Josh’s Anime Blog

It’s episode 15, and Nagisa tries to restart the drama club once again, with the help of everyone deciding to lend their name to the club, giving it the 5 student requirement. The only problem now is finding a faculty sponsor, but Nagisa ends up having a clash with another start-up club in an attempt to pick one up.  And apparently the school uniform designer also watches Evangelion a little too much.

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The highlights of this episode:

• The robot and the girl still stand in field of light in the world with no birth and no death. The robot realizes that he was originally from a different world either far in the past or in the distant future. However, the consciousness in the robot decided to come to the desolate world with no birth and no death because it was lonely for the girl.
• Kyou, Ryou, and Kotomi decide to add their names as members of the Theater club, even though they’re not really interested in acting, to help Nagisa reach the requisite number of members for it to become an official club again. Nagisa goes and asks Koumura-sensei to be their advisor, who tells her to discuss the matter with Rie Nishina - the girl who gave the violin to Kotomi.
• Nagisa and Rie have a chat, and then they each discuss the situation in their own groups. Rie and her group, who want to form a Choir club, asked Koumura to be their sponsor first, but Rie notes that Koumura was the sponsor for the Theater club before, and Nagisa is a senior, so this would be her last chance at being in the club.
• That night, Okazaki is hanging out in Sunohara’s room (even though Sunohara is still knocked out at school from a previous incident) when Sunohara’s sister calls. Okazaki pretends to be Sunohara on the phone, saying ridiculous things about him, which Sunohara’s sister falls for anyway. Sunohara’s sister tells Okazaki that she’s visiting the day after tomorrow and then hangs up before Okazaki can tell her that it really isn’t Sunohara on the phone.
• The next day, Okazaki and Sunohara notice Nagisa reading a letter, which turns out to be an anonymous note warning her to give up on forming the theater club. Sunohara, who suspects the Choir club members, goes off to investigate. That afternoon, Sunohara reports that it was one of the Choir club members - a girl named Sugisaka - who left the note, and asked her to come along.
• Sugisaka takes full responsibility for the note, saying the other members had nothing to do with it. Sugisaka tells Nagisa that Rie used to play the violin, but then got injured and couldn’t play it as well and thus started to sing and begs Nagisa to not get in Rie’s way. However, Sunohara yells at Sugisaka that people shouldn’t try to gain favors from others due to sympathy. However, Nagisa decides to give up on the theater club, since the Music club is serious, and the theater club is just kind of a rag-tag group.
• Sunohara continues to be worked up over the Choir club situation, so Okazaki takes him to Yukine’s library to calm him down. There, for fun, Yukine pulls out an astrology book and tells Sunohara that his lucky color is orange and his lucky word is basketball and that “how he challenges the seemingly impossible” will touch others. Sunohara then suddenly gets an idea and runs off.
• Later, while Okazaki is wandering around the school, he sees Sakagami being pressured into joining the girl’s judo club by both the boys and girls’ judo presidents and Okazaki rescues her from the situation.
• The next day, Nagisa and Okazaki run into Sunohara, who tells them that they should play a basketball game against the basketball team to impress the choir club into letting them have Koumura as a sponsor. Okazaki tries to tell Sunohara that he won’t do it, but Sunohara keeps badgering him about it.
• When school is over, Okazaki tries to run away from Sunohara, picking up Nagisa on the way. When they’re finally away from the school, Nagisa asks Okazaki what he’s doing, and Okazaki tells her that Sunohara is actually in love with him. Nagisa actually believes Okazaki and when Sunohara finally catches up with the pair, Nagisa tells Sunohara that he has to stop because she’s Okazaki’s boyfriend. Sunohara, who of course likes Nagisa, runs off in horror at hearing Nagisa.
• While running away, Sunohara passes a girl, who then approaches Okazaki and Nagisa, and introduces herself as Mei Sunohara - Sunohara’s little sister…

I’m trying to figure out where this episode falls in in the great scheme of things. My guess is my same guess from last week: that we’re progressing Nagisa’s arc a little bit, then hitting Sakagami’s arc, though it’s still unclear from the preview if this is the case.

If CLANNAD is indeed going to be 24 episodes long like Kanon, then we only have 9 episodes left to resolve 3 of the girl’s arcs, so time is starting to run out. Kanon had the same issue, and thus resolved Shiori’s arc in about three episodes, and then resolved Ayu and Nayuki’s arcs largely simultaneously. The same thing may need to happen here. Perhaps this episode suggests that they’ll go through Nagisa’s arc during both Sakagami and Kyou’s arcs this time? I guess we’ll find out.

I’m not sure what the purpose of having Fuko was in this episode. Last time, it was kind of comedic relief with her picking out the star from the crane machine, but this time nothing really happens. She shows up and then…leaves. I guess it was supposed to be comedic relief, but it seemed too pointless to really be funny.

What I did find funny was going into Yaoi mode. We’ve had a pair of faux Yuri moments, so why not have a yaoi moment too. I love how Nagisa fell for it too, going so far as telling Sunohara that she was dating Okazaki.

Perhaps the character which made the most progress in this episode was Sunohara, who I’m starting to think actually likes Nagisa now instead of just saying he does. Also, the person who does his voice does the best screams.

Oh, and what’s up with the CLANNAD girls switching to Evangelion school uniforms?