The "Key Magic" Motif

Key Discussion
#21

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?

#22

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.

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#23

@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.

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#24

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.

#25

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:

  • (Shiori route)If you don’t like the happy miracle ending of her route, then why not accept the bad ending where she doesn’t survive and Yuuichi moves on?
  • (Little Busters Refrain)If you don’t like the ending where everyone survives the bus trip, then why not accept the bad ending where “it was enough”?

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.

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#26

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.

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#27

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.

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#28

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

#29

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.

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#30

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;

#31

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

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