Kazamatsuri has been very important to me even if I was never a fully fledged member of the community. I discovered Kazamatsuri around 2012 when I played Rewrite, but I didn’t join up until 2013.
Back then I was known as Gurluas. Eventually I actively joined in conversations and Kazamatsuri was a positive place, I even made some friends, attended some events and experienced one of my favorites games, 100% Orange Juice. Unfortunately I never got to participate in a podcast and real life caught up with me eventually bringing me to the point where I can’t do it anymore… It saddens me to see Kazamatsuri actually end though… But I guess all classes have to graduate someday.
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This isn’t quite an open letter, but you’re definitely a full fledged member of the community, don’t worry.
There’s not just one way to participate, and I hope that everyone has been able to participate in a way that works for them.
If this community means or has meant something to you, you’re definitely a proper member, and don’t let anyone say otherwise.
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As the Magician of Words, I should probably say some… words :3
I came to this community with the promise of beautiful stories and fine people, and I got it. The experience I had with Little Busters was one of a kind, having not read any other Key novels (other than Planetarian the week before) and thus I was able to dive in with a fresh set of eyes, and try to figure things out. Puzzling out the story and putting just… way too much effort into my posts brought joy to me, especially as I was in a part of my life without much else, no job, no school, friends that lived far away, lots of depressing free time. I loved chatting with other members of the community about their interpretations and experience with LB that for them came years before my own. It gave me a reason to get up early in the morning.
Fittingly, in the spirit of Key, you all are what made this place great. I love how passionate a lot of you are, it really shows on the forums and on the podcasts. Of course there’s a special shoutout to @Aspirety for being an absolute madman and keeping this place breathing for so long.
Y’all nerds take care of yourselves. If you ever need a class clown, you know where to find me. After all, that’s the one thing I want to be remembered for 
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Hmm…where do I start?
First off, otsukaresama deshita! And Happy Graduation! While I am melancholy to see Kazamatsuri close it’s curtains, as I was when Rokkenjima did, I’m so thankful that I got to join both communities. Seemingly just in time to catch the last act.
I remember the first time I joined very vividly. I was a member on Rokkenjima first and indeed 07th Expansion works are a huge part of my life, much like how Key is for members here.
When I joined, and even now, I’m not as big of a Key fan as I’d like. I was so hesitant to join here, and even as time went on felt more like the observer, the one who watched.
I read planetarian, some of Little Busters! Rewrite, and now AIR. I want to be moved by these stories. Seeing the members of Kaza express a passion and love for them has given me a deep humbled appreciation for these works.
I want to learn, and be moved, more and more by the world of Key, and that will continue from now on thanks to Kazamatsuri.
I can’t put my finger on it. But it feels meaningful to me.
Despite not being as big of a fan, I was encouraged to join and welcomed anyway. That was a gift I will appreciate forever…
As the wonderful treasure Kazamatsuri gave to me that I will forever be thankful for is meeting wonderful friends.
From @Aspirety, to @liclac, from @RyuuTamotsu and I’s first meeting, to the subsequent hangouts and the new friends I met at those times too. The memory of going to Comiket to get merch for everyone too will stick with me for sure!!
To the Winter Festival and Vitamin C fun, our thoughtful voice chats, to meeting recently @Mogaoscar in Japan with Shinto adventures and good talks!
There’s so many treasured, fun memories I hold dear in my heart thanks to Kaza. That will stay with me for life, and I’m forever grateful.
Perhaps a Key work hasn’t moved me deeply much yet…but I can say for sure many Key fans here at Kaza have.
I’ve met some of the kindest, most genuine people here, and honestly that speaks volumes to me. I have a deep appreciation to have been able to experience being a part of this community.
To everyone, thank you so much.
Graduation always comes with feelings of bittersweet happiness…but we will always have our cherished memories, and continued bonds from this time of Kaza!
Let’s enjoy the time for now, and go out with a bang and celebration!
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I joined Kaza not too long ago, but I will say I knew about it for a long time. I was already part of an existing Key community but I decided to check out Kaza last year and I’m glad I did.
