[Ascaloth] CLANNAD ~After Story~, Another World (Kyou Chapter) at Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

[Ascaloth] CLANNAD ~After Story~, Another World (Kyou Chapter)

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Popularity: 5% [?] Published by Ascaloth July 6th, 2009 in Ascaloth, Anime

What would your life had been like, had you just made a different choice at that particular moment? How differently might it have turned out, and how would it have made you a different person from the one you are today? If you had just managed to make that confession you never did make to that special other at that time, might things have been different today, for better or for worse? Just like the Tomoyo Chapter which came with the CLANNAD (TV) DVDs, Episode 25 or otherwise the Kyou Chapter, which came as an OVA with the CLANNAD ~After Story~ DVDs, depicts an alternative CLANNADverse, where this time Okazaki Tomoya gets himself involved with the Fujibayashi sisters. Therefore, it has little in relation with the main storyline which detailed Tomoya and Nagisa’s transition into the adult world, and instead brings us back to a School Life arc where Kyou and Ryou did not have to weep in united grief at a tennis court one fine day. Yet, there is much to cry for even still.

CLANNAD ~After Story~, Another World (Kyou Chapter).

And right off the bat, we’re dump straight into the core of the Kyou storyline, where said Kyou is left moping about her choices while Ryou finally works up the courage to confess to Tomoya. And thus the chain of events start.

The cross-talk between the new couple reveals all too quickly and obviously that the pair don’t really have a clue as to what the fuck they’re doing, which is probably the case for most student relationships anyway. It’s a funny thing, I used to like depictions of school romances quite a bit, yet nowadays I find them….about as immature as their real-life counterparts all too often tend to be as well. I’m either getting older, or more cynical. Probably both.

When three has to become two, the vacant spot is keenly felt. Although I’m left to wonder, who prepared the bento there? Hilarity is bound to ensue if it was Ryou’s handiwork.

Come to think of it, we never really got to see Kyou and Tomoya sit down and have a nice long chat very much, even though they show here that they do have quite a bit of conversational chemistry. In fact, the last time we saw them do something similar was….in the main storyline, when Kyou was already a teacher and Tomoya already had Ushio. Huh.

A stellar example of the influence of memetic mutation can be found in this very scene. While the original source material did not come with any such connotations, the animated adaptation of the very same scene, by virtue of having appeared after the genesis of a pervasive meme informally known as ‘nice boat’, has inexplicably attained external connotations of rampant promiscuity and lethal violence.

One thing KyoAni certainly is no slouch at animating is body language. Sometimes, I wonder what wonders just a little of this kind of thing would work in the main Tomoya-Nagisa pairing.

Head-in-a-bag, averted.

Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiioooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

Always good to see good ol’ Sunohara back. By the way, it’s just kind of sad if a guy has been in a relationship with a girl for a while, and his best bud still doesn’t know about it. Certainly doesn’t bode all too well for said relationship.

This the crack SunoharaXKyou pairing everyone wanted?

It’s probably just an ill-thought-out act of desperation, but I don’t see the logic behind Kyou’s actions. See, what she’s doing here not only won’t dispel the rumours, it’ll even add onto them in the form of people gossiping about her being a two-timing slut. Or something.

While Sunohara’s high CON stat is unfortunately not showcased at all in this OVA like it was most prominently in the main storyline, he does put his other strong point - a respectable WIS stat - to good use here.

What bothered me about this scene is how Kyou sounded so….stilted, throughout the entire exchange here. She didn’t sound quite like the Kyou we’re used to at all, or is that only because of the already awkward situation she has to work with?

No princess crepe this time around?

The other thing about this OVA is how….textbook melodrama it was. Putting aside the incredibly rushed pacing due to the very compressed content within the time space of 1 episode, the Kyou arc as portrayed in the OVA played out like pretty much every other two-bit love-triangle melodrama I’ve seen. There just doesn’t seem to be all that much substance under the layer of supposed angst, and frankly, I much prefer Kyou throwing punches and dictionaries around instead of being all melodramatic. Somehow, it just doesn’t suit her.

"If you’re thinking of putting distance from the two of them, then you’d be the worst man alive."

Also, though Sunohara once again shows his respectable WIS stat here, it seems that I’ve heard almost the exact same thing out of some other characters in other shows before. The whole thing is really playing out like a paint-by-numbers melodrama, and there’s not much to distinguish it from any other.

"If this were in a manga, if the two of us are alone in a classroom, we’d end up kissing, right?"

