Oh hey I guess this thread is up and kickin’ again :o
Well, I made this thread back then and labeled it specifically as “Favourite Key Series” as opposed to “Favorite Key Visual Novel” specifically because I personally think that judging a work for it’s sake of being a VN adds a whole new dimension of things to take into consideration. I guess I might be unique in this opinion, but I very much treat VNs as a video game, and not just a medium of storytelling as most would label them as. So, personally, if I asked myself “Which is my favorite Key VN?” I would take things such as choice mechanic and story branching into consideration. By labeling it as “series” I could focus on things related more to storytelling such as characters and setting (even though, for the longest time, I had been undecided). Which is why, in the first poll, I did not consider Tomoyo After as a separate series. Of course after learning more about the series, I realize I am wrong, and Tomoyo After and Kud Wafter definitely do stand alone as their own series, whereas Harvest Festa does not.
Digressing aside, I guess it’s about time I put in my vote for favorite series. See, like I said, for the longest time, I had been undecided about this sort of thing. So I decided to do what I do best: Analyze the shit out of it!
So here’s what I did: I would rate each of the series over certain criteria, then calculate which one would get the highest average score. However, I couldn’t rate them with a simple “out of 10” scale, because then I’d just end up rating all of them 8-10/10 in all of the criteria, and that wouldn’t get me anywhere. As such, my scores for rating would be a rank; The series that I think did that criteria best would have the highest score, and the one that did that criteria worst would get the lowest. That way, being the lowest score would be heavily penalized.
The criteria I selected are as follows:
- Characters: This refers to how much I like the characters. This includes their personality, the character growth in the story, how well they fit with the setting, how well they interact with each other, and so on.
- Setting: This refers to the initial setting of the story. How conducive is the setting to the series, and what that setting means to me. Good way to think about this is if the story were to take place in a different setting, could it still be told the same way? If so, then the setting isn’t very good.
- Theme: Somewhat of a personal criteria, but I rate this as how good I think the theme is, how well it was portrayed in the story, and how much it affects me in my life. Can’t be having subjective answers without subjective criteria, now can we?
- Main Story: This refers to the main, overarching story. Kind of like the final route that puts all the things together. Kanon is a bit of an exception in that it only has side stories; you can argue that Ayu’s is the main story, but I still see that as a side story.
- Side Stories: What would Key series be without their routes after all? It’s hard to rate this as some series may have a huge diversity in the quality of their routes… but it ended up quite nicely, IMO, as I felt each series had a certain consistency in terms of route quality. Planetarian is also an exception here as it has no side stories.
- Emotional Impact: Another more personal criteria. This being works by Key, I expect a certain emotional impact from the story. Not only while reading, but also long lasting emotional impact; one that I can look back to and still feel emotions for, probably years after reading the story.
- Music: This is actually a big part for me because of how much I value the music. Not only am I looking for the quality of the music, rather, how well the BGMs fit in with the story at the time it was being played.
Now then, onto my ratings!
Characters:
Kanon: 3
AIR: 2
CLANNAD: 1
Little Busters: 7
planetarian: 4
Rewrite: 6
Angel Beats: 5
Little Busters has, without a doubt, the best characters. Quirky but lovable cast, lots of character development, and great involvement between each other. Rewrite takes second, with Angel Beats following. Planetarian was pretty solid, then the rest of the series come after. What I found to have the worst characters was CLANNAD. To be honest, none of the characters really stood out to me. Even though I say my favorites are Ryou and Kappei, I just pick that out of a sense of interest, and can’t really articulate why I like them. Furthermore, the characters don’t really develop much =/ If anything, Tomoya is the only one that heavily develops throughout the story.
Setting
Kanon: 7
AIR: 3
CLANNAD: 2
Little Busters: 1
planetarian: 6
Rewrite: 4
Angel Beats: 5
I find it a bit interesting that I rate Kanon as the highest in terms of setting. Much like other Key works, it has a very mundane setting to it, which I am honestly not a fan of. However it has two key elements that I think drive the story: Snow and Memories. The snow adds this somber tone to the series as a whole, and the fact that Yuuichi has memories with all of the cast which he must now bring up again I feel is what drives the story, and it couldn’t have worked otherwise. I may be a bit biased in picking planetarian and Angel Beats right after as these having more fantastical settings gives it plus points. Rewrite’s was a bit more unique because of the layout of Kazamatsuri. AIR was also a bit more unique because it was a very small, unpopulated town. CLANNAD and Little Busters, however, use the heavily overplayed “mundane high school” setting, and, the way I see it, any other mundane high school could have worked to achieve either of those stories.
