Clannad gives us a very rare opportunity to see how genetics are visualized since we get 3 whole generations of a family. So wanted to take a look at how and what traits are passed down.
Starting from the top of the family tree, Sanae’s hair is a warm brown color, and she has 3 distinct ahoge. Akio’s hair is a deep red. It’s pretty wild and all over the place, and he has 2 ahoge. Nagisa’s hair is a reddish brown, and she has 2 ahoge. Tomoya’s design isn’t as clearly defined, but CGs show that he has blue hair, no ahoge and pretty straight hair. Finally, Ushio’s hair is straight with a pale brown color. She also lacks the ahoge.
Here are the main colors of each character.
In general, we can see that the daughters inherit most of their appearance from their mothers, but their fathers’ traits still show in their hair. In 2/2 cases the ahoge number is based on the father. Nagisa has clearly gotten some of Akio’s red color, and some of his wildness can also be seen in how Nagisa’s bangs fan outwards(not necessarily reflected in her personality). That wild influence is nowhere to be seen in Ushio’s hair, and she also has the least vibrant shade of brown due to Tomoya’s blue color in the mix. Interestingly, there is barely any difference in eye color between the women. Akio’s eyes are brighter, and Tomoya stands out the most with his blue eyes.
One thing that we unfortunately can’t check reliably is if Sanae’s wavy hair is passed down. We can see that Sanae’s hair starts curling up towards the ends, but Nagisa and Ushio only have shoulder length hair, so we can’t say whether they don’t have the genes or it only starts curling with long hair. Neither Akio nor Tomoya have curly hair, so based on the previous observations we could hypothesize that their daughters inherited their straight hair.
So the genetics are solid, I think. We can instantly see that Nagisa is Sanae and Akio’s daughter, and likewise can we instantly see that Ushio is Nagisa’s daughter which is pretty important if you know what I mean.
