A (weak) Attempt to Justify the Ending of Clannad After Story
A lot has been said about the ending of Clannad After Story (not surprisingly, since it’s probably in the top two or three most popular shows currently airing), but most of it has been negative. I’d say the reception has been mixed on the generally staunchly pro-KyoAni AnimeSuki Forums and almost universally negative on the wider blogosphere. My own opinion of the ending sits just on the negative side of “don’t care”, in that, I definitely would have liked a better ending, but there’s nothing in it that’s so objectionable that it changes my overall opinion of the show. But I think there is a case for a reanalysis of some of the interpretations that drive a lot of the common negative reactions to the ending, and that there is something more to it than just a deus ex machina to spare the main character (and the audience) from despair. My contention is that it isn’t inconsistency that ruined Clannad After Story’s ending… it’s ambiguity. (A spoiler warning is implicit in this post’s title).
My-HiME is one of the more infamous examples of a deus ex machina ending in anime. After an emotional rollercoaster ride where several characters experience loss, tragedy, sacrifice and growth through their hardships, in the final episode almost everyone who “died” (what was there, like twenty characters?) were magically brought back, which really cheapened the struggles and character development that preceded. At first glance, After Story’s ending isn’t too dissimilar. When Nagisa died, Tomoya went through some incredibly profound character development as he matured, accepted the loss of his wife and learned to be a father to Ushio and then reconciled with his own father. He became a man that, in the final episode (in a significant moment which is too often overlooked) couldn’t bring himself to regret meeting Nagisa and, by proxy, accepted the hardships that accompany the happiness in their relationship (a cliched moment, but a touching one, IMO). His character development was a result of his loss, but, as we find out in the second to last episode, his loss was caused by divine forces outside of his control. What starts to make things feel really cheap though is Ushio’s death. Within the moment, it basically felt meaningless and unnecessarily cruel from the writers. And, it’s even more difficult to find meaning within Ushio’s death when she was revived in the very next episode. In other words, the consequences of Nagisa’s death were given time to play out, but the consequences of Ushio’s death weren’t, so it felt like something that happened in order to induce an instantaneous reaction from the audience, rather than having any thematic significance.
The portrayal of the city is important and, I think, at the heart of the perceived inconsistency which a lot of people have problems with. At face value, it pretty much feels like the city is toying with Tomoya; he so much as states it in ep 21 (8:38-8:42) and, from memory, several times before that. At first, it chooses Nagisa to “curse” as a consequence for the growing pains within the city, a reaction to the changes and progress and whatnot. Then, not satisfied by taking Nagisa’s life, it suddenly makes Ushio sick and then kills her. Sounds like a pretty vain and vindictive divine force, right? And then, just when it feels like it’s made Tomoya suffer enough, it decides he’s learnt his lesson (whatever that “lesson” is) and gives him his family back. What motivates the city’s change of heart? It’s pretty hard to say. The common interpretation from the ending’s defenders is that the city wanted Tomoya to come to appreciate how blessed he is to have a family, but I’m trying to figure out any moment where he failed to appreciate that before the city saw fit to take away his wife. Nonetheless, if people arrive at this interpretation, it’s no surprise that they’d be disappointed, or even angered by the ending. It’s not something that can be justified with a “lesson”, IMO. It’s even more bewildering when Tomoya and Nagisa come to the conclusion that the city nurtures them… an almost irrational thought considering it killed off his wife and daughter and then gave them back to him for the sake of an obscure “lesson”. But, given the portrayal of the city, this isn’t a difficult interpretation to arrive at… it’s almost the most obvious one.
