How did you first discover Key?

Key Discussion
#36

Key Studios almost, kind of almost, started my entire anime watching, manga and VN reading, and Japanese learning career.

@Karifean If you said your encounter with Key was by chance (and it is a pretty impressively small chance), then my encounter with it had to have been aligned with the nine stars or something.

Back in 2012, I didn’t even know what “anime” is. Hell, didn’t even know what Studio Ghibli is. I was a typical person wasting his time away on watching YouTube let’s players. Through the YouTube connections between large channels, I found ChilledChaos, and oh goody he was reading through Katawa Shoujo. Catching my interest after watching tens of episodes, I downloaded Katawa Shoujo and played through it in about 2 weeks (so technically I gave my VN virginity to 4chan). I also almost never read YT comments, but, by the nine stars’ whims, I wanted to read some comments on one of the KS videos whose number I don’t even recall. The topic of the few comments was “What else VN would you recommend to ChilledChaos,” and one comment read Clannad. Since Katawa Shoujo made a tremendous impression on me as my first VN, I held the same expectation for Clannad and went for it. Despite translation comments that leaked into the dialogue confusing me a bit, of course I didn’t know what they were back then, it exceeded my expectations. I loved and still love it. From there, I discovered anime and manga, and then I told myself how great would it be if I could understand at least a little bit of Japanese, so I can do without subs.

So basically, Key Studios’ works are a part of the person I am today. The morals and messages that the Key VNs delineate so well, the embarking of my Japanese studies, even networks in real life.

…Now I just feel like a hypocrite because I am not even close to finishing reading Kanon.

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#37

Hey, I also watched some of Chilled’s Katawa videos! Although that wasn’t what got me into VNs, I watched a decent bit of the playthrough. Guess since I’m commenting I’ll just share my story. This may be a bit long, but stick with me.

So let’s rewind back. Way back. Back to sometime around 2008. I had a good friend at the time who considered himself something of an anime god. He went on and on about all the stuff he’d watched. As for me, I liked the art style and everything, but I didn’t watch a lot outside of like a bajillion episodes of Bleach and some obscure stuff here and there (my first finished anime was Midori Days). Anyways, he talked a lot about Clannad and how it was his favorite romance anime and just anime in general. Well, whatever. I didn’t really care too much.

Now fast forward to late August 2011. I’m at the same friend’s house and, for some unknown reason, I felt like watching anime. Probably just the mood I get into when I’m with him. Asked for a recommendation. Take a guess what he suggested? So I sit down on the couch, plug in my headphones, and watch Clannad while ignoring the 3 other people like the good friend I am.

So I watched Clannad. Cool, right? I’d be an idiot not to watch After Story as well. Fast forward one more day. After Story was pretty solid, even if I wasn’t huge on the ending. Well, the next day I find myself queuing yet again on the Key coaster and end up watching Kanon (2006). At this point everything is just blurring together in my mind. I couldn’t even remember half of what I watched, so maybe, in retrospect, it wasn’t a great idea to watch all this stuff in a row. Luckily I had rewritten my body so that I wouldn’t die from watching anime until 4 am and waking up 3 hours later every day.

Air. Believe me, I tried. In the end, I couldn’t get into it, and dropped it in favor of who knows what. I went through a massive anime binge. Like, holy crap enough to last a lifetime. During this time I was gradually drained of my powers, and have since been unable to start or finish pretty much any anime. Oh, somewhere along the line I watched Angel Beats, as well.

August 13th, 2013. I had been co-commentating a long series of 100% Twilight Princess streams with a friend over the summer. I have no idea what happened but someone showed up in chat who mentioned visual novels. Don’t know why, or how, or whatever. I added him on Skype cus I’d been looking to get into visual novels but had nobody to talk to or ask. I’m getting lazy so I’ll just speed this up. He told me to read Rewrite. I read Rewrite. I liked Rewrite. He told me to read Little Busters. I read Little Busters. I liked Little Busters but not as much as Rewrite. Uhhh… I just bought Planetarian.

Maybe I’ll go back and edit this when I’m not PLAYING PLANETARIAN HYPE HYPE HYPE

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#38

Every time.

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#39

My beginnings with Key is a rather complicated yarn. If you asked me three years ago what I thought about anime, I would have told you that it was disgusting, fanservice-filled crap with pretty artwork. Now, I’ve mellowed quite a bit. I understand that I was incredibly ignorant back then, and I understand the significance of anime as an art form now.

Anyways, about two-and-a-half years ago, I bought a game called Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love. I had no idea what to expect, but I loved every single minute of it. It got me into visual novels, and I also decided to give anime a chance. The first anime I completed then was Accel World, and I was quite amazed. I wanted more, so I tried looking into similar shows. Thanks to Sakura Wars and Accel World, I became familiar with the harem and slice-of-life genres of anime. I then discovered an anime reviewer on YouTube by the name of Arkada, who kindly recommended CLANNAD, hailing it as a near-perfect anime that no one should miss out on. I decided I had to sit down and watch the entire thing, and I loved every single moment of it.

After finishing Clannad, I spent some time mending the gaping hole it left me with. I then came across another review from Arkada, this time recommending Kanon 2006. I watched that, and loved that too. When Christmas came around, I saved up enough money to buy the visual novel. I became aware of Key after coming across CLANNAD’s Wikipedia page, stating that it originated as a visual novel. Due to my fondness for Sakura Wars, I made it a goal to collect and read every Key novel.

