Clannad

There are 3 realities (really its 2 realities that exist at the same time with 1 of those realities having 2 time lines within it that exist at different times, but that seems too confusing and it doesnt really matter so ill just streamline it into 3 realities)
1. The hidden world with the lights where an older Ushio, a robot version of okazaki, and a sheep version of fuko exist (just go with me on this, sheep fuko will make sense later)
2. The one where Nagisa and Ushio died
3. The final one where everyone lives happily ever after

Nagisa's disease is related to the city's power, the light orbs that grant wishes, she died as a chlid but akio made a wish with a light orb to bring her back and she is now linked to the city
Okazaki absorbed a light orb when he took Ushio to visit and make up with his father so he can have a wish granted

Fuko gained some sort of power, i dont know what it is or how it works but its clear she has it with the way she exists, im guessing its related to however she ended up in her comma
Fuko is critical to everything, at the start of the show, in season 1, fuko is the reason nagisa and okazaki become so close, she even had them call each other by name, she was what they needed to begin their relationship
In after story theres a sheep in the hidden world, i didnt think much of it until fuko started talking about being afraid of getting lost and memorizing ushios scent (which wasnt a joke, she actually did find ushio based on scent at the end)
The sheep brought the robot back to the girl, by scent preventing the robot from getting lost
So my line of thinking is fuko used w/e power she has to jump into the hidden world (she appeared as a sheep) to help out okazaki if he needed it
It also explains the very end where we see Ushio as both the older version from the hidden world and the 5 year old version, Fuko sees/knows her as both
That plus the fact that she had the final scene means she must be significant, writers dont give the final scene to some minor comedy relief side character, unless its a comedy, and this wasnt

First Ushio died in reality 2 but she inherited nagisa's attachment to the town, so upon her death she created the hidden world (reality 1)
Nagisa didnt create such a world though, meaning she couldnt, so theres some difference between her and ushio, that difference is fuko, the way fuko acted toward ushio before she died fuko did something with her power to change ushio that allowed her to create the hidden world, i dont know if she did it intentionally or not but real physical contact with fuko and w/e her power combined with ushios connection to the city's power is triggered it either way

The hidden world is created and exists at any point in time when compared to the normal world, meaning even though ushio created it when she died it still exists even before nagisa and okazaki met (they are sepearte things with their own seperate time continuims so time in one world has no meaning in the other)
At the same time as that happens Okazaki makes his wish to save ushio, and is sent back to the day he and nagisa met

Meanwhile ushio is still connected to the city, so feelings and memories (the light orbs) manifest themselves in the hidden world, including okazakis feelings and memories, she builds a robot to put her father's feelings/memories into creating robot okazaki in the hidden world
Robot okazaki is confused, only has bits and peices of the real okazaki, but he knows he needs to help ushio so he tries and eventually realizes everything

Okazaki, now back on the day he and nagisa met, decides it would just be best if they never met, nagisa would live and that would be good enough for him, and if they never met ushio would never be born (hence why the hidden world was ending)
Robot okazaki realized everything and using the power in the hidden world merged with the real okazaki at that point in time, merging like that made okazaki feel everything for ushio and decided they needed to be together so he called out to her
They both remember everything, nagisa remembers due to her connection with the power that the city has, and okazaki because robot okazaki remembers and they merged, the events of the series begin (time was frozen during all that so while it did happen we wouldnt have been aware of it at the start of the series)

They only sorta kinve remember everything later (instead of remembering it all like they did at that frozen moment) because okazaki was sent forward from that point (his conciessness) from the power of the wish, leaving behind part of his feelings/memories in his past self, and nagisa forgets because she only remember due to her connection to the city while okazaki was there, once he was gone she only vaguely remembered since the city's power was no longer effecting her in that way
When okazaki arrives at ushio's day of birth his wish is granted, nagisa looses her connection with the city so that ushio doesnt inherit it and therefore wont die because of it later

It sent him back originally to have a second chance (it was partially his fault for taking ushio outside while she was in that condition so he couldve saved her by just not going outside like that), but he chose to do everything the same way because of robot okazaki, so to grant the wish the power had no choice but to cut itself from nagisa (i guess it cant cut itself from ushio for w/e reason, i guess it just felt like being nice and saved nagisa too)