Things suddenly become much more palatable if one works on the theory that the city had been trying to save Nagisa from the beginning. The behaviour of the city suddenly becomes more consistent when Nagisa and Ushio’s deaths are seen as a consequence of its shortcomings and lack of power, as opposed to vindictiveness. In episode 15 of After Story, Akio completes his story of Nagisa’s near death experience that he started telling Tomoya in ep 20 of the first season of Clannad. Akio tells Tomoya that, without thinking, he took Nagisa to the hill where the future hospital would be built, and prayed that Nagisa be saved… and that prayer was answered. Yes, it’s still a deus ex machina, but a deus ex machina is much more acceptable than an inconsistent deus ex machina ending. In ep 21, Tomoya explicitly implicitly (yes, both at the same time) makes the link between Nagisa’s health and the state of the city. Basically, one could interpret this as, at the moment when the city saved the near-death Nagisa, it had her on something akin to a magical life support, but over time, as the city changed, it had less power to sustain that life support (hence her sickness), and Ushio’s birth was too much for it to handle so, making the choice between her and Ushio, it chose Ushio. Ushio’s existence was also sustained by the city, seeing as she wouldn’t have been born in the first place had the city not been keeping Nagisa alive, and the city was able to cope with Ushio, but as she became older and the city’s power became weaker, something had to give here as well, and, well, the rest is history. What allows Tomoya to get a reset and save both Nagisa and Ushio again, isn’t the city deciding it had had enough of toying around with Tomoya, but the light orbs that Tomoya had collected which represent the feelings of the people touched by Tomoya and Nagisa, etc, etc (I imagine the significance would have been a little more clear in the game). I’m not sure what the Illusionary World has to do with all of this, or what meaning there is to the girl in the Illusionary World being Ushio. I guess it could be seen as a mechanism or a pathway through which Tomoya could go from one world (ie, the one with the bad end) to the reset world (with the good end). If this is the case, then I’m a little disappointed that the Illusionary World ended up being little more than a plot device (especially considering how much money KyoAni poured into animating it), but maybe I’m misinterpreting something.
As I mentioned in my last post about Clannad After Story, I haven’t played much of the game, but this interpretation was basically pieced together from posts and comments from experienced gamers made in various places, particularly the AnimeSuki Forums, such as this one (ie, the rare post that doesn’t resort to “OMG you just didn’t get it” silliness to try to defend the ending). It’s still a (flawed) deus ex machina ending, I guess, but with this interpretation, the behaviour of the city suddenly becomes a lot more consistent and doesn’t seem so blatantly and unnecessarily cruel, and Tomoya’s eventual embrace of the city doesn’t seem so irrational. The problem with the ending doesn’t become an issue of consistency, it becomes an issue of ambiguity. To arrive at this conclusion, at the very least one needs to realize the link between Nagisa’s near death experience and her sickness, as well as the link between Akio’s prayer which allowed Nagisa to survive her near death experience and the city (ie, the divine force which granted his prayer). Neither of these were shown very clearly. At the very least, looking at the ending in this light gives it more meaning than having one character die for no good reason one episode before the end and then a divine force reversing two deaths at its whim, which is not only a very easy interpretation to arrive at, but also a fairly off-putting one.
My interpretation of Ushio being the Girl of the Illusionary World, is that her existence in it represents a kind of last-ditch attempt by the “Town” to preserve Ushio’s life, by preserving her soul/consciousness in a form that can be sustained as tangible within the IW itself, allowing her a last attempt to set things right; which leads to Robo-Tomoya, and the collection of the lights.
The thing about the ambiguity CLANNAD AS’s ending is that it comes with much precedence. Ayu’s miracle in Kanon required one to self-justify as to its nature, while the little boy and girl at the end of AIR also offers a tantalizing, albeit unresolved possibility to Misuzu’s tragedy. Maeda seems to utilize the ambiguous ending to such an extent that it probably deserves its own spot on TVTropes, and from what I can figure, it basically banks on the gamer/viewer/reader/etc. to fall so much in love with the characters that they end up entirely willing to believe in whatever self-justification they can cook up just to see their beloved characters Earn Their Happy Ending. Of course, while it generally works for the VN gamer crowd, when released to a wider audience through KyoAni….it pretty much becomes a case of Your Mileage May Vary. Thought of it that way, it’s hard to say whether the Maeda Ending is a case of poor writing skills, or deliberate emotional whoring.
Anyway, I’ll start on the review by tomorrow, boss.
