Clannad After Story 1:Goodbye at the end of summer 「夏の終わりのサヨナラ」

The long awaited After Story has arrived! Great new opening and ending songs.


The whole episode is about a baseball game that is played between the Tomoyo team and some unknown team.
At the start, Nagisa's father ask Tomoyo to gather players as he has a match to play against a neighboring team that he desperately wants to beat. The other team has experienced players who used to play in Koushien, the final of the Japanese high school baseball tournament, so it would be a tough match.





Tomoyo didn't agree at first, but he is reminded he can just recruit all the member of the drama club. In the end, he managed to recruit pretty much all the club member, plus three more. In recruiting Yoshino, who refused at first, he tells some sob story (fabricated) about creating memories during youth in this town:b

Come game time, Nagisa's father became pitcher, and pitches well. He managed to shut down the opponent in the first inning, and his team scored 4.

It soon goes downhill though, when he got injured because one of the opponent threw the bat by accident and hit his leg. He appoints his daughter, Nagisa herself, to take over the pitching, to the surprise of everyone.





Long story short, Nagisa is not as good as her father, but only concedes 5 until the end of the game. Sunohara also made a bunch of mistakes to share the blame:b

Last inning. 4-5 trailing. Step up Tomoyo, who hasn't been doing too well with his strikes. Result: homerun and win for the team.



They celebrated the win by having a dinner together, and then it's time for The Big Dango family to make another appearance in the ending theme:)

Funniest moment: Yoshino repeating his feel good speech after he struck the ball magnificently, which contributes to the win.

Impression:
As expected, CLANNAD remains enjoyable after a half a year break, no surprises there. No plot progression in this first episode though. As someone who doesn't know what will happen from now, I am extremely curious on what kind of main story will be told in After Story. Well, I have to wait for a few more episodes for more clues.

Clannad　「クラナド」 official site
Opening theme: Song that engraves time (Toki wo Kizamu Uta) 「時を刻む歌」 by Lia
Ending theme:TORCH by Lia

Next episode: Searching for fabricated love. Everyone is close to graduating it seems, as Sunohara is questioned on what he wants to do.