Clannad (visual Novel)

Clannad (visual novel)

Clannad (クラナド, Kuranado?) is a Japanese visual novel developed by Key released on April 28, 2004 playable on Windows PCs. While both of Key's first two previous works, Kanon and Air, had been released first as adult games and then censored for the younger market, Key's third work Clannad was released with a rating for all ages. Clannad was later ported to the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The story follows the life of Tomoya Okazaki who meets many people in his last year of high school, including five girls at his school, and he helps resolve their individual problems.

The gameplay in Clannad follows a branching plot line which offers pre-determined scenarios with courses of interaction, and focuses on the appeal of the five female main characters by the player character. The game ranked as the best-selling PC game sold in Japan for the time of its release, and charted in the national top 50 several more times afterwards. Key went on to produce an adult spin-off titled Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life in November 2005, which expanded on the scenario of Tomoyo Sakagami, one of the five heroines from Clannad.

Clannad has made several transitions to other media. There have been four manga adaptations published by ASCII Media Works, Flex Comix, Fujimi Shobo and Jive. Comic anthologies, light novels and art books have also been published, as have audio dramas and several albums of music. An animated film by Toei Animation was released in September 2007, followed by two TV anime series including two original video animation (OVA) episodes by Kyoto Animation produced between 2007 and 2009. Both anime series and their accompanying OVAs are licensed by Sentai Filmworks and were released in North America in 2009. The animated adaptations have received high sales figures in Japan as well as critical acclaim abroad.