You make a great point, he probably wouldn’t. Tomoya would be a completely different character if the, “dragon” or inner demon was slain, never existed. Right? Unfortunately, if that were the case, we’d had ourselves a different story. One completely different than the emotional journey we call Clannad. It is Tomya’s circumstance that drives this story.
One thing I overlooked is that there are negative choices that may reflect a negative low self-esteem and self loathing attitude. My bias comes from the Anime and after story.
The choices I find myself making have been based off of the anime. From this point of view, Tomoya’s interaction with other characters seems very stable, especially compared side by side to Sonohara. I can see that he does have a good sense of self-esteem. It stems from his ability to appropriately acknowledge and assess his own needs as well as other peoples boundaries. He doesn’t invade personal space. Just like all the other posts have suggested before this one, he just helps them. You cannot help someone take out the thorn in their heart if you haven’t taken the time to take out your own. I believe that thorn to be Tomoya’s circumstances.
Tomoya’s dad is a prime example of this, he is too blinded by his own thorn to help Tomoya.
Yeah, as I said before, I think the point (possibly of the entire story) is that Tomoya doesnt feel like he has, but really needs, a family. This’ll probably be an even better discussion for sumtotal Bookclub reflection. There is tons of great evidence for this in all the routes: how his current relationships have been affected by his relationship with his father, and how his new relationships with all of the people of the town affect his views on family. I’m gonna try to make a point to point all of these out now :yukismil:
But seriously. Nice touch right there
I actually rewatched episode 10 of the anime and it had this scene from the common route, but this action wasn’t very noticeable, nor looked very clear.
Guess this is one of those things that works best in text format to emphasise the action.
It’s been a while since I’ve read Clannad, but I’m impressed with the translation work so far. Great stuff.
Like I said, this is my first reading of Clannad, so I’m pretty certain that my opinion about the characters will change with time. Since I can only base my opinion on this route, where you have choices such as: rip this stranger’s resume to pieces and put it down the drain, I think my reasons are understandable. That being said, I’m looking forward to reading the other routes. I’m quite curious about the other characters and about how my perception of the characters and story change as my reading advance.[quote=“Yerian, post:72, topic:2037”]
Sunohara is really Key’s first “bro” character. I guess Yukito was a bro too, but he’s also the protagonist, so he cant really count. Later characters I would put in this category are the like of Masato and Hinata. They’re there to lighten the mood, sure, but they also always have your back, no matter what. Perhaps you’ll come to agree with me more as you continue to read.
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I’m pretty certain you are right. I’m really curious about how the relationship between Sunohara and Tomoya in this route affect the opinion of other characters towards Tomoya. Since he spend most of his time with such a trouble maker, how are the heroins’ and other characters’ perception affected?
Does anyone have the date of when the podcast is supposed to record? I’m not recording, but I’m not sure how far behind I am. I am a slow reader after all.
Guess I’m a bit late to the party.
Clannad was my first VN and it feels great to read it again. The small gaps in my memory are being filled again and the overall picture is becoming more and more detailed. I sincerely hope to learn more about this story and its characters than ever before as I participate in the bookclub.
I like how the common route handles the mood. Whenever Tomoya is alone with his thoughts, he recalls his difficult situation and becomes gloomy. He distracts himself from these thoughts by means of recreation. His options are limited in this regard, so he kills time by interacting with other people (and teasing them).
I’d like to take a closer look at this.
Tomoya is a team player with low performance who watches everyone closely. He could accomplish so much more if his self-esteem was higher.
Sunohara receives a lot of praise in Tomoya’s inner monologues. Despite that, he is pictured as the biggest loser throughout the match because his shortcomings are more obvious than his accomplishments and skills. Sunohara is high-spec, but his selfishness and poor decision-making are impairing his overall performance heavily. Basically, he’s an idiot. This is exactly how he got himself into the same situation as Tomoya and stays there.
Mei is the opposite of her brother. Her age and physical abilities are of no concern thanks to her quick and smart decisions.
Tomoyo’s stats are off the charts, but she’s only using a fraction of her abilities because she’s too concerned with matching a certain self-imposed image.
Misae-san doesn’t have that problem (and is thus a perfect role model for Tomoyo). She doesn’t mind being herself. She’s making full use of her abilities, although bringing up her age does shake her up.
Nagisa has been put in a very important position despite her severe lack of skill and physical ability. It’s a tough situation, but she hangs in there and gives her best. She succeeds occasionally.
These characters are playing this baseball game the same way as they’re living their lives.
I see what you did there.
Bring it on.
I would’n go so far as to call him an actual bro. According to my memory, Sunohara only has like one and a half “true bro” moments in the entire game. The VN is making this way more obvious than the anime: Sunohara is a clown and a punching bag more than anything else.
