Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life

2005 adult visual novel

Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life (智代アフター ～It's a Wonderful Life～) is a Japanese adult visual novel developed by Key released on November 25, 2005 for Windows PCs. The game is a spin off of Key's earlier all ages game Clannad. Key later released versions of Tomoyo After without the erotic content, and the game was ported to the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Switch under the title Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life CS Edition; CS stands for "consumer software". The story follows the lives of Tomoya Okazaki, a young man who recently graduated from high school, and his close friend Tomoyo Sakagami as they start to see more of each other in a romantic relationship. The gameplay in Tomoyo After follows a branching plot line which offers pre determined scenarios with courses of interaction, and focuses on the appeal of the title character Tomoyo. Being a spin off of Clannad, where Tomoyo is one of the game's heroines, Tomoyo After provides an expansion of Tomoyo's story after the events of Clannad and is written by Jun Maeda and Leo Kashida. The art was done by Fumio, as opposed to Itaru Hinoue who had done the art in Clannad. 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 twice more afterwards. A manga adaptation illustrated by Yukiko Sumiyoshi, under the title Tomoyo After: Dear Shining Memories, was serialized in Fujimi Shobo's Dragon Age Pure in 2007. Unlike the game which is told from Tomoya's point of view, the manga is told from Tomoyo's perspective. A single tankōbon volume was released in Japan in December 2007.

Tomoyo After is a romance visual novel in which the player assumes the role of Tomoya Okazaki. The story takes place a month after the events of Clannad during summer vacation after Tomoya has graduated from high school; he is still in the same town Clannad was set in. A central theme in the story is the ties between families, much like in Clannad.

After releasing Clannad, Jun Maeda decided to make a game based on Tomoyo's scenario from Clannad. Maeda handled the game's planning and scenario, and Leo Kashida, a new member of the team, accompanied him. As opposed to Itaru Hinoue who was the character designer and art director for Clannad, Fumio was the art director for Tomoyo After, while Hinoue helped Fumio with the character design. Yūto Tonokawa wrote some of the additional story for Takafumi and Kanako. With the added scenario and visuals combined, the PS2 edition is 1.5 times longer than the Windows edition. In the original version, the entire cast excluding Tomoya Okazaki, had full voice acting; this was not changed for the PlayStation 2 version. Added support was included so as to make the visuals on the television sharper than in the past with visual novels played on a consumer console rather than on a computer screen. The version of Tomoyo After available in Key 10th Memorial Box was re released on April 30, 2010 with updated compatibility for Windows 7 PCs under the title Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life Memorial Edition. Key released an updated version titled Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life Perfect Edition on September 26, 2014 for Windows. The Perfect Edition contains the additional content featured in the consumer ports as well as the adult content from the original version. Tomoyo After was released in English on July 1, 2016. The first consumer console port of the game was released for the PS2 on January 25, 2007 by Prototype under the title Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life CS Edition; CS stands for "consumer software". A PlayStation Portable version of the CS Edition, along with full voice acting including Tomoya, was released on March 19, 2009 by Prototype. An Xbox 360 version of the CS Edition was released by Prototype on September 22, 2010. A PlayStation 3 (PS3) version of the CS Edition was released by Prototype on July 29, 2012 as a limited edition originally sold only at the VisualArt's Daikanshasai event held that day in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of VisualArt's. The PS3 version has subsequently been sold at three other events: at Comiket 83 between December 29–31, 2012, at the 2013 Tokyo Game Show between September 21–22, and at the Character1 exhibition on May 1, 2016 to raise money for victims of the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes, totaling ¥272,506. A downloadable version of the PS3 release via the PlayStation Store was released by Prototype on May 29, 2013. A version playable on Android devices was released on February 27, 2013, but did not include "Dungeons & Takafumis". An adult version playable on Android devices was released in November 2014. Prototype released a Nintendo Switch port on September 10, 2020 with text support for both Japanese and English.

A manga adaptation, illustrated by Yukiko Sumiyoshi and titled Tomoyo After: Dear Shining Memories, was serialized in Fujimi Shobo's shōnen manga magazine Dragon Age Pure between April 20 and October 20, 2007. The story is based on the visual novel version that preceded it, though instead of the story being told from Tomoya's point of view, the manga is told from Tomoyo's perspective. A single tankōbon volume was released in Japan on December 8, 2007 containing four chapters.

The visual novel has two main theme songs: the opening theme "Light colors" and the ending theme "Life is like a Melody", both sung by Lia. The Tomoyo After Original Soundtrack, bundled with the original release of Tomoyo After, was released on November 25, 2005 bearing the catalog number KSLA 0020; it was re released on April 27, 2007. The soundtrack contains 21 tracks composed, arranged, and produced by Jun Maeda, Shinji Orito, Magome Togoshi, Yuki Shimizu, Miu Uetsu, and Kazuya Takase of I've Sound. A piano arrange album was released on December 29, 2005 titled Piano no Mori which contains five tracks from Tomoyo After and five from Clannad. Each of the albums were released on Key's record label Key Sounds Label.

According to a national ranking of how well bishōjo games sold nationally in Japan, the original Tomoyo After Windows release premiered at number one in the rankings. This game stayed on the charts for a month longer, ranking in at 35 and 36. Tomoyo After for Windows was the eighth most widely sold game of 2005 on Getchu. com. In 2006, the Japanese gaming magazine PC News reported that the PS2 version of Tomoyo After was the fourth highest selling bishōjo game of 2005 with 49,226 units sold.