Crystal Tokyo Anime Blog

     This episode begins with Kotomi returning the violin back to the girl she borrowed it from and Kotomi making another friend. While walking down the hallway Tomoya asks Kotomi isn’t it nice to be making friends, while walking Kotomi starts crying after Tomoya’s asks the question. The next day Nagisa asks Tomoya if it’s nice that Kotomi no-longer stays in the library and is back taking classes with the rest of the students. Later that afternoon the group is in the theater club room talking about what they do when not in school, Kyou says that every-one’s answer is very lame and it’s a waste of one’s mind and body, and what they should be doing is going out on a group date. So, the next day they meet for the group date (back in high school I was never so lucky to be on a group date with just me a four hot girls). While out on the town they attempt to win a large stuffed animal but it’s a complete failure and Kyou asks who can say they’ll achieve victory and out of nowhere Fuko appears, and she claims she can achieve victory. No one remembers her but they all feel that they had met her before, so Fuko gives the game a try and what does she win? (a starfish).

     After a fun day they all head home, Tomoya walks Kotomi home and she thanks him for her meeting him and giving her a good time. She gives him a book/diary and tells him to hang on to it, he doesn’t have to read it just hold on to it. Just as Tomoya is questioning her about this, the old man (the bad guy) shows up and Kotomi grabs Tomoya and forces him to run away with her. Later that night Tomoya has another strange dream, and he comments to himself about his strange dreams. On the way to school Nagisa thinks that Ryou might have been in a bus accident but to every-one’s relief she was unharmed, Kotomi has a bad reaction (almost seems like she’s having a breakdown) after this incident. The rest of the group is very worried about her, she left school and went home but the nurse and the other teachers won’t tell them anything because of privacy concerns (what the hells is the deal). Later Tomoya runs into the “bad man” and he asks him whats the deal, and he says he knew Kotomi when she was little and wonders why Tomoya doesn’t remember. They talk and the man leaves a message for Kotomi, “they apologize for what happened on that day”, he says nothing more. Tomoya follows a butterfly (symbolic for dreams, or for memories) to the back of Kotomi’s house where he gets visions of the past, he enters her house and goes upstairs and finds Kotomi in a room completely covered in paper clippings. A clipping falls off the wall and mentions something to the effect that Kotomi’s parents are dead  and this inductees a memory in Tomoya and he’s sure that they’ve met before. Well, that’s all for this episode, below are some screen shots.

     Well, this episode was a lot more interesting and important than the last episode. In the previous episode all that happened was some character development, but in this episode we head towards the nitty gritty of Kotomi’s social problems. Tomoya is linked in someways to Kotomi ‘s past and her possible future, he just has to puzzle it out. With all this stuff revolving around him, he’s either a source of healing or a source of limitless sadness. But I have to agree with Kyou that their wasting their innocent youth, yes Kyou it’s time to get busy using those smoking hot bodies (sorry, for that last comment, it’s a six pack of beer talking). 

     This episode begins with Kotomi continuing to practice the violin at school and her playing is still injuring the ears of those around her. Later Kyou and Tomoya keep trying to improve Kotomi’s social skills but her sense of verbal timing is still off. After Kotomi, Nagisa, and Ryou leave school, Kyou asks Tomoya if he liked a girl would he actually date her, he kind of blows the question off saying that he’s a delinquent and not very good material. Tomoya wakes up Sunday morning to find his house a mess, and his father passed out again on the floor, so he leaves the house and ends up finding Kotomi practicing the violin at the school. Tomoya falls asleep after eating a apple pie that Kotomi baked, and while sleeping he has weird dream, the weirdness of his dream rises to the level of a acid trip. On Monday, Kotomi is scheduled to have a outdoor violin recital, Kyou has strong armed a large number of students to attend, Tomoya is very worried about the outcome knowing Kotomi’s skill level with the violin. Nagisa tells Tomoya that Kotomi has improved her skills greatly, but once the recital starts her playing has not really improved and is painful to everyone. But by the end it seems that her skills has improved to the point that no one died from the music. After the recital the group is walking home together, and someone tries to grab Kotomi, and Nagisa, Tomoya, and the others protect her, when they ask Tomoya who that was all she says is that the bad guy. Well, that’s all of this episode, below are some screen shots.

      Overall I felt that this was a very strange episode, I don’t think that it did much to advance the main series plot. All this episode did was flesh out the Kotomi character some more, she begins to slowly come up of her shell, but her social skills are still sorely lacking. As far as I’m concerned there were only two interesting points in this episode; the first interesting point is when Kyou asks Tomoya about dating; and the second interesting point comes at the end with the man trying to grab? Kotomi. I also found Tomoya’s weird dream kind of funny, what else did Kotomi but in that apple pie, PCP or maybe LSD? One thing I do have to say about Kotomi is that as far as I’m concerned  she’s the best looking of the Clannad girls, in real life I’m a leg man so I’m a sucker for a good set of legs, and in my opinion Kotomi’s got a killer set of legs. Well, when all is said and done I give this episode 5 out of 10.

     This episode starts off back in the dream world/other world, with the junk doll having a conversation with the young girl. The doll realizes that it must have come/or lived in another word in the past or in the future, and it struggles to recall those other memories. Then we pick up with Tomoya and Nagisa discussing how to get more members for the drama group. So, Tomoya tries to recruit Youhei and Kotomi, and Tomoya thinks it would be good to pull Kotomi out of her world of books and get her to interact with more real people. Later Kotomi ask Tomoya if Nagisa is his girlfriend and he says no, everyone around Tomoya and Nagisa knows that they are a couple except them (how cute). Tomoya takes it as his mission to train Kotomi on how to be more social and how to make some friends. Well, the plan works to some extent, Kotomi makes friends with Kyou and in celebration of this event Kyou wants Tomoya to take them someplace interesting, and to Kyou’s annoyance they end up in theater club’s meeting room. Later during the theater club’s meeting they hear a violin playing and Kotomi runs out of the room and it to a room where a girl is playing the violin, she asks Kotomi if she would like to try to play it. Kotomi accepts the violin and her playing is so bad it shatters lights and windows driving everyone to their knees in pain. Well, that’s all for this episode, below are some screen shots.

     Well, here we are at episode 10 of Clannad, after finishing the Fuko centered episodes we seem to be starting a arc focusing on Kotomi. Nagisa and Tomoya seem the be more of a couple than ever before, everyone one knows this except the two of them, even if they don’t notice it they seem to be tied together by the red string of fate. In the aftermath of Fuko’s gentle fading Nagisa and Tomoya seem to have forgotten personally knowing her, but as Nagisa tells Tomoya she recalls a nostalgic warm and sad feeling. I really liked the last arc, I know that some people dislike anime that intentionally pulls at the viewers’ heartstrings, but I’m a old softy and a sucker of melodrama nowadays.

     The world of Clannad is the perfect male fantasy world, a world where all the girls are cute with almost all of these girls being kind and gentle, a world where even the most hard edged and gruff girls really harbor a heart of gold. This is a world where all the sweetest and cutest girls don’t have boyfriends and are just waiting for a normal guy to come along and touch their souls, this is emotional escapism at the purest level, a world where gentle and lonely souls flutter around each other like moths around a flame until they finally meet creating the perfect emotional connection. Clannad is also a world where even a girl laying in a coma longings for connection, human contact, and love is so great it can cross the boundaries of human consciousness to touch the lives of others. This is emotional escapism of the highest level, and I’m buying into it.