Many of you probably have no idea who I am but if you participated in the Winter Festival, hey maybe you do. That was an incredibly fun time for me. Me and Team Vitamin C got so into it and I thoroughly enjoyed making content for the event. Shout out to @Naoki_Saten @cjlim2007 @KaiMiang @BeanCurd and @Celeskastel. I’m really glad I got to meet you all and make such wonderful memories. Honestly the Winter Festival is the last good memories I had before I entered a really rough period of my life. Thanks for helping me end off 2018 with a bang! And of course thanks to @Aspirety for making me feel welcome.
@Mogaoscar You are also really cool.
I lament that I don’t have as many memories as the rest of you do, but I will still think of Kaza fondly after its closure.
Naze daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
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I first discovered Kazamatsuri back then when I was really in love Little Busters! 5-6 years ago (I think?). There’s some part of me thinking right I should’ve join back in those days, but at that time, I thought wouldn’t fit in or anything and besides, I’m not really the type of person who can easily interact with people around the internet. I just enjoy, and maybe satisfied reading discussions as a lurker and as an outsider.
Kazamatsuri’s community and discussions made me realized that there are some stories that shouldn’t be taken at a face value, that maybe perhaps there’s much more to it than it meets the eye or something like that. I can still remember at that time, after school and doing other school stuffs, I will go to bed and read some discussions on the forum and think a lot about LB! before I go to sleep. That was certainly a fond memory of mine.
I may not be a long time member here and maybe I was late to join the community, but better to be late than never, right? Even for a short while, I can’t deny the fact that I made some good memories here even those were very little moments.
I am especially very glad that I was able to participate in Winter Festival. At first I was hesitant to join in, but I’m glad that I decided to join anyways. That was certainly a wonderful experience that I will never forget.
I also even gained a title for some reasons…
But hey, I actually like it, it sounds cool. It is certainly kind of accurate… Anyways…
I always think Graduation is not the end of everything, but it’s a start of a new chapter in life. Who knows what might happen in the future? I am actually looking forward to that.
It was an honor to be a part of this community.
Thank you very much!
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I had both fun and some not so fun experiences in the community. All I have to say is I liked all the discussions we had, and thank you all for participating in them with me.
This is fairly short and straight message but appropriate from my view.
keep enjoying Key media guys!
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A long time ago, I chose to quit Kaza. I deleted the majority of my posts, removed my own avatar, and went my own way. While I still appreciated the forums, they weren’t really the place for me, who prefers the fast-paced style of a Discord discussion.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have any fond memories of this place. While I disagree with many decisions taken since I joined around two years ago, I can say for certain that I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t joined Kaza. Even forgetting about my own participation, just reading up on all the Key discussions helped expand my horizon beyond my own views.
To the friends I made while here, and to those who I never met: Thanks for being awesome Key fans.
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Maybe the only things I can wrote is. Thanks for everything.
I’m not too good at writing or expressing myself and maybe that is why I’m not much contributing in here. But in this journey I find new friend and someone that I can talk about Key since there is not so many around me. although I could counted as new member in here since I’m only around here at end of 2016(?) but I grow fondly in here just like the Kazamatsuri front landing page said “a Home for key fans”. It’s was fun… to see someone talking about something I like and I sometime talking about something I like.
I know that there was end of journey in every story. I just can’t accept it the idea somehow, but in the end i should accept this hard feelings.
Again I will say it again, Thanks for everything.
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Feels strange, writing this which is like my first post on here in two or so years. Still, I feel the need to voice my feelings.
When I joined Kaza, which was some years ago now! I was still a teenーwell, I was 18, if I’m not mistaken. At the time, just like everyone else, I joined because I loved Key, nothing more than that, really. I remember my first experience on here being the Great Charlotte Wars, which was a lot of fun, but being the overexcited young’un I was, I just loved arguing, so that worked out. The community was of course divided in terms of opinion back then, but everyone was nice, and I felt very much welcome around these parts. I remember that one night I spent talking with @Pepe, who was always very kind to me. At the time I was going through Key’s works, posting my (looking back extremely embarrassing) opinions, but I still managed to get into (one) podcast, the CLANNAD bookclub episode on Tomoyo’s route. That was embarrassing! but a good memory overall, I really loved having that opportunity. Thank you @Aspirety for giving it to me. I also made other acquaintances here that helped me, I’m thinking here of @RyuuTamotsu who welcomed me during my stay in Japan.
