Conversely it could’ve also worked out if Tomoya had been more steadfast and confident in his position. Or if he’d taken the effort to prove the allegations wrong. Or if Tomoyo had simply been less ignorant of the effects of her actions. In the end it comes down to wishing either of the two - or the authority figures involved for that matter - to be someone they’re not.
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Yes but nobody else realized that was the bigger factor. Not Tomoyo, not Tomoya, not even society as a whole.
Well, sure, they could have made the relationship work if that were the case… but I am doubtful that tomoyo would still be able to save the cherry trees if she kept it up, no matter how confident tomoya became…
That much is true, and that’s what makes this story beautiful. It shows the story of two flawed people trying, then failing, then succeeding to make things work out.
Tomoyo being less ignorant would have been nice, but that’s her flaw. It’s a pretty big flaw, but literally nobody else in the story sees that flaw. Heck, I think even half the readers fail to notice this flaw. And I think that’s what ticks me off the most. I don’t hate Tomoyo, I hate society.
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Well, I started CLANNAD recently, and have finished two routes as of now, this being the first.
I will state my opinion to start since it seems necessary. I like Tomoyo, if maybe not as much as some.
While I was hoping for more from the romance itself, it was a good route otherwise.
One thing I’d like to discuss is the bad ending. I didn’t see anyone bring it up, though at times I may have skimmed a bit through reading this.
It’s not the kind of bad ending I’m used to. Tomoyo and Tomoya stay together. However, with her one other goal defeated, Tomoyo’s devotion has her decide to not even finish school in order to be with him, which could derail her future much more than the good ending. In a sense, the bad ending is what people were concerned about occurring.
I suppose one could say that Tomoyo’s flaw is a prioritization of her love over all things. “I will become the student council president to preserve the trees for my brother” “I will nurture my relationship at the cost of my other student council duties”.
Her past may not have taught her about people very well. Tomoyo was likely used to achieving her own goals, and generally not having to consider others besides Takafumi very much.
I may edit this and add more, nothing else is coming right now.
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I praise you, good sir, for seeing that glaring flaw that everyone (both in the novel and outside) has ignored.
As the legendary Freddie Mercury once said: “Too much love will kill you”
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Everyone has ignored this? It’s the whole point of the Tomoyo route!
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Hmm, I don’t think it’s quite that simple tbh. The problem is less with her prioritizing her love over her other goals, but more with her being unwilling to commit to it, trying to balance both sides and failing really badly at doing so without realizing it.
She’s also naive, in that she doesn’t realize that “what she can contribute to society” is so important to the people around her, Tomoya, classmates and teachers alike, because to her, that’s her own problem - as it should be, no less!.. but it just isn’t how things are, and she doesn’t take notice of just how much this affects Tomoya in particular.
So really, I’d say while people like to attribute her priority issues to Tomoya instead of Tomoyo for some reason, the problem is more fundamental in that none of them really care about Tomoyo as a person, they just care about her as a contributor to society. And so Tomoya becomes the ‘liability’. Tragic, isn’t it.
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Some people way back when (just scrolling up there a bit) thought that the whole point of the Tomoyo route was that Tomoya wasn’t being a man enough because he refused to join Tomoyo in the student council 
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I need help here, at Day 21, I keep getting rerouted to Misae’s route and I can’t figure out what to do?
During that day, there’s a branching path where one of the choices states “Persist and go to Misae-san’s room”. You must not choose that choice.
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Thank you for the information, I kept making the mistake…
Since Necroposting is apparently allowed and encouraged around here, I suppose this is the best place to start before I dig into any TA threads, since a lot of my lingering issues with TA stem from the original route and how their relationship is established up to that point.
At the time of writing, I have only completed 4 routes: Kyou, Ryou, Misae, and obviously Tomoyo’s. While I haven’t finished any others (started Kotomi’s atm), I do have a feeling my opinions aren’t going to radically change at this point, based on what I already know from the anime and now have a good idea for how the VN and anime differ in their interpretations.
