CLANNAD - Common Route Discussion

Sometimes I think that Sunohara genuinely wants to play around with Tomoya’s stupid suggestions. Unless he’s that much of an idiot that’d do his all to imitate two lovers parting at a train station and not mean it ironically.

…well, maybe he is that much of an idiot, after all ^^

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I actually am finding that I enjoy the comedy scenes more than any of the more serious interactions with the girls. The same was true with Rewrite and LB!, so maybe I’m just a sucker for KEY common routes.

In other news, I like the baseball scenes. I’m totally an American sports lover, so I’m cool with this. Same with laser tag. And basically all things Sunohara, who’s hilarious with Tomoya.

Not really interested in Nagisa much at the moment; more interested in the reference book room girl (can’t even remember her name, though) and Tomoyo, though the latter is mostly because of the Sunohara screwing-around scenes. I wonder if there’s a significance in Tomoyo and Tomoya’s names being literally only one vowel apart. If not, I have to wonder why they would choose such incredibly close names, even if their kanji are very different (though I can’t tell that either, being all in English).

Finally, I’m curious if there’s a “pure comedy route” like Rewrite had. I don’t think LB! had a route that was pure comedy, but I hope there’s one for CLANNAD. Since I avoid walkthroughs, I’ll find out eventually!

yeah Tomoya is “朋也” and Tomoyo is “智代”. I think it’s just a coincidence that they’re one vowel. If you put it in hiragana they look at little more different that English too with "ともや” and “ともよ” which I guess is still only one character difference.

Not sure what you mean by ‘pure comedy route’, but most Key games have Joke endings in there somewhere.

I just finished the baseball route today as well. I had go back to the common route to find this event because I had totally skipped it earlier when I first played it. It was so much fun with all the characters coming together to play against the former Koshien members. I would also agree about when Misae was offended about her age and said it with censor tags threw me off completely and I laughed so hard that even all the others said the same line that she said. I think Tomoya learned a valuable experience in the baseball route that he had to come know more about others fighting through their own circumstances and helping others those in need than thinking about himself. Anyway, the beginning when I first played CLANNAD really got me interested quickly as soon I saw the fantasy world and the things that Tomoya was going through with his life. The moment I saw Nagisa standing at the bottom of the hill as her hair sways from the sakura petals made it feel nostalgic and I wanted to know more about her in the game.

Okay I just finished this the day before last! I liked seeing and getting introduced to all of the characters. Characters are usually my favourite things about stories, so I’ll explore my thoughts in depth from my first impressions. I am using the walkthrough choices.

Tomoya is a good lead character. He reminds me a lot of my boyfriend in that he teases and trolls his friends a lot (my boyfriend is a bit nicer about it though :stuck_out_tongue: I like how he interacts differently with different people.
Sunohara I manage to both like and hate. He’s kind of a sexist ass and I hat that, but he’s very funny and very tragic.
Nagisa is pretty sweet. I feel pretty bad for her though. I know she’ll get lots of development, but for now it was kind of blank for me.
Misae didn’t really stand out to me. Nothing against her, she was just more background character to me.
Tomoyo seems like a perfectly nice woman, but her personality doesn’t stand out for me. She’s pretty violent and aggressive, which is obviously played up for humour purposes, but it still makes me kind of uncomfortable. She was fine other than that.
Yukine I didn’t get to see much of, but she seems nice. Looking forward to seeing more because she was pretty minor so far.
Kotomi is weird. It definitely has me interest and wanting to know more about her. I overall like her although I don’t appreciate her defacing library books. I guess I’ll find out eventually what that’s all about!
Kyou was also a bit violent and aggressive for my tastes, but I like how upbeat she is.
Ryou was very nice and sweet and I liked her and want to know more about her. She seems a bit flat so far is my main complaint, but she hasn’t had the most development yet.
Kappei was pretty fun and I liked him. I feel about as hopeless as he is sometimes!
Mei I really like so far and she has a cute dress. Also very much looking forward to seeing more from her.
Fuko is probably my favourite so far. She’s so random and off that I find it incredibly charming to watch her and Tomoya interact. Looking forward to her route!

