CLANNAD (Visual Novel)
Written by Jun Maeda, Yuichi Suzumoto, Kai, Toya Okano.
Published by ASCII Media Works.
Synopsis:
Clannad's story revolves around Tomoya Okazaki, a third year high school student who dislikes his life. Tomoya's mother (Atsuko) died when Tomoya was young, leaving his father (Naoyuki) to raise him. After the accident, Tomoya's father turned to alcohol and gambling, and held frequent fights with his son. One day, Naoyuki, again arguing with his son, slammed Tomoya against the wall, dislocating Tomoya's shoulder. Ever since then, his father has treated Tomoya nicely, but distantly, as if Tomoya and he were strangers rather than a family. This hurts Tomoya more than his previous relationship with his father, and the awkwardness of returning home leads Tomoya constantly to stay out all night. Additionally, the injury disables Tomoya from participating in his basketball club, and pushes him to distance himself from his school and other activities. Thus his delinquent life begins. Tomoya's good friend Youhei Sunohara, who got thrown out of the soccer club for a dispute, is also a delinquent and often hangs out in his dorm room with Tomoya doing nothing much.
The story opens on Monday April 14, 2003 at the beginning of the school year, when Tomoya meets by chance Nagisa Furukawa, a soft-spoken girl one year older than him who is repeating her last year in high school due to being sick much of the previous year. Her goal is to join the drama club which she was unable to do due to her sickness, but they find that the drama club was disbanded after the few remaining members graduated. Since Tomoya has a lot of time to kill, he starts to help Nagisa in reforming the drama club. During this period, Tomoya meets and hangs out with several other girls who he gets to know well and help with their individual problems.
Main Character:
The player assumes the role of Tomoya Okazaki, the protagonist of Clannad. Tomoya has been labeled a delinquent, or a young person who defies authority due to his non-committal attitude towards school and general apathy towards living life; at the beginning of the story, he even hates the city he has lived in all his life where Clannad is set. He is very straightforward in his comments to others and will not hesitate to speak his mind, even if he comes off as rude during such times. Despite this, Tomoya is very loyal to his friends, and has been known to dedicate himself for those around him in need of help or support. He generally has a selfless personality and does not ask much from others in return for what he does for them.
Tomoya meets Nagisa Furukawa, the main heroine of Clannad, at the onset of the story. Nagisa is a soft-spoken girl who has very low self-esteem and self-confidence which causes her to rely on those around her for support; she developed the strange habit of muttering the names of favorite foods that she plans to eat as a way to motivate herself, such as anpan. Kyou Fujibayashi, another of Clannad's heroines, is a bad-mouthed and aggressive girl well known as a good cook among her friends and family. When angry she does not hesitate to throw a dictionary at people that she often carries around for such purposes. Despite this attitude, she also has a more subdued side, especially towards her younger fraternal twin sister Ryou Fujibayashi.
Tomoya meets a genius girl named Kotomi Ichinose, also a heroine, one day at school. She is ranked in the top ten throughout the whole country in standardized exam results of every subject—she always goes to library to read extra materials, especially books in foreign languages. Kotomi is a very quiet girl with poor social skills and it is quite difficult to communicate with her; Kotomi can even completely ignore someone when reading, even if they make loud disturbances around her. Clannad's fourth heroine is a second-year student named Tomoyo Sakagami who transfers into Tomoya's school. Tomoyo, like Kyou, can be extremely aggressive, and Tomoyo is a very strong fighter, preferring to use kicking over punching, and is very athletic. Although Tomoya is older than her, Tomoyo does not show him his due respect as a senior student. Tomoyo appears in Key's fifth game, Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life, as the main heroine.
The last main heroine in Clannad is a first-year student named Fuko Ibuki who has a distant attitude towards others and, before she met Tomoya, was generally seen alone by herself making wood carvings of starfish with a small knife to give to others as presents. Fuko is extremely enthralled by starfish, or things that are star-shaped, and will often go into short euphoric bouts where her awareness of her surroundings is completely overtaken.
Relate the characteristic of the person to yourself:
To make it simple, I love Clannad. I like everyone in Clannad.
To begin with, they are all so kind, even a dumbass like Sunohara is friendly and funny, even Tomoya's father is kind, i think, he just have a foul mouth like Tomoya.
I once thought that i would spend all day learning to reach the top of the nation, like what my father and mother wanted. Knowing that if i try hard, it might be possible somehow.
But then i read manga, visual novel (about Clannad, about the way Tomoya, Sunohara, Kotomi... is) and everything began to change. Up until secondary school, i have always walked a lone patch; the environment i grew up, the always trouble i had to face was difference from a normal kid.
Being a idiot, spending my secondary school life loafing around with my friends, playing, daydreaming.
Those time will never come again, so i treasure them.Being an idiot is fine, as long as i have fun, then it's worth it. I began to live for the present, enjoyed the present of life.
As long as you continue to walk forward then it's the right path you have chosen; as long as you continue to have fun, enjoy my time, live life to the fullest, then there will be no regret; that is what i think, the way i've been living now.
About the main character I like the most in Clannad, it is Kotomi, not Tomoyo or Nagisa.
A genius, a girl from your childhood who you have forgotten, who always wait for you all those years, who had lost her parent and lived her life all alone since then, waiting for you, for the promise that you would come and you're the only one who's considered not stranger, who is loved even you've forgotten her all those years, the only one who can bring her back to the society; what will you do.
She's so nice, so cute, so admirable, so lovely all the time i followed the story, for the first in my life my heart beat really fast, breathing became hard then my emotion change every scene of the story. If she's real, i might love her for real. Well, the truth is (all the girl i had ever met or read in book) i love her the most, so it's no matter she's real or not, i still love her and Clannad.
