(This week’s show is, for the most part, wholesome, yet there are a couple of very dark moments. Also, abortion is discussed in one episode before being rejected as an option. As always, there are spoilers, and don’t pirate.)
The day long awaited has come at last. And what could I say to fittingly summarize this Holiest of Holy Days, this happiest day, this day of ultimate eucatastrophe, wherein prophesies are fulfilled, entropy is overthrown, and the rage of men and devils is shown to be all for naught?
“Awareness grips the mind, the tomb is empty, and the God-Man again walks the face of the earth.” (From an old Stations of the Cross booklet we used at my grade school).
Our Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, the reign of Death has ended, and the gates of Heaven are thrown open to receive the righteous dead from the beginning of the world even until this very hour, and shall never be shut until the end of time. And we, whether ever-faithful, newly reconciled, or newly received into the bosom of Mother Church, rejoice that we too will rise with Him on the Last Day.
While it is true that, for the present, we still find ourselves in the shadow of plague and death, with many of our usual Easter traditions forced to wait until next year, nevertheless we should not allow this Easter day, Octave, and Season to pass without hope. The trials of the present will pass, our churches will open again, and in the end, eternity awaits. We may not know how this world will reach it’s ending, but we have the assurance of the God-Man who conquered death that it will be a happy one.
The Church in her liturgy resounds with this hope and triumph. The Alleluia is brought back in full force, and for the next eight days the Gospel will feature Our Resurrected Lord revealing Himself to His disciples. The Sunday after that, the Sunday in White (also called “Low Sunday,” or, in modern times, “Divine Mercy Sunday”) will end the Easter Octave, but season will continue until Pentecost, 50 days after Easter. (50 days of celebration are given in place of the 40 days of fasting, so that, to paraphrase St. Augustine, we may receive every man a denarius for our labor).
If there is one thought that should fill our minds on this day and during this season, aside from profound gratitude, it should be this: suffering and death do not have the last word, and though this world may take things from us and our love and charity may seem wasted, the universe is in the hands of a loving God who desires our eternal happiness. And even as Christ’s triumph came about, not in spite of, but because of His sufferings, so too in our sufferings lie the unseen seeds of eternal joy, as our love in His Love renews and repairs the world.
Which brings us to this week’s show: Clannad.
Clannad is an anime series adopted from a visual novel (a kind of video game popular in Japan, in which the game play is almost non-existent so as to better focus on the story). Like many visual novels, Clannad is big into high school romance and branching story paths, leaving it up to the player to decide which cute moe girl, if any, the protagonist, Tomoya Okazaki, ends up with (there are nine to choose from in all). Adapting a visual novel with that many branching storylines into a single, linear anime series isn’t easy, but Clannad shows that it is not only possible to make such an adaptation, but to make it well. The opening scene of the series speaks for itself:
Everything is this scene is perfect, from the music to the way that the colors go from dark and blue-shaded to bright and vivid the moment Tomoya and Nagisa Furukawa, his future bride, make eye contact. This perfection, in my humble opinion, continues for the rest of the series.
Clannad centers around high school student and delinquent Tomoya Okazaki. (The “delinquent” title seems a bit of an exaggeration, though; he stays out late, skips class, and gets in an occasional fight, but doesn’t do anything worse than that.) When not at school, he spends most of his time goofing around with his best friend, professional punching bag and comic relief character Youhei Sunohara. As much as possible, he tries to avoid being at home and having to deal with his alcoholic father. Tomoya’s mother died when he was very young, and though his father provided for him materially, he also turned to drinking, gambling, and hard drugs to cope with his grief. Their relationship went through a physically abusive phase, in which Tomoya’s shoulder was permanently damaged, ending his dreams of a basketball career. Ever since that incident, Tomoya’s father has kept his distance, both physically and emotionally, from his son.
With his dreams shattered, Tomoya drifts through life without a care or purpose.