Well, that’d be the most common outcome, but it doesn’t necessarily happen that way. For example, if it’s a whole other genre which I shall not name, you two might not stop at kissing IYKWIM. For another example, you might try to go stabbity-stab on him with a KA-BAR instead.

"I’ll become the girl that you desire…."

Yup. Heard all this before.

And in the end, all misunderstandings were resolved, everyone came to terms with their true feelings, and the true pairing finally got together after a long trial. Eeeeyup. Textbook to the very end. By the way, I’m no fan of Kyou’s new hairstyle here.

It might be that the classic romance story of Tomoya and Nagisa remains relatively fresh in my mind as one of the best I’ve ever seen, and thus that might have something to do with how I felt, but to me the Kyou Chapter felt like a bone that KyoAni felt they had no choice but to throw to the Kyou fans, much like they did the same with the Tomoyo Chapter for the Tomoyo fans. It was compressed, it was textbook, it really wasn’t anything special; which is a big shame considering the potential of Kyou’s character. Still, whatever else it may be, it is also pretty much the last taste ever of CLANNAD we’ll get from the pairing of Key Visual Arts’/Kyoto Animation, for there is not likely to be anymore. It was a nice little jaunt back to the CLANNADverse, even if only for a while, even if only to an alternate world, but this is truly the end of everything. The last moments of an epic 2-year journey we all undertook long, long ago, up that steep slope of fate.

Ascaloth of RIUVA, signing out.

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6 Responses to “[Ascaloth] CLANNAD ~After Story~, Another World (Kyou Chapter)”

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1 Lola 4 comments Jul 6th, 2009 at 6:04 am

why no kisses between Tomoya and Nagisa? that sucks.. I was ok with that, but since the OVA had some kisses, I got angry. Kyoani was pretty unfair about that, screw that “pure love” stuff. I wanted a kiss at least.
5/10 pretty rushed OVA, made for the fanservice and the saimoe. I jus hope they won’t animate Tomoyo after.
2 Sorrow-kun 26 comments Jul 6th, 2009 at 9:27 am

“but to me the Kyou Chapter felt like a bone that KyoAni felt they had no choice but to throw to the Kyou fans”

This. You know what also annoyed me about this episode: the fact that there were more moments of intimacy here than there were during the two seasons of Clannad and Clannad After Story. I guess that’s more a gripe about the main story, but, IMO, the canon couple should get the most intimate moments. Why was KyoAni so apprehensive about showing intimacy between Nagisa and Tomoya when they did so much to describe their love through other means? I wasn’t asking for too much, just a simple kiss every now and then.
3 Tremere 28 comments Jul 6th, 2009 at 10:32 am

That was pretty nice. Let’s see the other arcs !
4 Taka 9 comments Jul 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am

IMO they should have made the DVD special a new arc in the Nagisa storyline where Kyou and Tomoya get together when she is Ushio’s teacher. Would have been epic.
5 Lola 4 comments Jul 6th, 2009 at 5:03 pm

@Sorrow-kun
yep, now I can’t die happily becouse of that. I’m afraid they will animate Tomoyo after some day, since she’s Jun maeda’s favorite (I just finished the manga and is a very heavy romance, but tomoyo and tomoya felt out o character to me, the story is sad but never got me)
@taka: that won’t work! that’s against natural laws! in each storyline he can love only one woman. but there’s a doujin game about kyou being ushio’s step mother. I obviously would have hated that kind of ending, and dropped the series, I was terrified in episode 20 wen he met kyou, thank’s god nothing happened between them muhahaha.
6 Niker 17 comments Jul 15th, 2009 at 2:20 am

Since I’ve played the game, I know what these characters went through. Almost none of the true feelings were/can be shown in a 20 min span. But its kinda like a harry potter movie ( 6th is coming out soon )… the book is 700 pages long and u are supposed to snap all that into a 1.30 hours span? Impossible, but if people read the book, they’ll most certainly know what the situation is, and they’ll know their feelings when they read the book/played the game.

I guess pretty much everyone got a school days flashback….

I still have to watch the afterstory, but I’m downloading it…

Kyou, My favorite girl, will be the last glimpse that I have of clannad. It’ll be the last of this epic series… RIP Clannad.

I loved every minute of it, and I’ll watch it constantly on my computer.

Cheers,
Nick

Do not use any < and > for your own sake. It will end the comment there and then. Also, there is an automatic IQ filter which weeds out comments made by those who accidentally got transported from the stone age.

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