Clannad ~After Story~ - Episode 5

After three episodes dealing with Sunohara and Mei's story, it's time for a new focus in Clannad ~After Story~, and this time time around it's dorm manager Misae Sagara's turn in the spotlight.

Before all that, we get ourselves another little segment of Imaginary World "action", where the girl from that world has made a see-saw. Once again, I'm left wondering what this slightly pretentious has to do with Clannad as a whole, but at least it doesn't last too long I suppose.

Anyway, onto the episode proper, Tomoya and Nagisa pay a visit to the dormitory, to find Misae dishing out her usual slice of justice to Sunohara after he tries to sell her cat - A nameless ginger feline that just started following her around one day until she decided to take care of it, to use Misae's own explanation (and that sounds strangely akin to how I'd describe my own cat. Although he does have a name at least). As Misae talks, so Tomoya dozes off, and before we know it it's flashback time!


This particular flashback takes us back to Misae's own schooldays, where she finds herself harrassed by a young lad called Shima Katsuki, a boy who Misae apparantly helped simply by talking to him when he was wheelchair bound in a hospital. He wants to return the favour by granting her a single wish, although Misae is more interested in pursuing a guy she's interested in at school than dealing with such trifles, yet finds herself spending time talking to him anyway despite her frustration at the inevitable misunderstandings it causes.

After enjoying the comedy of the early episodes of After Story, and even having a certain amount of time for the last instalment which closed out that Mei-centric arc, I have to confess that I found this particular episode really quite dull - I can't really blame Tomoya for drifting off to sleep mid-episode. To be fair, the seeds have at least been sewn for some interesting episodes to continue this story arc, so I can't be too harsh on it all, but unless I'm being naive it seems patently obvious where this story is headed and I just can't get too excited about Misae's story in general. Overall though, I suppose I'll have to simply reserve judgement until we see what episode six brings us, but either way I have to chalk this up as the least interesting episode of After Story so far.