Kyou got screwed out of her route again

For the 23rd episode of CLANNAD ~AFTER STORY~ we're getting Another Story. A story set one year before the start of CLANNAD and that meeting at the bottom of the hill.

Here we have Nagisa nervously beginning her third year at school, while Tomoya begins his second year hanging out with his buddy Sunohara. The delinquent duo are hard at work on their latest punishment task for trying to leave the classroom through the window.

Kyou is less than happy about the situation as she's been asked to keep tabs on them because she's the class representative. This little meeting was the duo's first official trade of introductions with Kyou Fujibayashi, and quite possibly the first brief hint towards Kyou's VN route.

Meanwhile at the Furukawa Bakery. Nagisa has returned home and tells Akio about her first day in the third year. He decides to give his daughter some advice on how she should make friends in class by using wacky methods. This discussion obviously backfires on him when he badmouths Sanae's bread.

Now we're return to the school where Nagisa is still feeling nervous, and Tomoya is taking a nap on the grass. Kyou finds him and tries to wake him up while dropping further hints about her VN route when Sunohara appears and confronts her. After Sunohara correctly guesses what was on her mind, he receives a memory erasing punch for his trouble just before he could spill the beans to Tomoya.


On the way home from School, Nagisa meets a couple of girls who invite her to do a spot of window shopping. They get Nagisa to try on some clothes and then decide to play a joke on her. When Nagisa arrives home afterwards, she and Akio have another talk regarding the making friends subject when Akio gets careless and insults Sanae's bread for the second time this episode.

Next we have our first proper viewing of the Fujibayashi household. Ryou is doing her fortune telling with Kyou and kindly informs her of what fate has in store for the following day. But that hope was quickly shot down by Sunohara and his cunning love letter plan.

Kyou finds Sunohara's love letter in her locker and thinks it's the real deal after Ryou's fortune telling. Sunohara is happy that she fell for it, but Tomoya is thinking otherwise.

We then see Nagisa entering her classroom and missing out on a chance to bond with her classmates when they're discussing the Big Dango Family.

We now switch back to a visibly flustered Kyou who believes something good will come from the love letter. But after being given the run round by Sunohara and Tomoya several times, she soon discovers the pair in the act and sends them to hell!

Shortly after that trip. Sunohara decides to vent some stress with another prank due to his failure with Kyou. When the time came to include a message inside the prank, Tomoya is the one who writes it because Sunohara was getting overly hyped on weird thoughts of them being a duo.

The prank is set at the entrance to the school with no-one being stupid enough to actually spring it. Well, no-one expect for Nagisa who probably suffered a mild concussion for her curiosity. She does later recover in the infirmary and leaves with a new friend as a result.

At the end of the episode we see Kyou and Ryou having a little talk about the problematic duo while taking a bath. Sunohara starts work on his love letter 2 plan to use on Kyou. And Nagisa is happily telling Akio and Sanae about her new friend, and then thanks the message she kept from the prank by Tomoya for giving her courage.

And I'm finished! Man, I sure wrote a lot there.

Anyway, the next episode preview showed it'll be a bloody recap offering. I feel cheated here as I'd have liked to have seen KyoAni animate Kyou's route as a final send-off.

Hell, they could have done Kappei's route as he got totally screwed over by not appearing in the anime at all!