So nagisa lives, ushio lives, everyone lives happily ever after in reality 3

The happily ever after ending ruined the tragedy that came before it
It undid nagisa's death which was really powerful and well done, that episode was 1 of the best episodes of anything ive ever seen
I really hate when stuff ends like this, where they do both the sad ending and the happy ending, you cant have your cake and eat it to, pick one

But seriously. Besides a few things (over analysed things to be exact), i pretty much agree with your theory. In fact i'm surprised that you figured this shit out, because the first time i saw it i jsut accepted it *magic* without explanation (well you still have to accept it as magic i suppose), because the show didn't do a very good job at explaining much of this stuff. I believe the only thing that was explained was the light orbs and something about dimensions by Ichinose in After Story (i could be wrong). Maybe the Japanese dub offers more lore, but i'm pretty sure they didn't really focus on it. Apparantly the visual novel explains it better, because i did research online about the ending, which still baffles me on how you came up with this (unless you did research too). On a small side-track note, do all visual novels do this thing where the main character has to go through the problems of each side character in a very linear fashion, coz Stein's Gate followed a similar pattern.

The part that made me *feels* the most was when you find out about Okazaki's father who was just trying to be a good guy. I mean it wasn't a plot twist or anything, i think saying i knew it was coming is a little strong, but he was obviously not a bad guy. I suppose it was just well done

I feel like *undid the tragedy* is a bit strong, it definitely lessened the impact. I feel like its more bitter sweet. Of course not having that happy ending would have made for a far greater emotional impact, but I have to say i was somewhat relieved when getting the happen ending, i mean i can accept sad and depressing endings, but what Okazaki would have gone through woulda been a lil too much and i believe ending it there could have potentially been very disapointing. But thats just me.. and of course you smell. All right last time i'm making that joke

and you smell.

Bacon wrote:

But seriously. Besides a few things (over analysed things to be exact), i pretty much agree with your theory. In fact i'm surprised that you figured this shit out, because the first time i saw it i jsut accepted it *magic* without explanation (well you still have to accept it as magic i suppose), because the show didn't do a very good job at explaining much of this stuff. I believe the only thing that was explained was the light orbs and something about dimensions by Ichinose in After Story (i could be wrong). Maybe the Japanese dub offers more lore, but i'm pretty sure they didn't really focus on it. Apparantly the visual novel explains it better, because i did research online about the ending, which still baffles me on how you came up with this (unless you did research too). On a small side-track note, do all visual novels do this thing where the main character has to go through the problems of each side character in a very linear fashion, coz Stein's Gate followed a similar pattern.

I think it did a good job of setting things up for you to figure out

The fuko stuff comes mostly from backwards meta analysis, since she has the last scene in the show (and like i said before, only major characters get the last scene) she must be important so i worked it out in reverse, thought about the scent thing more seriously and remembered the sheep and rewatched that ep to come up with all that, i still say shes critical and that its not over analysis, seriously rewatch the ep with the sheep and the eps with her in season 1 with all this in mind and it makes sense

Also i was getting stuck on how ushio made the hidden world and nagisa didnt, at first i thought it had something to do with okazaki, but it didnt make sense, so fuko's interaction with ushio seemed more likely, again im running on the assumption that fuko must be important so im trying to give her actions meaning and it actually fits really well here which further leads me to believe it

The rest i think is fairly obvious, the other world thing was set up, the wish granting lights were set up. nagisa's connection to the city was set up, they even explicitly show okazaki absorb a light, its all there, they just dont explain the details of how it all works or where it comes from

The event with okazaki and his father where okazaki absorbs the light orb and gets a wish, so the ending you get would just be ushio dies and okazaki is alone

Yeah that part was pretty emotional and i teared up a bit, but didnt cry there

I did cry though, Nagisa's death hit me really hard, i knew it was coming with the way things were going leading up to that, but even so i cried for like half the next episode (it was more because i started thinking how it would be if i lost sarah like that and i realized its not impossible for something like that to really happen and it snowballed into me full out crying for like 15-20 mins about it, especially since i was watching the aftermath of it, thats very close to what i might do in that situation and this improbable hypothetical scenario got too real)