No matter how much you are able to justify the ending, I still (and will) find it unpalatable. Perhaps it was because the importance of the city was, as you say, left ambiguous, but I still think the fact that everyting simply resets, even for good MAGIC CITY ORBS cause, detracts from the ending.
I’ve seen a lot of these types of posts lately and it makes me wonder about two things:
1) Why so much more effort than given for your average ambiguous/”inconsistent” series ending when usually this type of resolution would result in a “release the hounds” type reaction from your average anime fan going by what I’ve seen? That’s just a general reflection on people coming out of the woodwork to defend this ending by the way and not specific to this post and it probably stems more from my tendency to keep as a much of a watch on the general anime fandom as I do on the shows themselves than anything else. It however does lead me to…
2) If this shows ending needs so many people coming out to try and defend it then doesn’t that kind of prove that there’s something inherently wrong with it regardless. As in shouldn’t this ending be able to stand on it’s own without all of these diagrams that people are drawing up (which might not necessarily be an accurate representation of what happened anyway) and attempts to rationalize it (which also might not necessarily be an accurate representation of what happened anyway)?
As usual you and I are almost in agreement, ambiguity is a key issue I share with regard to this ending, but I have to ask, does that necessarily preclude inconsistency when all we have to go on in a lot of cases are the attempts to justify the ending by fans? Some of which themselves run contrary to one another.
Anyway, surprisingly I’m most in agreement with Ascaloth here, Maeda seems to put more stock in the fans abilities/desires to find a way to justify his endings (not a bad bet given what I’ve seen actually) then he does in attempting justify them himself. As a result, like Ascaloth said, depending on one’s own interpretation and tolerance levels for ambiguous and apparently inconsistent endings, you’re mileage may vary.
@Ascaloth
I suspect the latter (although either one isn’t super impressive, but deliberate emotional whoring is a lot easier to forgive, depending on the circumstances).
As far as the previous Key/KyoAni endings are concerned, I thought there was just enough hints in the Air ending to figure out some sort of “happy end” interpretation of the ending, while the Kanon 06 ending was a blatant DEM, but I found a way to forgive it because it played to one of the story’s major themes, so there was meaning to it. Both were rushed, both were ambiguous. Same with Clannad AS’s ending (so you’re right, there is precedence). But I don’t think any of the endings were inconsistent.
Nonetheless, there is a pattern here, and there could be two possible causes: KyoAni’s adaptations of Maede’s writing not being able to transmit the underlying meaning as well as the original source or Maede’s writing itself being ambiguous at the endings, and for some reason I doubt it’s the former. One could come to the conclusion that he either likes ambiguous endings because it fuels interpretation and discussion, or that he’s so obsessed with the emotional rollercoaster that comes before the ending, that he’s not so concerned about the finale being neat and closed off and crystal clear (GSZS was so insightful when it said that the Japanese tend to be more concerned about the process of things rather than the result). I don’t have a major problem with this, even if it does nark me a tiny bit, but I can see why people would, hence YMMV. But it does back up this idea of “deliberate emotional whoring”, so I think you could be onto something there.
@Omisyth
The reset! I knew I forgot to discuss something. The reset is pretty difficult to justify of itself, and I think anyone who innately has a problem with reset endings is inevitably going to dislike Clannad AS’s ending. I guess I’m trying to find an interpretation which gives meaning to the reset ending. Reset endings, in general, are devoid of meaning and actually detract from or even reverse the meaning of the events that preceded it. But, I think there’s meaning in Clannad AS’s reset ending if you consider the city as a force which strengthens when it comes closer to being a great big family (like the dangos), as opposed to something which kills off someone’s wife and daughter because it wants to toy with him (maybe this is part of the lesson that Tomoya learnt). It’s an interpretation that doesn’t so much rely on the city being so inconsistent, so I prefer it. Something being “ambiguous” is a lot easier to swallow than something being “inconsistent”. The former just takes a bit more effort to interpret, the latter means that, no matter how much effort you put into interpreting, you’ll still come up with something that stinks.