Although I haven’t finished Kotomi’s or Nagisa’s, I get a constant underlying vibe from the game about needs and wants. To my perspective, Kyou/Ryou simply want Tomoya. These feelings of love seem to be their first, and they simply have trouble making those feelings known. Although Tomoya explicitly mentions multiple times that he thinks Ryou needs him, they still seem to carry on mostly fine whether or not you engage with them.
Nagisa and Kotomi, however, need Tomoya to grow, and almost appear to fall of the face of the earth if you don’t engage with them. Nagisa never starts up the Drama Club or becomes true friends with Tomoya, and Kotomi is likely still sitting alone in the library where you’d meet her. If Tomoya doesn’t help them, they make no progress, and he doesn’t ever actively think about them ever again.
The Tomoyo route gives us a something of an opposite in this case. There is a much more apparent mutual need and interest that is established almost immediately between the two. The beginning of their relationship is easy, natural, and they get along well because of their shared current loneliness and difficult pasts.
The wrench gets thrown in when finds out she looking to become Student Council Prez. It causes him to question his position, but instead resolves to simply enjoy the time they have left, and break apart when and if she becomes Prez. Despite that, he still actively helps her get elected and votes for her himself, because by that point he realizes this isn’t a passing phase; he wants to stay with Tomoyo because he cares about her. At this point, the want is established for both of them; they continue to try to make it work.
The most interesting part of the route comes from societal pressures that get put on them. Neither Tomoya nor Tomoyo care in the least what any one thinks about them as individuals or a couple. What they do care about is obvious: each other. The actual problem is that Tomoyo’s major flaw is her denseness: she simply isn’t aware of why Tomoya starts doubting their relationship, despite him hinting at it multiple times (ie: the phone conversation).
The breakup scene perfectly encapsulate a second transition: Tomoya’s want becomes a form of love. It’s not a beautiful, pure, endearing kind of love: it’s a sacrificial love, similar to the way a parent might give their life (literally or figuritively) for their child. Tomoya can’t handle the pressure and hurting someone he cares about: he’s spent that past three years thinking and hearing he’s worthless. He can’t tear down that mental wall and follow her up the hill, and it’s unrealistic to expect him to. Whether or not it’s morally correct, it is a rational conclusion, albeit born from irrational concepts created by him and those around him. I’ve done this kind of thing before; it’s about setting yourself aside and doing the cold mental calculus to figuring out what’s best for someone you care about more than yourself. It’s only during the eight month gap that he also realizes what he felt was real and that he genuinely needs Tomoyo once she gone.
It’s hard to say whether Tomoyo feels similarly at that moment since we aren’t able to see what’s going on in her head, but I’d say she makes both transitions during the gap as well. She too sacrifices something (a potentially bright future) for what she wants, needs, and loves. That being said, I imagine it was easier for her to come to this conclusion than Tomoyo since she never cared about the expectation society put on her in the first place, as well as her propensity to focus solely on going after what she wants. With the previous goal complete, there is nothing to hold her back anymore.
Overall, this is my favorite route yet. It’s believeable, excellently paced, and is solid from moment to moment.
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I agree with you. Tomoyo and Tomoya’s relationship feels incredibly natural to me, and that’s why I love them. There’s hardly much melodrama and the scope is small enough that the focus never deviates from them wanting to be together. Though Tomoya is out of place here, in my opinion. He seems to be a better character and more developed person when he’s taking care of someone, not when he’s being taken care of here by Tomoyo.
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I do agree to a certain extent with your perspective that Tomoya is very in his element when he’s helping someone, but in ever example I think of, I always see a mutual “yin and yang” sort of pattern develop. He helps her become Student Council Prez, and their resolve and relationship grows together because of it. He lets her wake him up and make him lunches/meals because it makes her feel “girly” which helps her with her “tom-boy” complex quirk, but ultimately it makes them both feel happy and needed. Even breaking up with her is his own twisted way of helping her, albeit at the cost of himself. I can’t really think of an example besides the break-up where only one of them stands to benefit (and even in that case, the “benefits” of that move are questionable) without the other.
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Wow you hit the nail on the head right there. I love how you point out her greatest flaw so well, and don’t prescribe to the whole “oh tomoya should juat git gud” mentality. Her denseness is her charm and her bane, and what makes things worse is that this denseness actively causea even more internal problems for tomoya over the course of their relationship.
