CLANNAD: Now Killing You Sweetly in English

I hate CLANNAD .

. I hate it so much that I break down crying whenever I think about it. In all seriousness, there is something about CLANNAD — the odd visual novel game turned anime turned manga (talk about backwards) — that breaks my heart into a million pieces every time I watch it. And yes, I have watched it more than once. Don’t judge me.

But I’ve never gotten to play the original visual novel, primarily because I only speak two languages, and neither of them is Japanese. Luckily, my own laziness is now no longer an issue! The team at Sekai Project recently launched a Kickstarter to bring the original CLANNAD to English. which, in its final day, is sitting pretty at almost 500 thousand dollars, out of an asked for 140 thousand. Excellent work, my brethren.

For those who have no idea what the heck CLANNAD is, it’s… hard to explain. The premise is simple enough: You play Tomoya (not to be confused with Tomoyo), a student at a local high school who lost his mother in an accident and constantly has to deal with his alcoholic father. On the way to school one day, he meets Nagisa, a very odd girl who had been out of school due to illness. You can guess where the story goes from there (hint: It’s adorable).

No word on what systems CLANNAD will be released on, but it is going through Steam, so it will be on Windows at least, and likely on Mac as well. You can support it on its Kickstarter pageif you hurry, or merely gaze longingly at screenshots if you miss being able to support it.