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Ah, Youhei Sunohara. He’s a real marmite character if ever I seen one, which is why this episode could either be a bad one, or a good… no. This was never going to be good. Spoilers ahoy.

In this week’s episode, we get to see Sunohara making a fool of himself much moreso than usual, and in front of many more people, all because of one of Okazaki’s playful remarks that always go just a few dozen steps too far. While stepping through most of the characters we met in last episode’s baseball-’em-up again, and being rejected every time for being, well… Sunohara, Sanae-san finally reveals she was actually worried about his direction in life as well. Who knew?

Cue the bare-faced excuse to further add moé points to Sanae by dressing her up in the token uniforms to appear as Sunohara’s fake girlfriend. I seriously think that the whole episode was a set-up just for Sanae to cosplay in the usual anime regalia - nurse, cat-eared maid, culminating in the eponymous seifuku. The thing is, doesn’t Mei know who Sanae is anyway? Is she supposed to be like some sort of magical girl who no-one can identify when she changes clothes?

Sunohara acts like his usual, nonchalant self, which does make me slightly irate. It’s never angry enough to turn off, and there is a certain charm there if you look really hard. But all in all, his serious naïvete and willingness to follow Tomoya’s whims can sometimes really make me lose faith in him. But I suppose he is a loser character, after all.

Another interesting thing about this episode was the dream-like sequence at the beginning, which seems to pick up from last season’s ones. It reminds me very much of Chihiro’s novel in ef - a tale of memories, especially now that this dream world has sheep of it’s own. I’m interested to see how/if this parallel will run alongside the main plot this season, as it did last time, because I certainly thought that the girl and the robot were finished with.

Overall, this was a crap episode though. Clannad always has it’s funny moments and it’s dirty misunderstandings, but they couldn’t save it this week.

The next episode certainly holds much more promise than this one. If there’s one thing I want to see, it’s Sunohara’s character rising up and actually doing something worthwhile for once.

Tags: autumn 2008, clannad, Clannad ~After Story~, harem, visual novel

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 11:25pm and is filed under Anime, Clannad ~After Story~. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.