I’d argue there’ a much deeper mutual need between Tomoya and Nagisa (whereas between tomoyo it is immediate but skin-deep) but that’s for another discussion, I feel. I also find Tomoya and Nagisa’s relationship much more natural whereas with Tomoyo it feels much more romanticized… but that’s also me basing from my own personal experiences.
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That’s an interesting angle I’d admittedly never considered. I agree with many others that Tomoya and Tomoyo have great chemistry. I like the back and forth banter they engage in. As far as personalities go, they are on similar wavelengths, so there’s plenty of witty snark and teasing to throw around there. On the same token, though, up until the student council comes into the picture, the ups and downs in their romance are related to workplace commitments that aren’t directly related to their connection as people. While Nagisa and Tomoya do have realistic moments where they disagree or think differently on issues, Tomoya and Tomoyo could be argued as being too in sync as far as their day-to-day conversations go, with not enough of their disagreements and slight emotional snarls that come with a day-to-day romance.
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@Pepe and @DangoDaikazoku I do agree with both of you that their relationship might be a little too “easy” and romanticized. I don’t have a decent counterpoint to the easy critique (aside from maybe saying Tomoyo’s denseness is a crutch to stand on to the point where she either isn’t aware/doesn’t even consider or care enough to sweat the small stuff, which is admittedly kinda weak/too convenient), but I would say the romanticized part of it comes from their social statuses, which I think creates an “us vs them” sort of effect, which eventually fails.
As for the Tomoya x Nagisa part, again, I didn’t get far into the route because I was kind of trying to talk to and be friendly with everyone at the same time and just wanted to see the early interactions the first time I played before picking a specific route to start with. The problem I’m having with Nagisa is ironically exactly what someone in this thread had mentioned in this thread, which is that they felt the VN was pushing them to like Tomoyo, but I feel like its even worse in Nagisa’s case. Its practically immediately screaming at you for the first hour “Please help this poor girl with her dream because she’s frail and super unsure of herself!” While Tomoyo does air on the side of too easy, I get the vibe that Nagisa (so far) is a bit too sympathetic.
I do fully intend to see Nagisa’s route through, and would love to find out I’m wrong; I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say regardless. Overall, I think the diversity of characters is the primarily reason I’m loving Clannad so far, especially with the extra time and layers that come with reading a VN, as opposed to watching the anime.
This route is shit and so is Tomoyo
First of all this route handles it’s length poorly. it’s way too long and filled with filler most of the time.
Second the romance is not really my thing in this one, personal preferences i guess.
Okay so Tomoyo came to this school to save sakura tress and see them again with her brother.
She had been working hard till she met Tomoya and then she starts to ignore her responsibilities, i can tolerate how oblivious she was till she became student council president but after that…
using the announcement system for her own selfish reasons and keep abandoning her work to see Tomoya. Tell me Tomoyo you wanted to save those sakura tress didn’t you? Then why are you ignoring your duites!! those tress aren’t gonna be saved if you keep sitting idly, your brother almost lost his life for your family. Don’t you wanna work hard like you did at first to save those sakura tress.
She becomes literally selfish forgetting about her goal and not caring what could happen.
Also if my memory serves me right we get the whole flashback of how Takafumi got into an accident and her family was reformed but when it’s asked that why does she wants to save the sakura trees she gives one line “I Just want to see one more time together with my brother” .
Come on writers i get ‘less words carry better’ is a thing but this won’t work here, this isn’t an anime where i could see her face and how emotional she’s feeling. This is a visual novel where words are valued most. So because i couldn’t feel that this was important to her, this goal of saving the trees was important to her i couldn’t connect with it.
There are instances where it’s good though. the bad end especially where she just gives up everything and follows tomoya the only one she has left as she couldn’t possibly face her family now. The breakup is a strong one too but i think it wold have been better if tomoya had tried one last time and told her “Hey you can’t get your goal like this, get your head straight and start taking your responsibilities” before opting to break up. Tomoya didn’t do something bad but he didn’t do something worth parsing too.