And that leads me to today. I still only own Kanon, but Little Busters is forthcoming. I still have a goal to collect Key novels, but it may take longer than I anticipated. Not to mention there aren’t English translations for all of them…

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#40

My story is way too boring. There was this site, that randomly livestreamed some anime and I was just watching the thing they showed before CLANNAD (dont remember what it was) and continued watching, because I was bored. That’s how I discovered CLANNAD. I watched it, loved it, did my research about it and found the VN, I read some routes of the characters I liked in the anime, but never finished it. After that I just hopped to more Key stuff. I think Angel Beats came out then and after that I watched Kanon, which I enjoyed and Air, which was well, it took me a while to continue after episode 7.

#41

I just re-read my post on this topic and realized that I have a severe lack of elaboration on that post

So what actually got me into Kanon was an anime forum that I used to go to very frequently at the time. Someone made a topic about Kanon and people were all praises about it. Watched it and loved it. I did realize what “Key” was and heard about the praise of Clannad as well. But at the time, because I was so impressed with both Kanon and Fate/Stay Night, I learned what a “Visual Novel” was. So I told myself “I will not watch Clannad until I read the VN first!” which, as expected, had no english translation patch yet :stuck_out_tongue:

But yeah, I only played my first VN after I asked my friend about it and he let me know about planetarian. I don’t know why I was still lazy to find out about more Key VNs back then, but eh. I guess after that I did tell my girlfriend about Key and how they make really good stories, and how clannad is their best-known work (and has no ero content), so I guess that’s what caused her to look for it.

The rest is pretty much accurate as it was a slippery slope down to reading all the rest of their works

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Key Fangames
#42

Quite the interesting story you have there. I commend you for spreading the gospel of Key to your girlfriend. :slight_smile:

[quote=“Pepe, post:41, topic:291”]
So I told myself “I will not watch Clannad until I read the VN first!”
[/quote] That is actually what I decided to do with AIR and Little Busters, because I wanted to see if reading the visual novel first would give me a different perspective of the anime adaptation.

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#43

So have you read Little Busters yet?

#44

(checks the mailbox) Nope. It’s not here yet.

#46

Man gotta love that friend of yours. :proceed to throw more Key VNs:

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#47

When I found out the ‘visual novel genre’ i tried searching for some visual novels to play. I got into Fuwanovel, then I found Rewrite. The first route I did was Lucia’s: I simply loved it. Then, I started searching about Key and found out LB!, that I’ve just finished recently. At this time, I was already a Key and Maeda’s fan.

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#48

Wasn’t Lucia’s locked until you completed Shizuru’s? o.o

#49

Nah you start with Kotori, Chihaya, and Lucia by default.

#50

Yeah, that hurt.

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#52

I discover key when i check my facebook group ‘home for anime and otakus malaysia’ and ‘clannad group’ . I see they always post many pictures about angel beats,clannad and give a high recommendation about this anime.They say if you like to cry watching anime then i suggest this.Thats where i start to know key

#53

My story is pretty similar to @JDAM_Cid in that I was first exposed to Kanon and Air by Megatokyo back around 2001, and didn’t really pay it too much mind.

In 2005, after high school, I started getting really into anime again. I discovered shows like Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya that were aimed at my current demographic (before that I was only familiar with shows like Dragonball Z that just didn’t interest me anymore). From there I sought out Air and Kanon 2006, because I had heard of the franchises (loved them both). I started watching the Clannad anime when it was first airing and instantly fell in love with that series.

That’s where my experience with the visual novels started. On Christmas of 2007, I bought myself a copy of Planetarian, and read the whole thing in one sitting. Then, in the summer of 2008 (between Clannad and After Story anime releases) I picked up a copy of Clannad Full Voice that I read through. Since then I’ve also read through all of Rewrite and a few branches of Little Busters.

So I think my answer to the original question of how did I discover Key is probably “Megatokyo and the anime adaptations of Air and Kanon '06”

#54

My first experience with Key was back in early 2009 when I watched AIR
I was on the “List of Animes” alphabetical list on Wikipedia and I was watching opening themes trying to find shows I want to watch
And I found AIR’s and my life has been chagned for the better ever since

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#55

I got bored of Naruto and all that boring shonen stuff cause the plots seemed boring to me. Then on YouTube, I saw a suggestion and it was CLANNAD episode 1. I watched it and it caught my attention because it actually talked about real life situations, I also loved the animation, dem cherry blossom trees doe :3 After that, I thought CLANNAD ended since I finished the last episode, and then I saw the OVA for the Tomoyo chapter, which was part of season 1. I didn’t understand why she was with Tomoya so I did research on CLANNAD and it said there was a second season. I then watched it, and lost my soul ;; After I finished all the episodes for After story, I saw the top suggestion on YouTube, and it said “Kanon 2006” so I watched it and got hooked up with it. After I finished that too, I kinda got sad cause the recommendation box showed CLANNAD which I already watched. After that, I searched on the Internet “Anime’s like CLANNAD and Kanon” and I found out that there was an anime called “Air” which I couldn’t find cause when I typed it in, all these airplane videos would show -.- Until I realized I had to type “TV” in. Basically, after I finished Air, I then re-searched if there was any anime’s like CLANNAD, Kanon, and Air, and I read something saying it was from Key, and that I could watch Angel Beats, which, I enjoyed. Did some research and learned LB was an anime too. Watched the first episode hoping to get all excited and be happy, but I honestly didn’t like how it started. The animation and the first episode plot kinda threw me off. So did the boy to girl ratio since I liked the normal 1 boy to 6 girls. I gave up on it. Re watched it about a year later and yeah. Now here I am. Though I gotta say LB was disappointing for all those fights and stuff. Key is wonderful ^^

#56

Doesn’t Angel Beats break this pattern too?

Hey, @Takafumi, seems like you’ve found a partner in crime. (lol)

#57

Hey, I was his partner first! Also, going off of the anime alone there’s a higher chance of having a negative reaction, I’d say. It’s not like it’s a secret that it’s a rather meh adaptation, so he’s not alone in that regard.