CLANNAD - Fuko Ibuki Route & Character Discussion

Key Discussion
#1

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Discussion topic for Fuko’s arc & character in CLANNAD. Feel free to discuss anything from Fuko’s route, but if you need to reference content from outside her arc or the common route, tag with [spoiler]. Character discussion of Fuko is also welcome. Her birthday is the 20th of July. If you would like to discuss Kouko’s character, please visit her Character Discussion Topic.

This topic also hosted CLANNAD Bookclub discussion from this post onward, and was referenced in our Fuko Route Podcast.

What would you rate this route?

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CLANNAD - General Discussion
CLANNAD -Hikari Mimamoru Sakamichi de- Episode 02 Discussion
#2

I honestly didn’t like Fuko’s route. It felt like too much of a rehash of Key’s other works… The coma thing’s been done before. The memory thing has been done multiple times. In my opinion, it was one of the (many) boring character routes in Clannad. She’s not a stand-out character like Tomoyo, Kyou, Kotomi, Yukine or Misae.
The best part was when Ana played near the end.

#3

Being the first character route from Key that I had ever experienced, Fuko’s story arc holds a pretty special place for me. I thought it was well done and it gave me a good taste of what I was getting myself into. The drama in the route was really good and I nearly cried during the scene in the Anime, where Sanae cries that she couldn’t see Fuko anymore yet she remembers her. Fuko as a character was pretty likable though I can see why some people don’t really like her all that much. I liked her energetic personality and her determination to wish her sister’s wedding well is pretty awesome. I will admit that sometimes her antics can get a little tiresome but I found myself laughing for the most part. Overall, I liked Fuko’s story arc. It’s not my favorite, but it was a good introduction for a lot of things to come.

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#4

You’re annoying and your route sucks.
Go away Fuko.

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#5

I still love how her route in the VN is the only one with two different endings, and by that, I mean “good endings”

#6

Almost by complete coincidence, I found myself rewatching Fuko’s arc of the Clannad Anime today. It still manages to work up a lot of emotions out of me, even if it is one of the weaker arcs of Clannad. One of my favourite scenes was the one where Sunohara is given the starfish while he’s just on the brink between remembering and forgetting, and they share a touching scene about how Sunohara didn’t hate her. Just seeing Sunohara mention Fuko’s name really gets me going ;_;

I’m glad I can still come back to this arc and still get heavy emotions out of it, even after seeing it so many times. And I still really like her character, despite all the flack she gets.

#7

Happy birthday to the misunderstood, strange girl that won me over in the anime and led me on the path to becoming a loli fan! Congratulations, Fuko Ibuki! :slight_smile:

#8

Ibuki Fuko in anime…I don’t want to know and heard that something happened in her life. It’s stabbed my heart when I heard that what happened to her and how…how can be like this…

#9

Bookclub discussion begins from this post onward!

#10

One thing I’m a little confused about… Why didn’t Yoshino recognise Fuko when they met in the Baseball route?

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#11

It’s been a while since I read Fuko’s route but does it ever mention him going with Koukou to visit her? I think Fuko says Koukou told her about him which I would take as he’s never visited.
Edit: could be from a story perspective too. If I saw my fiancé’s sister, who I knew to be in a coma, just suddenly walk up I’d probably freak. Yoshino probably wouldn’t freak but I have no idea what he’d say to acknowledge it without spoiling Fuko’s route.

#12

Just finished Fuko’s route. (Been rather sporadic with reading the visual novel haha). It was a nice touch that you need Nagisa to be with you in order to get into Fuko’s route. I had tried using the save where I ignored Nagisa but kept on getting the bad end.. Overall, I found that the anime did not vary too much from the source material (that is the visual novel). Anyone who has watched the anime will more or less know how Fuko’s route will play out. However, The romantic aspect is more focused on fukoxtomoya here.. And Nagisa is a shipper on deck!!! :stuck_out_tongue: .

#13

Just finished the Good Ending of Fuko’s route. Started crying, that’s all I gotta say.

#14

Can I have a Fuko to take home and love for my very own? I will take good care of her I promise! Seriously I love Fuko. I finished this route last week and I fangirled about it for several days.

I had enjoyed the interactions I had with her in other routes, but doing the full route was awesome. I don’t really remember her route that well from the anime, though I kind of remember thinking that the supernatural aspects of it felt kind of out of place. They didn’t feel out of place reading it though, especially because they kind allude to it early on enough where it just feels like something that comes together really smoothly.

I really like the idea that Fuko was trying so hard to reach her sister and couldn’t because her sister’s love had reached her (Fuko understood that her sister distanced herself for Fuko’s own good) but Fuko’s feeling can’t reach her unless she actually finds the happiness in friends that her sister wanted for her in the first place.

