Clannad -The Motion Picture-

Clannad is a film based on the visual novel and anime series of the same name.

Plot
Tomoya Okazaki (Kenji Nojima) is a male third-year high school student who does not feel at home due to a distant father who works a night shift, and a mother who died when he was a child. Due to this, he simply goes to school for no reason and does not have any interest in school activities. Tomoya meets a third-year girl from his school one day early in the school year named Nagisa Furukawa (Mai Nakahara). Nagisa is repeating her last year of high school due to having been sick most of the previous year, and this year she does not know what to do. Tomoya suggests she finds something new to do at school, and she comes up with restarting the drama club. By the time the sakura trees are done blooming, Nagisa has already started hand-making posters advertising the drama club's reformation. Tomoya, and his good friend Youhei Sunohara (Daisuke Sakaguchi), help Nagisa with putting them up around the school, but the student council quickly goes around and uses red paint to deface the posters and write 'invalid' on them. This angers Youhei greatly and he beats up one of the student council members.

Kouko Ibuki (Yūko Minaguchi), the teacher who had been the adviser for the drama club before it disbanded, gets involved by telling Nagisa that if she can gather more members that she will talk to the school about reforming the club. Tomoya and Youhei try again by this time making copies of hundreds of posters and putting them all around the school, but no one joins the club. In the end, Nagisa gets Tomoya and Youhei to sign up, and she reassures them that she will not ask them to act on stage. The drama club is reformed, and with a month left until the school festival, Nagisa decides to do a soliloquy based on a dream she has had ever since she was a child; meanwhile, Tomoya and Youhei work backstage with the music and lights respectively. Nagisa gets to writing the script, and invites Tomoya and Youhei over to her house for dinner, though only Tomoya can come due to Youhei taking up a part-time job with an electrical company. At Nagisa's house, which turns out to double as a bakery, Tomoya meets her energetic parents Sanae (Kikuko Inoue) and Akio (Ryōtarō Okiayu), and even gets to stay overnight after being heavily persuaded by Nagisa's father.

Like Nagisa, Tomoya has also had a recurring dream ever since he was a child. In his dream, he initially is disembodied in a dead world where he is the only thing "alive". He finds a discarded human-sized doll and uses it as a body to travel around the world on an old bicycle. After some searching, he finds a large sakura tree known as the "tree of promise" where he believes he will meet the person he has felt is with him in this dead world.

When the school festival finally begins, Nagisa reveals that she has not finished the script, but still wants to go on with the play since the story is still within her. Nagisa has her performance in the evening, so in the meantime, Nagisa hangs out with Tomoya and Youhei. During lunch, she tells them that the reason why she wanted to do drama was due to her parents formally having been theater actors, but they both had to give up acting after Nagisa was born. Nagisa wants to do drama so as to continue her parents' dreams in her footsteps. For the play, Sanae gives Nagisa her wedding dress to use as her costume, much to the surprise of Akio. Nagisa starts with her monologue without a hitch, and during her recitation, Kouko gives stage directions to Tomoya and Youhei via headsets. Gradually, Tomoya comes to realize that the story Nagisa is reciting is the same dream that he has had since he was a child, and is shocked to find that Nagisa also had the same dream of the dead world. At the play's conclusion, Tomoya realizes that he and Nagisa were meant to be together and confesses his love to her.

Shortly after the festival, Nagisa's health falters once again and she has to take another leave of absence from school for a year, meaning it is not until a year after Tomoya's class graduated that Nagisa is able to graduate high school as well. After this, Tomoya and Nagisa start living together in a small apartment in town while Tomoya works for an electrical company and Nagisa works part-time as a waitress at a local family restaurant. Later, Nagisa becomes pregnant, and her doctor informs her family that if she gives birth to the child that she may die in the process. However, Nagisa's family chooses not to tell Nagisa about it. One winter night, Nagisa gives birth to a baby girl she names Ushio and Nagisa dies that same night. This causes Tomoya to go into deep depression for a period of five years, during which he does not go to work, or even visit his daughter who is being raised by Nagisa's parents.

Tomoya's friends and his father try to get him out of his depression, but Tomoya is very stubborn. Tomoya's father (Hiroshi Naka) asks Tomoya's friends to take him out on a retreat for a few days in order to break his depression, and they take Tomoya out of his house so fast he does not even know what is going on. Once they tell him on the train, Tomoya is dead set on going back home and makes it to the train platform which would take him home, but anticipating this, Nagisa's parents were waiting for him with Ushio. Tomoya's friends block his escape route, and Tomoya turns back to see Ushio starting to run toward him. She trips midway which makes Tomoya leap out and catch her. Picking her up, he is able to see the continuation of his old dream once more and sees Nagisa under the promised tree smiling lovingly at him and Ushio.

TV and film differences
Being done by two different production teams and having their own take on the story from the Clannad visual novel, there are numerous differences, both subtle and obvious, between Clannad and film. The series follows the original visual novel's storyline closer, while the film makes several changes from the original material. While both the series and film depict the developing relationship of Tomoya and Nagisa, the film presents their relationship as central to the plot. Due to this focus, the film downplays the other main heroines which played major roles in the series, such as having Kyou, and Tomoyo Sakagami playing minor roles, while Kotomi appearing only as a background character, and Fuko not appearing at all. Furthermore, Tomoya takes the place of the girl of the illusionary world and Kyou's sister Ryou does not appear in the film, though Fuko's older sister Kouko is in the film, and plays a major role. In the film, Kouko is still teaching at Nagisa's school, is depicted as athletic, and had been the drama club adviser (she was an art teacher in the series) before the club was dissolved, instead of Toshio Koumura as in the series. Also, Kouko's fiancé Yusuke plays a bigger role in the film in how he helps Tomoya obtain a job at an electrical company and remains his friend during Tomoya's depression. A large difference, though, is that Nagisa, in the film, remains deceased by the closing of the film, but in the anime Nagisa is brought back to life by the light orbs containing Tomoya's wish.

The relationships between certain characters and the characters themselves have changed in the film. For example, Nagisa is a shy girl who struggles to take initiative in the series. She doesn't have this issue in the film and is outgoing, being the one to initiate befriending Tomoya. Tomoyo and Youhei constantly fight, but in the film, they act friendly toward each other and work together to get Tomoya out of his depression later in the film. In fact, Youhei in the film is depicted less as a comic relief character as in the series and is more serious about life, such as when he gets a part-time job due to his family's financial situation. In the series, Tomoya's father is a lazy, unemployed drunk who mostly sleeps with piles of trash around him, but in the film, he actually works a graveyard shift and usually sees his son in the morning before he goes to school. He also cares more about his relationship with Tomoya and even lets him reunite with Ushio to prevent Tomoya from becoming like himself. Kyou is seen as a close friend of Tomoyo in the film and even helps Tomoyo with her election for student council president, but in the series, Kyou finds Tomoyo as a nuisance who gets in the middle of her plans with hooking up Tomoya with her sister Ryou. However, despite these numerous changes, Nagisa's parents Akio and Sanae mostly retain their roles and personalities as seen in the series and original visual novel. In regards to voice acting, only the film-version of Tomoya Okazaki is voiced by a different actor from the TV series.