クラナド Episode 02

SPOILER Summary:

Okazaki sees Nagisa in a field surrounded by light and making an offer to take him to a place in the city where wishes come true. Okazaki is stunned by this, but Nagisa tells him it is lines from a play, which she practices in the field. This of course explains her desire to be in a drama club. Okazaki asks her if she is planning to restart the club, and she confirms this, assuring him she will give it her all.

Someplace else, a girl is alone in a room and is apparently in a place where nothing is born or dies. She puts together spare electronic parts and appears to build a crude robot, who appears to be giving the narration about this odd scene and the odd girl therein.

The next day at school, Okazaki is walking outside the campus when Kyou comes up on a scooter. She yells at him to get out of the way and has a small accident. However, there’s no harm and she decides not to press the matter further since her bike isn’t dented. Okazaki reminds her he’s the victim here as she scoots off. He’s met by Sunohara who tells him he’s going to challenge Tomoyo, who beat him up in episode 1. They go inside and he issues his challenge, and she’s not amused. She tries to warn him off but he refuses and presses the matter. However, with Okazaki agreeing to be witness to her act of self defense, she beats Sunohara again and as he’s still in the air, she gets Okazaki to open the dust chute on the wall and she kicks Sunohara inside. Then, she causes him to lose his grip and fall down to a trash bin (one presumes) below. Despite her distaste for having to fight her fellow school mate, it seems she has taken a liking to both Okazaki and Sunohara for some unknown reason, which she refuses to speak further of (beyond being reminded of something). Sunohara vows revenge.

After hearing some guys talk about a supposed ghost in the school, Okazaki decides to cut class and get some sleep in the library. There, he finds a girl barefoot with a lot of advanced books all around her and scissors to apparently cut pages out of the books. He stops her from doing this and her response is a strange one. She offers him some of her bento. However, she only has one pair of chopsticks, so he carefully takes a piece of the omelet she’d made and tells her it tasted really good. This seems to please her a great deal. After leaving her, he wonders if that is the ghost he’d heard about, but after consulting with Ryou, he learns that her name is Ichinose Kotomi and that she’s a genius who ranks in the top-10 nation-wide for every high school subject in the national exam.

Okazaki changes the subject to Kyou and the issue of her nearly running him over that morning. He starts to say the English word “bike” but only manages to get “bi” out before Kyou attacks him with a book, which he narrowly avoids. She drags him into the hall, furious that he was about to spill that she rides a scooter to school when that is forbidden. So, he returns to his class and announces that Kyou is “bi.” This leads to much talk in the class about Kyou’s sexual orientation, which upsets Ryou. Kyou is taking it out on Okazaki in the hall again and the upset Ryou comes out, wondering if it is true, forcing Kyou to explain it was the “bike.”

That afternoon, Okazaki meets up with Nagisa, who’s sitting with a broom. She asks him to meet her in the theater club room. She creates a flier and when he says it needs something else, he says she needs to add lines about the beautiful president. She is embarrassed by this and refuses, saying that he’d be a better president. But he says that he’s only helping her out and has no plans to actually join the club. This makes her a bit sad, but this is forgotten when he encourages her to go ahead and add an illustration that she wants. So she adds images of “Dango” (a food) from an old anime series. He agrees to help her post flyer’s.

As he’s posting flyer’s, he hears someone in what’s supposed to be an abandoned classroom. The girl is carving a star shape with a knife. She’s so caught up in what she’s doing, she doesn’t hear him approach and gets heavily startled, fleeing for the exit. She’s apparently very happy about her carving but when he sees her injured hand, he takes the knife and sees that it is chipped. She demands that he give the knife back which he won’t, saying she needs a sharp one. He points out her injury and twice reveals that she in pain even though she denied it. So to her dismay, he takes the knife.

He continues posting fliers and Sunohara arrives, stating he’s surprised that Okazaki is bothering with a club. Nagisa overhears this and asks if it is true, so Okazaki tries to play it off. He goes home and makes dango characters for Nagisa when his father comes up close to him, causing him to have a severe negative reaction and to move away from his father. His father seems fairly quiet and even a bit timid. However, Okazaki is angry with him for treating him like a stranger and he flees the house, ending up near Nagisa’s place where he meets her. He gives her the dango characters he’d made which pleases her. She confesses to being depressed all day and reveals that she’s often the subject of being picked on. But now she feels better. He tells her about how he used to play basketball and agrees to play ball with her after school the following day.

The following day, Okazaki is hanging out in Sunohara’s room as it is raining outside. He suddenly remembers his conversation with Nagisa and borrows Sunohara’s umbrella to head to the outdoor basketball courts. Sure enough, Nagisa is there. He starts to chastise her about standing in the rain waiting for him, but she points out that he did in fact come, so it wasn’t wasted time. She begs him to make a shot for her since she’s never seen one done up close. He goes to make a shot, but the ball falls out of his hand and he collapses on the court. He confesses that he can’t raise his arm above the level of his shoulder since a fight he had with his father a few years before. She’s depressed about having troubled him and faints.

Thoughts:

Yeah, I think I’m going to like this one pretty well. I’m liking the characters which is a good start and I’m interested in seeing where things go. Okazaki is like the standard hero character in these things, but his own issue with his father is almost creepy. I get the feeling his father beat him at some point but we’ll see where that goes.

The Okazaki-Nagisa pairing is sweet. Granted, Okazaki will be involved with every girl in the anime, but much like Kanon where the paired couple for the end of the series was obvious from the begining, this one appears to be that way too.

The funny scene belongs to the fight between Sunohara and Tomoyo. ^_^ Runner up is Omazaki having fun with Kyou by announcing to the class that she is bi.

I neglected to mention it for episode 1, but the strange girl was shown there and again here with this whole weird thing about her. I guess she’s the rumored ghost.

Update (18 Feb 2008): 4:3 images replaced with widescreen images.