Today I wanted to talk about one of the most obscure Key characters: Key-chan (and her sister Kuu-chan).
Key-chan is the forgotten mascot of the studio and… it’s honestly very hard to find any info about her on the web so I’m going to be the most exhaustive possible and share everything I know about her. I hesitated to create a topic dedicated to her but since she has made some appearances in Key works I think it’s better to talk about her here.
Key-chan first appearance
It’s hard to say when was the first appearance of Key-chan but it seems very probable to be in 1998, when Key was founded.
Regularly, Itaru Hinoue made a new drawing to illustrate the front page of the Key website of the time, at the beginning she only made drawings of Key-chan and then she created a new character: Kuu-chan, the sister of the mascot. According to this page, their real names are Kisato Asamiya (麻宮姫里) and Kuu Asamiya (麻宮空).
Key-chan was also used to illustrate the banner of the website.
Kuu-chan first appearance
The Key website is totally different today than before but by using archive.org we can find most of what it was before. If you go here, you can find nearly all of the illustrations used for the front page (you can also find one more Kanon related picture in the old gallery).
Key-chan appearances in Kanon:
The first appearance of Key-chan in a Key work was in the cafeteria of Kanon, she’s on the left:
As you can see, she has the same appearance as in the front page picture n°3 :
In Kanon '06, episode 17, she also appears in the cafeteria with her sister Kuu-chan:
(a bit spoilery)
Key-chan also “appears” in the CG were Makoto is reading manga while eating nikumans. Take the magazine on the bottom of the pic, flip it and you’ve a part of the front page picture n°4.
Jun Kitagawa was used in the front page pictures made before the release of Kanon (see here and here), according to this page (and the Crunchyroll one above), Kitagawa was planned to be the older brother of Key-chan and Kuu-chan, this fanart seems to illustrate this:
Key-chan and AIR:
Key-chan doesn’t make an appearance in AIR however, there was a nice front page picture with the mascot sisters to promote AIR at the time:
A third girl with pink hair was also created at the time. She’s apparently the rival of Key-chan (the alt of the picture in the source code of the front page says キィちゃんにライバル登場?). So she has a sister, a brother and a rival, now you know everything about the complex lore surrounding Key-chan
Key-chan appearance in CLANNAD:
She makes a final appearance in CLANNAD, in the VN (Fuko’s story spoiler):
In the anime (episode 9):
…and that’s about it for the official works. The 19th October 2004, the design of the Key website was changed, removing the front page picture, and Key stopped to use Key-chan.
In Kanossyu 2:
The two girls appear in their CLANNAD uniforms in this doujin shoot’em up. You need to unlock them if you want to use them. There is a small description in the manual, of course Key-chan is supposed to be among the strongest characters.
We can find some drawings and commentaries about Key-chan in some of the extra works of Itaru Hinoue, like at the end of the Kanon artbook (or in Ganbare! Kaeru-kun, Aqua Lovers 3, …):
We can also find her in some merch:
And also in some fanarts:
Notice that she’s holding a Keropii like in
her second appearance (be careful, the link is a bit NSFW).
(If you’re interested to know, the two girls with the white hat are Kanon and Shion,
they were created to promote the 20th anniversary of Visual Art’s. If anyone knows who is the girl with the Little Busters uniform at the top of the picture, I’m interested.)