“Let's see...How about adding something at the end? A word that not only implies greatness, but transcends the flow of time...Tomoya Okazaki Eternal!”
Sanae Furukawa Quotes
2 quotes from Clannad, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
A former teacher whose bread is inedible and whose tears about it are entirely sincere. The gentle half of the healthiest marriage in the series, and the person who holds the family together when it breaks.
“Are you saying...my bread is...nothing but a deathtrap?!”
The bread routine works because Sanae's half of it is played straight. She is not in on the joke; each time she overhears Akio she is hurt in earnest, and the show never once has her wink at the camera. This is the episode where the setup is unusually elaborate, with Akio warning Nagisa to watch out for landmines and Sanae working out, in real time, what the landmines are. The line is the moment of realization, and it is delivered as pure grief. The reason to notice it is what After Story does with her: Sanae is the one who raises Ushio for the five years Tomoya cannot, and the tears here, over bread, are the same actress and the same face the series will use for the real thing. Clannad's method is to teach the viewer a character's emotional range on trivial material so that the serious scenes need no introduction.
Sanae's contribution to Akio's naming contest is the gentle one, and the show immediately has Akio ruin it by shortening the result to Ethanol. The gag is the first time the viewer sees the Furukawa parents work as a pair, one escalating and the other softening, and it is also the moment Sanae's whole character is set: she is a former teacher who runs a cram school in the back room and can make anything sound like a considered proposal, including a name. The odd thing is the word she reaches for. A story that will end with time being rewound to save her daughter opens with the mother wishing something on the hero that transcends the flow of time. It is a coincidence, in a first episode of a comedy, and Clannad is built out of exactly this kind of coincidence, which is why fans reread the early episodes after the ending.