I'm a total sucker for happy endings, so this gets a 10 out of me.
It's an extremely rare thing for a story of any kind to resonate with me on a level I can honestly relate to. The last such story was the movie
Big Fish, from which I drew several parallels to my relationship with my own father. I found it to be a terrific movie and it holds a special place among my movie recommendations.
I've been watching anime now for more than half my life (got into it when I was 15) and while it's been a fun ride so far I really haven't found any stories within anime that really got to me until I found
Clannad and
Clannad ~After Story~. As I've said in my thoughts a few episodes ago, I'm a father myself of two wonderful kids. I have an amazing wife who I love to no end and who loves me back. I was raised to believe that two things matter above everything else in life: family and friends. Watching Tomoya's journey from being a self-absorbed delinquent to the man he became thanks to the support of his friends and loves ones has been an affirmation of my belief in the importance of these things.
To be sure, he got to his destination the hard way, and for a while there he did lose sight of the goal. No one is perfect, though, and we all waver from time to time. The true measure of any person is how they face adversity. In spite of all the hardship he faced, Tomoya did come around and re-dedicated himself to his family even if it means a life without Nagisa at his side. In spite of his own perceptions of his father, he found it in his heart to forgive him his indiscretions and help him find happiness as well. That all speaks to a strength of character that you simply will not find in a lead character in most stories, be they on paper or on the screen, live action or animated.
Ultimately, though, no one can live being 100% magnanimous. You have to want something for yourself as well in life. For a long time, Tomoya didn't seem to want to let himself be happy. To an extent I believe he thought that happiness was simply something he was not meant to have so he decided to make others' happiness his own. That just doesn't work, though. If you don't want anything, you never change. If you don't change you don't grow, and as Nagisa said at the very beginning nothing can stay the same way forever. Not even Tomoya's own misery, which he ended himself when he admitted how important Nagisa was to him. When he called out her name it was with such passion that it shook me.
It is rather fitting (and even perhaps a little ironic in a way) that allowing himself that moment of happiness is what saved not only his own life but that of Nagisa and Ushio as well. But then it's also bringing things full circle. Both Nagisa and Ushio saved Tomoya from a bleak, solitary, meandering, meaningless life, after all. I think that's how most guys who get married and have families feel about their wives and children, at least I know that's how I feel. And while I don't come from the same background or go through the same trials in life as Tomoya, it's a message I get loud and clear.
Kudos to KyoAni for also presenting the ending in a way that can be construed as being either completely mystical or completely not. The sudden jump back in time to Ushio's birth leaves things at least somewhat open to interpretation. Did Tomoya really go through all that hardship and then wish for a different life, or was it all simply just a nightmarish hallucination as Nagisa lay there laboring to deliver their child? I'm sure most fans of the series, especially those who played the game, will say it was the former. I, however, am completely comfortable looking at it either way. I suppose it depends on your own feelings about the supernatural as to which perspective feels more right, so to each his or her own.
As for the Fuko ending...let's be honest, we all wanted to see a little more Fuko before the very end. She is rather cute, after all. A bit touched (and by "touched" I mean "bludgeoned with a ball peen hammer"), but cute.
Now I will sit back, enjoy whatever extra bits we get in episode 23, wonder if episode 24 will be another DVD-only thing (please more Kyou oh please oh please oh please) and hope that the rumors of a Tomoyo After movie are for real.