I hope you enjoyed your stay at the Key Café. We’re not exactly talking about a medium that’s known for being concise here. Don’t agree with you about the filler part—all the time Tomoyo and Tomoya spent hanging out with Sunohara is possibly my favorite part of this route. The three make a great group and I enjoyed their time together just as much as they did. You can’t really expect the route to be jam-packed with feels from start to finish; the route is more than just the climax, but that seems to be the only part you care about.
Please forgive the high school girl for not being a strict workaholic 24/7. This is one of her major internal conflicts: she has something she needs to do but she’s distracted by her infatuation for Tomoya. That’s exactly why she breaks up with him, because she recognizes that their relationship is preventing her from saving the trees.
I mean, that’s exactly why she does it. Right after hearing about her brother, she shouldn’t even need to say explicitly why she’s saving the trees.
I used to be in a place where I hated happy endings too. That ending is so shallow I can’t agree that it’s better at all. There’s no growth on the part of anybody in that; Tomoyo utterly fails in all she holds dear and only serves as a tragic love interest.
Tomoyo is the one who grows the most in this route. That’s not to say Tomoya is only an observer here, but Tomoyo really does choose her own path.
Don’t forget that ultimately, Clannad is all about family. It’s right in the name. The game isn’t just a simple love story; there’s highs and lows, fun times and difficult times for each character. The characters grow even if things don’t always work out perfectly for them. If a regular love story or an overly melodramatic tragedy is what you’re searching for, you may be better served by a generic romance novel you may find at a department.
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That’s objective for every person. We all have different type of fillers we like. i liked kappei’s route filler but didn’t like tomoyo. i can overlook filler as long as the feels(emotional part) are good And honestly every route in clannad suffers from this even after story at the starting 4-5 hours. But tomoyo is the worst it literally drags on forever, making us experience characters relationship is good but there’s a limit on how much bullshit you can add, it shouldn’t be 10 hour filler and 2 hour feels. The magical recipe is balancing the filler and feels proportion.
It’s because it’s shallow that it’s good writing. it’s supposed to make you feel shallow that’s what a bad ending is.And i don’t hate happy endings.
Sorry but after 60 minutes of Tomoyo cooking and tomoya having lewd fantasies. i couldn’t stand that they gave this important part only 15 minutes of screentime 
Tomoya is her boyfriend. The one who knows how important her goal is to her. So it’s his responsibility to at least try to support her, surely there was a better option than just breaking up.
She didn’t had to be a workaholic all the time but ignoring her duties when called is bad nonetheless.
She would have ignored those two girls who called her in school for work if tomoya didn’t told her to go and she also did that on founders festival. Who says council presidents don’t have free time, she should have some time to spend with him.
You see Tomoyo has to prove her worth to society if she wants it to help her in saving the tress. Her position of president is not something you can take half-assedly. Only if you do your duties and and remain a dignified stature is when people will follow you.
Remember Tomoyo chose it so she has to be prepared for the difficulties.
Only hard work bears fruit after all.
Ha ha ha ha…
This is exactly the irony of this route and I will repeat it again and again until everyone in the world realizes this.
You’re exactly right! Tomoyo does act like an idiot, and she does shirk her duties all because of her love for Tomoya. And the worst part? Absolutely nobody in the game blames her. The rest of the school blames Tomoya. Even Tomoya blames himself. Tomoyo absolutely fails to see the problem, as well. The even worse part is, surprise surprise, even when it comes to the readers, many fail to blame Tomoyo! This is, and the route points this out, because of how amazing she is, people fail to see her flaws. When a star shines brightly enough, you don’t see the craters and dark holes in it.
Now, years after, I think I’ve calmed down a bit, and I don’t think she is wholly to blame; I, too, blame Tomoya for not supporting her more (and just beating himself about it), and I blame the student council for not seeing Tomoyo’s flaws either. But, at the end of it, I am convinced that the writer intended it to be such. I think that Maeda intended her to be a flawed character, and intended literally every character in the story to be blind to her flaws, thus making the breakup even more soul-crushing but the reunion even more cathartic.
As they say in my industry “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature”
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