A Date With Nagisa Furukawa of CLANNAD as a Thought Experiment

“According to the Myers Briggs test apparently only 4% of the population got my result. Making it harder to find people I can “let inside” or truly feel connected with. It’s just a test but it often feels that way…” —Ab imo pectore

Having taken a look at the distributions, my personality type stands as one of the most common, with an estimated thirteen percent of all folks having it. The story behind my Meyers-Briggs test is simple enough: I was asked to do it as a part of a team-building exercise for work, and unsurprisingly, ended up with ISTJ. Known as the “Guardian”, individuals of this personality type are fiercely adherent to facts and rules, working hard to complete tasks delegated to them. Honest, direct and dutiful, ISTJs also tend to have a talent stack, excelling at nothing in particular, but possess reasonable competence in a range of different areas. They also can be unyielding and blunt, as well as less willing to deal with spontaneity than people with a different personality type. That captures my essence very succinctly, and it also leads me to wonder how I am projected to get along with different personality types, especially considering that in practise, I generally get along with most people in a professional sense. Describing my professional interactions would be too dull to warrant a post, but what if we added some flair to things? For this discussion, then, I will take a look at aspects of my own personality and use those facets to determine just how well I would get along with someone like Nagisa Furukawa, whose personality is considered either ISFJ or INFP.

• While I cannot truthfully say that Valentine’s Day is my favourite holiday of the year (that belongs to Thanksgiving and Christmas), I remain largely neutral about the event. Consider this: it is a bit disheartening to have no one special to celebrate it with (-1), but on the other hand, it means I can save a small amount of money and direct it to either my savings or spend it on something for myself (+1). With that being said, for those of my readers who are in a relationship, I wish for you a Happy Valentines’ Day, and for the readers like myself, I offer a Happy Singles Awareness Day!

The “Defender”, ISFJs are supportive, reliable and loyal (incidentally, the same things I would look for in a relationship), but can also be rather shy, find it tricky to express how they feel and can overburden themselves with challenges as they try to help those around them. These attributes describe Nagisa well, but she also has some elements of the INFP personality type: she’s driven by her sense of optimism, making the most of every situation, values harmony and holds a strong sense of creativity that allows her to resurrect the drama club and bring her dreams to life with a performance of Girl in the Illusionary World. Similarly, she does take some things personally, blaming herself for causing her parents to give up their dreams of being in theatre. For this discussion, we assume that Nagisa is an INFP: her creativeness in expressing herself in the play she likes and the Great Dango Family, coupled with her general desire to wish for everyone’s happiness and her response to learning about her parents’ past means that she can fit into this category. In general, an ISTJ and INFP relationship could function with effort and some compromise, although some folks say that such a relationship would be remarkably difficult, so this post aims to put that to the test, using the personalities as a starting point, and then determining whether or not someone with traits similar Nagisa’s is someone that I can appreciate as time passes, and we know one another better.

We suppose that Nagisa is an INFP, a personality type with a four percent frequency: the ISFJ personality, while one I am fond of, would not offer much in the way of interesting discussion. My ISTJ and Nagisa’s INFP means only one of our traits overlap: we’re both introverted — we would understand and appreciate the value of quiet time and share moments with a small group of close friends. I can hold interesting conversations about different topics, so if the right topics are available, fun conversations can be had. However, there’s always the possibility that there isn’t enough communications between the two. I’m not very good with subtle hints (scuttlebutt has it that I accidentally rejected some people without saying a word because I missed their messages) and typically, need to be hit over the head, as it were, to know how someone is feeling. My sensing component will find newfound perspective from Nagisa’s imaginative thinking, and at the same time, my practicality balances her tendency to go off into her own world. While projected to offer some challenges in conversation, I am a touch more imaginative than the average ISTJ, so I could follow her flights of fancy in a conversation.

Next up is my thinking to her feeling: warm and compassionate, one of the things that stand out about Nagisa was this side of her personality. She genuinely cares about those around her and supports them as best as she can, standing against my usual no-nonsense “let’s get it done” approach. These two opposite traits complement one another nicely, allowing for decisions to be made with a balance between compassion and reason. However, my way of speaking is very blunt: I call things as I see them, and could inadvertently hurt Nagisa, while she’s unlikely to speak her mind. I’m not good with subtleties, so miscommunications could arise. To make things work, I’ll need to be more sensitive, be more attuned to things and pick things up on my own, while Nagisa would find it useful to be a little more direct. The most interesting set of attributes to consider will be judging-perceiving: I’m very fond of schedules and well-designed plans, allowing for freedom and the unexpected only if some semblance of a plan exists. Spontaneity does not typically fly with me: I’ll turn down hanging out with friends if informed about it less than a day in advance, for instance, since that time was blocked off for something else. Similarly, my penchant to be organised can come across as overbearing for INFPs. Fortunately, while coming across as rigid, I am more adaptive than the typical ISTJ; I appreciate spontaneity if it falls within a plan. With an open mind, judges and perceivers can get along — the perceivers can bring a breath of fresh air into the judge’s life, while the judge can help a perceiver become more organised. On the whole, while the personality differences between a ISTJ and INFP would initially cause some conflicts, over time, I imagine that they could reach a compromise and find themselves in a happy relationship, truly connecting with one another.

• I have a special announcement to make with this post: CLANNAD is nearing its ten-year anniversary, and so, I will be doing posts on CLANNAD once the ten-year mark passes. Because there are a large number of episodes in CLANNAD, doing episodic reviews will be impractical. Instead, I will drop by on the date where an arc ends to take a look at the events and contributions of that particular arc in the context of the whole story.

So, supposing that both partners open-minded enough to make things work, the final realm that this discussion will explore what kind of first date might be suitable for an ISTJ-INFP couple: without it, this post simply wouldn’t live up to its title. Before we begin, I profess that I am not nearly familiar enough with Japan to properly consider organising anything resembling a date there, so we will suppose that I’m running home field advantage. Further, we suppose that language barriers are not a concern. Looking off the idea that Nagisa and I are both introverts, I think that Calgary’s Shakespeare in the Park at Prince’s Island park would be a good first date considering her interest in drama. A twenty hectare park on an island, it is located right at the heart of the city and offers an oasis from the hustle and bustle of the core, featuring flower gardens and paths set right underneath the cityscape of Calgary’s central financial district. The choice of something like Shakespeare in the Park is motivated by Nagisa’s love for the stage and drama. To be able to visit a performance of an old classic under the summer sun would provide a calm setting for enjoying a Shakespearean play and consider different perspectives on what things like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet entail. Such a conversation might be shared following the play’s conclusion at the nearby Café Blanca over a cup of coffee (or tea, since I don’t do well with coffee). This is, of course, just one possibility; ideas for good dates are limitless. I would certainly enjoy an experience like this, but there is a reason why this post is dubbed a thought experiment — it is not actually possible to perform this particular experiment in reality.