Discussion topic for CLANNAD -Hikari Mimamoru Sakamichi de- Episode 14: The reunion of the Furukawa bakers, narrated by Tomoya Okazaki as written by Jun Maeda.
Spoilers for the vanilla CLANNAD are permitted, but please tag references to other Side Stories with the [spoiler] tag, providing adequate context in parenthesis.
How would you rate this episode?
0 voters
Looks like this is set shortly after the baseball match in the Baseball route. Here I was hoping it was set in the distant future.
This one is full of references to the jokes of the game. They mention Saito by name, and Fuko Ninja makes a dramatic appearance appearance too. Overall though, this was… A very boring side story. Nothing really happened, just a repeat of the events of the Baseball route, and not quite as impacting either. Ehhh.
When I think of CLANNAD’s baseball route, I think of fluffy fanfics. It felt to me like Maeda just wanted an excuse to bring the majority of CLANNAD’s cast together to play a game of baseball. It existed just for fun, and there’s no harm in that from an author’s perspective. This story is kind of the same deal, only there’s more focus on the journey than the actual destination this time around.
One thing I do find better than the baseball route of CLANNAD is that because there’s less focus on baseball, I don’t feel completely alienated by what’s going on. There’s a great deal more humor too, which is a nice plus in my book. My favorite part especially was Fuko’s summoning for absolutely no reason, which may make someone wonder exactly how Fuko became summonable through a wooden starfish, but I don’t really care because it’s Fuko. XD
Akin to most of the other stories in this collection, it’s just harmless fun that anyone who liked the baseball route would also like. I can’t wait to read the next one~ 
This side story evokes the exact same feelings CLANNAD’s common route had: it felt peaceful, but still packed with stupid situations and, best of all, Sunohara.
While this specific story didn’t achieve anything new, and wasn’t outstanding either, I can see how many of us may like it as a nostalgic story, since pretty much all of the characters appear and the brief story condenses both the happy, peaceful moments; the hectic, funny ones, and the worrying, dramatic ones. You could even say that this episode is something like “CLANNAD in a nutshell”, so despite how plain it was and how there wasn’t much originality, I can’t bring myself to hate this episode. This is why I gave it a 3.
Some issues I saw were, apart from the lack of originality, the fact that the drama part with Akio in his last days was pretty much too forced and its ending was too obvious. However, one could argue that this was to create some comedy, but in my opinion, if this was the case, this idea is pretty poor in comedy value.
Also, the ending to the episode is a bit too sudden (if you don’t consider the fact that the next episode follows this one right away). And, despite this not being purely a drawback, I still missed a bit of the good old baseball matches we can find in KEY’s works.
While you might think that I have a pretty negative opinion about this side story, The reunion of the Furukawa bakers surely had some hilarious gags like Fuko’s summoning, the a cappella singing of “YO-SHI-NO!” and even a mention to our beloved Saitou (presumably, Jet Saitou). While not very ambitious, this story sure made me grin a couple times, and this is something I won’t deny.
Well this one’s not too special except that we see some of the “Scooby Gang” back together again fairly soon after the common route ends and relies of the comedy of misunderstanding without much of a pay-off. Best regarded I think as Part 1 of a two-parter with the penultimate episode even though it’s not labelled as such.
Just wonder if it might have at least offered something alternative with a POV rather than Tomoya again, maybe Sunohara this time…?
Contrary to most opinions I quite enjoyed this episode.
Yes it was ridiculous.
Yes it was filled with memes.
Yes it has the plot of a generic sitcom.
But it was fun, and I had fun reading it. One thing I thought unfortunate about clannad is that the characters never really had a chance to interact with one another. This gave them that opportunity and it was everything I could ask for.
