I think people can call any supernatural event in whatever way they want. Some calls it magic, some not, it doesn’t matter . What matters is that whether the supernatural events that happened in key games are relevant/irrelevant? Did it contribute or weakened the story? Why and how? So yeah, i guess we kind of gone side tracked.
Sorry for the wrong grammers
Regardless of whether you call it supernatural elements, magic… (I’ll be referring to it as magic anyway), there are moments in which magic is greatly used and others in which in my opinion, even though they are not incorrectly used, it doesn’t add anything new to the story/theme of the VN or Anime.
Introducing it from the start just gives the story a whole lot more possibilities. Angel Beats! and Charlotte’s stories and main themes revolve around their magic worlds or elements. Basically, it allows the writer to create a whole new set of rules to place the characters in. A great example I find of this, even though it is not from KEY, is No Game No Life. The main characters are sent to a world that works in a very different ways, and you can see how everyone has adapted his lifestyle to those rules.
Introducing magic elements at the climax generally contributes to a big fail. Every single magic element should be slightly foreshadowed or even fully explained, regardless of when it is actually used. The reason for this is realism. For any story to feel realistic it needs to have a decent logic consistency in between the events that happen. When this doesn’t happen the audience / readers are left out thinking that the plot development is all too convenient.
KEY works however, don’t have this problem as far as I know. The magic used at the climax is usually properly foreshadowed.
And this is what I don’t like about those magic endings. As you’ve said, the issue is not (Shiori’s route and CLANNAD After Story spoilers) keeping Nagisa and Shiori alive.
Then, why do you use magic to solve a problem that never existed?
Emotional relief. You can rest easy knowing there is a (possible) timeline where shit doesn’t happen. At least I think that’s the intention; how well it works is a different story.
‘Key Magic’ is a touchy thing for me, mainly because while it doesn’t really bother me when it’s used, I do question whether it enhances the story by being there. I mean if you’ve read all of Key’s works you know that Key Magic isn’t always a thing, and for a second I just want you to imagine what if Key Magic was there as well. Would it affect your enjoyment or even interpretation of the story as a whole?
For me, it’s a yes, and it likely would’ve affected my enjoyment negatively. There’s a time and place for Key Magic and I’m glad it’s not in every single Key story; though I’d even go so far as to say it should’ve been in fewer games. That being said I do recall at least one instance where I believe it actually adds to the story.
(WARNING! Spoilers for ALL of the as of this post translated Key visual novels!) In Little Busters for instance, I feel the Key Magic ending where Riki and Rin manage to save everyone only adds to the story and themes rather than taking away from them. It shows how much stronger Riki and Rin really have become. But I’ve already talked at length about this in the Refrain discussion topic.
Conversely, Tomoyo After very much benefitted from not having a Key Magic ending where Tomoya survives (cautious glare at the all-ages rerelease) since Tomoyo being able to move on and still dedicate her life to helping random strangers is very much part of its themes as far as I’m concerned, and having Tomoya actually survive would actively go against that. There being no Key Magic is instrumental to the very reasons why it’s my favorite Key ending.
In regards to CLANNAD’s After Story I’m rather ambivalent… I don’t feel it really adds much to the story to have the Key Magic miracle occur. The real reason I like After Story so much is everything before that. At the same time, since it’s a separate ‘route’ I don’t think it really takes away from the main story either… since all of the development of the main path still happens in that main path, and it’s not invalidated by Key Magic. That’s tredging very close to the edge of acceptability though, and I think it might have been better if there was no true end.
To have a happy ending. It’s kind of like a bonus, as they say in Japanese, an “omake”. As shiori said in her route, (paraphrasing here) the reason why we have fiction is so that we can have happy endings that don’t happen in reality.
I see a lot of people calling flak over the ending of clannad, but you know what I think? (CLANNAD After Story spoilers)I think that even if they did skip the timeline where Tomoya learned the harsh lesson of being a father, that still gives value to the story, and in a very big way. Why? Because even though the tomoya that saves nagisa never experienced that, we as readers experienced that. And I think that is the most important thing about Key’s works: that we as readers learn from the growth that the characters experience. The characters are fictional, after all, and them losing all of their growth is merely temporal. But we are people who interact with other people every day, and if we take these lessons that we’ve learned and use them to help other people close to us then, well, I think Key succeeded in the stories that they tried to make..
Non-spoiler summary version for you guys, but I think that the important thing to take from Key’s works is that they aren’t simply stories where we watch a character learn and grow and fight through obstacles; they are stories where we as the readers play a central role in the immersion of the story, and we must grow along with the character, that growth being something more permanent than any character growth in any other piece of fiction.