And then he meets Nagisa.
Nagisa is a shy girl who is plagued by frequent bouts of illness, to the point where she has to repeat her final year of high school. It was her dream to join the drama club and perform in a play, but with all the members graduating the previous year, the club has closed down. Nagisa wants to revive the club and put on a play for the school festival, and Tomoya, having nothing better to do, agrees to help her.
At this point, it would seem as though Clannad is just a typical, though very well done, high school romance story, like Toradora! but more somber. (And with a more memorable, if strange, ending theme song:)
However, there is clearly something else going on. What, a first-time viewer might ask, is the deal with the cutaways to a “World that has Ended” (shot in a much higher frame rate and with more CGI than the rest of the show) that seems to be populated only by a mute robot and a girl that looks almost, but not quite, like Nagisa? And who is that small child in a blue dress running through a field of flowers during the opening credits?
It isn’t long before this strangeness bleeds over into the main storyline. While searching for people to join the drama club, Tomoya and Nagisa meet a strange first year girl named Fuuko Ibuki. Fuuko doesn’t seem to go to classes; she just carves wooden starfishes and gives them to people, asking them to come to her sister’s wedding. Nagisa recognizes Fuuko’s sister as Kouko Ibuki, a retired art teacher from their school.
But Kouko’s little sister isn’t a student. She’s been in a coma for some time, having been hit by a car on her way to school. The Fuuko they see at school is rumored to be an ikiryō (a living ghost or astral projection) born of the comatose Fuuko’s strong desire for her sister’s happiness.
Putting their plans for the drama club on hold, Tomoya and Nagisa resolve to help Fuuko. They convince Fuuko’s sister to get married even with her sister still in a coma. They get the school administration to allow the wedding to take place on school grounds. They even recruit Nagisa’s parents, as well as Youhei and the Fujibayashi sisters (twins Kyou and Ryou, both of whom have a secret crush on Tomoya) to help carve and hand out starfish for Fuuko.
But then Fuuko’s condition worsens, and people start to forget her, even to the point that they cannot see her anymore. It seems that everything Tomoya and Nagisa have done for Fuuko will be for nothing.
But the day of the wedding arrives, and everyone who was invited shows up. When asked, Tomoya’s friends reply that they felt that they had to come, even if they could not remember why. Right as the wedding ends, Fuuko is able to appear one last time to congratulate her sister and thank Tomoya and Nagisa for all their help.
By now it should be clear that Clannad is not a romance. It is a fairy tale. And like any fairy tale, it runs on a different, and higher, logic than a more “realistic” tale. Chance (“if chance you call it”) and sudden miracles are not only appropriate in this sort of story, they are expected and even essential. As G.K. Chesterton put it in The Everlasting Man,
“We know the meaning of all the myths. We know the last secret revealed to the perfect initiate. And it is not the voice of a priest or a prophet saying, 'These things are.' It is the voice of a dreamer and an idealist crying, 'Why cannot these things be?’”
As I said in last week’s article, a fairy tale can leave a real impact on us, even if it takes place in fictional worlds with fictional characters. To quote G.K. Chesterton again, “Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.”
But at first glance, it seems that Clannad does not have a dragon to fight. There are certainly obstacles for our characters to overcome, including a few that require physical strength and daring do, but none of their opponents are evil, and they all end up on friendly terms with each other.
But there is indeed an enemy in Clannad, one of the most frightening, realistic, and familiar of all that could exist, one that has Tomoya and many of the other characters deep in its clutches.
This enemy has a name: Despair.
How do our heroes fight this enemy, that has Tomoya so convinced that he has nothing to look forward to, and Nagisa so convinced her dreams aren’t worth pursuing and that her illness is all that will ever define her?
