02.06
Yeah… it’s one of those episodes.
Episode 7: Star-Shaped Plot Tumors
Previously on Clannad, Tomoya and Nagisa find out that Ms. Ibuki can neither see nor hear Fuko. The show doesn’t really explain why, so it just expects us to roll with it and bawl at how they can’t share their true feelings with each other now. Yeah, call me a soulless monster for not feeling it, but I need logic before I can get the slightest bit involved in drama. Even if it’s magic, it still has to make sense. Unless you’re a sugar-crazed five-year-old with a liking for cops cutting heads off, there is no excuse for such a blatant exploitation of melodrama here.
After the opening, Ms. Ibuki remarks about the rumours that Fuko is out and about at the high school. But because she can’t comprehend the magic of friendship, our stick in the mud notes how it’s impossible for her to be hanging out at school since she’s been at the hospital all this time. Then we get this lovely piece of dialogue.
“Even if only in her dreams, I’m glad if she’s surrounded by lots of friends. Good friends. Close friends. If she can only dream, then I hope she is always with her friends. If she were ever to wake up and then come back to this school, will the two of you make a solemn vow to me that you will be the very best friends?”
Why does it feel like I’ve stumbled upon scrapped Téa dialogue for Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series? Littlekuriboh, is there something you aren’t telling us?
After hearing comments from Tomoya that any normal person would regard as creepy, Ms. Ibuki just tells the two to keep Fuko company even though she just doubted that they ever actually talked to her. She wants it one way, but it’s the other way.
Tomoya and Nagisa both say that she should just marry instead of angst over her sister, because Fuko wants her to. Instead of giving Tomoya an introduction to Mr. Mace, Ms. Ibuki just kind of mutters about not wanting her happiness to take away her involvement with her sister.
With redundancy time is done, Fuko plays with Kyou’s Swinub and invites it to the wedding, which leads to the question: How the fuck can a Pokemon see this girl if her own sister can’t?
Tomoya and Nagisa then angst about how Ms. Ibuki can’t see Fuko, with the red one crying and blaming herself for some odd reason. And as showcased for the last three episodes, we get more scenes of Fuko handing out starfish while our main two keep contemplating over shit.
And since the show can’t be boorish enough, Tomoya and Fuko decide to invite Kotomi to the wedding. In the middle of being handed a starfish, Kotomi begins to list out scientific names and brief characteristics because no one in this show can have natural dialogue.
Barefoot, shy girl with encyclopedic knowledge? There’s a fetish for that.
After making an off-hand comment about how the two are awkward, Tomoya has to go on a tongue twister’s face-off with Fuko. Our protagonist starts off with, “Kris Kringle carefully crunched on multicolored crimson candy canes while climbing the catacombs,” while Fuko just makes incoherent dog noises. What an abhorrent abomination that knows no bounds in bombarding my brain with belligerent, blighted boneheads. Sunohara pops up since you can’t have a tedious scene without him on board, only to get attacked by a horde of Fuko’s paedophiles. At least it wasn’t another from visit from DEM LEGS, but that’s like saying getting mauled in the face by monkeys is better than getting shot in both kneecaps.
Tomoya and Nagisa once again talk to Ms. Ibuki about her marriage with Future Tomoya. Because of nostalgia, she wants to have the wedding at the school surrounded by all her students.
Crap, I suddenly got a flashback to a Little Bill episode with the plot like that, except it was straightforward and made sense.
Oh wait, this is a Clannad recap. Got to get in focus.
Furashubaaku time begins as Ms. Ibuki remembers a vacation where she and Fuko were at a beach. She remembers how Fuko didn’t talk to any other girls her age, and instead committed bad touch upon starfish. Instead of doing the normal thing and introducing her to people, she gave her the cold shoulder in the hopes that Fuko would take the hint and find someone else to annoy (and admittedly, it worked, kind of).
But of course, she got into an accident after the entrance ceremony, because tragedy and little sisters go together like salarymen and hookers.
Then after being asked why these two are so obsessed with trying to help her sister, Tomoya tries to justify it by saying how he and Nagisa are as awkward as she is. Because each one of us is
A brain,
An athlete,
A basket case who also happens to be a brain,
A princess,
And a criminal, right, Tomoya?
Then there’s even more scenes of Fuko handing starfish, with Tomoya contradicting himself by saying she’s not awkward at all.
At yet another empty classroom, they have a meeting with Sunohara about the wedding and stuff. The only reason he’s there is because he believes there’s a love triangle in this show, sad bastard. When in fact, he’s so out of the loop that he thinks Fuko is handing out shuriken—or in his words, “Shoreeken”—as wedding invitations
After being told that very few people know what these things are, Fuko concocts a plan to make a school announcement about how they’re all starfish. And with all these set to motion, she plans to start a cult with these aquatic creatures as their messiah. How far until she’ll give all the members Kool-Aid to drink?
Nagisa proposes that they hand out dangos as invitations, on the basis that they’re cute. And oh Christ, she ends up having a fight with Fuko about whether or not the dango is cuter than the starfish. But being Clannad, they quickly decide that both are the cutest and resolve their difference like so.
Fuko proceeds to orgasm again, with Tomoya taking advantage of the situation yet again by making her poke and pummel at Sunohara’s face.
Commence titles and a knock-off of the 20th Century Fox fanfare, as Tomoya has mastered “Swapping the Sculpture in Hand.” Having accomplished all this, he has finally become the “Fuko Master”, which is slightly more dignified than being Game Master, a bit less than being BeastMaster, and no way can you compare it to being Pokemon Master.
Deciding that they need to talk someone about the wedding, Tomoya and Nagisa go to Hitler for help. Having known Ms. Ibuki since presumably escaping Germany, Hitler reminisces on how friendly they were to each other. But being over a century old and out of his culture, he confuses which Ibuki he’s talking about and admits that’s he rather forgetful. He even confuses Tomoya for the future one when being told that his friend is getting married.
But having honed his abilities of foresight after losing the Second World War, he correctly predicts that they want to set the wedding at the school and quickly decides to make it so.
A bit sad that he didn’t go into a senile stupor and talk about how Rory punched him in the face once, but I digress.
They tell the good news to Ms. Ibuki, and she replies with how Fuko’s coma has gotten worse. Then they cry again, because the director thinks that we’re babies that will mimic what we see.
Back at the dorm, Sunohara makes note on how a crowd of students didn’t so much as notice Fuko trying to hand out starfish to them. You’d think he’d try to get Fuko to walk in their way or touch them to see if they really can’t feel her, but drama forbids it. Oh, and people are forgetting the mere fact that they even have starfishes. Shouldn’t dying make Fuko’s ghost more visible to everybody? But I suppose since there’s absolutely no evidence of how afterlife logic works, the writers can just make up shit for the sake of it. Next, they’re going to make believe that robots and little girls from another dimension can turn back time and save people from dying. But they really can’t be stupid enough to do something like that, can they?
Well that was abrupt. Goodnight, everybody!
Originally posted on Friday, August 12, 2011.