This screenshot of Nagisa pretty much sums up the entire episode. I have never, ever seen Nagisa look so strong or determined throughout the entire series. Heck, she looks rather garang (fierce). I can already imagine her with the two bars (Singaporean rank for Lieutenant) on her shoulders if she puts on an army no.4 uniform. She gets full salutations from me.

Nakahara Mai earns much praise from me for putting across in full force the strength of Nagisa’s will in her voice. With her firm “dame desu” and rather fierce “hai”, I am given much affirmation that Nagisa has come a long way from the time she met Tomoya at the base of the hill.

You can listen to Nagisa’s theme here. Nagisa’s theme is played in pure piano in this episode and is titled as Nagisa ( 渚) in the CLANNAD OST as well (track 5), which is why I chose to name this blogpost thus. The ending song (Dango Daikazoku or Big Family of Dangos) of the anime is also a vocal rendition of her theme, which of course drops hints from the very start that we’re most probably getting a Nagisa ending.

I sing Dango Daikazoku softly to myself often and it always sends rush of emotions welling up in my chest when I reach the chorus, and think about all that Nagisa has been through and actually CLANNAD and life in general. Although I don’t know basic Japanese grammar, the few starting lines of the song are simple enough for me to translate whenever I sing it without reference:

“Dango, dango, dango, dango

Dango Daikazoku. (does not need translation)

Yanchaa na yaki dango (A fried tea dango?)

Yasashii, an dango (A happy dango?)

Mina, mina, awasete hyakunin kazoku (When everyone gets together, we’ll become a family of a hundred)

Akachan, dango wa, itsumo, shiawase no naka de (the baby dango is always surrounded by happiness)…”

The last line is really meaningful, because it describes how human beings always hide their youth from the truth in hopes that they are not slapped by cynicism too soon. It has links to the “hidden world” always brought up in CLANNAD from time to time.

Oh yeah, and for those who are not familiar with Japanese honorifics, the -kun suffix is usually added to the end of the name of an acquaitance/friend, not your son (lol). I guess, it is finally time for Nagisa to learn that Tomoya has taken much harder knocks in his life than she has.

And the cruelty of it all is that Tomoya’s father was SMILING throughout.

Even the teacher recoiled in pain when he realised Tomoya’s situation but at least…

…we get rewarded by sunken-eyes-moe Kyoto Animation style XD

I don’t know which Key soundtrack the pure piano rendition of Nagisa’s theme was from (started playing in the above screenshot at 11:54), but I’m gonna go on a mad Key Sounds buying spree to find it. Actually, it will most likely end up transcribed on Josh’s Sheet music and I’ll definitely go learn to play it on the piano (I’m a grade 7 btw).

This episode clearly shows the difference between someone who is part of a loving family everyday (Nagisa) compared to a person who has not experienced the warmth of being in a family for a very long time. Tomoya is awkward in saying the most basic Japanese greetings such as ittekimasu (approximately “I’m off!”) and itterashai (approximately “have a safe journey”) which all Japanese say as part of their culture no matter what. It may not seem very strange to the non-Japanese CLANNAD watcher at first glance, but it is a damn big thing if you are Japanese or you are familar with some basic Japanese culture. We can see how natural Nagisa’s parents are at sending them off, even though it is Okazaki’s first day. IMO, they are probably near perfect parents, but we still do not know the issue between them and Nagisa when she was younger. We also get more of Nakahara Mai’s determined-sounding slightly garang voice here

And the track ends on this frame (around 13:51), just as I was starting to get into that warm and fuzzy moe mood T_T. Since I spend a lot of time listening to my sound tracks and singles, it was really too damn short.

I appreciate how KyoAni manages to balance out the seriousness of each episode with a humongous dose of humour every single time. That said, Sunohara’s voice acting is amazing and he is an indispensible loser character: Slapstick humour with Bishoujos over easy always works.

And I wasn’t actually looking at Okazaki getting kicked, nor do I care the least of him getting kicked, over here. I don’t know how they do it, but the animation artists over at KyoAni just draw and animate lolis perfectly. I’m also watching the eroge to OVA adaption Yotsunoha now, and I really wish that a better animation studio did it as Nekomiya Nono really deserves better quality animation than she is getting.