Discussion topic for CLANNAD -Hikari Mimamoru Sakamichi de- Episode 15: Together in a public bath, narrated by Tomoya Okazaki as written by Kai. It is a direct sequel to Episode 14: The reunion of the Furukawa bakers.
Spoilers for the vanilla CLANNAD are permitted, but please tag references to all other Side Stories (excluding Episode 14) with the [spoiler] tag, providing adequate context in parenthesis.
How would you rate this episode?
0 voters
I smell a fanservice story…
Theeeeeeeeere it is.
Admittedly, it did have some funny and cute moments. It ended on a nice note, much like the baseball route. Still, it’s mostly fanservice 
I haven’t read this yet but it’s already 10/10
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This is absolutely fanservice in every way and its great. Not really a whole lot happened other than some funny interactions between characters but it was a really entertaining read. This is one that I can see myself coming back to down the road just to read for the fun of it.
I’m usually not the biggest fan of such fanservice-episodes, but this one had enough nice points that I didn’t hate it. Really, the closing words of this one make very clear that the Baseball-Route from Clannad is definitely also a good ending. From Clannad itself it was a bit more “nothing really happened”, but here, the implications that people on that discussion were talking about were made a bit more clear.
It’s strange enough that this story continues from the previous episode, but it also seems to have changed hands in the process, so it’s like a fanfiction of the previous fanfiction.
(obligatory BWOM)
With that out of the way, it feels like a natural continuation of the previous episode, complete with similar jokes and character moments, save the fact that it’s about ‘the wonders of a public bath’ rather than baseball. Bathhouse scenarios are pretty tired tropes in anime, and I imagine Kai writes this kind of stuff all the time, so it seems like there wasn’t much effort put into this scenario.
Do I think this story is bad? No, I think it’s just as fluffy and enjoyable as the previous episode. There’s nothing substantial to either save a few good moments with Fuko and Sunohara, and while those are few and far between, they’re enough to make the experience enjoyable at the very least.
One story remains. Will it be the best one of all? Can’t wait to find out~ 
In CLANNAD, a nice way to rate an episode or route is to see how much Sunohara appears, and this episode had a ton of Sunohara. The more Sunohara we have, the better. I’ll rate this side story 4/5 Sunoharas.
But seriously, Sunohara was just hilarious in this episode, which surprisingly, as @EisenKoubu said, continued The reunion of the Furukawa bakers while changing the writer. This struck me. Is this episode some fanfiction KEY wanted to include but Maeda refused to write? Sincerely, this is a question I’d like to ask them directly if they appear in another convention.
This aside, while it surely was a fan service episode, I thought that it was outstanding in spite of its fanservice episode status. It was hilarious without having to explicitly exploit the fact that they were all naked, and it also delivered a heartwarming ending without it being too cheesy. Brilliant execution I must say. The reason I’m not rating this a 5 is because even though I found it splendid, I thought it lacked that something inexplicable that you can find in Akio’s side story, or Koumura’s one.
Overall, a very good side story. You shouldn’t be misled by its title. This is a quality-comedy episode, at least in my opinion (not that it’s high quality comedy, but rather that it’s very well executed).
Well if you must have almost the entire cast of Clannad naked in a bathhouse…
It’s the sort of comedic story that only really works because we know the characters so well - I mean imagine if this had just been a short completely standalone KN! The humour is a bit predictable but in the end at least we have the notion as Yoshino states that shared memories like this become precious and irreplaceable, even if they are a little embarrasing at the time. Well that and the boob and knob gags…
I’d give it 3.5 / 5 if I could.
