Kotomi ~Pure Moe~

I want some ice cream…

I haven’t really blogged Clannad since there are tons others doing it, but I gotta at least occasionally make a post about my favorite series on the air. With the conclusion of Kotomi’s arc in episode 14 KyoAni ties up all the strings of her story in the glorious way only KyoAni can. Whether you felt like crying or not, it was certainly a powerful and emotional experience to behold. As a warning, since I don’t blog this normally I had a lot to write, the tl;dr crowd need not apply.

 

 

The Beginning: Moe and More

In the first couple of episodes Kotomi was portrayed as a delicious representation of all that is moe, she just looked so damn adorable in the scene above. From then on we pile on the moe traits: bishoujo with big breasts, adorably introducing herself to everyone, devotion to horrid violin playing, baking a delicious pie for Tomoya, and more. I know that some bloggers just didn’t take well to Kotomi , but others have, a matter of opinion I suppose. Although I would suspect that her moeness is less in dispute then that of Fuko. Regardless I found her to be pretty damn moe, and at the beginning that was about all we got from her. There were some hints thrown around about future drama, but nothing really substantial so the viewer just sat back and enjoyed the comedy train. I know many anime fans out there, especially American ones you find on silly places like ANN, seem to really hate this type of character. I really don’t understand what’s not to like about such moeness, you can’t really say that any of the other characters are the same as her. While Clannad may have a lot of moe and bishoujos, they are all quite distinct and have so much more depth to them than 95 percent of shows out there.

The Middle: The House Comes Crashing Down

We knew something was coming, even with all the moe and comedy flying around during the first half of the arc, this is Key and KyoAni, some shit was going down. During the second half of episode 12 it all crashed, as the above two shots entail. I was really impressed with Mamiko Noto’s performance in this episode. I mean she was playing one of those characters that only she can really play, but at the accident when she just broke down and wailed I was really thrown, first off because I didn’t think her voice could do that in such a convincing and jarring manner. It made the scene so much more emotional the way she acted, in addition to how totally surprised I was at how it happened. I was also struck by the above displayed room scene where she had collected all of the articles of her parent’s death, and the way the evening sunset created a light so similar to that of the fire that Tomoyo recalls. The plot device of him meeting her as kids and suddenly remembering is not really particularly original, even for Key, but it’s only one out of the five girls so I’ll give them a free pass this time.

The End: Resolution and Reality

The ending of her resolution episode was a mixed bag for me. The scene where she receives the bear and the letter was certainly powerful and emotional, and showed how she was exorcising the demons of her past. As much as her character grew throughout her arc, it was still weighted down by her guilt over what happened in the past. I’m not big on symbolism, but I figure that white dress in this case goes to show that she has purified herself or at least cleansed herself of the guilt. Finally, with the truth being revealed she was free from that guilt and could truly grow as a person permanently. The problem I had was the whole message in a bottle style thing going on, it seemed a bit I dunno, silly. The letter was signed with K&M in English, I really don’t see how that would indicate much of anything. In addition even if it had an address and name, the likelihood of it washing up somewhere and a chain of people spending money to send it instead of just throwing it out or selling it is pretty low unfortunately. That and the whole multiple languages thing was kind of cheesy and the accents were pretty bad. So I think the immediate impact of the episode in particular was a bit diluted by those additions, however I don’t really thing they detract from Kotomi’s story as a whole.

I think the thing that struck me most about Kotomi’s story was how real it felt to me. The anguish and guilt she felt over the death of her parents and the burning of the thesis was not out of the ordinary for a girl that age. To me it represents a great story because it is real, which is different from the storylines of most of the Key girls. There are no miracles, no kitsunes, no dreams walking around or anything like that, it was as close to reality as you can get. In that way it struck me as a better overall story than Fuko, because in the back of my mind I realized hey the Fuko walking around was a dream/ghost/apparition/whatever you want to call it, and she disappeared from their eyes and memories. I will admit I teared up significantly more during the end of Fuko’s arc for whatever reason, death or disappearing just has a deeper instant impact on me. However, I think that the realness of Kotomi’s tragedy will impact me the most in the long run.

Conclusion: Integration Theory

As all of us who have watched KyoAni’s versions of Key games over the years have realized, they keep on getting better and better at weaving in the different girl’s storylines into one coherent plot. Clannad has been the strongest so far, seamlessly weaving the girls in and out of the other’s storylines, especially Nagisa. Kotomi’s arc has seen an explosion of Kyou and Ryou involvement however, whereas Fuko’s arc had mostly Nagisa. I was constantly and pleasantly surprised at the new ways in which they were able to put everything together and make it not seem so out of place. However, there is a point in Kotomi’s arc where it becomes fairly obvious that something isn’t quite right about this whole thing. As Ascaloth discussed, in the scene when Kotomi comes out to greet a sleeping Tomoya I was kind of scratching my head and saying ok you guys are supposed to be making out now. She basically says that she loves him and that she was waiting for him all this time, and I’m sure in the game this was the tender kissing scene. But as we know Kotomi-chan is not the chosen one and so KyoAni made the best out of the situation and tried to make it semi-platonic. I assume they wanted to use the original scene as much as possible, it is very powerful, but it loses a chunk of it’s impact without the romantic component, and for those of us who have played a lot of these games and watched many of these shows, we kinda knew what was supposed to happen but didn’t.

Overall though, I felt they did another wonderful job with this arc. It was a bittersweet story that started out with by far the funniest episode of the season, episode 10, and kept up the humor for as long as it was necessary. However, when it was time to drive the drama home it was hard hitting and in the right amount. There was no superfluous melodrama or rampant jealousy, backstabbing, or a lot of the other messy material that many shows of this genre are filled with. All the main characters were involved somehow, I did not feel that anyone was really relegated to secondary status more than necessary.

I am curious as to how the rest of the series is going to play out. In Kanon the girls who’s arcs finished were kind of dropped until the very end, for various somewhat believable reasons. We figured Fuko won’t play much of a role for the rest of the series, but Kotomi isn’t really going anywhere for the immediate future, and she has been accepted into the circle of friends. Is she going to cheer Nagisa and Tomoya on? Is she going to give sad looks from the sideline? Is she going to vanish into thin air? Time shall tell I suppose, the episode preview really didn’t give us any clues. Speaking of that preview, it kind of leaves up in the air what arc is going to be next because only Nagisa is mentioned. We all assume that she is the chosen one for the end of the show, so I really doubt it is the final Nagisa arc. There are a couple of possibilities, Hinano opines that it’s a Nagisa character development arc at the cost of some of Kyou and Ryou’s conflicting arcs. There are some other random theories and guesses, but there really aren’t any significant clues that will tell us yet what’s to come. To be honest it only adds to the excitement and I really have no reason to expect anything less than an amazing result when you look back on what’s already happened.

A Few For The Road
And to commemorate the end of Kotomi’s arc here are some of my favorite random official and fan artworks that I have collected of Kotomi, click for bigger images of each. It’s all randomly collected from 4chan and AS, so if any of this is yours send me an e-mail and I’ll credit you.