Clannad After Story 01
クラナド アフターストーリー Episode 01

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

With Tomoya officially a couple with Nagisa, Akio-san decides that the boy dating his daughter needs to do him a favor and that involves getting a baseball team together for the sake of their town to take out a rival shopping district’s team. Nagisa and Tomoya recruit Youhei, Kotomi (who’s very excited to play after having watched the previous baseball game Tomoya was involved in), and Kyou from the Theater Club.

Ryou decides she will cheer since she’s not good at sports. Youhei and Tomoya pay a visit to Tomoyo, who agrees to play only if Misae-san (the house mother of the dorm Youhei lives in) plays. Misae is soon recruited as is neighborhood electrician (and former rock star) Yuusuke as well as Youhei’s little sister, Mei-chan.

Once the team is formed, they meet that Sunday to play the rival shopping district team, who all have uniforms while Akio-san’s team does not. Akio-san’s pitching proves masterful and soon his team is up to bat. They soon get a surprising 4-0 lead with some of the players doing quite well and some lucking out. However, things change when Akio-san is taken out by a bat that accidentally slips out of the hand of a player from the other team. Nagisa is pulled from cheering with her mother, Ryou, and Kouko (Yuusuke’s wife and Fuko-chan’s sister) to be a pitcher, not because she’s good, but because she’s so bad, she’ll be hard to hit. It works for the most part but the other team eventually takes the lead in part because of Youhei’s mistakes.

It is down to the last inning and Nagisa gets a hit. Soon the bases are loaded and it is Tomoya’s turn to be at bat. Because of his shoulder injury, Tomoya hasn’t taken full swings. Akio-san knows that Tomoya is just going to have to take a swing anyway. Tomoya does and Akio-san’s team wins. To celebrate, everyone comes by Akio-san’s place where Sanae-san makes a big feast.

Thoughts/Review:

I don’t know why the Japanese are doing this dual-release but there has to be some sort of financial thing involved in initially airing an anime in 4:3 pan-and-scan (actually, it may not even be much pan-and-scan as some shots are clearly just cut off with no attempts to scan at all) and then re-airing it a few weeks later in wide screen.’

In the OP sequence, I noticed there was no obvious Fuko. I think she’s in there in one brief scene with her back to us but she is not mentioned. Granted, her storyline was mostly resolved in Clannad but I hope her absence in the OP doesn’t mean that we won’t get a few more humorous appearances by her character.

Speaking of Fuko, I was surprised to see her sister and brother-in-law appear in this episode. Not only that, but they had parts to play with Yuusuke having a funny moment trying to give some cliched speech after his first hit but forgetting to call time first. Yuusuke’s seiyuu is MIDORIKAWA Hikaru, who’s also the voice of Zelgadiss in Slayers. I mention this because with Slayers REVOLUTION having recently ended, it amused me to hear Zelgadiss’s voice in another character. ^_^

The story itself would be called filler since it did nothing to advance a plot. There was that bit at the end with Tomoya somehow seeming to be tied with the “Garbage Doll” in the other world. However, I didn’t mind that there was no plot. I love the characters from Clannad and as such, I loved seeing them playing baseball, even if this kind of episode has been done many times before in other anime series. I laughed out loud when Kotomi got up to bat and had a complete analysis of the game and hitting in her mind. I laughed when Youhei got beaten by Tomoyo and when Tomoyo decided she wanted to try to hit the baseball like a girl. There were many funny moments in this episode but overall, things were just a heck of a lot of fun. That’s good because I have seen some bits and pieces about where the game takes the story and if the anime writers follow that (which they will), I’m sure we’ll be grateful for these fun moments now when the tears come later. ^_^;;;

I mention the so-called Garbage Doll (or robot but I guess the official designation is “doll”) earlier and that leads me to state that I hope the whole weird sub-story from Clannad about the girl and GD is actually explained this time. We had a lot of hints from Clannad and those need to be fleshed out into at least some answers.

There is one really unique thing about Clannad After Story — Tomoya and Nagisa being a couple. Clannad followed the steps of Air and Kanon in setting a harem table with the male lead to chose one of the girls. Now that this choice has been made, I rather enjoy seeing Nagisa and Tomoya as a couple (and hope to see a lot more of that). I also like how the other girls who’d been interested in Tomoya are still there and friends with both Tomoya and Nagisa. I find that refreshing and very enjoyable.

So, a really good start to this new series of Clannad.

Oh, I may or may not upgrade the images when the wide screen version is released. Depends on how I feel. ^_~