Key General Discussion - Recurring themes and comparison

[machelmore]

So I noticed that there’s no general Key discussion where you can freely discuss any Key franchise without limiting it to one specific topic. This topic can be used to discuss any two (or more) Key series’ (anime, VN, even manga or works by Key Sounds Labels - I think comparing other things to Owari no Hoshi no Love Song could lead to good discussion.) This includes One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e and MOON, though you’d have to be especially careful with spoilers for them.

Obviously not everyone has read/watched every Key series, but there are bound to be some who have, and many of us will have read/watched a decent amount of them. As long as everyone is considerate with their spoilers, I think we can have a good discussion.

Please mark any late-series references and whatever else necessary with [spoiler] tags, providing adequate context in parenthesis.

[machelmore]

So the reason I thought to make this topic in the first place was because I was reading through One again and I came across this:

Which of course got me thinking about Air.


I think it would be cool to find out how many times we can find recurring phrases/themes like “my true/other self” and “eternal sky”.
(Little Busters spoilers)I know “eternal sky” comes up at least in Mio’s route, and now I’m wondering where else in Key I can find it.

[Takafumi]

This is basically the “other world” thing which exists in ONE, Kanon, AIR, CLANNAD and Litbus. It was a style inspired most notably by ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’, something I myself have also referenced a bunch. It signals a detachment from the present, and a desire for something unknown but familiar. A lot of the Key protags (and a few of the other characters) get stuck in this idea of an internalized dreamscape, which commonly expands into an outer true reality.

This is also one of the reasons why I said “the most Maeda thing since ONE” in reference to the Owari track Kooru Yume. It explores the same subject in a more juvenile light.

[Bread]

Something I find quite interesting is how Maeda approaches reoccurring themes throughout the various titles. While there are a bunch of recurring sub themes if you look at the arcs on an individual basis, the primary themes of a handful of the titles are also in direct parallel. This will spoil all of Kanon and some of Little Busters I suppose. Most notably here I’d like to look at how Kanon and Little Busters both approach coping with loss and regret.

To first give a brief overview, Kanon is universally about how we cope with loss and grief, having few sub themes through the heroine arcs. Most every character, even secondary cast like Sayuri and Amano, has a plot that revolves around a major loss in their life. Makoto, Mai, Nayuki, and Ayu lose Yuichi. Sayuri lost Kazuya. Shiori and Kaori are on the cusp of losing each other. Yuichi lost Ayu so on and so forth. Every arc is structured similarly, then, with the characters first coping with their loss poorly only to realize the reason why they are grieving so much is that they carry so much love. Makoto is angry, Mai lies to herself, Kaori cuts off ties, Sayuri blames herself and self harms, Yuichi chooses to forget and the list goes on.

Similarly, Little Busters–and I’ll be a little more brief here–focuses on how we all deal with and accept death. Throughout the heroine arcs, though, this is a bit more in the subtext than it was in Kanon, with the more principal theme instead being regret. The theme of loss is more palpable in the arcs of Komari, Saya, Sasami, and most importantly in Refrain. None of this is to say, however, that the sub and meta text of Little Busters is not constantly referring to loss and the pain of regret.

What I find most interesting is where these two similar stories differ in their approach and what they ultimately have to say. Put simply, Kanon ultimately looks at why it is that we grieve and where those feelings come from where Little Busters looks at what it takes to move on as well as what the knowledge of loss informs us about life. This can be easily understood as the result of Kanon being more about love and Little Busters being more about maturity.

The characters in Kanon hurt so much because they love. All of the pain that the heroines carry with them in Kanon comes from the fact that the one who is lost is always someone very dear to them. In this way, Komari’s arc is very similar to the execution of Kanon, even if it ultimately is colored by the Little Busters interpretation of loss. Every resolution in Kanon–even the classic Key magic happy ending–is gained through the characters recalling that their pain came from love, that the important thing is to never forget how much you loved what is lost.

Just as Komari is the Little Busters character who is most similar to Kanon, I think that Sayuri is the Kanon character most similar to Little Busters. Ultimately, Little Busters speaks to the inevitability of loss and the finite nature of youth. Resolution, then, comes from the cast being able to make the most of their limited time together and overcome their regret. Little Busters is about second chances and recovery, about growth and maturity. The cast of Little Busters throughout the narrative seek to find peace in their past failings enough to move on. Sayuri is unique in Kanon for being the only member who has already recovered from her loss. For Sayuri, Mai was her salvation, her second shot and chance to forgive herself for never showing her brother the love he deserved. Being in this position she is able to guide Yuichi and try and help him live a better life, a life like a kanon. Indeed this is how Little Busters is most different. Like with Sayuri, it places much more focus on how loss makes us need to live better more thoughtful lives.

Through Kanon we learn that pain comes from love and it is that feeling of love that is what is most needed to recover from loss. Holding onto love is the best way for us to move forward. Moving on is hard. It hurts to lose, but it is something we all must face.
Through Little Buster, we learn that life is short. Too short, in fact, for us to be wasting any of it. Strength is the ability one has to keep walking forward, to see as much as you can and continue on when things get tough. All of us must do the best we can to enjoy life and youth while we have it.

Kanon and Little Busters work well in tandem, each managing to tackle a different part of the pain of loss, both in ways that are brilliantly constructed and beautiful.

