Woah! 2001??? You might be one of the longest-running key fans on here! Mad props for sticking with it all the way until now 
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I feel old, lol! Thanks Itâs such a great company that has left a profound impact on me with their beautiful stories ever since. I do have a cosplay pic someplace of me as Ayu from a 2002 convention. I got my friend to be Makoto and my cousin to be Shiori. Only one guy knew who we were!
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Yeah I feel that Key really only boomed after KyoAni animated the first three games, so most people would have been in the dark from Key at that time
I first discovered Key through a friend of mine I made on Twitter a while back. He recommended I watch Angel Beats, so one weekend I blew through it and ended up enjoying it despite its faults. He then gifted me Planetarian on Steam and I read through it all one night and loved it. Then he told me I should watch the Clannad anime adaption and over the course of a month I got through that, ended up being one of my favorite anime of all time.
Got hooked after that and been a big fan since!
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Actually kind of surprised at myself that I hadnât posted here yet.
Anyways, for backstory I wasnât really super huge into anime until after I had graduated high school in 2014. I was aware of it since I would watch stuff with my brother when I was really little, and I had even watched some of my own volition while I was in high school, but not nearly enough to really call it a serious hobby. My senior year I enlisted in the military, and then went to basic training after I graduated. I ended up meeting quite a few people who were pretty into anime while I was there, which sort of gave me the idea to start exploring it more seriously once I got back home.
So like a lot of people here my first Key work was Angel Beats. I was just casually browsing for something to watch, saw a qt girl with a gun, decided that was apparently enough to substantiate a watch, and at the time I thought it was pretty amazing. I looked up the OP on youtube since I liked it a lot, and saw comments talking about Clannad. So I went and watched that, and long story short After Story became and still is my favorite anime ever. This jumpstarted an endless descent into eternal weebdom as I began consuming anime at a much more rapid pace. I also started dabbling in visual novels in the form of Katawa Shoujo at some point, but Iâll get back to that later.
Anyways, some time later I was speaking with a close friend who had also just recently gotten into anime as a result of being recommended to watch Little Busters by one of his buddies. At this point I STILL wasnât aware Key was a thing, but he recommends Little Busters to me so I decide to google it and see what itâs all about before I jump in.
Lo and behold, I discover that not only were Angel Beats, Little Busters, and Clannad all works by this company called Key, but that Little Busters and Clannad were actually adaptations of visual novels. Now, at this point I had recently finished Katawa Shoujo (which was my first VN), so I had begun to develop an interest in visual novels as a whole. So I quickly burned through the Little Busters anime, acquired the VN, read it over the course of a month or two, andâŚ
The deal was completely fucking sealed. Holy shit the Little Busters VN was so good it made me shit pure rainbows of emotion, and I promptly proceeded to read Planetarian, then Clannad, then Rewrite in relatively rapid (for me, since I take things pretty slowlyâŚ) succession.
And, uhâŚhere we are.
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My story is about as simple as they come. I got the Clannad anime for Christmas 4 years back and loved it. After consuming all things Clannad I could get my hands on, I branched out into the Kanon anime, Little Busters, Charlotte, and the Planetarian VN. Havenât regretted it once.
While hunting for good slice of life anime, I came across a YouTube video by the AnimeMan with the title â5 anime series that will make you cry like a bitchâ. Four out of the five were Key works and Clannad After story was ranked 1 on his list. He said, â You might say that you did not cry after watching Anohana or Angelbeats but there is not a single person I know who hasnât cried watching Clannad AS. I cried continuously for the last six or so episodes, thatâs like three hours. Three hours of crying really takes a toll on your body. You have to watch it. It is simply amazingâ. And so I did. I thought he was exaggerating but after completing the series, I realised that what he said was an understatement. This was how I was introduced to Key works. Since then, I have become a huge fan of Key and a die-hard fan of CLANNAD.
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I saw worst anime lists, one had Clannad: After Story, which had given me a bad first impression, but I also looked up anime memes, Clannad being present, then I asked one of my friends to give me a copy of the game, I played it, then did research, and I changed my mind, I loved Clannad, it was amazing. Kotomi and Fuko along with the baseball route are now among my favorite moments in gaming. I decided to watch the series, I am currently watching it still, and I will finish it and After Story, along with the movie and TOMOYO AFTER.
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If I remember correctly I first saw Angel Beats for the social pressure then, some time later, Clannad and LB anime without even knowing that all 3 were from the same company (in fact I saw LBâs anime without knowing that is from Jun Maeda, my cousin recommended it to me because he liked the characters design without even seeing it before and because of the synopsis I thought that was a baseball anime). After LB I saw people complaining about a bad adaptation and then I read the VN so I can respond correctly to the complains but after reading it I understand more or less the complains 
(actually I like the adaptation even now)
Finally I read the Kanon, Rewrite and Planetarian VN, see Charlotte, Kanon(2006)âŚ
ahem The year was 2006⌠Anime Network on Demand was still a huge thing on major cable networks, and from there I found treasured classics such as⌠Area 88, Getbackers, Tenjo Tenge, and of course⌠Air TV. All dubbed too, of COURSE!