Let’s remember what most works of Key are: Games. Make poor choices or fail to understand the characters and you’ll get a bad ending. Guide them to a solution and you get a good ending. Explore the game in its entirety while giving your best guidance to all of its characters and you’ll get the true ending.
Of course, when the element of “difficulty” disappears from the equation due to transfering the story to a different medium (or using a walkthrough), the true endings seem too “magical”. Of course it’ll feel like the happy ending has been reached too easily if you get it without putting in any effort. Of course you’ll hate a lazy dude who inherited his parent’s riches while comparing him to someone who earned his money through hard work.
Now back to focusing on the story aspect. I’ll be quoting my own post from the a different topic:
As was stated several times in this topic, “Key Magic” doesn’t solve a problem. It’s all about the character’s development. It’s all about the struggle they’re going through. Because they have become stronger and better people, because they have reached the goal in the best way possible to them, they are rewarded.
Here’s my favorite example about so-called deus ex machina in Key: Kud route in Little Busters, which way too many people fail to appreciate (Kud and Refrain spoilers):
If you haven’t reached Refrain yet and you don’t pay much attention to the dialogue, then it’s easy to consider the ending of the Kud route a deus ex machina. The power of love saves the day, shattering the chain and saving the loli’s life after a telepathic chat all the way from the other end of the world.
Let’s pay attention to the dialogue now. What does Kud lament? Of course, there’s the sadness of never seeing her beloved again. But that’s not her biggest problem. What pains her the most is that she could never become a great person like her mother, that she remained a useless gear. She actually kinda appreciates dying as a sacrifice to comfort her desperate coutrymen, because she would finally become useful that way! That’s messed up! So the goal here is not survival. It’s for this self-deprecating character to overcome her despair, to appreciate herself again and to forgive herself. And Riki manages to do just that. The broken gear becomes a tool of self-liberation.
And now apply your Refrain knowledge: Kud’s survival on itself does not matter here because she’s actually as good as dead for an entirely different reason. What matters is whether or not she can liberate herself from her regrets. After all, the whole imprisonment and sacrifice thing is something she did in order to punish herself and the goal of the route is to make her realize how wrong that is. She survives the imprisonment because her guilt isn’t binding her anymore and she does not wish to be punished. She saved herself and Riki helped her do it. There was never an external force at work.
I personally prefer feels over realism and good ends over bad ends. But even if I didn’t, I’m pretty sure I still wouldn’t dismiss Key Magic as something like a cheap way out. Once you take a closer look at the stories, you realize how greatly it complements them.
I seem to be seeing a lot of posts that conflate any implausible resolution with being a Deus Ex Machina; this is not quite correct.
The most important aspect of a Deus Ex Machina is that it is a plot resolution that is set up insufficiently or not at all earlier in the story. In other words, if all the pieces for an ending are in place prior to the final act, then the resolution, no matter how implausible it may be from a real world perspective, cannot qualify as a Deus Ex Machina (henceforth “DEM”).
To examine the difference (as I see it) will require that I bring up some examples from outside the realm of Key. Beware: Spoilers follow.
For an example of a DEM, I’ll direct you to Edge of Tomorrow (the film adaptation of All You Need Is Kill): After Cage (or Keiji) finally kills the Omega, time still resets, even though it was supposed to be the Omega, which is now dead, that facilitates resetting. Not only that, but it sends him back a full two days, when it should have only been one. This irregularity is never explained by the film, and presumably only occurs so that we the audience can see Tom Cruise get the girl in the end. Now, I really thoroughly enjoy this movie, and even its ending, but that doesn’t change the fact that this resolution runs completely counter to everything we the audience have been told thus far about how the film’s universe works.
Now, for an example of an implausible resolution that is not a DEM, let’s examine the Harry Potter series: In the Chamber of Secrets, a Basilisk fang is used to destroy the haunted diary of Tom Riddle, which is explained to carry some part of Voldemort’s consciousness imbued within it. Additionally, the sword of Godric Gryffindor becomes soaked in Basilisk venom. Come the Half-Blood Prince, a larger revelation about the exact nature of Horcruxes, and a brief overview of the kinds of weapons that are known to be effective against them, and the method of ultimately finishing the Dark Lord becomes perfectly clear. Even just within book two however, Dumbledore tells Harry offhand that Phoenix tears possess potent healing abilities. Later, as Harry lies dying of Basilisk poisoning, Dumbledore’s Phoenix, Fawkes, who had already helped out earlier in the battle, sheds several tears into Harry’s wound, saving his life. And, of course, we must never forget Dumbledore’s greatest piece of advice: “Help will always be given at Hogwarts, to those who ask for it”, which he would later amend to “Help will always be given at Hogwarts, to those who deserve it”, a change which carried its own significance as the story progressed. Here, all of these resolutions are set up by earlier events–Jo Rowling went in with a plan, and all she had to do when there were loose ends was to pay off all the plot points she had already set up earlier on.