The actual ending wasn’t my favourite because I’m not a huge baseball person, but I did like seeing all of the characters interact. It’s nice when the love interests can react and interact with each other outside of the main character and I hope I see more of that!

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This is one of the things that I agree with and something that I think they did really well in the anime. CLANNAD didn’t focus on this very much except in some of the routes, but I really love that Key’s future works all had their characters interacting with each other on a regular basis. (as opposed to having love interests as separate, independent characters)

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Oh my, there were some really interesting discussions in this thread that it feels kinda embarrassing that I can’t say much about the common route other than how I found it to be tedious at times. T.T

I wasn’t too keen with the galge scenes found here; as much as I like Kotomi, I found the scenes with her, so far, to be boring. And I didn’t find the scenes in the Illusory World, effectively did it evoke mystique, to be particularly immersive. Nagisa nor Ryou hasn’t stood out to me yet. The Tomoyo gags worked the first time, but it got repetitive fast.

I guess that’s just what happens when I expected it to have a high entertainment value, especially when my first experience of Clannad was the anime. I noticed this from, of all people, Fuuko. I remembered her being my favorite character in the anime because of the hilarious shenanigans with her, but I can’t seem to feel it that much here. Props to the anime in vastly improving her entertainment value. XD

Man I must have sounded harsh here, but I did found something to like here. I surprisingly found the savage Kyou to be a highly entertaining character, so she was instantly my fave girl in the VN as far as common route is concerned. I also really like how extremely modest Misae is, repetitive the martial arts joke got. Sunohara is quite entertaining. His joke got repetitive, too, but not as tiring as Tomoyo’s.

And then the two characters in the limelight for being easily the most entertaining characters here: Yoshino and Kappei. Yoshino’s corn is just too much to handle, and Kappei is just the right kind of wild for me. XD

But comedy isn’t just the merits I can give to this route. The scene where Nagisa was beholded by an desolated classroom was a standout moment that I really like. Fuuko’s revelation of her prime motivations is a really touching moment that made me remember why I like Fuuko a lot.


For the baseball route, I followed faithfully this forum’s walkthrough. I like the baseball route a lot, and there were heaps of really fun moments here. Looks like a lot of people here agree that Misae being FWATCHOOO years old was so darn hilarous, but Yoshino making a corny speech only to get a strikeout was just as funny. It was pretty jargon-y though, but it helped that I knew a little bit of baseball so I managed to understand half of what was going on. P: Nagisa and Fuuko actually doing better than Sunohara was fun too.

I really liked the end scene though, where he was encouraged to swing rather than pull off another sacrifice bunt. It’s like the story is hitting home that Tomoya need not to sell himself short, and treat himself better.

Mygad this got long even though I wasn’t really saying much. I’ll try to get this shorter next time I get back here.

PS: Totally love the remastered tracks, especially Baka Futari.

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Fuko shines more in other routes to be sure, when she is just a footnote like she is in common. But I consider Fuko my Adopted Soul Imouto so I am kind of biased.

I was actually just thinking the other day that I really want to go back and reread common and the baseball route though because I think it will feel really different once you have played through all the others. It works well as a first route, but I also feel like it might work really well as route to revisit.

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Just finished the common route this week! Overall I like how it lets you dabble in every route for a bit. They did a really good job of showing everyone’s personality and quirks in short consumable bites.

I do think I like the anime version slightly better. In the VN it kinda felt like they were pressed into playing the game without that friendship bond. In the anime, they have known each other for awhile so it felt more natural seeing them come together and doing something amazing. It seem to mean more when they cheer Nagisa on to pitching in the anime compared to the VN. But both are amazing in their own way.

I did find the gun shooting game part of the route to be quite funny and enjoyable. ^^

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Interesting how the relationship between characters in the anime are more similar to Kotomi’s route than the actual common route in the VN, heh

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Average. That’s the word i would pick to describe this route.

