White hair loli- check
Life changing accident- check
Reunion of friends- check
Regrets about life - check
Vague symbolic title - check
Giant fat cat that causes earthquakes - nope
I don’t see a connection at all : J
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Busters is just a popular title that japanese groups adopt~ I looked all this up a while ago though, when Anohana came out, so my memory of why it is so isn’t great~
I think my first impression of the first episode was something like “Oh cool. It’s Litbus Kingdom Hearts!?” It wasn’t…
Kanon is a reference to Pachelbel’s Canon in D, but there’s no reference to it at all in the VN. A canon is a piece that contains multiple instances of the same melody playing at different points. It could be taken to mean that time flows on and things change, while a lot of things remain the same as they were before. Yuuichi had noticed that a lot of things had both changed and stayed the same. The girls he knew seven years ago had grown up, but most of them had not changed personality-wise. Sayuri said it best in the anime: ‘[The song] repeats the same melody and crescendos gradually, peacefully, and beautifully. It would be nice if life changed like that: slowly, but surely, while being seemingly unchanged from day to day.’
[quote=“Pepe, post:1, topic:709”]
(This may be kind of obvious but I don’t want to jump to conclusions having not played the VN)
[/quote] Same here. This is why I am not going to discuss the meaning behind AIR until I have read through it.
Clannad is Gaelic for ‘family’, which is an underlying theme throughout the novel. The relationship between Tomoya and his father, Nagisa and her parents, Fuko and her older sister, Tomoyo and her brother, Kyou and her sister Ryou, Kotomi and her parents, and even Ushio and her parents were all important parts of each character. After Story really talks about the difficulties of keeping family together in the midst of hardship, and was told really effectively. (The Past Path also did that with Atsuko’s route, although it was not as well-executed as After Story.)
The meanings for a lot of visual novels’ titles are quite convoluted. It may seem like the developer just decided to pick a random English word that sounded cool and ran with it, but that’s not always the case.
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As has been said earlier, while there is a sensible reference to Canon, and while the anime does play on it, I just can’t seem to swallow that thought simply because it isn’t mentioned in the visual novel.
And now we have two more additional titles (and one sort of Key title) to add into the fray
- Why is Charlotte called Charlotte?
- Why is Harmonia called Harmonia?
- Why is Holy Breaker! called Holy Breaker!? (and why is the exclamation point so important?!)
While the first two are too early to figure anything out, Holy Breaker! does deserve some discussion.
…if only we could actually get information about it 
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Exclamation! Point! Is! Crucial! For! Titles! These! Days!
It started with Little Busters ! Then Angel Beats ! Then Holy Breaker !
Then when they decide to make sequel, they’re gonna add more exclamation points.
Angel Beats!! or Angel Beats!!! Or Angel Beats!!! or Angel Beats!!!
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Like “K-On!” and the second season “K-On!!”… I think Japan are just bad at naming things (See: Nintendo).
I don’t understand the casing on Key’s franchise names. Why is CLANNAD in all-caps? And AIR? Why does planetarian not have a capital P?
That caps thing also stated boldly by Takahiro Baba. planetarian must be all lowercaps and CLANNAD must be all caps. I guess it’s like title stylization to make things more catchy?
Also, Holy Breaker is also all caps, plus exclamation mark. So it’s HOLY BREAKER!
(I don’t know why are they shouting the title like that. I’m gonna use it as the replacement for expletive HOLY SH*T!)
Anyway I’m glad Key didn’t succumb into the overly-long title boom. Imagine if one of our beloved VN title is “My Childhood Friends Can’t Be This Dead” or “My Family Life is Horrible as Expected” or “We Still Don’t Know the Name of That Student Council President in Our Afterlife”
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and I believe he also stated how VisualArt’s must be spelled
And that’s why we always shout HOLY BREAKER! in the chat lol
Long title naming sense is strictly reserved for Light Novels 
Last I checked, Charlotte is called Charlotte because Nao is a planet/Yu is a planet/The comet is a planet/The Camera is a planet/Hitler is a planet and they’re named after some obscure dwarf planet.
Harmonia probably has a music theme with a name like that.
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Harmonia makes me think more about, well, Harmony as a term.
A collection of similar or different things coming together to form something new and interesting.
