CLANNAD / First Impressions

Summary:

With Sunohara absent from school, Tomoya and friends discuss what to do and how Mei wants to get her brother playing soccer again. Kyou and Tomoya don’t think the idea will work because of the type of people in their school’s soccer club, and Sunohara’s disappearance makes it that much harder to get him reinstated. Despite all the obstacles though, Mei decides to go to the soccer club to make the request, and Tomoya and Nagisa go with her. The soccer club president turns down their request, and when Mei tries to plead with him, the other members start to badmouth her brother. They think of Tomoya as the same as Sunohara, and although this pisses him off, Tomoya backs off because of Mei. He, Nagisa, and Mei then go to see Yukine, and she has him reveal what happened between Sunohara and the soccer club: back when Sunohara was a first year, he got into a fight with the soccer club upperclassmen who wanted absolute obedience from the underclassmen. Tomoya had met Sunohara for the first time in the faculty room after Tomoya had gotten into a fight elsewhere, and the two hit it off. In light of all this, Nagisa observes that the club members haven’t forgotten what happened, and Yukine wonders if Sunohara could play soccer happily even if he returned.

Yukine then decides to share the story of her own brother who had almost never come to school and got into a lot of fights. She used to think he was a scary person, but she now understands that he has a lot of good qualities and just has a hard time bringing them out. Tomoya remembers that Sanae had felt similarly about Sunohara. Yukine thinks that Sunohara also has a lot of good qualities, and she believes that even if it’s not with soccer, if given the chance, then he’ll go back to being the brother that Mei loves. When Mei asks, Yukine reveals that she now gets along with her brother very well. The following day, Sunohara shows up at school, so Tomoya confronts him on what he did the previous day and if he worried about what Mei was doing. Sunohara doesn’t seem to care since he knows that Mei was with Tomoya, and he claims that he doesn’t have time to be concerned about her because he’s so busy with Sanae. This pisses Tomoya off, so he tells Sunohara to go talk to the guys in the soccer club so that he can find out how much Mei is thinking about him. Before the two can get into a fight, they’re broken up by Kyou, Ryou, and Kotomi, and Tomoya ends up storming out.

Sunohara skips the rest of the classes that day, and after Tomoya tells Mei and Nagisa what happened, Mei decides to go see the soccer club again. She doesn’t want to bother Tomoya and Nagisa anymore with this, but Tomoya wants to come along, and he tells Nagisa to go home first because he doesn’t want her to get in trouble if a fight breaks out. Nagisa insists on coming as well, and she promises to run away with Mei in the case of a fight. They catch the soccer club in the middle of practice, and they once again ask the club president to reinstate Sunohara so that he can at least participate in their practices. The club president is resistant because he has nothing to gain from this, so Mei offers to help the club in any way she can. It’s only after Tomoya bows his head that the club president notes how Tomoya has changed and assigns them to pick up soccer balls that get kicked off the field. The soccer club initially keeps the three of them busy picking up balls, however it soon becomes clear that the members are intentionally working them ragged. One of the members even hits Mei with a soccer ball, but Mei insists that it was her fault and keeps working her hardest.

Afterward, despite all the hard work, the club president once again turns down their request because no one would want someone like Sunohara on the team. He also reveals that Sunohara knows what they’re doing and yet isn’t coming because he’s abandoned them. Mei starts crying from this and insists that her brother will come, and when Tomoya tries to stop the bullying, the other members of the club get in his way. Before Tomoya can do anything, Sunohara rushes in and kicks the soccer club president in the face. He starts beating everyone up for making Mei cry, and Tomoya joins him after leaving Mei to Nagisa. By the time it starts raining, the fight is over, and Tomoya and Sunohara lay bruised and battered on the soccer field. Tomoya calls Sunohara an idiot and no-good brother and tells him to apologize to Mei, but Sunohara sees this as picking a fight. When the two get back up, Tomoya punches Sunohara and blames him for what Mei went through. Tomoya tells Sunohara to think more about Mei since he’s her brother, but Sunohara claims that he did worry about her. He had simply felt that if she was with Tomoya, then it’d be okay. Sunohara had intended to stay hidden earlier, but it was because Tomoya was so careless that he had to show up – protecting Mei was supposed to be Tomoya’s role as her boyfriend.

The pair’s fighting is broken up by Nagisa and Mei, and seeing Nagisa there and Mei crying uncontrollably leads to Sunohara hugging his sister. The following day, Sunohara and Tomoya run into each other on the way to school, but to everyone’s surprise, they start laughing. Mei ends up going home with the desire to find a good friend, and sometime later, Tomoya takes Sunohara to meet Akio who Sunohara still thinks is Sanae’s father. Nagisa and Sanae come out of the bakery as Sunohara is asking Akio for his daughter, and Sunohara is subsequently shocked to find out that Akio is actually Sanae’s husband. As he laughs over all this, Tomoya remembers the first time he met Sunohara. Both of them had been bruised after their respective fights, and when he saw Sunohara’s face and blonde hair, Tomoya started laughing. It was the first time he had laughed like that since coming to the school, and he felt that he wanted to try to fool around with this guy. From that day on, Tomoya and Sunohara always hanged around each other and did things together, and even now, they’re laughing together.

