Now Viewing: key_(company)Tag type: Copyright Refers to the visual novel creator. The object used to unlock and lock doors is tagged as key. The company was formed in July 21, 1998 by Maeda Jun, Orito Shinji, and Hinoue_Itaru. Maeda often writes the stories and composes the music for the games produced by Key, Orito also composes a lot of the music as well and Hinoue designs the characters. Prior to the formation of Key, quite a few of its members started off at the company Tactics working on visual novels like One which feature their stylistic trademarks. The company rose to prominence with the 1999 visual novel Kanon. Their visual novels are famous for their tragic story lines where the male protagonist and the female characters are emotionally and spiritually battered throughout the storyline. However, the protagonists' wise cracking personalities along with the female characters' cute antics provide a lot of humor. Although the male protagonists are often faceless in their visual novels, they are notable for being much more developed in personality and backstory as opposed to simply being an avatar for the player. Platonic relationships are also as important as romantic ones and their visual novels as well as their anime adaptations emphasize the bonds between friends and family members. Although quite a few of their games feature explicit sex scenes, they are not the focus of the story and more emphasis is placed on the drama. Games like Kanon and Air, which originally had sex scenes, have received rereleases that remove the sex scenes but the storyline remains intact. The anime adaptations also follow these family friendly versions. They are often set in a world that seems similar to the real world, but fantasy elements eventually crop up in the story. They also like to have one of the characters own a cute pet of some kind. Besides romance, the bonds between family members and friends often plays a large role in their stories. They also have a tradition of creating young looking mothers. They have had a significant impact and influence on the medium of visual novels and popularized the utsuge visual novel which are heavy dramatic visual novels that aim to make the player feel for the characters and shed tears. Although he specializes in horror/mystery works, Ryukishi07 has cited Key's works as a major influence on him, particularly their method of setting up story lines, often by starting slow and almost deceptively soothing and then suddenly hitting the player with heavy drama. The company's work is also a major influence on the American manga-esque comic Megatokyo. The soundtracks to their novels, often composed by Maeda Jun and Orito Shinji and Magome Togoshi, are also well known and there have been many official remixes and arranged albums of them. The Kyoto Animation adaptations use both the unaltered original music from the visual novels and the official remixes as the background music. Singer Lia often sings songs specifically composed for the visual novels. Toei and Kyoto_Animation are the most frequent adapters of their work. Both of them have adapted Kanon, Air, and CLANNAD. However, both studios take very different approaches to the source. The former compresses the storyline and in Air and CLANNAD significantly alters the characterization of some characters. The latter also compresses the story-lines but stays closer to the source material. Ishihara Tatsuya of Kyoto Animation has directed all of the Kyoto adaptations. All of them are also written by Shimo Fumihiko. The Kyoto Animation adaptations reuse the music from the visual novels and remix CDs for the background music of the anime adaptations. The Kyoto Animation adaptations are generally better received and are more well known. Little Busters!, however, is adapted by J.C._Staff as opposed to Toei and Kyoto. Some of Key's writers like Hisaya Naoki and Maeda Jun have branched out and written non visual novel works. The former was the head writer for Sola while the latter worked on Angel Beats! and a fantasy manga titled Hibiki_no_Mahou. The characters of Kanon and Air are playable characters in the doujin crossover fighting game Eternal Fighter Zero, which is full of in-jokes pertaining to those series. The characters from the Tactics made visual novels One and Moon are also playable characters. Their releases: vndb.org/p24 Related work: Angel_Beats! Moon_(game) One Key Artists: Hinoue_Itaru Na-Ga Fan Work: Eternal_Fighter_Zero Zen Moonknives Other Wiki Information Last updated: 02/01/15 3:03 AM by jojosstand This entry is not locked and you can edit it as you see fit. |
     
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