Now, I haven’t been through every Key story, so I’m not about to speak to all of them, but I think I’m safe in saying that for the ones I do know well (Clannad, Angel Beats!, and a few of the routes from Kanon and Air), the supernatural elements of Key stories fall more often into the latter category: Resolutions which, though implausible, are indeed set up earlier in the story.
I like a lot of the responses in this thread, but I’ll add my two cents.
Just because an ending doesn’t invoke Deus Ex Machina, it doesn’t mean that ending is satisfying, or that you should expect people to accept “well, it was foreshadowed in the beginning.” People forget a lot of things and if they aren’t primed for the reveal, they will feel cheated.
Case in point: CLANNAD. I love this game to death, but even though the orbs of light were foreshadowed throughout the game/series, nobody expected the orbs of light to bring Nagisa back from the death. This reveal ultimately appears as a plot twist (even though you can argue it isn’t) and since they weren’t expecting it or didn’t have the orbs in the forefront of their mind, they might feel cheated. Specifically, the viewers had absolutely no reason to suspect that Nagisa’s life/death status was tied to the orbs of life.
It makes sense within the narrative. The “need” for the orbs of light didn’t appear until Ushio died. It would be a different story if, say, Tomoya kept wishing for the resolution of his problems, and at the end of the story, his wish was granted. But that isn’t the case. The “trigger” for the light orbs activating doesn’t actually happen until the absolute end of the narrative. There was no way to prime people that “hey, remember those orbs of light? They might be important soon.”
This is all about viewer expectations. You can logically invoke Chekhov’s gun and say “well, that thing at the beginning of the movie? You were supposed to guess that it would be used at the ending” but sticking a few hints in the narrative without context of their use does not necessarily free you from “an unsatisfying ending.”
TL;DR: I think, to be concise, I’d recite some writing advice I received a few years ago: “the ending should be surprising, but inevitable.” The trajectory of the entire story should lead up to that ending. You can say “well, it was foreshadowed” all you want, but that doesn’t mean the ending was “inevitable.” You can use this argument against CLANNAD: there is no reason to expect that Nagisa would be brought back to life, since the latter half of After Story focused on Tomoya’s recovery and also in Little Busters!: there is no reason to expect the Little Busters to live, considering that the entirety of Refrain focused on Riki and Rin “moving past” everyone’s deaths. Like yeah, KEY had their bases covered, but does that make it satisfying? Your mileage may vary. (Neither of those bothered me at all, but I know people that really had problems)
Sorry for rambling, but hopefully I got my point across
“[I]f there’s ever someone you want to save… Search for the light in the other world” That’s from the end of After Story. That’s so blatant you would have to be an idiot to not know what it’s referring to. At that point, anyone with half a brain should realize completing that goal will give you that ending.
I’m probably conflating the game with the anime because I definitely don’t remember that being mentioned in the anime
edit: and also that my recollection of the gameis from the machine translated After Story, rip
Note: just realise I’m speaking in respect to the anime and not the visual novel.
I think, in a way, “key magic” made some of the anime more realistic - ironic considering it involves magic. The main example is Little Busters.
Little Busters Refrain (anime) plot twist spoiler
Convinently every girl Riki talked to had some sort of regret or tragedy in their lives that need to be resolved. Thanks to “key magic” this is explained. With Kyousuke, Kengo and Masato making that phantom world with the 5 girls,thus, Riki was kinda pushed into talking to the 5 girls, rather than it being a convinent coinicidence. Do I think that is “Deus ex Machina”? No way, it actually gave the plot room to have more depth to it. The literal disappearance of Mio Natsumi was a fantastic tool to express the idea of loss of identity, and envoked a larger emotional response for me. The repetition of June 20th for Kurugaya also made her story more powerful for me because the repetition emphasised her desire for stay with everyone. Not to mention that overall, the “phantom world” was a fantastic plot twist and made the ending immensly entertaining
However, for Clannad, it did kinda feel like a “Deus ex Machina” in a way
Clannad after story (anime)major spoiler
The magic of Clannad was always referenced throughout the anime so it wasn’t put in there out of laziness or to convinently wrap up the story. However, when Tomoya went from Ushio dying to Nagisa back alive, it felt like a “Deus ex Machina” method to make the story a happy ending. I’m not saying it’s bad thing, I feel like this method completed the story because after Tomoya’s large ‘self discovering’ or ‘self monologue’ (however you’d like to describe Tomoya’s scene after Ushio dies), they couldn’t leave it with just Ushio dead, or if they did, I’d probably be pissed with the story. But, at the same time, it felt like the producers wanted to go down the “bad route” to make clannad so emotionally strong and give the story depth , but then revert back to the “happy route” to make everyone happy, and thus, get views and sales. What do you reckon?
