02.06
Episode 1
We pan out to a bleak town, where we hear someone bitch about the monotony of it all. Not even a minute passes by, and it already gets tiring, with such crisp dialogue as, “There’s no place I’d rather not go ever again.” As we get more scenery of the setting, our lead, Tomoya, walks into the path of a red haired girl who inexplicably mutters “Pan-pan,” the Japanese word that children use to say bread. Why a high-school girl says this to herself, I don’t know. She asks Tomoya if he likes this school, and how she loves it “very, very much,” only to lament about how everything good changes no matter what. Then, he corrects her by saying that they can all just find new things to be happy about. A moment later; they immediate become best friends, I guess.
And so, we get introduced to the saccharine world of Clannad, one of the most talked-about anime in recent years as well as the third leading cause of Type-2 diabetes.
For those with a keen eye on the dialogue, you’ll be noticing that I’m watching the dub by ADV’s reanimated corpse. And before you go on about how much it sucks in comparison to the sub, I agree with you. Outside of seasoned veterans like Luci Christian or Hilary Haag, the entire cast is full of either miscasts or amateurs, which isn’t helped by shit dialogue written by people who apparently BabelFish’d the original Japanese scripts instead of properly adapting them.
After the opening, we cut to our lead walking back to the dorm, then to cut once again to seeing some blonde kid named Sunohara getting beaten down by men who look twice his age. Tomoya walks into the situation, and just laughs it off that he’s getting fucking assaulted here. Soon, the dorm mother pops out, scares the guys off, and leading the show to cut yet again to Sunohara’s room. Sunohara and Tomoya are talking to each other, and we already get a sense that the kid has more estrogen in him than most of the girls on this show. Honestly, it’s like his voice actor just got his groin bludgeoned a second before recording.
Immediately after that, we cut something entirely different. In an empty room filled with nothing but a girl who looks kind of like the one from a few minutes ago, we get the following narration:
“This is a world that has ended. Nothing is born, nothing dies. Not even passing time exists. If I were looking for somewhere to be born, I don’t think I should choose this world. And in this world, such as it is, there is someone. I wonder if she can see me. I haven’t been born into this world. A girl living alone in a world that has ended. A girl living in this empty and still world. For some reason, I am bothered by that girl.”
…
I’ve read instruction manuals with better prose than this. Next, we switch to a scene with Tomoya at class. A bunch of nameless characters are making tactful comments about how our lead does nothing with his life. Then, a purple-haired girl named Ryou walks up to Tomoya and complains about how he doesn’t come to class on time, but being a doormat; she fails at getting her point across. Ryou switches the subject to something about fortune-telling, and for some reason uses playing cards to predict Tomoya’s future. She ends up spilling the cards and somehow uses this to foretell how he’ll be late in tomorrow’s class due to a romantic meeting with a girl. Tomoya has a rare moment of clarity and snarks on how specific that was, only for Ryou to say that it was “Maiden’s inspiration.” A keener eye would say that she’s pulling shit out her ass, but before anything like that ever happens, someone throws a dictionary right at Tomoya only for it to go out the window like a steroid-induced home run.
Enter Kyou, Ryou’s older sister and the ensemble bitch of the show. When hearing about the fortune, Kyou just laughs it off, calling Tomoya “lover-boy”, and our scene once again abruptly ends. God, I know the brevity’s the soul of wit, but this is not proper direction. You need to have fluidity to make scenes work, not cuts that try to aim for Chris Nolan only to fall short of Marc Forster.
Tomoya walks through the halls while hearing a couple of guys talking about a ghost. With that blatant foreshadowing out of the way, our lead goes outside to see the red-haired girl eating lunch, or as the pisspoor dubbing puts it, “her lunchtime meal.” Once again, she asks him if he likes this school, and gushes about how much she loves it. But this time, it gets elaborated a little with the girl lamenting how she had to repeat a year due to being sick, and having to be in school while all her friends have since graduated. Tomoya asks her if she hasn’t went to any clubs like Drama in order to be among friends, which the girl remarks that she’s too physically weak to join any of them. One wonders why this girl isn’t in some kind of ward hopped up on vitamins if she’s that fragile instead out in the open, but I digress. The two then notice Kyou and Ryou at the top of a school building, presumably pretending that they’re Captain Jack or something. Tomoya tries to get red-haired girl to say hi to them, only for them to leave off without even noticing.
But we’re done with that pseudo-poignant moment, because suddenly… wild bikers appear! Apparently, the bikers are pissed that they couldn’t go to this school, with one kid remarking, “This school has the highest rate of kids going to college in the town,” even though we haven’t seen so much as an actual teacher yet. However, these guys quickly get their asses handed to them by a gray-haired girl
called Tomoyo.
Some people bring a knife to a gun fight. Real men bring a pan.
GAZE INTO THE SKIRT OF DREDD!
With that over, we immediately get to another scene with Tomoya looking out the window, then to another scene with Tomoya and the red-haired girl, who we learn is named Nagisa Furukawa, introducing themselves. It’s just the first episode, and the director can’t fucking keep focus on a single scene for more than a few seconds. And as soon as I type these words, we cut to Sunohara calling Tomoyo out. He gets KO’d, and cue scene yet fucking again.
Tomoya then walks to the clubs and sees Nagisa open a door, only to find a room filled with boxes and chairs. She notices him, and goes, “What are you doing with your hand up there?” With this little game of “bad touch” over, Tomoya talks about how the club has been on hiatus since March, though notes how there’s a chance it can always start up again. Nagisa inexplicably gets savvy and asks about why he’s being so nice to her after only being around each other a few times, only to just smile and nod like the dumbass she is.
We then get a montage of Tomoya walking around town, finishing with him wandering into the Furakawa’s bakery. He meets Mrs. Furukawa, and the woman looks like she gave birth to Nagisa when she was still in the womb herself. Tomoya tries some of the bread, with a cracker baked in (who the hell puts the crispy part in the inside?). Of course, he says pretty much what everyone else would say, and the poor bint runs off and cries. Mr, Furukawa comes in, and threatens Tomoya with a fucking metal bat for not saying the bread is good, only to become bros with him after hearing that he goes to the same school as Nagisa. Then at dinner, he bitches at him for thinking that he’s Nagisa’s boyfriend, only to give him a “Believe in yourself” speech about getting the girl he loves.
Daddy’s off his meds…
This guy would be more at home fighting alongside Gai Daigouji or beating the fuck out of Anti-Spirals instead of wasting his time being a slice-of-life dad. His voice also amplifies how jarring it is, since the actor sounds like some kind of vicious wifebeater than anything else.
Moving on, the Furukawas make jokes about changing Tomoya’s name, and this scene alone makes me confused as to why fans of the sub hate this version. Instead of finding a Woolsey-esque way to translate this into English, they directly adapt it so it’s laced with Japanese terminology and alienates anyone who doesn’t know what “Ginga” means or the context behind “Tomoya Okazaki Eternal”, perfect for all you weaboos out there.
After a dinner montage, Tomoya comes back home and finds an old guy asleep on the corner. This guy turns out to be his dad, whose mere waking is enough to send Tomoya into a hissy fit and run out the house. We get some more exposition where Tomoya talks about how his mom died and his dad’s a gambler who drinks a lot. And since that apparently only needed a couple sentences to cover, we cut to a random spotlight of Nagisa asking to bring him to a special place.
“If you like, I’ll take you to a special place in town. A place where all your wishes come true.”
Hope you brought protection, kid.
And with that, the first episode is over, and I need to fucking detox this shit out of my system.
Originally posted on Monday, March 28, 2011.