He could be a true bro, I won’t deny that. He’s got the skills and guts to back you up. But he barely ever bothers thinking about others or viewing a situation from anyone else’s perspective than his own.
It’s kinda interesting how similar Kyou and Tomoya actually are. The both like to tease Sunohara and they both evade the questions they don’t want to answer the same way. Also they way their conversations are going it really makes you feel that Tomoya, Sunohara and the Fujibayashi twins have known each other for some time. Can’t remember if it’s brought up in the VN or not but anyway it’s a proof that Tomoya actually has a few more friends than you get the impression of in the beginning of the story.
I think that it’s partially true that Tomoya has more friends and is more connected to people than he lets on but at least partially I think that is because this is how we are seeing it as opposed to how he is seeing it. So those three, the Fujibayashi twins and Sunohara, are still the only people that it seems like he had talked to at all previously other than maybe “random student number 2” sort of people. Even then his interactions with Ryou are really, really stilted even beyond Ryou’s normal incredible shyness. Similarly I think he sees Kyou and Sunohara as more like “people he hangs out with occasionally” as opposed to really being friends of his, Kyou in particular. I mean even if he were doing it solely for comedic effect (as he probably is) the number of times Tomoya claims Sunohara is not actually his friend is pretty substantial (by the way if there is a drinking game for Clannad this should definitely be one of the rules). So while we see that he is plainly good friends with Sunohara and Kyou and at least probably has had some contact with Ryou I’m not sure that he sees it in the same way.
you’re right. But still, who is considered a friend is quite a subjective topic so it’s hard to find a definite answer to it. At least one can guess that Sunohara considers Tomoya as a friend looking at his reaction to Tomoya saying he’s not his friend.
It’s hard to know whether Tomoya is just joking with Sunohara or not considered Sunohara’s mostly there for the comic relief and being a person the main character can hold some conversation with sometimes to make the time between the encounters and monologues more natural.
The production value in CLANNAD’s introduction is the best I’ve seen in a Key work. Second is a tossup between Rewrite and Air- But this intro is just incredible.
@Parrexion While it may be true that Tomoya actually associates with people a bit more than is let on at the very beginning, remember that most of the other students (and even the teachers) dislike, and are even afraid of him because he’s a delinquent. This in fact is the main reason he says he likes to talk to Kyou: she treates him like just like any other person :kyogrin:
I think Tomoya really considers Sunohara as friends despite his comedical denials (lol), I mean fooling around with each other, bullying him like it’s Tomoya’s second nature? Yep definitely friends, best friends in fact (I know because I’m basically taking Sunohara’s role in my group although not as stupid as Sunohara, yes guys you can laugh). I even remember early in the game, Tomoya’s monologue introduction of Sunohara, he described him as the only friend that he can have a honest conversation with. If they are not the definition of best friends, I don’t know what is.
My first post in the thread is about the illusionary world and how it might tie in to the main story, and then people in the podcast proceed to say about the illusionary world: “What the hell is this! We have no idea what this means!”
Trust me, all of us members in the podcast have enough to talk about the illusionary world that it’d take up an entire podcast. The only problem is 99% of the thoughts are going on spoiler territory.
That is why, instead of trying to talk about “what is it?”, we talked about “how does this affect the reader?”
I finished the baseball route yesterday. I was surprised by how much I liked the game at the end as I was kind of itching for one of the girls endings and I don’t like sports much. I also really liked how readable one route is. I’m sure some of them are longer, but I really thought I would be putting more time in than that per week by quite a bit.
I can never make up my mind about Sunohara. I think the banter between him and Tomoya is genuinely funny and I like how he is often very self aware of himself as the fall guy in the comedy duo, but at the same time he also says and does things that only make me pissed off at him.
I had the most fun with Yoshino’s parts this route. He is a good mix of dork and cool and I am looking forward to more of him in other routes.
Just finished the Baseball route now and I must say that the baseball game and the laser tag game are really the funny events in Clannad because the rest of the routes have more of a focus on the characters of the route. This route though doesn’t spend that much time on character development etc. and instead focuses on what funny thing you can do with the characters. Which makes me think whether you should play this route first or last. First to get to know the characters or last just to see how the charcters you know will act in the end.
Also the laser tag game makes the VN suddenly feel like a completely different game which is really great in some ways. Also it’s quite enjoyable and you really want to know how both of the games will end. I can say that I barely know the rules for baseball (Wii sports…) but it was good. Just felt bad for Sunohara during the game when he was the only player which didn’t get a good hit.. I can imaging how much better the baseball game would be if you actually knew the rules though.
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 ^^
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.