@Kaioshin Sama
1. Well, as I said in the opening, it is one of the most popular current anime, so it’s no surprise you get more people discussing it, which results in posts that go deeper and further than people would bother with a series that isn’t being widely watched. I wrote a big giant post on the fifth Kara no Kyoukai movie, and didn’t spark a single bit of discussion, even though there’s way more to discuss, analyze and interpret in that movie than there is in something like Clannad AS.
2. Well, yes, I never said that there wasn’t anything wrong with the ending of Clannad AS, my contention is that what’s wrong with it is that it’s ambiguous, but not inconsistent, and that the former makes it much more acceptable than the latter. It’s still a flawed ending, I’m not disputing that.
If it doesn’t fall to the fans to come up with ways to defend an ending, then who does it? This isn’t really all that different from the myriad of posts that came out at the time of Code Geass R2’s ending which attempted to interpret what had happened (mostly, whether Lelouch was alive). When an announcement came from the staff which destroyed the superposition of states (dig my “Schrodinger’s Cat” joke hurr hurr), I remember that gaguri complained that it shouldn’t be up to the staff to decide an interpretation for the viewers outside of what’s been shown within the series itself.
I actually haven’t really seen much in the way of attempts to justify the ending of Clannad AS on the blogosphere. This might be an unfair bias, but I tend to think something has a somewhat more likely chance of being credible if it turns up on the blogosphere than if it turns up in a forum post. Obviously a lot of the interpretations from fans on the AnimeSuki Forums, for example, are contrary to each other (for the obvious reason that they’re different), so I think it’s important to look at each interpretation individually and figure out if it’s at least internally consistent and justified by pieces of evidence drawn from the series itself (just as I’m hoping people will do with this post), and then determine which interpretation is the best. I do think that, at the end of the day, there is (at most) one “correct” interpretation (I know I’m opening up a whole can of philosophical worms here by mentioning this), but I don’t know if my attempt is the interpretation, so much as it is an interpretation, and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s far from rigorous. Anyway, if there has been other attempts to formulate interpretations in an attempt to defend the series’ ending on the blogosphere, I wouldn’t mind if you linked them, because I can’t find any (not that I’ve looked very hard).
@Sorrow-kun: Oh I wouldn’t say the blogosphere is any more or less credible then the average post one can read on a forum. Like everything that warrants credibility it still comes down to the sources ability to earn or have it.
Anyway, your attempt is feasible enough IMO and really if it has any weakness I wouldn’t say it’s really your fault because you, me and everyone only have so much to go on given the ambiguity of it all and our being forced to rely on theory to justify the ending. That’s why I think that it shouldn’t have fallen to the fans but to Kyoto Animation and perhaps also Key to have shed more light on the matter. The original source’s explanations, justifications what have you are always the strongest in terms of foundation when they actually follow through on giving them, but when they don’t and as you go down through the levels of the chain of anime storytelling (Writer, Animator, TV as a Medium etc.) and eventually to the end user (the viewer) the strength and weight of one’s attempt to explain something from that position becomes that much lesser because it’s competing with other viewers attempts to explain (on top of lacking the power of G-Canon…..which I don’t think most people understand because there are still those that insist Lelouch is alive but whatever….) and as a result their will never be one clear explanation. Like Ascaloth said, our mileage will have to vary.
Anyway here’s a start:
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/03/18/clannads-storyline-explained/
Yeah it’s Sankaku Complex. Remember what I said about taking credibility by the sources ability to earn or have it? However it does feature that same graph that has popped up on more then a few occasions and seems to have been adopted as the supposed cure-all patch to fixing Clannad’s ending. I don’t really think it’s that simple, but the way I see it without the base source in Kyoani/Key to provide the most agreeable unambiguous explanation for us we are now left with two choices, neither of which seem any better then the other IMO.
1) Flood the internet with a whole bunch of indie explanations and pick between those or
2) Pick a few of the more plausible ones and work between them.
Of course what one deems plausible may vary so in the end I think we’re probably all just going to end up back at option one with hundreds of people vying to try and justify the ending of Clannad After Story. Could be a good discussion while it lasts though.
