Key Boys

Key Discussion
#1

Now everyone likes a good Key girl, but don’t you go forgetting what Key does best, it’s boys.

From the hilarious sarcastic early protags to show stealing LB boys, Key boys often take main stage in the main routes and come out some of the best characters because of it.

My favorite boys are the three Little Busters(Riki doesn’t count as a boy, he looks too good in a skirt) for reasons I don’t need to elaborate on in the slightest, I said it a long time ago when I finished Refrain, I refuse to pick a favorite of the three.

So hey, discuss them boys, just don’t cry.

[Aspirety: Don’t forget to tag them late-game spoilers with [spoiler]. Don’t want Refrain ruined for anyone!]

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#2

Some Refrain spoilers~

I think that they really learned how to write good male characters while working on Angel Beats!
Masato, Kengo, and Kyousuke were amazing. Masato has to be the funniest character I have ever seen! Kengo really won me over in Refrain… After everything Kyousuke pulled, I lost my trust for him a bit… but I know he had good intentions. With what happened to Rin, and what happened Kengo and Miyuki during the baseball match… Kyousuke could be cruel sometimes.

While I wasn’t fond of him at first, Yoshino from Rewrite turned out to be a great character. He was always there to support Kotarou at the important times. Even though he was just a normal human, he showed real emotional support, and was easily the most noble and thoughtless character throughout Rewrite~

#3

I moved 4 posts to an existing topic: Haruhiko Yoshino - Character Discussion

#7

I was preferring to keep the threads route-oriented than character-oriented. I also think the Key boys deserve more than one thread! Key Boys feels too broad, and we’ll end up leaving the thread to die without having gotten into any in-depth discussion about each individual character. How to organise this…

Excluding characters who get their own route (Sunohara, LB Bros, Sakuya), maybe a thread for each character? I’d be totally on board for a Yoshino thread. Though there are some Key boys who probably don’t deserve their own thread. (Rest in peace Kitagawa.)

Let me know what you think.

#8

Poor Kitagawa… He had some good moments in the anime at least ^^;

I guess it makes sense to have separate threads, but I feel like a lot would die…

#9

It’s only a matter of bumping them up. It’s a better fate than having them all die together :stuck_out_tongue:

#10

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

#11

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.

#12

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.

#13

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 ~!

#14

That’s who I want to read about most in the Visual Novels! We barely know anything about him…

#15

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

#16

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.

#17

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)

#18

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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#19

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~

3 Likes
#20

Thisthisthisthisthisthisthis x999999 <3

1 Like
#21

Otome Games. And yeah, totally agreeing with some of these ideas :stuck_out_tongue:

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?

#22

Surely Kyousuke deserves a thread all for himself.

#23

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.