I really like that seeing Fuko in the hospital kind of puts this final blow on a person’s ability to see her at school. The idea that there is this kind of zone where you kind of know something is the case, but because you have not faced reality in its whole there is this kind of grey zone where the impossible is still possible, and as long as you don’t cross that line there is still hope. Basically Fuko is Schrodinger’s cat (starfish?) - she exists only in that possibility that she could be there and as soon as you understand she is impossible the Fuko you know ceases to exist.

I did both of her endings, and while the non-romantic one felt more authentic, ending with Fuko asking Tomoya out made me really happy.

That was one thing about Fuko’s route, while I really like the dynamic between Fuko and Tomoya, and Fuko herself, I feel like at its core this romance is kind of unbelievable or unnecessary? I guess what I means is that all of the best emotional tones of this route are non-romantic. The themes of friendship, and the way Fuko and Ibuki-sensei want to reach each other more than anything, but they are the people most unable to connect, those were what really drove the route. Which is probably why the ending where Fuko asks them all to be her friend felt the best.

There were a couple of things at the end of the route I kind of rolled my eyes at. Mostly how quickly Ibuki-sensei went from not even announcing her engagement to ready to have the wedding to really wanting to have the wedding at the school even though none of her students were really left. I guess the route didn’t really need to have it all spelled out, as that is not really the kind of padding that would have been enjoyable.

Anyways, I loved this route and I want a little sister like Fuko because I think she could understand my fangirl soul.

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#15
#16

So I finished the route and I’m gonna keep most of my notes for podcast but I’ll just say this. Notice that throughout the entire route, Fuko never cried.

#17

This is the one route in Clannad that has always rubbed me the wrong way.

I’m all for supernatural shenanigans, but astral projection is something which really bothered in this particular route. I know the use of out of body experiences has been used before in Key stories, (and previously in Clannad, e.g. Shima) and this is no exception, but I just wish (no pun intended) that these supernatural elements (which don’t relate to the light orbs) that allows things like this to happen were somewhat explained. If not in the route, then at some point throughout the novel in some external event.

If it’s acceptable to let us know precisely how the mysterious light orbs work in a nice small piece of exposition, then it would be pretty sweet to put some of the other bizarre plot mechanisms in to perspective too.

Whole series spoiler

From what I’ve gathered having finished the novel, we don’t ever find out how this other strange stuff works (Shima, Fuuko, Akio’s prayer). Which is a shame in my opinion

But aside from that, it was a nicely written route as far as I’m concerned.
I wasn’t sure how old Fuuko was, so I thought it was super creepy seeing Tomoya share a kiss with her… I honestly thought she was about 10 years old the whole time, until I looked it up on Google. I may have missed the part where they specify her age, but apparently they are the same age? Interesting.

I also played both endings for her route for the sake of 100% completion. I for one much prefer the friendship ending, as opposed to the one where they start dating. That’s probably because of the misconception I had about the age at first… But I also just feel they aren’t compatible :stuck_out_tongue:

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#18

Same. I mean at the end after Tomoya forgets her, Tomoya is mysteriously holding Nagisa’s hand so you know Fuko ships them so really I feel that ending feels better.

#19

So I went and finished this route and I guess this is the first route I’m going to have to give a 3 for in CLANNAD. I just thought that it was pretty average.

I guess the problem I had with it was that the main point of the story lied in the situation, rather than the emotions of the characters. And the situation in and of itself is one that is just too out-of-this-world to relate to. Fuko was pretty stoic about the whole situation and having hear bare her emotions just a little bit more would have made it better, in my opinion.

At the end of the day, it was nice to see her finally achieve her goal, but I just wasn’t able to feel the kind of emotional impact that the writer was trying to portray… Probably because I didn’t see it as much of a hopeless cause as other similar situations. Also probably because the bad end; which in other stories makes me more aware of the gravity of the situation; made me feel quite nice as it shipped Tomoya and Nagisa in a very sweet and natural way. You know something is wrong when a bad end makes you feel good :stuck_out_tongue:

But hey, the route was still pretty entertaining in its own regard. Fuko is just really fun to bully and I would most definitely make her drink juice through her nose, if given the situation (I guess that puts me down to the level of Sunohara but who cares~~).

Plothoooooooles
Or maybe he was to busy trying to get them kids to have good memories.

That’s why the “Fuko ending B” exists and is much much better than the ending A. Definitely felt that this route’s romance was just put in for the sake of being so.

They did start school at the same time, so yes, Fuko is the same age as Tomoya, albeit stunted growth from being in a coma… Wait does that even physically happen?

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#20

Fuko is very stoic, and in general is not the kind of person who would probably be able to cry in front of others. It took her almost until the end of the route to really even know how to lean on Tomoya or Nagisa a little, and she seemed to be aware that people were going to forget her impossible existence anyway. Because of this Tomoya is our main point of reference for the emotional side of things - the way that reader is more in tune with Tomoya emotional creates a sort of feeling of watching over Fuko as opposed to being directly involved. I think it worked, but I can see how some people might not have gelled with it.