It did it’s job for introducing the characters but it was weak in making you feel attached to them. The jokes are weak, in fact i didn’t expect clannad would be so full of boob and sexual jokes. The other major parts which rely on screwing up sunohara are only fun at first bit quickly become boring and repetitive. It had some good funny moments though like yoshino yussuke and sunohara’s conversation over music or Akio-san in the basball route or fuko’s pranks.

It felt like a harem manga at the very best. Tomoya the protagonist who picks up on his friend and is friends with girls(better than his friend sunohara at least), sunohara the friend whose purpose is to be comic relief, nagisa the shy and good girl (a bit mix of komari and rin) , kyou the abusive girl, tomoyo the strong student council president, fuko the dreamy girl…and others.

It focused on less group scenes which i think was the weak point. Even in the baseball route where all characters come togather, no one speaks much with each other. Didn’t feel like a team in the least.

Can’t say i enjoyed this one as the other Vn comman routes.

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The early works are like that: most of the time, you’d have a heroine and a supporting cast for her. There wasn’t much mixing in between groups. LB! was the first main series game to shift towards greater group mechanics, though I’d say the trend really started in Tomoyo After, and you can point at things in Clannad that also can be seen as the basis of that shift.

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I think you mostly set yourself up to be disappointed by the common route, as it seems like you were expecting the exact same kind of group setting as in a certain other VN. But as Helios already pointed out, Clannad’s focus is different and the entire cast is in no way a big group of friends, though depending on the route some of them will get to know eachother better. I don’t think this is necessarily a weak point as it’s mostly just a different setting and not really a flaw in the storytelling, and I actually don’t mind it much because I think this has its advantages too when it comes to the plot.

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Group was only a minor thing, I was expecting it to be like this, focusing on one character at a time.
My only problem was that the character tropes felt overused (maybe because i read too much manga) and that even as individuals i didn’t felt uhhh… Connectivity with them but that can be because common route has many branching scenes and i didn’t see every one (i followed baseball route walkthrough) so i didn’t get much encounter with them, besides nagisa, tomoyo, fuko and sunohara others only got one long scene or two three short scenes.

The major problem with the route was comedy - sexual jokes and making a character gag relief (sunohara) for me these are signs that you are running out of innovation.

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How ironic; CLANNAD was one of the best displays of comedy in Visual Novels at the time, and a refinement of the innovative Tactics formula. It was, in my opinion, a perfection of the style used in ONE and Kanon, and probably the final grand iteration of such a style. The comedy was one of the big things that made CLANNAD different.

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Ah, I was under the impression that you thought it was one of its main weak points, but I stand corrected. Keep in mind though that the baseball route only serves as an introduction and naturally not everyone will immediately feel connected with the characters. It’s also good to take the age of the VN into account, tropes you think are overused now might not have been in that day and age, but ultimately if you’re not enjoying these tropes there’s not much to be done about it.

As we’ve discussed on Discord before humour is entirely subjective, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sexual jokes necessarily as long as they don’t cross a certain line. I laughed a lot more in Clannad than in some other VNs and I don’t think the type of comedy is any sign of running out of innovation whatsoever.

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Like i said. I have read too much manga and so most of the gags that are done in clannad are already seen by me. so it didn’t feel different for me at all.
same thing with the tropes relta. if i had read it sometime before i surely wouldn’t have found the gags repeating.

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I wasn’t overwhelmed by the Common/Baseball route but it does its job in introducing the main characters - you only really get to know them all by following the individual routes and that’s when the VN starts to hit home.

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I have just finished the common route, thanks to Kazamatsuri’s walkthrough, and I really enjoyed the jokes with Sunohara, the introduction of the main characters and the baseball match at the end. It was interesting to see that each character has many references to its own route like the students who talk about the ghost of the young girl for Fuko . I really enjoyed it with the parts about the Illusionary world and it wasn’t that long too. Now I have to go into Nagisa’s route :slight_smile: