The Best Clannad Quotes, Every Line Checked

Clannad opens as a school comedy about a delinquent who arrives late on purpose and a girl who has repeated a year through illness, and its jokes carry far more weight than they let on. Ten verified lines follow, all from the first season, which began broadcasting in 2007, and all in the English dub as Wikiquote transcribes it. None comes from After Story. This site has no second-season line checked yet, so this is the Clannad of the school years: the hill, the bakery, the drama club and the girls Tomoya meets along the way, with the later story left to the ending guide.

“Fun things...Happy things...They can't all possibly stay unchanged. Even so, can you go on loving this place?” — Nagisa Furukawa

Asked aloud at the foot of the school hill by a girl repeating her last year of high school because illness kept her absent. A first-time viewer hears nerves. Rewatched, it is the question the whole series goes on to answer, planted in the opening scene.

“Just find something. Just find something new that's fun or happy. Come on, let's get going. We start to walk up...the long...long...uphill climb.” — Tomoya Okazaki

Tomoya's reply, and it does not answer her. Telling her to go and find new things is the advice of a boy who has given up on his own life and can only recommend distraction, and the show frames it as the first step up a hill anyway. The answer is thin on purpose; the series spends the rest of its length finding a better one.

“Hmph! What a puny name! Go with something like Galactic Okazaki.” — Akio Furukawa

Said at the Furukawa dinner table, once Nagisa has supplied the guest's name. Akio's introduction, earlier in the episode, was a kick and a lecture at bat-point for calling Sanae's bread a failure; by dinner he is renaming the boy, and Sanae is happily going along with it. It is the Furukawa house rule in one move: nobody gets to be embarrassed, because Akio will always be more embarrassing first. Set against Tomoya's own silent home and drinking father, the teasing is a welcome.

“I like you better than a sea slug.” — Fuko Ibuki

When Tomoya admits he has no idea what level that puts him on, Fuko clarifies that she likes the sea slug fairly well, so he should be glad. The funniest line in Fuko's arc arrives in the episode where the other students begin to forget she exists, which is Clannad's standing habit of parking a joke directly beside a loss.

“I know, but even with friends, there's a line you can't cross, so I'm afraid you're just gonna have to give up!” — Nagisa Furukawa

Tomoya has told Nagisa that Sunohara's pleas to play basketball are a cover for being in love with him, she has believed every word, and here she gently lets Sunohara down on Tomoya's behalf. The bit runs on one fact: Nagisa cannot recognize a prank. Her kindness is sincere and aimed at entirely the wrong target.

“No matter how cold and distant people may become, on the inside something warm and precious always remains, something that never changes. To me, that's what family is like.” — Tomoyo Sakagami

From the episode in which Tomoya comes back from a suspension he took on to protect her, and Tomoyo tells him how her brother risked his life to keep their parents from divorcing. It is a good line asked to carry more than the anime has built for her, since her story is compressed into a few episodes. It earns its place because, in a series whose hero has no working family, it is a character defining the word for him.

“Of course I am! They sing a song at the end of the journey, so I sang a song at the end of the play. Why else do you think I would do something like that?” — Nagisa Furukawa

After the play, Nagisa tells Tomoya she has remembered how the story ends: the girl and the doll set out on a long journey, and at the end they sing a song. He groans, and this is her defense, which is structural. Nagisa apologizes for almost everything, and the song is one of the few places she holds her ground, which is less a quirk than a trait the series will come back to.

“I know everyone applauded and all, but I think they were a little confused by the ending. That song kind of ruined the whole emotional build-up.” — Tomoya Okazaki

His verdict a moment later, once she admits the Big Dango Family song was her own addition. He is right, and it does not matter: she says she just wanted to sing it. The exchange fixes what the two of them are, a boy who tells her the truth and a girl who does what she wanted anyway, both counting that as affection.

“Lately, I've been starting to feel like this school isn't so bad after all.” — Tomoya Okazaki

Back inside the empty school after the festival, where Nagisa finds the class-monitor notice Tomoya put up as a joke while she was absent. The sentence is small on purpose. It is the whole of what has changed in him, and the show is right not to inflate it, because the confession a minute later needs to come from someone already changed.

“Will you go out with me, Nagisa? I love you, Nagisa. So I... I wanna spend every day of my life together with you!” — Tomoya Okazaki

The first season's big declaration, and on its own it is any anime confession. The series spent its middle stretch giving Fuko, Kotomi and Tomoyo their stories in miniature before settling on Nagisa, so the choice lands more like a schedule than a decision. What the line promises is paid off only later, which is a fair reason to admire the show and a weak one to admire this scene.

Every line sits with its commentary on the Clannad quote page, including Kotomi's rabbit-and-deer line and Akio's speech on the day of the play, which carry spoiler flags and are left out here. What After Story does with the hill and the empty world is in Clannad ending explained, which spoils the whole series. How each quote on this site is checked is at our verification notes.