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. ;___;
So Hinata is obviously best Key boy, yeah?
He’s got a great butt.
The idea of the male character in the medium of visual novels and in particular the galge sort of story structure is one that I feel goes criminally misused. With perhaps the lone exception of Kitagawa, and even then the anime of Kanon 2006 rectified this by giving him a proper character, whenever Key has stempted to write a male character they have always been fine at worst and legendary at best. Taking a strictly non romantic roll these characters offer a different lens and often represent different ideals than the heroines can.
Of these the standouts for me are Sakuya, Kyousuke, and Yoshino from Rewrite, Little Busters, and Clannad respectively who each take on the roll of flawed mentor to the protagonist. Unlike any of their contemporaries these characters arc as a guidepost of potentiality, representing both the strengths the protagonists can reach as well as the flaws and failures. In each of these instances the male cast goes far to demonstrate the stories themes but more often than not in a retrospective way. This is something that is also not often touched upon, but can be seen in characters like Sayuri in Kanon.
Sakuya’s sacrifices demonstrate the value of connection and the weight of duty where Kyousuke’s determination and drive for his goals so wonderfully paints the ideas of friendship that Little Busters is constructed around. Yoshino’s tale is for me the single most emotional part of Clannad, telling wonderfully the value of connection and family, and it is in this that we see another common thread within the male cast of the Key games–and that’s heart.
Ryuuya, Yoshino, Masato, Kengo, Kyousuke, Kappei, Akio, Komura, Sakuya, Gil, and even Potato we see some of the most emotional vertexes of each of the Key narratives, tapping into different kinds of connection and interpersonal dynamic than is able with the heroines. It is a shame that characters like Rewrite’s Yoshino don’t get the full attention that the Little Busters boys do, becauuse while they don’t tell these kinds of stories often the tales of the boys are some of my favorite the company has ever produced.
Best,
Bread
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