Clannad ~After Story~ - Episode 9

After taking up eight episodes to polish off the remaining story arcs that they hadn't managed to squeeze into the original series, episode nine sees the beginning of what we can generally regard as Clannad - After Story proper.

Given that last story arc this can be generally regarded as "a good thing", although be warned, After Story isn't likely to be a light-hearted and humorous tale. Indeed, give or take a couple of amusing moments (Botan's "Doll mode" being the obvious highlight), the episode as a whole plays like a one of Eastenders more depressing episodes while someone is sat on the video's fast forward button.


With time running out at school, thoughts begin to turn to graduation and what comes after that... For most of the gang at least. The exception to this rule is Tomoya, who seems to be trying to dodge the question even when it's put to his by Nagisa. If Tomoya was looking for an excuse not to think about these things, then he certainly gets it, as Nagisa falls ill once again, a mystery fever that lasts for so long that she misses the rest of the school year and will have to retake her final year yet again. So, this episode is filled with Tomoya juggling school and his worries for Nagisa, managing to graduate despite really not wanting to do so without her, bringing us to an emotional ending as his school life finally comes to an end with no clear future path in sight.

I have to confess that the ending did get me feeling a little emotional, but that aside there isn't a massive amount of note in this episode apart from the feeling that most of the main characters that have sat alongside Tomoya and Nagisa will be largely jetissoned, which is possibly (for me at least) even more upsetting than the episode's overall subject matter. Really, overall this instalment can probably be seen simply as scene setting for everything that's going to come from here, and while I can understand taking an entire episode out to show the period of time covered here I think we all got the idea within the first five minutes, which left a lot of the rest of this instalment dragging a little.

Still, the main meat of After Story is what we're all here to see, and now we're finally getting it - Time to add a bumper box of tissues to your Christmas wish-list, as chances are you may well be needing them...