It is not with simple optimism, the belief that things will get better just by waiting, but with love. By love, I do not mean sentimental feelings, but the kind of love that sees the other, first, as an extension of oneself, and finally, as more important than oneself; love that is not defined necessarily by intense emotion, but by choosing to step outside of oneself for the good of the other; love that shows itself in action. It is the love of a family, defined both by biology and by choice, by blood and by compassion.
Tomoya never explicitly says it, but I think one of the biggest reasons he is so bent on helping Nagisa is that her parents, right after meeting him, treated him like one of the family. They do the same to Fuuko before she disappears, to the point that Nagisa even comments that it was as though Fuuko was her and Tomoya’s child. (Both she and Tomoya clam up and blush as the implications of this set in.)
Tomoya’s drive to help Nagisa likewise turn him into an agent of compassion. After trying to bring in Youhei, Kyou, and Ryou into the reformed drama club, Tomoya seeks out Kotomi Ichinose, the school’s reclusive teen genius, in his search for more members. Kotomi has zero social skills and a traumatic past (her parents died in a plane crash on her 5th birthday, and in her grief she burned what she thought was the last copy of their research thesis on alternate universes; she’s been trying in vain to reconstruct it ever since). Tomoya and the club help her to come out of her shell and make friends, even to the point of cleaning her neglected garden when Kotomi has a days-long breakdown.
Tomoya also forms a bond with Tomoyo Sakagami, a former gang member running for student council president. Tomoyo has no interest in joining the drama club, but she does promise to clear several obstacles in their way in exchange for the club’s help in her campaign. Tomoyo doesn’t want to be President for the power; she sees it as the only way to save the sakura trees on the school grounds that mean so much to her and her wheelchair-bound brother. Tomoya goes above and beyond for Tomoyo to help her improve her reputation, even taking the blame when a couple old rivals attack Tomoyo at school so she won’t get in trouble. (This results in him getting suspended, and Tomoyo developing a massive crush on him, because what’s a high school anime without a harem?)
The other characters develop, or already possess, this same level of compassion. Youhei sees no possible benefit for himself in helping Tomoya with the drama club (none of the girls are interested in him), but he helps out just the same. Kyou keeps trying to set up Tomoya with her sister Ryou, even though she herself has feelings for him. Tomoyo, as previously mentioned, is doing whatever she can to save something precious to her brother. And when all the girls discover, to their great disappointment, that Tomoya only has eyes for Nagisa, they put their hurt feelings behind them and continue to help Tomoya and Nagisa.
With Tomoyo becoming Student Council President, it seems that all the obstacles for reviving the drama club have been overcome, but there is one final snag. Nagisa has an idea for a play for them to perform: a story she remembers about a girl in a world that has ended (Sound familiar?). Tomoya half remembers a similar story, but no one else seems to know of it. Thinking it might be in a book Nagisa read as a child, Tomoya and Nagisa search her parents’ shed. They discover (separately) that Nagisa’s father used to be an actor, and her mother a teacher, and that they both gave up these careers they loved so that they could care for Nagisa. Heartbroken and crushed by the thought that she was responsible for crushing her parent’s dreams, Nagisa is unable to perform her part in the play, Until her father comes and reassures her that they are happy. Nagisa’s dreams are their dreams, because that is what being a parent means.
Nagisa recovers herself, and the play is a rousing success. (Though everyone finds it odd that Nagisa chose to end the play with a rendition of “Big Dango Family.”) The next day, Tomoya confesses that he loves her, and the two officially become a couple. This would be a good ending on its own, but the story continues in Season 2, Clannad After Story.
(I could not find a version of the OP with English subtitles, so I found a good cover for you all):
Clannad After Story starts where the last season left off, with our heroes returning to school after summer break. (In Japan, the school year starts in April and ends in March). The first few arcs explore the backstories of otherwise minor characters, and are best left unspoiled. But from these arcs we learn two important things that play a major role in the rest of the series. First, we learn of a local legend that orbs of light appear whenever someone causes true happiness in someone else, and that these orbs can allow the one who makes them to be granted a single wish. Second, we find out that the legend is true, and that such wishes have come true in the past. (We saw these orbs in Season 1 as well, both in the segments of the Girl and the Robot in the Illusionary World and in the main story when Kotomi finally received her parent’s final gift to her: a teddy bear she wanted for her birthday. Her parents had thrown it off the plane just before the crash, opting to save it rather than their thesis.)
These revelations show more clearly something we may have already felt on a subconscious level: the universe of Clannad, in both its human and supernatural elements, abounds with compassion, and the unnamed supernatural power that runs this universe truly seems to care about the people who live in it. (We Christians, knowing what we know about God’s infinite compassion, should find this idea very familiar and comfortable).
But this theory of a compassionate world is about to face a most bitter test.
(Warning: Ending Spoilers. Last chance to turn back).
Graduation comes, and Tomoya begins the long over-due process of becoming a functioning adult. He gets his own apartment and a job he excels at, and it looks as though he’ll be getting a big promotion. All the while Nagisa is there to support him and take care of him.
Then Tomoya learns that his father has been arrested on drug charges.
Tomoya’s chances of getting a promotion are shot (what your family members do matters a lot more in Japan than it does in America), and it’s all that Nagisa can do to calm him down. But when he’s finally calmed down, something magical happens:
Tomoya and Nagisa are married shortly after, and before long Nagisa becomes pregnant. Everyone is excited, and Tomoya and Nagisa even pick out a name for the child: Ushio.
But then Nagisa falls ill again, and with a fierce snowstorm preventing her from getting to the hospital, Nagisa dies in childbirth.
The next episode starts five years after Nagisa’s death. As hard as Nagisa’s passing was to watch, the start of this episode is even worse. Tomoya has become exactly like his father, drowning himself in work and gambling, allowing his relationships with his friends to wither and die. He doesn’t even have a real relationship with his daughter; little Ushio is being raised by Nagisa’s parents. In all his misery, Tomoya’s one repeated wish is that he had never met Nagisa in the first place.
Nagisa’s parents, however, are determined that Ushio have a real relationship with her father. They invite Tomoya to go on a trip with them and Ushio, and then vacate their house before he shows up, leaving Tomoya and Ushio alone together for the first time. With nothing else to do and a small child to entertain, Tomoya decides to take Ushio on the planned trip by himself. He’s rather cold and grumpy towards her at first, though he does buy her a toy robot to play with.
When they reach their destination, Tomoya finds his grandmother (who he has not seen since he was a child) waiting for them. They talk while Ushio plays in a field of sunflowers (This removes all doubt that the mystery child from the Season 1 opening is Ushio). Through their conversation, Tomoya learns just how broken by grief his father was when his wife died, but how he still tried to provide for Tomoya. Realizing he’s become worse than his father, Tomoya resolves to step up and be the father Ushio deserves. Meanwhile, Ushio has lost her new toy robot while playing in the flowers. Tomoya tries to console her by promising to buy her another one, but for Ushio, this toy robot is irreplaceable: it’s the first present her father ever gave her. Tears are shed, and Tomoya finally tells Ushio about Nagisa.
The story gets much brighter for the next few episodes. Ushio moves in with Tomoya, and Tomoya starts reconnecting with his past. He visits his father, and even offers to assume his remaining debts so he can retire in the country with his mother. (Right after Tomoya and his father reconcile, Ushio sees a familiar orb of light enter into Tomoya’s body). Fuuko even wakes up from her coma.
And then Ushio gets sick.
Wracked with the same illness as her mother, Ushio goes from bad to worse as treatment after treatment fails to help her. Determined not to lose his daughter, Tomoya gives up everything (his job, his savings, and his every waking minute) to take care of her.
Then, one stormy winter day, Ushio begs Tomoya to take her on a trip like they went on before. Seeing that Ushio might not have much time, Tomoya reluctantly agrees. They do not get far before Ushio collapses. She tells Tomoya how much she loves him before dying in his arms. Worn out and in agony, Tomoya cries in vain for help before dying right beside her.
