary Kyou fanservice.

Episode 24:
Tomoya narrarates the events of Clannad in its entirety to Ushio, a giant flashback from the beginning of the series to episode 22 of After Story. This was simply here to refresh our memories, especially for those among us that are nearly senior citizens (like myself).

Impressions:
I’m not much of a Kyou fan, but I loved episode 23 and its nostalgic return to the light-hearted school days arc. Kyou’s wild goose chase that ultimately culminated in Tomoya and Sunohara getting their asses beat elicited a good laugh from me. Akio’s comedy was solid when giving Nagisa his always helpful “advice”, and the baleful bakery tears bit with Sanae never gets… stale. Get it? Yeah, you got it.

The real highlight was the epic and dramatic slow motion bath pan drop that cut back and forth between the pan falling and the reactions of our two favorite dunces, with Sunohara’s face growing with delight and Tomoya’s with a growing sense of dread. Nagisa’s little squeal when it hit her was the cherry on top of the sundae.

It brings back memories to get a whole episode of the Tomoya prior to meeting Nagisa. He wasn’t so much a bad seed as he was misguided. He was still a delinquent prankster, but he showcased his good side a few times by helping Kyou near the beginning and later leaving an encouraging message for the recipient of the prank, who so coincidentally happened to be his future wife.

So hey yeah, there’s a completely unnecessary fanservice bath scene with Kyou and Ryou too. Neato. I’d probably care more if it was Yukine or Kotomi, but that wouldn’t make much sense since they had no part in this episode.

I love the details to the little additions in the show, like how episode 23 added illusionary world Ushio to the episode cut and how Shino, Naoyuki, Ushio and Fuko have also been added to the TORCH line. Clannad was quite the journey as both Tomoya and Nagisa grew out of their shells, made new friends in all the arcs and finally began their new life together, and I loved every minute of it. I’m kind of sad it’s over now, and a bittersweet feeling lingers in my heart. But hey, we haven’t seen the last of Key and KyoAni. Up next with an estimated 98% probability is Little Busters!

Extra: As of this writing, I think there’s supposed to be another extra episode focusing on After Story Sunohara, but I can’t find any concrete sources. I’d be happy to find out it’s true, but if not that’s okay too.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Anime, Clannad.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.