And something unexpected that got me was when ushio lost the toy robot and was insistent on finding it, like okazaki i was thinking "dont worry, it can be replaced" but when okazaki suggested that to her and she said no and that it had to be that robot because it was the first thing daddy got for her, tears just flowed out uncontrollably for about a min

The one where he dates Tomoyo instead

Even the running gag with the bread stayed funny because of him

Bacon wrote:

I feel like *undid the tragedy* is a bit strong, it definitely lessened the impact. I feel like its more bitter sweet. Of course not having that happy ending would have made for a far greater emotional impact, but I have to say i was somewhat relieved when getting the happen ending, i mean i can accept sad and depressing endings, but what Okazaki would have gone through woulda been a lil too much and i believe ending it there could have potentially been very disapointing. But thats just me.. and of course you smell. All right last time i'm making that joke

It definitely undid the tragedy for me
I disagree that its bitter sweet, everyone lives happily at the end, sure okazaki remembers it all and it all did happen, but still, everyone is fine now with no consequences, how is that bitter sweet, its 100% sweet at the end

I dont know, i just want unhappy endings, if ushio had died in ep 21 and that was the ending scene id first complain about the girl and robot being pointless (if it took that ending the girl and robot stuff would need to be taken out to work better), but then say it was amazing because it took the dark ending and i would actually rate it higher overall than angel beats and even give it a spot on my top 10, ill explain more below

I think, in the last scene, they could have discovered older Ushio in a number of other ways, but they used Fuko because she is the only character that didn't get a proper After Story follow up. I mean they couldn't have involved Fuko waking up from the coma in After Story without getting majorly side tracked. But i didn't rewatch those episodes with the sheep that you were talking about. Maybe i'm just not seeing it because the Fuko arc was so poorly done. It really lasted a few episodes too long without any major developments.

I forgot to ask what did you think about the robot thing, like did you predict it or soemthing? Coz i mentionned how as i was throwing theories about it the first thing i came up with is *meh i bet the robot is Okazaki or soemthing..*

I could be overthinking it, but how do you explain how ushio made another world but nagisa didnt
And what do you think of fuko being in the series, are you saying everything involving her was just pointless, i really doubt that, she had too much screen time to be completely pointless

Well yeah, the bitter part was the part i disagree with, it was all sweet no bitter
And i dont want to watch them suffer, thats part of the point, them getting their happy ending is nice and all but doesnt make for a powerful ending to me, ends up being your standard expected ending

Well yeah my first thought was it was okazaki as a blind guess, and that seemed too obvious so i stated coming with those theories i posted, the coma/memories stuff
But i dont count blind guesses like that as predicting it, you got to figure stuff out ahead of time for it to count as prediction, which i didnt
I did realize ushio was the girl in the other world when she was born, but i dont count that as prediction either since they basically spelled it out at that point

Okazaki's father came home 1 night, drunk, and pushed him into a window, the glass from the window cut a tendon in his shoulder
I like it a lot actually, because it explains why okazaki hated him so much even though he didnt seem to be that bad of a guy in the series

It fits so well that i feel like it mustve been in the show in 1 of those episodes that i saw over a year ago, and if it wasnt it mustve been in the game because i doubt the movie could come up with something that good

The movie says he got kicked out of the soccer club because he berserk, bit a guys ear off and kicked a guy in the nuts really hard, he still lives in the athletic dorm even though he was kicked out because people are too afraid of him to make him leave
In the movie he has a tenancy to "snap" and just go berserk on people when they do something he doesnt like

I like that it explains why he still lives in the athletic dorm, i dont think the show explained that, although i didnt even question it while watching the show so its not that big of a deal
But i dont like that they made him look insane, hes way too aggressive in the movie (during the school part)


Also, after nagisa dies, tomoyo and sunohara goes to try to cheer okazaki up, but okazaki doesnt even talk to him, he was being his usual comical self the whole time he was with okazaki, but after they leave sunohara is really upset that there was nothing he could do to help his friend, it was a good scene that i dont think was in the show

perform a song in the present
He plays the guitar and everyone sings the dango song in the movie

the other path where okazaki started dating tomoyo from that OVA i liked

Would you judge if once i found out it was an adult visual novel, i immediately looked up the ecchi parts? If you are wondering, they weren't that good

started making music again and i did want to see him perform