But death and tragedy does not have the last word.
We return once again to the Illusionary World, and find the Girl and the Robot collapsed in the snow. Sensing her death is near, the Girl starts to sing a song.
The song is “Big Dango Family.”
The Girl and the Robot suddenly remember who they really are: The Girl is Ushio, and the Robot is Tomoya. Upon dying, Ushio unwittingly used her wish from the orbs of light to create the Illusionary World, an alternate dimension in which time functions differently (hence why both Tomoya and Nagisa could remember it, even though they had never been there). Tomoya, because of his strong desire to never be parted from Ushio, found his way to the Illusionary World, and Ushio gave him the body of a robot.
Upon their realization, the Illusionary World collapses, and Tomoya’s Robot body is destroyed. He finds himself on the hill with the sakura trees, the very day he met Nagisa. As he sees her walking by, he contemplates his long-nurtured desire to have never met her, to spare himself the pain he know their meeting will cause.
But he can’t do it.
After hearing reassurances from Nagisa, Tomoya finally speaks his heart’s fondest wish: he wants Nagisa and Ushio back, no matter how much pain it will cause him.
The orbs respond, flashing time forward to the night Ushio was born.
But this time, Nagisa survives, and the falling snow is replaced with thousands of floating orbs of light.
There are some fans who despise this ending, seeing it as a cop out to try and bring a happy ending out of a story where, by all rights, a happy ending should be impossible.
But I love this ending. The groundwork has been carefully laid and foreshadowed throughout the entire series. It doesn’t hurt that the Greatest Story Ever Told ends the same way: with an unexpected, but not unearned, resurrection. Now, I do find the ending curious, for that reason especially. As far as I know, there was no overt or covert attempt by the creators of Clannad to make it a Christian story. Yet the ending seems far more Christian than Japanese. An ending in line with Japanese Buddhism would, I think, put it’s hope in reincarnation rather than resurrection. It might show Tomoya, Nagisa, and Ushio reincarnated as different people, with the miracle being that the remembered their past lives and recognized each other. But they did not choose such an ending. They chose physical resurrection (aided by supernatural time travel, true) as the means to reunite the Okazaki family, to reunite them as themselves in their own bodies.
Honest Paganism sometimes really does lead to Christian Truth.
We, like Tomoya, Nagisa, and Ushio, have experience the power of resurrection. But unlike theirs, ours is not a return to a mortal life that waits for death to come again, but a sharing of the Supernatural Life of Christ who dies no more. For in our baptism we died with Christ, and now we live with Him, putting off our past and more and more becoming little Christs. Now, that does not mean that we are annihilated and replaced with Christ. It does mean that we are fashioned to be like Him, so that His Light might shine through each of us uniquely, as through different prisms and gems. For we are now God’s clan, his family. God is our Father, Mary our Mother, Jesus our brother, and all the angels and saints in heaven and believers on Earth are our brothers and sisters. And the Holy Spirit, True God, is the bond of fellowship, charity, and compassion that unites us all together with the same creative love that created and sustains the universe.
And that is the reason for our Easter Joy, the secret revealed to us that can fulfill the dreams and desires of every human being who has and will ever be born.
The dreamer cries out, “Why can these things not be?”
And the voice of the God-Man rings out like a trumpet from the Eucharistic Altar, from the Wood of the Cross, and from the Empty Tomb, “It was in the beginning, it is now, and it ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”
Thank you all so much for reading this series, and especially to those of you who have read my novel, Cain, Son of Adam. This was really fun to write. Stay tuned to this space for more content. If you are disappointed that I didn’t cover a particular anime series, let me know and I’ll be happy to give it a look. (I could always use more ideas for content.)
Have a safe and Blessed Easter. God love you!