These are the prerelease opening movies to Key's bishoujo game Clannad, which came out on April 28th, 2004. The difference between the two versions is just the music. Which one do you prefer? I like the remixed version myself.

It was my mother's birthday on March 30th. On that day, we went to some Chinese restaurant and had a fantastic meal of fried chicken, sauteed beef with mushrooms, and steamed fish, topped with bowls upon bowls of rice. Before we were done eating, another family sitting across the dining area was about to do some karaoke. You see, this restaurant had a big-screen TV and satellite speakers powering its karaoke bar.

Then two men started singing. Words can't describe the experience I had. The karaoke machine spat out a mark after each song, giving them a mark out of 100. They must have drugged the machine, for they were getting marks from 75 to 85 with comments such as SUPER STAR and NOT BAD. Hey, if you're ever feeling down, a karaoke machine is just the thing to lift your spirits!

One thing I did notice was how the machine did its karaoke. It was a two-line system which advanced after the top line was finished. This meant that you knew what the upcoming words were. Most of the songs played were slow and had lengthy pauses, and the machine used triangle symbols to signify the length of them so that the singer knew when to start singing again. I thought it was a unique idea, and it seemed to be effective on the two chums.

A couple of days later, madgat (who else?) wanted us to do Clannad's Op, seeing as how we were uninspired to do Operation Sanctuary. Since these girls were much cuter, I agreed. After a couple of minutes of thinking, I decided to emulate the karaoke effect I saw at the restaurant. There was one lengthy pause in Clannad's song. Excellent. I used circles instead because circles look cool.

While that was happening, zalas pointed me to a forum thread which indicated that the song name was actually a Gaelic term according to haeleth, the head honcho of the Kanon Translation Project. chaoticreign did some research on the matter and came up with the correct name of the song. Without the help these two people, we could have very well just put down Megumeru, or even worse... Blessings (rough TL in Japanese).

It seems as if people hated this release because there was a glaring TL error that wasn't spotted until it was too late. Oog...

There is one major translation error. In fact, it is so bad and so noticable that I just had to dock 3 points off from this release. My eyes cringe whenever I watch this and the mistake shows up.

Today was happiness because I'm with five of them is way off, and should be something like I'm also with my books today and thus I'm happy. So how did this translation go to left field? Actually, I had a hunch it was the latter but Reikoku assured me it wasn't during our editing ...

<GipFace> [Japanese: kyou mo gohon ni kakomarete, shiawase]
<GipFace> I was with five of them today. They were happy ...
<GipFace> Hold on a second, you sure it's 5 of them?
<GipFace> Couldnt the kanji also mean book?
<Reikoku> well, yea, but i thought taht it wouldn't work as well/less likely
<GipFace> Really? Well looking at the cg it looks like books ;/
<Reikoku> did it?
<Reikoku> one sec
<Reikoku> naw...
<Reikoku> now that i think about it, it wouldn't work
<Reikoku> the way it's said is wrong if it were books
<Reikoku> it would be 'hon goki mo' if it was 'five books'
<GipFace> How come they dont use kanji for 5?
<GipFace> Could "go" just be an honorific?
<GipFace> Like "gohan"
<Reikoku> the 'go' in 'gohan' isn't honorific
<Reikoku> it actualy is 'gohan'
<Reikoku> it would be the letter 'o'
<GipFace> That line is still bugging me at the back of my head
<GipFace> Oh well I'll get back to it
But I never did. Before the release ...
<GipFace> Mmm is the clip upped?
<GipFace> Might as well get zalas to take a peek
<Landcaster> it is on my space still
<Landcaster> but i doubt zala will grab it
<Landcaster> he has limited bw
<GipFace> Ah okay
Soon after the release, I was attacked by my pillow. While that happened...
(actual log lines shuffled around for clarity)
<zalas> wtf
<zalas> reikoku..... [note: Reikoku was not online]
<zalas> "Today is happiness because I'm with five of them" ??
<zalas> I think the actual translation is probably "I'm also surrounded by books today, and thus I'm happy"
<zalas> the 'go' might be an honorific
<zalas> bah
<zalas> I think we'll need to post a note
<zalas> saying there's an error in translation
<Landcaster> zala.. if u are talking onscreen
<Landcaster> we had several we weren't sure on (but when i pointed my friend to it.. he didn't see ne that were really far off)
<Landcaster> but then again he didn't really look very long at it i think
<zalas> *sigh*
<zalas> I should've qc'ed >.>
The next day...
<GipFace> zalas, that tl issue you had
<zalas> The translation is more like "I'm surrounded by (precious) books, and thus I'm happy now."
<zalas> the go is an honorific
<zalas> (For example,) [Japanese: goshujin (husband)] is honorific
<GipFace> Meh, it wouldnt have been an nnl release without one creepy mistaek
<ChocoEd> Ouch, that's a tough translation...
<zalas> hope no-one notices that
<zalas> and hope no one notices the books she's reading >.>
<GipFace> I should have went with my gut instinct and asked someone else
<GipFace> Because I knew that was pretty bad ;(
<GipFace> Note to self: Obey gut instincts
<zalas> hehe
<zalas> now you have to make up for it by releasing a clannad 1 chapter patch <.<
<ChocoEd> LOL

So there you have it. 'Tis a sad day when it went through editing and a second opinion and QC without it being changed, eventually having the mistake noticed by a Japanese student. I guess all the pieces fell in place for this mistaek, but I didn't take the warning signals seriously. NNL sucks!

By the way, Reikoku was watching Mouse around this time, and the women in that show always say goshujin-sama. Who knew? =_=

• We still have no idea what the nonsensical blabber at the end is.
• The names of most of the characters were in English but they were hard to read. Some of the characters weren't named. Here's the cast in order of appearance:
  Nagisa Furukawa
  Kyou Fujibayashi
  Kotomi Ichinose
  Fuuko Ibuki
  Tomoyo Sakagami
  Yukine Miyazawa
  Ryou Fujibayashi
  Youhei Sunohara
  Sanae Furukawa
  Akio Furukawa
  Mei Sunohara (shown after the first two CG pans)
  Misae Sagara (shown after the weird animal CG)
  Kouko Ibuki
• Megumeru is the Japanese name of the opening song, but in English the term is Mag Mell. For an explanation of what this is, you can check out Pantheon's definition.