r/Clannad • u/BusyTraffic6822 • 3h ago
Discussion Anime vs VN analysis ideas(lengthy)
I’ve been analysing both the anime and visual novel after I finished the visual novel by the end of August and they have a stark difference in what they are trying to say. The anime is clear but the vn I’m still trying to make sense of so some outside ideas would be appreciated
I did this through the lens of tomoya specifically where I narrowed his character down to 3 main aspect: impermanence, passive vs active, and lived experience.
The bulk of what I’m going to say is specifically nagisas arc+AS upto her death in the visual novel(since tomoya is more fleshed out) but her death causes 2 divergences. Which I’ll use the anime for. The visual novel path is what I’d like ideas on(but if you have ideas about the anime part you can share too)
Simply:
Initial tomoya is passive and doesn’t really see the meaning in things since they’ll change. Why engage with things if they will change? He wonders if anything in his life will change or if it’ll still be robotic(pun) and monotonous.
His meeting with nagisa is literally this in a nutshell. She repeated her third year so her friends have left. All the things that made her happy are gone. So she heisitates to climb the hill to school. “Fun things, happy things. They can’t all stay unchanged. Even so, can you still love this place?” Tomoya answers. “Just find new and happy things”. This is ironic given the literal first minute of watching/playing of him not doing what he just said.
Anyway, throughout his final year of high school. He slowly becomes active. Engaging with new people, helping nagisa with the drama club etc. He feels fulfilled and now has a partner.(this is all I’ll say about pre afterstory)
During afterstory, nagisa gets sick again. Tomoya works his ass off for her, now having found his ‘meaning’. Every so often he will notice things that are changing…and he hates it. He’s somber about the restaurant opening up, he detests the knocking down the old school building where the drama club is, he thinks it’s cruel that a place that means so much to akio(the field where the town saved nagisa) is being built on. He extends this to himself, he fears any changes that might have to do with nagisa. This is all proof that he has been active. Akio says this himself, (paraphrase) “change just means you’re alive”. What this means is, if things change, you have to keep up with them. Keeping up is being active with them. And being active is living. However Tomoya doesn’t internalise this, opting to antagonise impermanence.
(Anime only now)When nagisa dies, Tomoya retreats back into his initial passivity we saw at the very start of the series. He repeats his daily activities robotically(x2!) and says “it’s as if my body is doing it out of habit” (habit being before he met nagisa). He doesn’t really engage with ushio and lets her live with akio and sanae, noting that ushio is changing too. As she gets older she looks more like nagisa. Which is too cruel for Tomoya to bear. This is his first proper loss, he was innocent to this beforehand. Now he knows the cost of connection and retreats from it.
When he’s eventually forced to go onto the trip with ushio(im gonna ignore the family aspect for this reading), he reconciles with her. What I find the most heartfelt about this is him reenganging with ushio despite knowing the cost of connection. He knows ushio might leave or change. He knows it might end up in grief as all connections do yet he chooses to be active in her life.
When ushio dies and he is returned to the foot of the hill, he calls out to nagisa. With that lesson learnt, he knows what the cost will be if he calls out to her…yet does so anyway. The connection gave him meaning despite knowing what will happen at the end. He learnt this with ushio, when nagisa died he retreated into passivity but when ushio died he stayed active, begging the world not to take her. This final choice of activity gains him the miracle(which is a result of previous acts of activity too) as if to say being active in life and accepting impermanence will save yourself(broadly). The timeline the miracle gave him were the fruits of his choices in life. Him being involved with people.
Profound message amazing blah blah blah.
The VN however opts for something else I don’t really know what to say about.
(VN only)When nagisa dies, Tomoya is returned to the foot of the hill. He calls out to her, saying he doesn’t regret meeting her and that he will live in pride and strength…then he does kinda the opposite.(the divergence is that the anime has him regretting meeting nagisa at this moment whereas in the vn he doesn’t regret it at all).
It’s way more grief based. He never says how he regrets meeting her. All he talks about is the fact that he is running away from his grief by trying to take his mind off of it(smoking, alcohol, using money). He considers running away from akio and sanae beceuase he thinks that will be the only think that will help relieve him of this pain. He can’t do that to them though.
We play through the rest of afterstory normally and by the time ushio dies…the game ends.
You have to play through afterstory again to gain akios light orb
Then another play through of afterstory to unlock the true ending where nagisa gave birth to ushio and is about to die, then immediately he’s returned to the foot of the hill where the scene repeats the exact same but this time the miracle is granted.
The anime is more about tomoyas character in the last half I’d say whereas the VN is more to do with the light orbs(which idk if I like).
With the anime being linear, it illustrates tomoyas conflict with impermanence and him accepting it. This links to the first episode with the first episode asking “if the things that make you happy change, can you keep on loving things?” And the final episode answering “the process of loving things is what makes it worth it even if it changes” which links to tomoyas reply to nagisa of “just find new things that make you happy” (as in when nagisa died he still had the memories but he found ushio to keep him going with that process of taking care of her and loving her, he found his meaning again)
In the vn, it erases this since technically he hasn’t gone through that(well all the routes in the vn are canon and definitely happend so that’s not totally accurate but to his knowledge he hasn’t gone through it). It asks the thesis question but the answer to it I can’t really figure out. I think me ignoring the family aspect is probably the issue but then what’s left of tomoya? His whole character is about dealing with impermanence(in the form of death) and I can’t really find a resolution to it.
Edit: in addition, the side stories vn actually promotes what the anime says. In the 16th story. Tomoya struggles in deciding if he should let ushio travel the world by herself. Eventually he agrees, noting that meeting people and leaving people will help for her maturity. The process of accepting impermanence and being active(in the form of meeting people and going to places but also parting with people and leaving places) will benefit her and is necessary for her growth. (Uhhhh let’s just ignore the whole premise of this story lmao. Tomoya letting his preschool daughter travel the world by herself…)