it felt like the producers wanted to go down the “bad route” to make clannad so emotionally strong and give the story depth , but then revert back to the “happy route” to make everyone happy
(VN spoilers) That’s how it worked in the VN too. You had to get the bad end before you could go back and get the good end
I kind of excuse this by using (CLANNAD everything)the mutli-world idea brought up in Kotomi’s route. Every “route” is a different world. In some of them he gets an orb of light. All of the Tomoya are connected through Ushio (I’m going to drop this here because I don’t feel like going into detail again about this. I basically say that Ushio, who is the girl in the illusionary world chose Tomoya to help Nagisa.). So Tomoyo’s bad end exists in one world. Kyou’s good end exists in another. And there is a world were Ushio and Nagisa are dead. But there is one world where Nagisa, Tomoya, and Ushio get their happy ending. The progress Tomoya went through isn’t nullified, at least not completely, because nothing was “undone.”
The reason why “Key magic” exists in CLANNAD is so that they can explore these themes of family and allow Tomoya to grow as a person by experiencing these hardships while still leaving room for a happy ending without nullifying anything.
@DaBackpack Your thing about inevitable endings seems incredibly vague, so Im not responding to that in particular, but both of your examples from CLANNAD and Little Busters! overlook the same thing: the essential messages that were, in fact, some of the most important of the entire story which were conveyed as a result of the endings playing out in the way that they did.
I really recommend you go read @Karifean’s post about the meaning of LB’s ending, as its probably the best Ive seen it put yet.
CLANNAD’s ending is much more complicated because of the complexity of how the light orbs and the town and the Illusionary World actually work.
I dont think I could even remember it all without going through CLANNAD again, but every single character in the story not only teaches Tomoya something either about himself or about relationships/life, but also reveals to him something that, when you add it all up, the ending comes to not only make sense, but possibly even be, as you say, inevitable.
And given the ambiguous nature of time in the Illusionary World, there’s no requirement to think that the Girl and the Robot had an easy time figuring out what it all meant and what they had to do–they could have sat there, wondering about it for thousands of years, and it would have still seemed to outside observers like us that no time had passed at all.
There have been a few more posts here that seem to dance around whether key’s magic is a deus ex machina or not that seem to not take into account my previous opinion but whatever, and I’ve thought pretty long about this and decided I wanted to approach this from a different perspective. Yes, I would like to convince all of you that none of what results from Key’s magic is deus ex machina.
I feel like the most contested matter is that of CLANNAD After Story, and Tomoya saving Nagisa’s life by collecting the light orbs. Not only is it contested on this forum, it seems to be the butt of jokes around the internet. But maybe we should step back and try to view this for what it really is. Most of Key’s works are visual novels, as we all know. However, one thing that I think that people constantly forget is that visual novels aren’t just static stories like movies or traditional novels are. Visual novels allow you, as the reader, to choose the ending to your story.
So, going back to CLANNAD, why is it that people can never accept the “true ending” when, in fact, you’re their the ones who sought out that ending? Why is it that people always have to go for the “true ending”, ignoring the fact that visual novels aren’t as static as that, and that multiple endings exist? Why must people always rely on walkthroughs, and not take the time to explore the world that these visual novels offer to us? I can go on and on with this topic, and it’s one of the things that I, as a person who “plays” visual novels, secretly has gripes with towards the rest of the community.
What I’m trying to say is that visual novels aren’t stories where the writer tells you what happens and you accept it; YOU have the power to choose which ending you want, and accepting only what is regarded as the “true” ending is what I think gets all you people so disappointed in it. I’m going to go into spoiler territory for another visual novel, but it’ll be minor so if you aren’t super iffy about it, I suggest you read this next paragraph. (Chaos;Head spoilers) Take for example, Chaos;Head’s endings. There are three endings to this visual novel, and yet none of these endings are really implied to be “true” endings. You, as the reader, have the choice to believe which of these endings are true. And, sure, while some of these are a lot more fucked up than the others, I think this power of choice is a great thing. If you can take that mindset and put it into every visual novel you play, then I think it’ll have a pretty big effect on your perception of these endings.
