Kitazawa, Yukito, Sunohara, Yoshino, Yoshino, Kotarou; I guess I underestimated 
I didn’t count Yuuichi and Tomoya because they didn’t really have a “design” in the VN so I can’t even be sure if Hinoue designed them at all
I also didn’t count the old guys like Esaka and Komuro now I feel bad 
but Tomoya had a design in Tomoyo After.
I never played tomoyo after so I guess I didn’t know about it D:
I had to go with Tomoya. Despite their stark differences, their similar traits make them all kind of blend together in my mind, so I chose the protagonist with the strongest story to me. Once I finish Rewrite, Kotarou might take his place as I’m totally in love with him already.
Totally never noticed there were two before. So we have and Shiori, Yoshino, and Yusa with recycled names (and a few others if you count pre-Key stuff). Anyone else I’m missing?
Fix that immediately!
I personally didn’t find it too special, it was sweet I suppose but I don’t think it’s a must play.
Yeaaaaaah I should but eeeeeh. Kinda waiting around for a memorial patch but then again I don’t have much time recently D:
Would be pretty fun to do right after re-reading clannad, though!
end digression
It’d be either Kotarou or Tomoya but I ended up picking Tomoya since I didn’t really like Kotarou’s huge development in personnality that depended on the girl he dated… I mean, yeah a guy does change depending on the girl he likes but Kotarou was different in each route, I’d believe it if someone said that it was someone else.
Anyway, I’ll stop critisizing Kotarou, he’s still an awesome protagonist and he’s got some characteristics that I like that other protagonists don’t.
I can’t really say why I favor Tomoya though. I just like that guy.
Tomoya is my favorite, with the Junker coming in at a very, veeeeeery close second.
Tomoya just benefits too greatly from After Story. After Story forces his character to progress in ways that no other Key protagonist can match. He was enjoyable but fairly standard fair in the school arc (kind but rough around the edges sarcastic delinquent is hardly groundbreaking characterization), but After Story just elevates his character to heights that I just don’t think the other protagonists since have achieved.
The Junker just works excellently as a narrative lens in Planetarian. There’s not a lot I can say specifically here, because nearly everything about the Junker contributed meaningfully to driving Planetarian’s story. Seeing such a cynical guy be amazed by the projection of the stars will always be one of my favorite Key moments.
Planetarian did a fantastic job for how short it was. In ~3 hours you learn as much about the Junker as I feel you did about Tomoya in the entire school arc, at least as far as personality goes. The kinetic novel is too short for him to really develop too much but you still get a good idea of how the events of it effected him.
Tomoya, easily.
First, he’s set apart from most other VN protags by the fact that he has a face and a very strong personality, rather than the first person blank slates common in most VNs. Second though, his character goes beyond just being entertaining and into the territory of feeling like a real person–he makes mistakes (some pretty big ones near the end); he has failures and weaknesses–but he also has a very realistic and down-to-Earth motivation to keep living the only life he has, no matter how dull or dreary it may seem.
RIP Yuu
Tomoya did a good job of having enough personality to be interesting without distracting from the other characters.
I’ve always weirdly liked Riki. But I think that’s just because he’s the kind of male character that most people reading these visual novels would hate and I find that satisfying.
I haven’t read/watched all the key series they are out there, so my opinion might change in the future. but i must say Tomoya is my favorite protagonist i have encountered so far. The reason is pretty simple; his personality is complex enough, that you will see him different ways through the routes, and change your opinion about him. For instance, i thought he was an asshole after reading baseball, but i changed my mind after reading tomoyo’s route. and you might say, that changing the way you see a character is pretty common with a VN; and I agree. The fantastic part about Tomoya’s character is that he remains consistent throughout those routes. His personality doesn’t change really; you just learn more about the reasons behind his behavior. Also, the diversity of the situations the author put him through plays in his favor, because it allows him to show multiple facets of his personality that could have easily been ignored if the story had always been similar in every route.
All in all, I thing he is a pretty well rounded, charismatic and consistent character.
I picked Rei
Unlike the other Key protagonist, Rei has a goal in life to better himself from the very beginning. Thst’s something the other protagonists lacks.
From what I saw from the screenshots from Harmonia, Rei can also easily clarify things such as how Tipi and Shiona felt. Unlike the other dense key protagonists who don’t understand situations. Not all the time, but for the majority of the time. Of course, we haven’t read Harmonia yet, so I don’t necessarily know if its was just a one-time thing, or legit.
Anyways. Other then Rei, I also like Hinata. The best friend who will always have your back.
At the beginning of Rewrite, Kotarou says this:
(…I’ll do it all over.) (And I’ll do it better this time…)
where he sets a goal to make him and his life better.
