Wow that brings up so much memories. Once I was searching for the most emotional animes, and simply I couldnt cry to anything. Once on some forum I heard about Clannad that it made a lot of people cry. I had promised myslef that i wont cry because im a strong person. But Clannad broke my promise and totally improved my emotinal state.
And from that moment when I finished clannad, I felt like sticking to Key is the best idea I can do. It simply caught me and will be in my heart forever.
One day I simply read about all the Key stuff, and discovered what they made. So by time I fell in love with Key more, the more I knew about them and their projects.
Im not regreting anything, and I hope someone will find this harmony in their hearts too via Key.
CLANNAD: Making people cry since 2003.
I swear, anyone who hasnāt cried to at least one scene there has a heart of stone
psstā¦Pepeā¦it was 2004 
Oops!
Well, the writers probably had it nearly done by 2003, and Iām betting some of them cried to it, so the argument still stands!
Some years ago when some League of Legends pro was asked what was his favourite tv show he answered Clannad, I did not have idea what was it (never watched anime before excluding Pokemond and things like that) so curiosity got the best of me and ended up loving it.
Me and my sister arenāt heartless ;~; We cry to stuffā¦ justā¦ good stuff.
The Tomoyo route almost got me~
#ShotsThrown
Oh lame, I canāt hashtag (even ironically) on discourse 
I first got into Key through Clannad, it was the first anime I ever watched and boy did I start with a good one! (Iām not counting watching PokĆ©mon and Dragonball as a child coz I didnāt even know what anime was back then 
)
It was the beginning of 2013 when I first decided I wanted to watch anime, I have a disability so I donāt get out much and needed something to do and thought āWhy the hell not try anime!ā I searched for āgood romantic animes.ā To this day I have no idea why because I was never a fan of romantic films or anything like that, I guess I just wanted to watch something ārealisticā and not all the fighting and stuff I associated with anime back then. Anyway so I looked through a couple of search results and Clannad popped up on every single site I clicked, coupled with phrases like āThis will make you cryā and āThis is one of THE best animeās not only in the genre but ever!ā
So silly me thought āAn anime will never make me cry, its been recommended so many times Iāll have to check it outā boy was I wrong about the crying part! As they say the rest is history I went from there and watched more slice of life anime and decided to find out who made Clannad and see if they had more, so next was LB! for me also the first VN I read. And now I am here with only Air left to watch
#fail
I did a similar thing when I decided to watch anime solely because it was anime. I looked through what I had already seen of anime, and realized that most of my favorites were romances, even though I hate romantic films and stuff. So I spent that whole year trying to watch every romance anime I could find.
#getgoodscrub
*#*sorrynotsorry
Ha I did that too.
It was the worst decision I ever made because it lead to me finding Da Capo.
At least they killed of worst girl in one of the spin-offs. Most satisfying thing ever.
I watched the Clannad anime and it made me cry a lot, so naturally I sought out the other Key animes, Kanon and Air (KyoAni versions) I love the feels and Key is so good at delivering them. Hail Maeda.
After that, I played the Little Busters VN (I was actually going to wait for the anime because timesinks, but then JC Staff picked it up and everyone said it was going to be terrible) Little Busters ended up becoming my favourite Key work of all time. Also read Planetarian and Rewrite, and watched Angel Beats.
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 didnāt even know what āanimeā is. Hell, didnāt even know what Studio Ghibli is. I was a typical person wasting his time away on watching YouTube letās 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 starsā whims, I wanted to read some comments on one of the KS videos whose number I donāt even recall. The topic of the few comments was āWhat else VN would you recommend to ChilledChaos,ā 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 didnāt 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 Studiosā 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.
ā¦Now I just feel like a hypocrite because I am not even close to finishing reading Kanon.
Hey, I also watched some of Chilledās Katawa videos! Although that wasnāt what got me into VNs, I watched a decent bit of the playthrough. Guess since Iām commenting Iāll just share my story. This may be a bit long, but stick with me.
So letās 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 heād watched. As for me, I liked the art style and everything, but I didnāt 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 didnāt really care too much.
Now fast forward to late August 2011. Iām at the same friendās house and, for some unknown reason, I felt like watching anime. Probably just the mood I get into when Iām 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? Iād be an idiot not to watch After Story as well. Fast forward one more day. After Story was pretty solid, even if I wasnāt 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 couldnāt even remember half of what I watched, so maybe, in retrospect, it wasnāt a great idea to watch all this stuff in a row. Luckily I had rewritten my body so that I wouldnāt die from watching anime until 4 am and waking up 3 hours later every day.
Air. Believe me, I tried. In the end, I couldnāt 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. Donāt know why, or how, or whatever. I added him on Skype cus Iād been looking to get into visual novels but had nobody to talk to or ask. Iām getting lazy so Iāll 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. Uhhhā¦ I just bought Planetarian.
Maybe Iāll go back and edit this when Iām not PLAYING PLANETARIAN HYPE HYPE HYPE
Every time.
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, Iāve 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 CLANNADās 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 arenāt English translations for all of themā¦
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. Thatās 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.
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 āKeyā 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 āVisual Novelā was. So I told myself āI will not watch Clannad until I read the VN first!ā which, as expected, had no english translation patch yet
But yeah, I only played my first VN after I asked my friend about it and he let me know about planetarian. I donāt 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 thatās 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
