Friday 14 November 2008

Clannad ~After Story~ - Episode 7

It's time for another new Clannad - After Story arc, and this time the star of the show is the girl in charge of the reference library, Yukine. We've seen in previous Clannad episodes how Yukine helps out tough guys in distress, and if nothing else this story arc at least reveals why.


In short, Yukine is the sister of Miyazawa Kazuto, an infamous and mysterious gang leader who somehow is apparantly actually a really nice guy that keeps his gang members out of trouble aside from the odd fight or seven. They just don't make gang members like they used to... Anyway, Yukine is popular amongst both her brother's gang and their bitter rivals, forever patching them up and offering them advice, and it's for this reason she becomes the victim of a kidnapping. Well, an attempted kidnapping, by a little kid who she shrugs off simply by giving him a piggy back ride. Bless.

It turns out that the kid in question is made at Kazuto for "stealing" his sister, who has left home and joined his gang, and of course idiot that he is even before this point Sunohara has spied and snatched an opportunity at playing the 'big shot', pretending to be Yukine's sister to impress Yuu - A seemingly harmless little prank that almost costs him dearly later in this episode but for some swift ass-kicking by everyone's favourite (well, when I say everyone's I mean mine) Clannad girl Tomoyo.

That aside, we learn that Kazuto is currently hospitalised, leaving his gang members to fend for themselves - A doubtless important point for episode eight, but it's really just another little fact in a really rather tame and not particularly interesting episode as far as this particular instalment goes. I know I had similar complaints about the first half of Misae's arc before being won over in the second, but once again I found that this episode didn't do a great deal for me - It lacked the humour of some of the early After Story episodes, and at the same time didn't really have any deep emotional core to tap into, which left us with this pretty tepid offering. I'm sure the second half of this arc will have more meat to it, but a spade is a spade and this episode was plodding by any stretch of the imagination.

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