Clannad: Kotomi Ichinose (Finale)

Ok for the final Clannad post... Here is a tribute to the girl genius of  Hikarizaka High School Kotomi Ichinose. There is a reason why I saved her for last, Kotomi is a character that loves going barefoot leading to her having the most foot scenes out of any of the Clannad women. :-)

Special bonus image sent in by Mister Bushido

Animations

(May take a little bit of time to load. ^_^;)

(These are a combination of webfinds as well as caps from Clannad episodes 2, 4, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 14 and Clannad After Story Episodes 3 and 24.)

Kotomi is a shy, quiet girl who Tomoyo meets and befriends in the school library. She is extremely intelligent but her social skills aren't quite polished. She tends to be a little awkward when meeting people. Because of her intellect, her teachers allow her to opt out of classes. She uses the free time to read in the library and even has a key to it so she can visit it on weekends. It is later revealed in the anime that Kotomi and Tomoya knew each other during childhood but Tomoya had forgotten about her having not seen her in a long time. Kotomi is also revealed to be an orphan having lost both her parents (both of whom were scientist studying a top secret project) in an accident; a trauma that she is still working through. Tomoya, Nagisa and their friends help her to overcome this tragedy and Kotomi goes on to study abroad in the U.S. becoming a respected scientist continuing her parents research into parallel worlds.

A running gag in the anime is that Kotomi loves the violin but is terrible at playing it producing a horrible screeching piercing the ears of everyone who listens to her play. She originally gets the violin from the music club who notices that she has an interest in it. After she practices with it, her friends encourage her to put on a concert with it to boost her confidence. It doesn't work out too well as the audience finds out just how bad Kotomi's violin playing really is but Kyou manages to work it to her audience selling ear plugs to the audience.

As mentioned above, one of things that foot fans would really love about Kotomi is that she seems to like going barefoot. She's always seen in the library with her shoes off. In fact she is barefoot more often than not in the series. :-)

Ok everyone. That concludes the Clannad posts. ^_^ It is definitely a really good series to watch if you have the the time for it and I really recommend it if you are into the Romantic Comedy anime genre. It is one of the most emotionally powerful anime shows that I have seen. Anyway, I hope that you guys enjoyed this set of posts and as always... more to come soon!

-KSC