So. Tomoya was given a second chance because of the happiness of others. What did that even had to do with the town and the lesson he was suppose to learn? And don’t even get me started on the Illusionary World.

Nevertheless, I believe that Clannad should have just ended after the first season.

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.

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 ^_^

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.

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=

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.

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?

Yeah it’s Sankaku Complex. Remember what I said about taking credibility by the sources ability to earn or have it?

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.