Then, as I grew, my interests became more diversified, and I lost the time to invest in reading KEY’s novels, apart from the one Angel Beast 1st Beat. But, although I stopped having any material to throw on here, that doesn’t mean my relationship to Kaza was over. At the time, I was thinking of building my own anime community. And Kaza was an essential part of my ideals, at the time. I wanted to create a community like this one. It took me a long time to grow to the point where I was ready to begin doing that, but at all times Kaza’s ideals were an inspiration, so that this place stayed with me even as I explored other paths (which is also why I agreed to help mod Kaza when Aspi was looking for someone). Above all, it was this community who opened me up to new voices and experiences when I was still a narrow-minded kid; if I was able to change for the better, it’s in large part because of this community’s ideals, and the kinds of people it gave a home to. For all of that, I have so much to thank Kazamatsuri for.
This is a bit of a strange moment for meーconsidering how long Kazamatsuri was up and running, all in all my period of active involvement was short, and I feel like this community has grown much beyond what I knew when it was my online home (not that this is a bad thing), so that in some way this closure comes as almost natural to me. At the same time, I still feel that something is going missing; a now distant but very real starting point for me is going away, and I can’t help be saddened by that. I wish I’d had the time to regain some activity here before it closed, but work has only grown to take up more and more of my time.
Even still, the time I did spend here, and even more the time that Kazamatsuri continued to live in me as an example of something I aspired to, the people I met who helped me grow, all of those things will remain with me. The end is sad, and I regret that I haven’t been able to give back to this community as much I’d have liked to. But it doesn’t compare to what I did earn from being a member of this community.
Thank you, Kazamatsuri.
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I don’t really know how to put my thoughts into words, but I really wanted to thank everyone here. I don’t remember since when I have known Kazamatsuri ( in a first time I was just reading the bookclubs and I did like how people respect each other and share their opinion here ) but joining the community almost one year ago was definitely the best choice I could have made. Before, I was a shy person who wasn’t able to interact with others but thanks to Kazamatsuri I was able to meet people like me who are fond of Key and I was able to gain more confidence in a complicated part of my life ( I was moving in a new region which is why I wasn’t as active as I would have liked to be ).
I am not really good when it comes to analysing stories but thanks to your advices and
@stupid encouragements, I discovered my passion for drawing and improved my skills.
Learning that Kazamatsuri is going to close saddens me because I really liked its atmosphere, the people I have met here and I would have liked to participate even more in the forum but all good things must come to an end and I understand that keeping this community alive isn’t an easy task and everyone has to pursue their goals in their personal lives.
I am very thankful for accepting me, for the time I have spent here and this year will always be a dear memory for me. Kazamatsuri is the only home in the Internet I have been part of and I think it will be the only one.
Good graduation Kazamatsuri and thanks for everything.
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Since I joined a few days ago, I don’t know if I’m allowed to speak my mind. I’m sad that this place is closing down, for two reasons, the first being that I just joined and the second is for all the memories that I couldn’t make in the past and the ones that I could in a possible future. This was going to be the place where I could talk about the stuff I love openly and without feeling too conscious.
So, even though it wasn’t for long, I have to thank you all for a wonderful possible future. It was a short letter and I’m sorry, but once again, thank you.
Stay well.
“This isn’t my blood anymore, but my own life! And it’s time to call it forth!” - Kotarou, Rewrite
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So this place is coming to an end. I haven’t been active in a very long time, but it was nice to be in an active Key community, pretty much the only english speaking Key community, even if I wasn’t really active enough after a while. I’m not the best at being social and I’m not terribly verbose so long essay style posts were beyond me.