I’m not saying you have to like Kotarou, but he doesn’t lack “a goal in life”.
If you think about it, he’s only bettering the world and not himself. He has no flaws but his outcasted-personality is what he tries changing, to better himself, yet the thing he doesn’t understand is that he already had people who didn’t outcast him.
Kotarou’s goals to better his life is more by doing whatever he thinks is exciting, instead of beneficial.
Plus, we all know that since Kotarou didn’t have his memories in the next route, that goal isnt really a goal he could reach and remember. Something you want to do, and somthing you CAN do, is different.
Until he got his memories in moon of course
I honestly think it’s pretty dumb to pick a character on the basis of a short plot point that may or may not even represent the character. For all we know, he doesn’t even care about learning emotions!
This poll (like everything else on the forum) is something we take seriously, so it’d be more helpful if you took your thoughts seriously and digged deep down to find a protagonist you like the most. Not only would it be productive to discuss, but it is also disrespectful if you don’t do this, considering we all did this.
That’s contradictory, so I’m not quite sure what you mean…
That may be true in the common route, but in the prologue, Kotarou says:
“It’s wonderful, it’s unknowing, and it’s terrifying.”
in reference to “youth”. Following the flow of dialogue backwards, we see that he then equates youth to happiness, and happiness to his “earnest wish”, which was to “do it all over”. Him trying to achieve his wish is not something exciting, rather something he would avoid. This is his earliest attempt at his goal of making his life, his youth, better.
Everything below that was irrelevant to my argument.
There are many things wrong here. I will not invalidate your favorite character as it is, of course, a subjective opinion. However, the reasoning just did not make sense. I guess you like the protagonists specifically having the goal of bettering themselves? That’s a little confusing to me seeing as we have not had the opportunity to see the entire game, and with it, the entire development of Rei’s character. But anyways, you also said that it was from the beginning. That, to the extent of my knowledge, is baseless speculation. The game does have screenshots and stuff but it does not make it clear that it was from the very beginning. But anyways, I completely respect your opinion, even if I don’t fully understand it.
So I haven’t actually posted in this thread yet, I chose my favorite as Tomoya, but Okyakusama the Junker is in a very close second. I think I might have a slight bias towards Tomoya just because Nagisa and Ushio.. Tomoya, while he does not have a clear goal at first, shows himself as very human in the beginning. He’s made his mistakes and still makes mistakes but he uses whatever he can to help his family in After Story an Tomoyo After, which I think is a very noble goal.
On the other hand, I also like the Junker. He represents how the world has changed from Yumemi’s time. The way he fits with Yumemi just makes so much sense and I love how he develops over the course of the novel, including how he ends up in Hoshi no Hito. Also the Junker, to my knowledge, is not dense at all. He might be dense compared to what Yumemi thinks, but Yumemi has not changed with the times.
Oh that was longer than I thought. Please excuse any misspellings because I wrote this on my phone
I think I originally voted for Hinata… but thinking about it recently that doesnt actually make much sense. While he is an extremely cool bro, and I sure hope he gets alllllll the time he deserves through the VN and rest of HD, I dont think I can call him my actual favorite.
Tomoya and Kotarou are both really cool dudes, and I love them both to bits.
For some reason, Ive always found Tomoya to be extremely relatable: his problems are those of relationships with family and friends (ones that everyone has to deal with), his development just makes so much sense to me, and I love to dig into his personality.
Kotarou, conversely, is not written to be relatable. He has problems that no reader will ever deal with. Tanaka writes his thoughts so poetically, though, that he becomes so interesting to listen to. Yet it seems to be written as a metaphor for real-life problems. And one the greatest messages Ive taken out of Rewrite is the way he deals with his confusion and making choices in life that are really hard and sometimes dont make sense.
However, neither of them take the cake in this poll for me. I gotta still go with Riki. Riki is so normal, to the point of the game making fun of it internally. He’s a nice kid, he’s a rational kid, and boy does he ever have to deal with a lot of shit.
Lots of people see him as weak, but Riki’s strength may be the topic Ive written about most on this forum (or at least thought about writing about). He is incredibly reliable, and he is able to do some things that I have thought about deeply, and have determined that I probably could not have made the same choices.
One of my favorite things about Riki, though, is how I can easily see why so many people want to be around him, to help him, to be his friend, to love him. So often, this is a humungous problem with protagonists: people seem to flock to them for no ascertainable reason, girls fall in love with them “just cuz”; its all just for plot convenience.
Riki sure is surrounded by some amazing people. A whole team of them. It would be easy to say that Riki is only cool because of the cool people around him. But they all love Riki for a reason, and I think that reason, while very complex (as all human interaction indeed is), can be simplified to the fact and the strength of his love back for his friends.
