Tomoya walks into school bitter and broken, and Nagisa walks out of it having rewired what broken means. The show doesn't ask you to understand loss before it makes you live it. Every warm moment between them carries the weight of something the show already knows you're going to lose, and by the time you realize what's happening, you're not watching a romance anymore, you're watching someone try to hold onto a person who's already slipping away.

Tomoya has spent years closing himself off from the world. His mother is gone, his father drowns in vice, and he's become a ghost at school, dismissed as a troublemaker nobody wants to know. Everything changes when he crosses paths with Nagisa, a girl repeating her final year of high school after a long illness left her isolated from her peers. As they spend time together, something shifts. Nagisa hopes to bring the school's drama club back to life, and Tomoya, claiming he has nothing better to do, agrees to help. Along the way he meets several other girls and comes to understand their troubles, and his view of life as dull and empty begins to change. Clannad mixes comedy and romance with drama and a touch of the supernatural, finding humor in everyday school life while dealing with loss and loneliness.