Or something like that…
Think of the protagonists search for emotion as adding flavor to his world. Color to gray. The right seasoning to food. It’s creates a wonderful harmony~
Speaking of which, in planetarian at first I thought it’s a corruption for planetarium, and I never knew that “planetarian” is actually a legit word (I thought Key just made up random words yet again like in CLANNAD case). I’m sure I’m just being slow and dumb here…
According to thefreedictionary, planetarian means 1. a staff of a planetarium (that’s Yumemi) and 2. inhabitant of a planet (that’s the Junker… or humans in general). So I think the title is really fitting for the whole cast (well there are only two characters there duh)
I suddenly got interested about the title when I listened to planetarian drama CD: Hoshi no Hito. The popular translation for “Hoshi no Hito” is “Man of the Stars” but when I think about it, Hoshi can also mean planet and it struck me: maybe the most elaborate translation to Hoshi no Hito is actually… planetarian. And I wasn’t completely wrong, I guess…
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Wow I totally did not learn this until today, and just realized how fitting this was. Nice find!
And thanks for reminding me that I should really listen to Hoshi no Hito >_<
Which is one of the reasons behind my argument that “planetarian” refers to Junker, maybe even before it refers to Yumemi. The other being:
Or maybe Hoshi no Hito is meant to show how “planetarian” originally refered to Yumemi, and now refers to Junker.
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I always just said that Yumemi was the inhabitant of the planetarium so, yeah, planetarian. lol
I’ve been meaning to ask this for a while now. The answer might be simple, but I’m still not as sure.
Does anyone know what the purpose of the names were for certain routes ? Such as “After Story” or “Refrain” or “Ecstasy” or “Terra” ?
After Story is pretty much self explanatory, but what about the others ?
Also, CLANNAD, Kanon, Air, LB, Rewrite, Charlotte and all that had meanings in their names, but what’s the meaning behind the names for Angel Beats! and Kud Wafter ?
And one last question that has to do with Saya and parts of Refrain, which I still don’t understand. If Saya died in the real world, how was her soul wandering all those years until the LB crash happened ? In the first place, did Saya actually die ? If she didn’t die, would that have meant that the Little Busters! gang would have never had Riki, cause Saya would have been there for Riki ? These stories are intriguing. I wouldn’t have minded if Saya had her own VN spin-off. Would be much more interesting.
I believe that Little Busters! Refrain comes from the fact that in music, a refrain is something that is sung repeatedly (iirc) which would definitely fit with all the stuff that goes on in Little Busters. Also, refrain has another definition. To refrain from something is to “stop oneself from doing something. (according to google)” This is definitely relevant as you could say Kyousuke refrained from helping Riki bring the Little Busters back together in Refrain. These might not be right, but I will continue to believe these because they seem to fit so perfectly.
I haven’t played Little Busters! Ecstasy but I will assume that the Ecstasy part comes from the h-scenes. Sha la la la…
On the other hand, Rewrite has Terra and Moon which REALLY FKING BOTHERS ME BECAUSE WHY IS IT NOT LUNA AND TERRA OR MOON AND EARTH?! I guess Key had to mix it -.- I bet there’s some real meaning there but I haven’t really bothered to figure it out.
Angel Beats! is because if you didn’t notice the ridiculous amount of cardiograms (don’t worry I didn’t know the first time either) the series has a lot to do with the heartbeat. Specifically Kanade’s heartbeat. Kanade = tenshi = angel. Heartbeat = beat. Therefore, Angel Beats!
I dunno about Kud Wafter but I assume its following the Tomoyo After naming convention but playing with it a little. The main character in this case is Kud not Tomoyo so therefore its Kud After and then they add the W to after because wafuu!!! So that’s my guess for Kud Wafter although I have never read the vn so don’t trust me on this one.
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As CJ and Pepe have said, the Beats part most likely represents a heartbeat. If I remember correctly, the significance of the heartbeat is that Kanade has Otonashi’s heartbeat, or that they beat the same way (from some episode I forgot the number of).
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Mhm. After Otonashi’s death, his heart was donated, and implanted into the body of a young girl with a fatal heart condition: Kanade.
Fair warning: Spoilers aside, this post contains emotionally scarring content.
I remember stumbling upon a Little Busters confession on Tumblr (can’t find the pic anymore because the blog was deleted… idek why) which was something along the lines of how it’s so wrong to abbreviate LB’s name as LitBus. Considering the things that happened in Refrain… I hope this is just a mere coincidence because if it isn’t, well, goddamn, Maeda. I have no words.