Anyway, I’m glad that this place existed and I’ll be sorry to see it close. Thanks for everything.
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I guess I don’t have much to say. I’ve had many moons to process this development. At the start of the year I went through as much of Kaza’s records as I could, and the stark decline begins all the way back in 2017. There was a lull because everyone was bracing for an LB! release in the summer, but that didn’t actually happen for another five months. That was quite unfortunate, and we never swung back from that. Ironically enough, we had the Love Song bookclub right before that which is like the best bookclub.
For four years Kaza has been my outlet, as well as my main reason to practice my writing and translation. I defintely got a free pass on a couple of school assignments because of that practice, and boy has my translation gotten better. Like, the Jerusalem project was six months long for an hour of content, lol. I also have this vivid memory of when we were playing around with the 1st Beat trial. It’s like the first scene when you meet Yui; she’s playing the guitarr in the parking lot, and NPC’s are throwing meal tickets at her like confetti. The phrase used to describe the ticket rain is ‘sakura fubuki,’ literally meaning cherry blossom blizzard. I spent a long time thinking about what to do there because “You should just translate straight and preserve the original message, right?” No, you retard, you need to make it gramatical and idiomatic in English first and foremost, goes present me. Haven’t had anything to direct that energy at for a while though.
Now here I am, already grown up
Still going on. The same old bike, still pedaling on
Going along these long empty roads
If just by any chance I’m passing you by. Are you still the same as I
Keeping that light close to your heart, like in those precious days
My pockets are still filled the same with brilliant memories
– Summer Pockets, Pocket wo Fukuramasete (Trying to adjust for syllables/rhythm. Always dreaded doing that because I’m the least musically knowledgable naked ape on this hunk of space rock.)
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Three and a half years. Although truly it’s been more like two years, since I haven’t really been active for quite a while. With Kaza having run for about 5 years it even looks as though I have been here for just two minutes in comparison. And yet it doesn’t feel that way.
Pretty much like many here, I joined cause I liked KEY and was getting into their VNs, having just read CLANNAD, LB and AB First (and last) Beat. I found the community to be extremely welcoming and got to learn much about writing essays, opinions and such in English, which is something I hadn’t done in my life outside of the ones I’d written in English exams.
Put this way the beginning doesn’t seem remarkable, but at the time I got to join the Kanon bookclub and that’s probably my most fond memory. It wasn’t too many people participating in the discussions, but nearly enough to look like a lively place. Still, not enough to become a marketplace full of strangers. It had this vibe of being in a small residence where people just come in and go out, some hang out around the fireplace and chat about a route, others are outside having a picnic talking about another route. I don’t know, that bookclub felt somehow more close-knit than the following, although that might have just been cause it was the first.
Then came the Tomoyo Bookclub, which was maybe the moment where I was the most active. I’m extremely satisfied with the posts I wrote at the time, and by that time I had learnt enough about music to start doing music analysis, covers and more, so I really took off and learnt tons of classical music, arrangements and improved my piano skills using Kazamatsuri as a motivation and creativity catalyst.
But that was the forum and my contributions, which I’m proud of, but can’t even compare to what I value the most from my stay here: having been in an Internet community for the first time, having made a bunch of friends, and having gotten to meet some of them in their respective countries, which is just a mindblowing experience for me.
Who would’ve told me that one day I’d be streaming Dungeons and Takafumis with @VyseGolbez and the next day I’d be walking around Tiergarten in Berlin with her, and even doing an escape room. Who would’ve known that @IkaCZ, the madman behind the “just shoot the heads” meme would be telling me to look for a turboautist with a Nao-Nao T-Shirt at the Charles Bridge in Prague. And as recent as three weeks ago, I would’ve never, ever imagined to have made such a connection with @Celeskastel that we’d have amazing talks and I even ended up practicing and learning about Shinto. I’m really looking forward to hanging out with her again, plus she’s more than invited to come to Spain and stay over at home as a token of gratitude for all her help (which wasn’t little) during the typhoon and the whole disaster that followed during those 2 days.