So when people say things such as:
Then my response is: isn’t that what you chose? (After story spoilers) Weren’t you the one who chose to be dissatisfied with the horrible ending of Tomoya and Ushio dying in the snow, and went ahead and sought out this new happy ending? You could have just stopped right there, and accepted that as the ending to the story, and it doesn’t lose any of its value whatsoever
Actually, I can bring that logic to other instances in Key:
To name a few. So to end my long and slightly inebriated rant, I leave you with this question to ponder: In Key’s Visual Novels, what makes the bad endings any less valid than the good endings? Stop accepting the static nature of “true” endings and start realizing that visual novels, much like life itself, can change with simple choices, and none of these choices are any less valid than the others.
I think you answered this in your previous paragraph:
Most media has an ending and people want an ending. Visual novels (ones with choices specifically) have multiple endings which to some people, might make them not seem like the story ending but more of a chapter, level or episode ending. If someone’s playing Mario they aren’t going to beat World 4 and say “ok I’ve saved enough Toads, who cares about the rest and Peach anyway?” so they try applying the same logic to VNs, which as you said, doesn’t work.
Things are heating up quickly. This is a topic I was interested in, but I think it turned out to be a bit more “hardcore” than I expected. Still, I’ll give my thoughts on what @Pepe said.
Since no one commented on your previous post, I wanted to say that I pretty much agree with you in all you said. While KEY Magic allows for resolution / ending of some “complicated” situations, KEY’s usage of this concept was never a Deus Ex Machina for me at any point.
However, if you ask the majority of people will tell you that the true ending is, in fact, true. This means that it was what was supposed to happen. If you ask a random person (who has read the Visual Novel of course) what happened at the end of CLANNAD they’ll tell you that (CLANNAD After Story spoilers) Nagisa died, Ushio died, but then Tomoya revived them with the light orbs. What I mean is that even though everyone has his favorite routes and has his own “this is what happened theory”, true endings have already been stablished as the canon ending.
Still, I keep thinking that some “bad” endings are how the story truly ended (LB! Refrain spoilers) I will always think that only Rin and Riki survived the accident, cause that is the ending that I liked the most.
He stated that he had only watched the anime, so he made no choices to get that ending. I’ll take advantage of the occasion and I instigate you, @Hixel267, to read the VN.
While I’d love this to happen, I’m afraid that it is just a utopia.
And this is the reason why it’s one of my deep-seated frustrations towards the visual novel community as a whole; I feel like there’s this mindset that I think people should have when reading VNs that nobody else sees, and while it makes me frustrated, I know I am a minority in this… Which is why I don’t bring up this topic very often. So yes, as you say
Ok Pepe, I’ll reply to you here. If a new topic gets made, it can get moved there.
Listen, what youre proposing with all endings being true or valid or whatever sounds really nice. I think it would be really cool if more VNs were written like that. But the problem is, the majority of VNs are not written that way.
Bad ends are almost always written as just little off-shoots. You make a bad choice, you die; You make a wrong choice, girl leaves you; etc. -> The End. Even when they arent so short, the non-true ends almost always end earlier than the true ends. So if you read the “bad end” first, the true end reads as if it is “more to the story.” And reading the “bad end” after makes it feel almost like an afterthought.
I’m not referring to opinions here. This is the way they are written. Even the aesthetic is aimed at this way of reading and thinking. You finish the true end, and something changes on the menu screen. Something happens to give you a sense of completion. Not to mention that some VNs even take the story in the opposite direction of what you’re referring to, and use the unique mechanics of visual novels to make all the “routes” true.
Basically, I agree with your sentiment, but I dont think this should be blamed so much on the readers when the writers definitely are at least as much to blame.
yeah I will be soon, I can’t really comment much on these topics without the full experience and knowledge of the original story. And thanks for explaining that I’d only watched the anime.
people actually go to walkthroughs for VNs? What a waste, I mean I know people what specific routes to get their favourtie girl (or boy, no discrimination here) or ending and all, but atlease, well, as you said;
That much is true, and the writers are definitely as much to blame. While I personally have this mindset, I can’t expect everyone else to have this mindset from the get-go. Which is why I brought up chaos;head because that is a pretty good example of the writers leading on the readers to try and see alternate endings as, well, alternate endings