@Kaioshin Sama
Yeah, ok, point taken.
The graph, of itself is pretty simplistic, but it does fill in a few holes I missed (like, why Tomoya knew the Illusionary World story back in the first season). I guess this just comes back to the the issues involved when watching and talking about any ambiguous story. I don’t disagree that superior storytelling is intricate (and multi-leveled), yet clear (without being blatant… hence why subtlety is important, but not too much subtlety because that just becomes ambiguity again, etc, etc, it’s all one big balancing act). But I still think it’s possible that one can extract value and meaning from an ambiguous work. Not that Clannad After Story is an ambiguous work anyway, only certain details needed for the ending were ambiguous. The important stuff, like the character drama, was pretty clear and straightforward.
@Sorrow-Kun: Funny, I thought you were really against ambiguous endings going by your reaction to what happened with Lelouch in R2. I recall you saying then that an ambiguous ending makes for a cop-out, especially when it relies on the viewers to come up with the explanation for what happened in an ending and that usually they will try to come up with the one that is happiest before the one that is most plausible. Though I suppose in this case the ending already handled giving people the happiest ending, but neglected the explanation/clarfication, which ultimately came for Code Geass R2. Though if you ask me I still wonder to this day how anybody could have come to the conclusion that Lelouch was still alive at the end and I believe the only reason there was any ambiguity was because of the fans. Guy got stabbed plain through the chest and got a full blown death scene. :/
In the end all of these explanations including the graph, remain a theory and nothing more, and that’s the problem that still runs through the story. Also like with Lelouch a single word from the director can make many or all of these theories moot and all of them still have to compete with each other. Also if you subscribe to this graph then it causes problems for the whole story because it makes it seem like Tomoya still crossed timelines from timeline 2 to timeline 1 at the end of After Story episode 16, which wouldn’t make sense. If he’s already at the point where he can collect the light orbs at the beginning of the series (and indeed we see him bonding with all of the girls and helping them) then why does he go through all of those bad end events shown in Timeline 1 starting at episode 17? Theoretically he already helped all of the girls to get the light orbs so he should just jump straight to the good ending. In this manner it looks like the graph doesn’t really work…..or am I missing something?
Different series, different circumstances. I’m not big on ambiguous endings either way, but I tend to have more tolerance for them in character-driven series where tying up threads isn’t so important.
As far as the light orbs are concerned, Tomoya might have had them at ep 16, but he didn’t use them until ep 21. When Nagisa died he had a lot of things going through his head, but I don’t think he was thinking about prayers to bring her back, and in fact, his first emotional reaction was regret. Yet, when Ushio died, he prayed to Nagisa to save her. Then the light orbs pass over the screen and in the next scene they’re in the Illusionary World. I think this is the difference. He had to pray for Ushio to be saved to activate the light orbs.
I think the graph is slightly off, because there should be a line from the bad end to the beginning of the good end which goes through the Illusionary World, but is only activated on the timeline in which Tomoya collects the orbs.
I completely object to the Sankaku Complex diagram. My explanation and interpretation of the ending and episode sequence is being edited by my friends, but I’d like to share my own timeline interpretation with you since that’s unlikely to change.
I have no experience with this game so I don’t know the exact “light orb” deal, It’s evident that he did release some light orbs into the Illusionary World, but the details to their usage I am not too clear on. But Tomoya did indeed pass through the Illusionary World during his ‘reset’, and his experience there is what eventually led him to his happily ever after.
p.s. I didn’t need to know about the ending of My-HiME D=
[...] cryptic “meaning” of Clannad might be answered through sorrow-kun’s justification of the show. He writes that the show’s ending fails because it’s ambiguous – the lack of [...]
“I’d say the reception has been mixed on the generally staunchly pro-KyoAni AnimeSuki Forums ”
Mixed? Maybe the naysayers have been more vocal, but going by the numbers over 80% of the people who go to the animesuki threads rate the ending as “very good” or above.