In all seriousness though, yeah I started with Air TV on that ol channel, with Vic Mignognaâs strange Yukito dub (like honestly it was just strange, he didnât fit it too well). Then after that, I bought Kanonâs 1st volume since it was like 3 dollars at a secondhand store and fell in love with those 4 episodes. You can pretty much guess the rest⌠I went on to finish Kanon (and Kanon 2002), found Clannad+AF⌠then discovered visual novels and read Little Busters first, before Clannad⌠Angel Beats anime was ok, not really a favorite⌠etc. on and on until I finished a few Key VNs (Clannad, Tomoyo After, Planetarian, LB!, and Rewrite) and have watched every Key animation that exists so far (even the old Clannad and Air movies).
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Oh hey look, a topic I never knew existed.
Back in 2013 was the first time I ever got into anime. After watching three or so animes I consulted a list of animes that donât suck and saw Clannad on it. I thought, âHa, a feelsy anime? That must suck.â Gave it a chance, and here I am.
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Time 4 a little backstory
I first discovered Key (in a sense) when I first saw a YouTube review of the anime adaptation of Clannad. After some time had passed and (at the time) had watched Toradora, Anohana and other animes that had romance, slice of life and some drama in them, I figured Iâd give Clannad a shot especially since there was so much praise for it. I soon begin to see what everyone else had seen in it. As the episodes passed by, I started seeing myself in some of the characters like Okazaki and through all the character arcs, I also started seeing some important morals in life that I had either forgotten or didnât feel like I could apply them properly. Sometimes fiction can come off high-handedly when trying to convey those kind of morals and can seem like disingenuous platitudes.
Even before I finished it, I felt like Clannad did narrative morals better than most I have seen up until that point. I felt the themes organically became part of the narrative & characters. If this makes any sense whatsoever, I also felt while watching Clannad that, for the first time, someone wasnât just making art to make people cry like theyâd stepped on a spiked lego brick; it was as if Maeda and the writers were aware that there might be people watching with their own problems, so they used some portions of the narrative to pass down some wisdom and morals they were taught or learned. Either way, that plus the stellar emotional storytelling is what drew me further into Keyâs works (I was only vaguely aware that they had existed at the time). After watching Clannad (and a lot of other stuff related to it I experienced that Iâll likely make a monolithic post about in another topic), it changed a lot of things for me, including to an extent how I view expressing emotions and the importance of family.
After many tears, I decided that I simply couldnât have enough of an anime kicking me in the emotional balls repeatedly and watched Angel Beats, Little Busters, Kanon and Charlotte (briefly tried Air). Despite not ever loving them as much as I had Clannad, I still have a special place in my heart for each of them and had grown a love of Keyâs works. It was once I had played the Visual Novels of Clannad and Planetarian that I realized the stories this company created had immense and profound impacts on me as a person, so I became the Key/Clannad fanboy I am now.
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Well, honestly when I first read the Clannad VN and then got the anime on DVD I wasnât even thinking about Key - it was only after joining Kazamatsuri that I even became aware that Clannad was only one story in Keyâs catalogue and wasnât even thinking about looking specifically for their other works. Then of course I changed after some discussions here and wanted to explore other titles.
With PC/PS games generally the publisher is low on my radar. I mean that for example with GTA5 I think of it as enjoying a GTA game not a Rockstar one that would push me to try out RDR.
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Back in 2010, I started to watch the Clannad anime. I am not fully sure who or what got me interested in watching the anime, though something in the back of my mind is telling me the ending song had something to do with it haha.
After that, I came across a twitch streamer who was playing through Little Busters. It was then I started to delve more deeply into Key as a whole and started to keep more up-to-date with new releases from them, upcoming anime adaptations, mobage/gree games such as Little Busters Card Mission and Angel Beats Operation Wars though I didnât know about the Rewrite one until I saw the thread here actually!
Iâm hopeful more key games get their time to shine and more people get to play them in english :D!
The first ever Key anime I watched was Clannad but that was the first time I started watching anime so I didnât really pay much attention to it. Then, when I played the Rewrite VN, I was attracted to Keyâs anime, games, and soundtracks.
Two years ago, I watched Clannad, and thatâs what started my love affair with Key. It was unlike any other anime I had seen. What I really loved about the show was the characters, with Kotomi being my favorite. Sheâs a lot like me, personality-wise. I could truly relate to her. I also loved Fuko, who is probably the cutest character Iâve ever seen.
Iâm actually thinking about carving out a wooden starfish.
I did some research and learned about some of the other shows produced by Key. Iâve seen Clannad, Angel Beats, Kanon, Little Busters, Air, and Planetarian. Iâm planning to get Rewrite for my PS Vita. Is the anime worth watching?
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Oh boy, youâve done it.
Nobody tell Helios.
The response is probably going to be overwhelmingly âno.â
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Iâve heard that the visual novel is great. The anime adaptation, not so much.
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I still recommend you watch it just to see how crazy it is