Preview

Well, I wasn’t thrilled with the overall conclusion to the Sunohara/Mei arc, but it wasn’t bad either. Certainly Sunohara coming showing up to save his sister was a high point, but the soccer club scenes leading up to it were stupidly frustrating to watch, and the resolution was still rather predictable – the soccer club members act like jackasses, Sunohara finally protects Mei, and things eventually get worked out. The focus on Sunohara and Tomoya’s friendship is probably the best part and ended up trumping (for me at least) Sunohara and Mei’s relationship by closing out the arc in a much stronger way than it otherwise would have. It was also amusing to see Sunohara finally find out who Sanae was.

Now that this arc is over, it appears from the preview that we’ll go to Misae’s story next. I guess they’re going to be hitting all of the secondary character stories in AFTER STORY before getting around to Tomoya and Nagisa again. Maybe that means they’ll revisit Kyou and Ryou’s story since they got the short end of the stick back in the first series (and unlike Tomoyo, they didn’t get their own special).

Also, the widescreen version of episode 01 aired today on Bs-i. Here’s a quick comparison I threw together. It’s still a shame the regular TBS broadcasts aren’t in 16:9.

38 Comments

  7. Ah I have to say though, it’s refreshing to finally see Tomoya and Sunohara get down to some dirty business and proving their worth. Being delinquents I always thought that the two of them seemed a little bit too passive, but this change in chemistry between the two really made things a lot more interesting to watch.

    Ragna
    Reply

  8. ya like u said, i dont like those scene unless i am sure that our team(our Mains) are gonna win, but ways one side arc finished let the next side are start and lets enjoy it… its time for the Cat to act? lol also Tomoya better actively be in the next episode, what am i saying of course he will.

    Chimasternmay
    Reply

  13. So I guess we will go through all minor character routes (except for Kappei since Kyoani wrote him off, a good decision imho) before getting to the real After Story. Which probably isn’t that bad considering both Misae and Yukine’s routes are very good, but still… considering how amazing is the later drama I want them to move on…

    Oh and Mei is moe? Wait until you see Ushio…

    steelman
    Reply

  14. Mei is just so moe I’m sort of sad that we’ll see less of her for the next arc ^^

    Looking forward to the next arc as well, the show’s proving to be as high quality as such a big name would suggest. Just a shame I saw it first in the non widescreen-format

    Quen
    Reply

  26. I still think Sunohara is a dumbass but atleast he has friends like Tomoya to get him back on track. I would have given anything to help them out in that fight. I didn’t take up karate & jujitsu for the last 9 years for nothing… 🙁

    Megas
    Reply

  28. One of the reasons I liked his ep (Or rather the arc) was because of the Tomoya and Sunohara fight in the end; both of them trusted the other “too much”. Tomoya believed Sunohara would come for Mei for sure, while Sunohara thought Tomoya would know to just give up on him and get Mei out of trouble.

    FlameStrike
    Reply

  30. What a great episode! Nice to see that they’re animating the secondary character’s paths, and I do recall seeing Kappei in the ending credits though, walking infront of Tomoyo.

    oTAKu
    Reply

  34. I liked this episode! It truly shows Tomoya and Sunohara’s friendship, and just as Omni stated, it was the trump of the arc. I mean even in the game, they support each other quite well, Tomoya may have abuse Sunohara but they were always there for each other, there were some great scenes in the game where Sunohara helped Tomoya a lot with his problems in various arcs, and Tomoya also helped Sunohara in his arc. It was a cool first meeting between them, goes to show the bond of friendship. This was actually quite cool seeing as they both teamed up to beat the soccer club, Sunohara this time was pretty cool, unlike his other fights where he gets beaten beforehand, ie. in Tomoyo’s fight with the delinquents.

    This arc actually feels nostalgic, since it was somewhat similar to my first meeting with my best friend, although it was different, we fought each other till we got tired, and eventually began to acknowledge one another and from then on we became the best of friends.

    X
    Reply

  36. Well, I guess I should have expected them to get back to sunohara/mei Show Spoiler ▼

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Dan
    Reply

  38. always wanted to see sunohara fights.. he seems to get his ass kicked more tho.. altho often by sakagami which is as good as super saiyan… well at least he’s worth something now 😀

    brianleung8912
    Reply

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