Kanako

Kanako
河南子
Japanese voice actor	Keiko Suzuki (game)

Kanako (河南子?) is a character in Tomoyo After ~It's a Wonderful Life~.

She is the ex-girlfriend of Takafumi Sakagami, the younger brother of Tomoyo. She does not like living in her home after seeing her widow mother remarry so she came to freeload at Tomoya's apartment, wanting to see Takafumi again (in Tomoyo After Tomoyo and Takafumi spend a lot of time at Tomoya's apartment). Kanako has a foul mouth and is excessively sarcastic. Her favorite food is ice cream and her surname is never revealed.

Role

Three years before the events of Tomoyo After, Kanako and Takafumi are in a relationship, and Takafumi is the ace of his school's track team. However, he and Tomoyo talk to their shattered family, Kanako's father, the track coach, harshly scolds Takafumi and refuses to let the two go out any longer. Soon afterward, Kanako's father dies from his weak heart. Due to his guilt over abandoning track, Takafumi distances himself from Kanako, and the two become estranged.

Near the beginning of Tomoyo After, Kanako's mother decides to remarry over Kanako's objections. Outraged, Kanako runs away from home to try to find Takafumi once more. Meeting up with Tomoya, she starts staying at his apartment. Over the next few weeks, she mostly loafs around and freeloads off of Tomoya and Tomoyo, though she does teach Tomoya how to fight well enough to beat the guys that want to fight Tomoyo.

However, after learning about Takafumi and Kanako's past, Tomoya and Tomoyo try to get Takafumi to take up running again, entering him in a local 15-km event. During the race, Takafumi starts flashing back to his nightmare about his coach rejecting him, but after Kanako says that she will forgive him for everything in her father's place, Takafumi overcomes his trauma, and the two of them pledge to restart their relationship. Kanako even returns to her mother's house and accepts her new stepfather.

Later on, Kanako's help is crucial in reuniting Tomo and her mother. After she befriends all the villagers by making ice cream and goofing around, the whole village unites to build a school for Tomo.

Skills and interests

Kanako has extraordinary martial arts abilities, having trained extensively in both aikido and karate. She is able to recognize a diverse array of fighting styles, including karate, Muay Thai, and boxing, after just a few seconds. Over the course of Tomoyo After, she trains Tomoya in fighting. Given the chance, she can easily trounce the delinquents. She says that while Tomoyo is the strongest in a brawl, she herself is the strongest in official matches. However, when Tomoyo and Kanako actually fight, Tomoyo wins, despite wearing a bear costume.

Kanako also has a great interest in coming up with names and slogans for newspaper advertisements, though her suggestions are usually terrible. She also enjoys making jokes, though Tomoya,Takafumi, and Tomoyo rarely find her amusing.

In the anime

Kanako's cameo in the anime.

Kanako makes an 18-second cameo appearance in The Older and Younger Sister's Founder's Festival of the Clannad anime. During a school festival while accompanying Fuko, Sunohara spots a pretty girl, Kanako, and runs after her. She refuses his advances, and he suddenly bumps into Tomoyo, who is wearing a bear suit. Kanako runs off, and Sunohara is unceremoniously kicked out of a nearby window by Tomoyo.