I think there are enough Key boys to warrant a thread, the protags are also characters in their own right.
Perhaps a thread for discussion of routeless characters instead, since there are also a few girls like Inoue or A-chan who’d not get discussion otherwise
No no, you misunderstand me. I mean that a single thread lumping all of them together won’t do them justice! I wanna see a Kotarou thread, a Yoshino thread and a Riki thread! Not just one for all of them.
Kyousuke, Masato and Kengo could probably suffice with just the Refrain thread.
Dawg no though, you can just lump the BEST boys into a thread while giving the others their own.
Refrain has so much discussion on it’s own without going into best boys thread anyway.
I don’t know about non-route characters- But a general ‘protagonist’ discussion could be cool.
On topic: We all know best boy is TK.
I KISS YOU ~!
That’s who I want to read about most in the Visual Novels! We barely know anything about him…
Him, Matsushita and Fujimaki and pretty much blank. :c You can almost put Noda in there too, but we have a tiny bit of info on him. Same with Ooyama who’s at least gotten to talk a lot in the manga/LN. All these boys without any love. ;_;
And I guess Takeyama, too. Jeez, all these characters lol
Yeah, we need more boys love.
At least the VN is giving them all routes, naturally I’m up for TK most, Hinata route I’m also looking foward too, especially the gay sex.
Hinata/Otonashi OTP bromance is certainly present. He’s gotta look out for Naoi, though.
They ‘Boys to Love’ list is going to skyrocket over the next few years. The Little Bros might have some competition. D: (I’m not complaining)
I’m still waiting for a Key game with a female protagonist and a harem of boys myself. I’m brainfarting on what you call those.
I’ve though Maeda writes male characters better for a while so I’d genuinely like to see such a thing happen.
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Well it’s not a far cry~ There has been Moon. which might count. There was the Yohei route from Clannad. A bit of the same atmosphere came from Kyousuke too in LB! Having a VN aimed at romancing males is possible for Key.
I just wonder whether it’ll be popular at all…
If Key really wanted to make a breakthrough in the VN world, they would let you select the gender of the protagonist. They could keep all of the routes the same too, as they appear to be fine with writing homosexual relationships~
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Thisthisthisthisthisthisthis x999999 <3
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Otome Games. And yeah, totally agreeing with some of these ideas 
Regarding thread organisation, I’ll leave this thread as a general Key Boys discussion in light of some good discussion here, but reserve the idea of individual boy threads later on. Any objections?
Surely Kyousuke deserves a thread all for himself.
I would love to see an otome or homo game from Key, the potential is definitively there (I’m not sure about Masato, but I could totally imagine Kyousuke and Kengo doing perfectly fine in an otomo game without having to change anything about their personality). But, this would be a very risky move in terms of business when they have only targeted straight males so far. I would fell from my chair if they ever happen to announce a game targeted at another category of people.
As for being able to select the protagonist’s gender, it’s an interesting idea, but it comes with one more problem: it would actually complicate a lot of things in the writing process. Either you don’t include any element referring to the protagonist gender (but for a romance story, that would probably be very awkward), or you double the work for a lot of scenes. The writers are known to be paid per line, which is why the games are so damn long, but then the game would be more or less half shorter for as much work and cost. And you would also need double amounts of CG and artwork for any representation of the protagonist.
So, a cool idea, but which would come with heavy costs for projects as big as the Key games. It’s more something people should try for the Nanoreno or a small project.
Just have a script that replaces every instance referring to the male MC’s gender, with a female word. That’s what they do with Pokemon~
You could have an androgynous looking MC~ The MC isn’t shown much in a lot of VNs anyway =w=
Can’t say I’m up for the two genders, that’s just going to complicate things more or force the MC into a fairly blank state, a good thing about Key is strong MC’s, that are characters, not just vehicles for the player.
Yeah I’m gonna join that boat as well.
As much we all know it’ll never happen, a Key otome game would be a very interesting experience. I just wanna see Key expand their horizons more, instead of being stuck producing games for this tiny niche of school-based nakige VNs. Rewrite was a nice experiment, but now they’re playing it safe again with Angel Beats. That’s part of why I’m upset they’re making a new Angel Beats over something completely original, but I hope it’s good nonetheless…
I could totally see myself playing a Key otome-ge though. If Little Busters is any indication of how they can write amazing male characters that outshine the females, then I’m all in.
I fear for Otonashi with the RPG things they talked about. ;~;
On another note- Igarashi. That guy was a BRO.
He was a great guy. I hope he had a good life after that incident.
Him and Otonashi were pretty inspirational. They even treated the rebellious guys fairly!
That episode just stands out as the strongest one to me. I can’t wait to see it in the VN. Going to be so strong. Especially if it’s ever from Igarashi’s perspective. Too strong. ;___;
