I suspect that in the original game this sacred grove is the same as the grove of sakura trees that Tomoya helps Tomoyo to save. Presumably the hospital was built on an adjacent lot. In the good ending the grove of trees survives. Perhaps this is the real reason Nagisa dies, because the trees are no longer around to protect her. In the bad ending the grove of trees is cut down to build the hospital. His prayer was granted and she survives at least until her twenties. I think that one of the keys to understanding the story is the grove of trees where Akio prayed for the two-year-old Nagisa’s recovery. The point, I think, is that Tomoya has to let go of his feelings of guilt and unworthiness before he can achieve happiness. However this is proceeded by a sequence in the afterworld where the spirits of Tomoya and Nagisa agree that they want to be together. (Americans may wonder why Tomoya is even required to to reconcile with his father, but from a Japanese perspective any ending which left the hero estranged from one of his parents would be tragic, even if the parent was abusive.)įinally the reset that we see in the anime only seems to take Tomoya back to the moment of Nagisa’s death, not back to the beginning of the Nagisa arc. By the time Ushio dies he has collected all the points of light, unless perhaps he gets a final one for comforting the girl in the empty world.
By the time Nagisa dies, Tomoya has helped all the other characters and collected all the points of light except for two crucial ones: the ones for reconciling with Ushio and his father. Dramatically it is necessary to do the whole thing as a single story.īut that feels sort of unsatisfactory too. It would be extremely tedious and unsatisfactory to watch. It is understandable why they didn’t do it that way. The Nagisa arc would start over, this time with interludes where Tomoya helps the other characters and collects points of light, finally culminating in the good ending. Then we would have the empty world story, followed by a reset. This would reach the bad ending around the middle of the first season. If the anime matched the diagram we would first see a short Nagisa arc in which Tomoya didn’t help any of the other characters. The diagram is helpful but in my view it doesn’t really describe what we see in the anime. (Click the image to see a larger version.) Tomoya must earn the points of light without knowing what they are or even that they exist.Ī diagram that has been floating around the Internet attempts to describe what happens in the anime, based on the sequences in the game. Things are more problematic in the anime, where there is no “player” and there is only one storyline. In the context of the game, the points of light are awarded to the player for causing the protagonist to make the right decisions, and the player wins by guiding the protagonist to the best ending.
This is pretty satisfactory for the game player. Once you have collected enough points of light you can replay the Nagisa arc and this time you can reach the “true ending” in which Nagisa and Ushio both survive and everyone lives happily ever after. After that you are dumped into the story of the girl in the empty world, in which you are told to collect hikari no dama (points of light.)Īfter that you can go back and play the other character arcs, and you will be awarded points of light if you help the other character achieve their dreams. In the game, the first time you try to play the Nagisa arc you inevitably come to the “bad ending” where Nagisa and Ushio both die. I have not played the Clannad game, which is not available in English, but there are enough descriptions available on the Internet to give me a pretty good idea of how it works. This probably has to do with the inherent differences between a visual novel and a television series, and the natural difficulties involved in converting one to the other. On the other hand, people who have watched the anime after playing the game it is based on invariably seem to think that the ending is wonderful. It’s not that it is a bad ending exactly, it just seems sort of unsatisfactory, like a deus ex machina.
#CLANNAD MOVIE TERRIBLE SERIES#
Many people who have watched both parts of the Clannad anime series have problems with the ending. If you read this before watching these shows you have only yourself to blame. STANDARD SPOILER WARNING: The contents of this page are intended for people who have seen Clannad and Clannad After Story.
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