Also, returning to the animesuki example, maybe it’d seem like it has been up to the ending likers to write an avalanche of posts justifying the ending as you say (though that has generally been 5 or 6 posters saying the same thing over and over again) but there has also been a good number of non players who have found the ending satisfying and well within understandable grounds.
Being a gamer of the Clannad VN, a reset to me seems the only plausible option for a happy ending even if it was portrayed in the anime as a deus ex machina. As this mechanic ties in heavily with the light orbs, I feel I should give my interpretation on this. Note there are game spoilers here.
The light orbs, the symbols of happiness of people living in the city, the feelings of every individual tie in well with the ‘city is a supernatural entity’ interpretation. Yukine comments on the ‘ancient’ legend of the light orbs and the fact how less and less people can see them. This goes with the changes in the city and the changes in people, lifestyle and technology. While technology is not at all represented, I feel that the author of the story also wants to comment on how the superficial and materialistic lives of people in the modern era undermine our ability to seek true happiness through relationships with other physical beings. This being said, Tomoya, a disconnected individual in society who has few stable and happy relationships with others who eventually finds and brings happiness to others through his efforts is rewarded with light orbs, symbols of this happiness he has brought. In the VN there are 14 light orbs in total (you can lose one through granting Fuko’s wish) and in order to get the true ending you must have 13 light orbs. It is only possible to get all 13 after Nagisa’s death, those being the ones of Akio, Fuko, Kouko and Tomoya’s dad. At the point in which Ushio dies is the point where you are told you need to collect more light orbs in order to save someone and thus get the true ending. You are then put to the menu and thus you have to continue with After Story again. However think of the reset as someone earlier commented as a save point in which you restart from for mere convenience without having to fast forward through all the text. That save point is when Ushio is born. Although I think that the anime should have put a little time fast forwarding through after story to that point instead of loading straight off the bat. I’m not sure how coherent this comment is, so excuse me if it’s a bit confusing through explanations, theories etc.
Watching the series in reverse, helped me come to the realization that we see the consequences of Ushio’s death in the very first episode.
The world that ended, is a world without time, it exists parallel to our world, before after and during our world:- the Ushio that stays behind in the illusionary world is the power that grants wishes in the “real” world.
But in order for her to be able to do so the “world line” where she dies still has to transpire. Ushio /is/ the soul of the city, and her existence appears as the lights within the city in the same way Tomoya and everyone elses existence appears as lights within the illusionary world.
It’s foreshadowed all the way through the series, from season 1 to the end of After Story, that’s why Nagisa and Tomoya have “memories” of the illusionary world, when Tomoya is given the chance to pick whether or not he meets Nagisa at the foot of the hill, essentially two of the “world lines” are converging, the one where Nagisa is fated to death during child birth and the other not.
So it could be said that Ushio saved Nagisa, when Nagisa fell ill as a child.
The title of the series being “Clannad” which I’m sure you’re all aware is Gaelic for “Family” the moral of the story would appear to be to look out for and nurture your family.
Of course whether or not the Ushio we see after her own death in the “new” world, is still the same Ushio is up for debate!
That was my interpretation of the ending anyway, before I read any fan theories, I hope it makes some sense ^_^
I just watched AS this last week.I had no knowledge before hand about the second series, and actually had to force myself NOT to go online to find out how things turned out in the end. (To the point where I didn’t even watch the Previews of next episodes after 15.)
And while I suppose you could try to justify or degrade the ending however you want, all I could do was hope things would work out somehow. I cried a couple times throughout the thing and actually, unlike most anime I watch, had to stop watching because it effected mo much I had to digest it.
To me the ending was both wonderful and well done. Could it have been better? Maybe, but its easy for us to take someone else’s masterpiece and say, we’d have done it differently, that’s what we do as humans after all.
Clannad and After Story together, for me are(is?) one of the best animes in its genre. While no doubt others will disagree, I think leaving the real reasoning for the ending up to the viewer is what makes Key’s works as noteworthy as they are.
Also as a final note, I’m glad I waited until it finished to watch it. If I had to wait a week or two after Episode 16 or 21 I would have gone Insane.