What a good boy that Jun Maeda

[machelmore]

So, getting back to One, and talking about Kanon, noting that this contains what could be
construed as common route spoilers, but this could all appear in a review, so it’s
probably fine to read it even if you haven’t read one or both of them. I’ll put it under a
spoiler tag anyway though.

Comparing One to Kanon, I think the easiest thing to talk about is the music.
I’m sure anyone who’s played both knows where I’m going with this already, but there are
two tracks from the different games that sound very alike. The track “The Voices of Trees
and the Bustle of Life” from Kanon sounds pretty much like a slower version of the track
“Run, Girls, Run!” from One.
I’ll get back to what this means in a minute, first we’ll talk about Sumii and Kitagawa,
the respective male classmate “homie” characters. Sumii and Kouhei seem to have known each
other a while, but Yuuichi and Kitagawa obviously meet in the story. Sumii is much more of
a “homie”, while Kitagawa is just kind of there. This, too, we’ll get back to.
Next is Nagamori and Nayuki. It’s implied in One, though you don’t see it too much, that
Kouhei spends a lot of time with Nagamori, walking home with her and the like. However, in
Kanon, Nayuki is always busy, usually with club practice. Adittionally, waking up in the
mornings, the opposite situation occurs. In One, Kouhei is unable to wake up on time, and
Nagamori is forced to suffer the consequences, and the opposite is true for Yuuichi and
Nayuki. In One, the main character is the one at fault, but in Kanon, he’s more of a
victim of circumstance. In One, it’s the main character that determines the fact that the
two can’t hang out properly in the morning, but in Kanon, there’s nothing Yuuichi could do
about it even if he wanted to.
Finally, is snow. Despite both being set in a freezing cold winter environment, it doesn’t
snow in One, unlike Kanon. More rain, less snow.
These are all very indicitive of the difference in atmosphere between the two games which
have very similar settings. A music track with less energy, a more distant friend, an
inability to spend time with people, a cold permanace rather than a short battering. In
this way, I’m actually one of few who doesn’t mind Kitagawa’s character. It fits better
with Kanon’s themes than Sumii would. Kanon is intentionally cold, and lonely, and sad.
As for One, there are much fewer underlying themes throughout the whole game, and this is
expressed very explicitly in Kouhei’s erratic behavior.
Just thought I’d write about how the difference in the two bgm tracks really drives home
the incredible difference in atmosphere between, as I said, “the two games which
have very similar settings.”
Might come back to this later and see if I can tie it in with the other games, maybe compare all the school-based Key VN’s in this manner, but we’ll see.

[Takafumi]

Your judgement of Yuuichi is interesting. You paint him as more of a victim than I would. Yuuichi is commonly the one at fault; though there are issues of circumstance causing some of the problems, Yuuichi usually handles the issues so poorly that he causes more problems than he solves.

[machelmore]

So in the Komari route podcast for the Little Busters bookclub, the podcasters brought up how Riki can have a good romance with pretty much any of the heroines. So I thought to talk about what makes some of the Key protagonists different, and how it affects their romances and choices. I talk about One, Kanon, Rewrite and Little Busters here, but there aren’t unmarked spoilers.

Riki’s title is “ordinary boy” for a reason. When you have a main character that doesn’t have a very strong personality (unlike Kotarou from Rewrite or Kouhei from One, for example), there’s nothing strange about them acting differently depending on who they spend their time with. Between different routes, you can portray the character as optimistic, idealistic, pessimistic, realistic, and so on, and it still works. Although, (Sasami route spoilers) they went a bit far in Sasami’s route. When I was reading it I couldn’t help but think “when did Riki become Kotarou?” Of course, you could say that the opposite is just as true, when you have a really erratic MC (looking at you Kouhei), they can be outright contradictory in their behaviour between routes and it’s not strange at all. It kind of makes it difficult when you have a MC right in the middle, like where I would put Yuuichi from Kanon. They kind of make up for it in this case by making many of the decisions really inconsequential, the kind of things that could be influenced by whims, but some choices (for example, the choice to enter Mai’s route - to go to the school in the middle of the night to pick up Nayuki’s notebook) aren’t so easily explained away. And, coincidentally, I don’t particularly like any of the Kanon romances.
If I had to say, in Riki’s “ordinary boy” case, it’s easier to have each romance be solid, but difficult to make any of them amazing. While in Kouhei’s - or any such MC’s - case, it’s easier to make an amazing romance, while some of the others will usually be sub-par. (Rewrite spoilers) For me, Rewrite demonstrates this best. I can’t think of a love story better than that of Akane’s route, and Kotarou-Chihaya is easily my favourite pairing of all time, but Kotarou and Shizuru together felt somewhat bland. But in LB, all of the romances are good, but I don’t think any of them are amazing. Though this is a relative judgement, I still think all the romances in Rewrite are better than the LB ones because of my Rewrite bias.
That’s my two cents on the subject anyway, though I’d like to hear what other people think about it.

You paint him as more of a victim than I would.

At least when compared to Kouhei. Though admittedly, a lot of people are a lot of things “when compared to Kouhei.” Getting back to the point, I do agree that Yuuichi doesn’t exactly help the situation, but that kind of also plays it’s part towards what I’m talking about, I think. At the very least, I do think it’s a much more deliberate decision on Kouhei’s part whether to spend a lot of time with others or none. But with Yuuichi I’d say that whether it’s inadvertently his own fault or not, his intentions play a much smaller part towards how much time he spends with people.