Is there a reason for Kappei to exist in Clannad?

[alpacaman]

Was thinking back to Clannad and I just can't wrap my head around what purpose Kappei is supposed to serve narratively. He isn't in any scenes outside of his route (at least I don't remember any), his route itself doesn't add anything to the overarching family theme as the whole family-giving-you-a-purpose-to-live-on-in-hard-times thing is already done in Yuusuke's subplot and tbh neither his route nor he himself as a character are that great to begin with. Even the most basic "one more girl/boy to date" explanation doesn't work as he isn't dateable. Not to mention that Clannad is already more than long enough without him. Is it because Maeda thought the "I want you to keep on living because I'm pregnant!" - "Who's the father?" - "You!"- "But we haven't even had sex yet!"-joke was too funny too pass up? Was it that? No wonder he was cut from the anime.

Edited February 27, 2020 by alpacaman

[Silvz]

Well, it wasn't Maeda Jun who wrote his route :v

[kokoro]

He's there to cuck you, taking Ryou away from you.

[alpacaman]

14 hours ago, Silvz said:

Well, it wasn't Maeda Jun who wrote his route :v

Didn't he have most of the creative control though?

[Dreamysyu]

5 hours ago, alpacaman said:

Didn't he have most of the creative control though?

I'm not 100% sure that I remember the exact meaning of his words, but I think Maeda once said in an interview that Key writers have quite a lot of creative control about routes they write. The others may reject their routes, but they don't really discuss fine details about the plot with each other. I believe, this may be the reason why the routes are always so inconsistent in quality and thematically.

I personally never played Clannad VN, but I always thought that the idea behind the route was pretty cool. It's rare to see a path in a VN that isn't focused on getting a girl. It's a shame if the route is bad, but, well, it was skipped in the anime, so it probably was.

[Silvz]

On 28/02/2020 at 3:03 PM, Dreamysyu said:

I'm not 100% sure that I remember the exact meaning of his words, but I think Maeda once said in an interview that Key writers have quite a lot of creative control about routes they write. The others may reject their routes, but they don't really discuss fine details about the plot with each other. I believe, this may be the reason why the routes are always so inconsistent in quality and thematically.

I personally never played Clannad VN, but I always thought that the idea behind the route was pretty cool. It's rare to see a path in a VN that isn't focused on getting a girl. It's a shame if the route is bad, but, well, it was skipped in the anime, so it probably was.

I don't remember Clannad having inconsistent routes, in terms of quality, to the point I'd think they were written by the same person if I did not know otherwise. I think Rewrite is the only game that suffers a lot from its different writers, and even having famous names behind it, it is by far - I wouldn't say worst, but the less enjoyable Key game.

[Dreamysyu]

17 hours ago, Silvz said:

I don't remember Clannad having inconsistent routes, in terms of quality, to the point I'd think they were written by the same person if I did not know otherwise. I think Rewrite is the only game that suffers a lot from its different writers, and even having famous names behind it, it is by far - I wouldn't say worst, but the less enjoyable Key game.

I was mostly talking about Little Busters in that post. Like I said, I never finished Clannad the VN, though I did quite like the anime, and it was the primary reason why I even started reading VNs. Though, Yukine's episodes in the anime felt a bit weird. Not sure if her route was handled better in the VN.

As for LB, of course what I wrote is only my personal opinion, but I generally notice that some routes in that game (Haruka, Kanata, Kud, and I'd personally add Mio to this list) get criticized a lot more than the others. And even if we don't talk about quality there, I'm pretty sure that some routes, such as Mio and Kud, have enough unique moments to make them feel like they are quite obviously written by different writers.