Theme
Kanon: 1
AIR: 6
CLANNAD: 7
Little Busters: 2
planetarian: 5
Rewrite: 3
Angel Beats: 4
Like I said, this is one of the more subjective criteria. I absolutely loved CLANNAD’s theme of family, and can relate to it quite a lot. The subthemes prevalent were also ones that I could appreciate as some of them were inherently romance-focused. AIR’s was also really great and I have the bookclub to thank for helping me realize it’s theme. planetarian and Angel Beats once again have pretty solid themes, what with the valuing of life and experiences. Rewrite’s and Little Buster’s themes while, sure, they were good, they just didn’t click with me (and I sometimes felt a disconnect between the story and the theme being presented). Kanon’s simply had no worth for me. It definitely felt like each route was a separate story with a separate theme, most of which really didn’t apply much to me.
Main Story
AIR: 5
CLANNAD: 4
Little Busters: 6
planetarian: 3
Rewrite: 1
Angel Beats: 2
Little Buster’s Refrain was, without a doubt, the best main story in any of the Key games. I would have generally chosen Clannad’s after story after this, but I definitely gained a whole new appreciation of AIR’s main story after having read it. So clannad goes after that then planetarian whose main story was also solid. For Angel Beats, well… I can’t help feeling that the main story was Otonashi’s story, which I really didn’t appreciate much. Perhaps this will change in the VN, perhaps it won’t. Rewrite, however, disappointed me the most with the Terra route. While I think that it is pretty well-written, I still didn’t gain much from it.
Side stories
Kanon: 3
AIR: 2
CLANNAD: 4
Little Busters: 1
Rewrite: 6
Angel Beats: 5
This might be a personal opinion, but I enjoyed each and every one of Rewrite’s side routes. The great part about it is that they all had a different feel to them, which added to the diversity of those stories. Angel Beats was pretty solid in this regard, too; we had Yui, Iwasawa, even Naoi, all of which tackled really heavy themes that I loved. CLANNAD was a bit more inconsistent since some routes I loved, others I didn’t, and Kanon’s was pretty average. However, with Little Busters, I was never a fan of the side routes. A lot of them I think weren’t written very well. Many of them I didn’t even enjoy.
Emotional Impact
Kanon: 1
AIR: 6
CLANNAD: 7
Little Busters: 5
planetarian: 2
Rewrite: 3
Angel Beats: 4
Clannad had the best emotional impact for me. Not only did it have me bawling while reading/watching, it was also one that I could look back and still feel the same emotions about. AIR was a close second and LB was pretty up there too. Angel Beats had one memorable scene for me, but I don’t want to rate it highly just because of one scene. The rest were average, and I guess Kanon was the worst as it imparted not much emotional impact that I can look back and feel the same way towards.
Music
Kanon: 5
AIR: 6
CLANNAD: 2
Little Busters: 4
planetarian: 3
Rewrite: 7
Angel Beats: 1
Rewrite had, IMO, the best music. Quality was great and they fit the specific parts of the story as well. Heck, even Harvest Festa’s BGMs were good. AIR’s was a bit repetitive at times but they sounded soooo good and were so fitting. Kanon’s had this sense of nostalgia that I absolutely adore whenever I hear it. Angel Beats had the worst BGMs though and the GDM tracks really weren’t enough to carry it over.
So, after rating everything with my system, how do the results look? Well I divided the total scores of each by the highest possible max score for each (since Kanon and planetarian have lower max scores) then multiplies by 100 to make it more readable, and it looks like this:
Well whoop-de-doo, AIR and Rewrite are tied… I just don’t know how to feel about this anymore @_@ Rewrite definitely had more solid points for it, but also had things that I think drew away from it’s potential. AIR, on the other hand, was pretty solid in all fields, but didn’t win in any.
It does however give me a good way of looking at how highly I regard Key works. Heck, after AIR and Rewrite, all the other series are extremely close to each other, which accurately represents how I feel about them. Kanon lags far behind, though, and I’m okay with that as I was never a big fan of Kanon.
So I guess you can count me as still undecided for now. I hope Charlotte will be good enough to break the mold 
Unless I decide to add a new criteria, I don’t think these scores will change much. I made these like a month or two ago, and I looked back on them and still haven’t changed anything (except one field where I accidentally put the wrong value in)