And here was were I wanted to go: I could talk about how Kaza shaped my way of writing, seeing the world, appreciating VNs and all that jazz, but at the end of the day, it is when I inevitably had to say goodbye (and hopefully see you soon) to all three of you, that I remember Kaza and how it wouldn’t have been possible without it. And that’s why I want to thank the founders, in particular Aspy and Pepe since they are the ones I’ve interacted with the most.
I sincerely thanked @Aspirety after all the typhoon thing because I really felt that way. It’s not like I haven’t had my ups and downs with you especially since we tended to have pretty much almost opposite opinions on certain critical social matters in the community and I ended up playing the devil’s advocate way too many times. But after all, Oli was telling me of you going to Japan soon and I can’t feel otherwise but to think that I should’ve gone to Japan a month later to meet you too. And I mean it, my financial situation isn’t the best for travelling, but in a couple of years when I’m fully out of university and finally have a full-time job, I’m also looking forward to visiting you, be it in Australia or wherever we might coincide. I’ll keep my word.
@Pepe, you’re a being of light. From the first time I saw your posts and your interactions in the discord I’ve wanted to meet you too. Honestly, it was a bummer when just as I was planning my Japan trip quite a long time ago now you proclaimed that you were going back to the Philippines, so I guess now I have another country to visit in my bucket list 
There’s many good things I can say about you as a person, but probably the things I’m the most grateful for are your selflessness with the Japan Post service you started and the Secret Santa events, which for me will forever be the embodiment of my personal Kaza values: trusting others you might not know and giving your all for those you are getting to know.
Kazamatsuri might be over and it was to be expected within the last two years. You need and deserve the rest, that’s something I’d been seeing during my latest active times earlier about 2 years ago, but you guys kept pushing forward for the community, and despite what some might say about overworking yourselves being stupid, you have my admiration for having gone so far, not for a project, not for a fandom, but for a community the interest of which could’ve been whatever. Thank you for your selfless work for the sake of its members.
And with my main point being the connections between members, I’ll seize the opportunity and will ask you all, that if you ever come to Barcelona or Madrid, hit me up so that we can meet, regardless of whether we’ve talked in Discord or the forums before, even if we don’t know each other at all. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt here, is that meeting someone from Kaza IRL can’t possibly go wrong.
PS: @AustinDoujin You bastard I was in Vitamin C too LMAO. You were also fun as hell, come visit Barcelona
And @RyuuTamotsu, I’m going to remember your proposal to go around the desert on camels when we meet!
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You’re alright, Moga.
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I joined Kazamatsuri around 2016 when the anime of Rewrite started and sought for the place to discuss about Key (and practice English). Though I am not so an active member, I felt excited to talk about Key with people from diverse background after every official releases from Key.
Another great opportunity that Kazamatsuri brought me was hanging out with Key fans lived in Japan , like @RyuuTamotsu , @Glenn_Irish, @shiro021, though we didn’t have many chances to meet, every meeting was memorable for me.
Anyway, thank you so much for making and maintaining such a great community for @Aspirety and other staff members, I wouldn’t have such a great experience without the effort of these kind and thoughtful admins.
The closing is a bit sad, but everything that has a beginning must also have an end. I hope people advanced for a new beginning have 良い旅.
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Stupid Austin, I knew there couldn’t have been a glitch in the Matrix when I saw you on my Discord friends. I’ll be real I could not remember the names of half the people who were in Vitamin C so I just pinged whoever did the fandub/podcast and also BeanCurd lol. I definitely remember you by name though, the smell of orange juice may have faded from you but you stuck around.
Barcelona huh, maybe one day…
13 minutes after posting: I remember now, you made the music for the SSS recruitment drive. That was baller mate. I actually still have it saved to my computer.
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I don’t know what to say other than thank you.
Over these last 4 years on this site, I’ve met and talked to so many awesome and kind people, and many of them I consider to be my best friends.
Kaza also helped me a lot when it came to talking and getting to know new people, as I was a suuuper shy person back in the day.
Big thanks to @Aspirety for creating this community.
I will remember Kaza for a very long time…
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