This Is Maeda Jun

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"I didn't create 'Nakige', I inherited it. For 25 years I've been chasing after Hisaya, unable to catch up. It's been my whole life."

Article Writer: Takafumi Sakagami | Published: 20 October, 2024 | C-pia! Magazine

Hello, World

A man once said: what is posted to the internet can never be erased.
Man is often known to be wrong. That only becomes more clear the more famous a subject becomes.
Case in point - Maeda Jun. A man of much mystery, much misinformation, much miscommunication, and yet... a man who is very open.
With the passing of years, information large and small has been lost to time, or trapped behind a language barrier no one has bothered to breach. Some things were forgotten as fans became old and others became new, and other things never spread beyond a scrap of paper in a disc that sold mere thousands.

With old web pages dying and search engines growing worse, the primary sources are no longer easily accessible. So before they go, let this be a reference to them.

In digging up old interviews and magazine articles, looking into radio shows and audio commentaries, reading diary entries dating all the way back to 1998, sharing uncited memories of interviews and events, looking at fan and critic reception over the years, spoiling a bunch of Key games, and highlighting often overlooked works, I hope to shine some light on one of the industry's most influential creators.

This article isn't about the events of big, popular games or anime that everyone aware of has already seen; this is about a person, and all he'll leave behind.

Ordinary Days

Inspired by Murakami Haruki's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Maeda's quirk as a writer was his focus on a psychological look at relationships, paired with an anti-utopian message that a happy, imperfect life is a greater ideal than one of endless satisfaction.
Along with this, Leaf's earlier works and various albums became Maeda's main source of pre-Tactics industry inspiration, though for his own personal tastes, fantasy and sci-fi RPGs as well as children's anime about cute young girls were his usual choices.

Music was always his best friend when it came to writing. He found it nearly impossible to work without having music to listen to.

The song Flaming June by BT was a big inspiration during his days working at Tactics. Many other songs have inspired him due to his habit of listening to music while doing work - other than when he's composing, of course.
It wasn't until the development of MOON. that Maeda learned how to compose music using a computer, taught to him by the team's two musicians. The software he grew familiar with, Recomposer, remains the main program in his music-making toolset today, even getting frequent use during Heaven Burns Red's development.^[a]

Later detailed in Satsubatsu Radio (which he often presented alongside his university friend and band buddy Nakagawa) Maeda was an untrained musician, so his composition style was one of trial and error. He threw random ideas at the computer and saved whatever sounded good for later.
He likened his approach to music-making to a school kid learning to program in BASIC.^[b]

That band he was in with Nakagawa, named KIMELLA, was one of two bands Maeda was in during his university days. The other was named Sailing Ships, formed with a fellow psychology student named Yoshida.
Songs from both of these bands were eventually played on Maeda's radio show, Satsubatsu Radio, so if you'd like, you can go and listen to them. They'll grow on you.

Maeda got his industry start at a small company named ScooP, where he learned the tools of the trade by helping out on Ojou-sama o Nerae!!, a pretty bad H-scene-hunting game that I reviewed for C-pia! Magazine.
Afterwards, he wrote the scenario for the first Chaos Queen Ryouko story before quitting the company in a hurry and moving to Nexton, an even smaller company that was in the middle of a structural shakeup.

MOON.

Tactics was formed by members of a shuttered studio named Mayfar Soft, which was closed in order to switch to all-ages game development. A staff member at the time, YET11, managed to convince the company to open up a new 18+ brand (Tactics) with the stipulation that they release two titles a year.
The small group began developing a romance sim by the name of Dousei using an outsourced scenario writer, and when development on their next game was nearing, they began looking for writers to hire.

Maeda applied, got the job, and was soon working in-house alongside artists Hinoue Itaru and Miracle☆Mikipon on a game titled MOON. ^[c]

The game was planned under the shy new hire's vision, becoming Maeda's first project. Once planning was complete, fellow scenario writer Hisaya Naoki joined the development team, as did Mayfar's Shinori~ and a composer who worked at Leaf, Orito Shinji.
As a result, and partly due to tonal similarities with Leaf's Shizuku, MOON. garnered attention from Leaf fans online, and the buzz around the game helped the yet-unproven studio launch into relative popularity. ^[c]

Maeda recalls browsing many online message boards at the time to see what people were saying about him, and this soon became a long-term habit of his.

A personal highlight of this time is the MOON. demo, a preview video using assets from the game to get new players interested. The style of it is quintessential Maeda, and it was developed without any knowledge of video editing by him and Hisaya. They stayed up all night and, with no budget, developed one of my favourite relics of Key history. ^[d]

ONE ～Kagayaku Kisetsu e～

As part of YET11's release schedule, Tactics were to follow Leaf's method of launching innocent games in between darker ones.
ONE, another game led by Maeda, would be the hope to MOON.'s misery.

It is but one entry in a long line of stories that reject endless bliss in favour of imperfect life. With a controversial protagonist who feels cold and disconnected from reality, the routes Maeda writes may not be the kind of stuff that's popular with a large audience, but they certainly make for a great transparent look at the kinds of themes Maeda prefers to focus on.

At the heart of it all is a curious idea: there exists an eternal world.
Kouhei, a numb, dreamless boy with trauma, known to disassociate, often finds himself looking at reality from afar. In his mind, he makes frequent trips to the eternal world, and in doing so, he grows further distant from existence
Some day, once he has nothing to return to and no one to love, maybe he'll never return.
It's a great hook and a concept that makes every Key fan react with the words "so it's like ___". Insert any one of Maeda's later works into that blank.

Although Maeda led the project and created this general synopsis, few people would call his half of the game the highlight. No; when people talk about liking ONE, they almost always mean Hisaya's half.
When the game released, the gap between Maeda and Hisaya's popularity became quite clear; the three most popular routes were by Hisaya, and the three least popular routes were by Maeda.
Even I (Maeda fan that I am) have to admit that... the best routes are Hisaya's. I'll defend Nagamori's route unquestionably, but compared to Misaki's or Akane's, it's definitely an alienating story.

On the 26th of June, one day before the Regular Edition of ONE hit store shelves, a user running a website named Flaming June wrote:
"To tell the truth, I'm unemployed as of this week!!!" ^[e]

Kanon

"'Angel' is Hisaya's paradigm while Maeda's is 'girl'; the gap between 'angel' and 'girl' is what's important."

The staff at Nexton were hard to work with. The manager would get in the way of the writers and artists, making it hard for the team to collaborate without a wall between them.
Furthermore, the 6-month deadlines were unreasonable, so the team (sans YET11) gathered at Hinoue's house to discuss quitting the company. ^[c]^[f]
One of the companies Hinoue had worked at in the past, VisualArt's, was willing to take them on, and so, with Hinoue acting as the bridge between the team and VisualArt's president Takahiro Baba, Key was formed!
...in an office the size of an apartment room!

"Thus began our suicide mission.
Recklessly, Hisaya and I took two slices of pizza whilst the rest of the team each took one.
'We can do this guys!'

...or so we encouraged one another. In these kinds of situations, the bonds of friendship tend to grow stronger.
And whenever one of us successfully finished eating, a round of applause filled the room."

Kanon was led by Hisaya, so Maeda took the backseat on this project. His habit of browsing the internet wasn't even needed to tell that, when it comes to ONE, Hisaya's work was the popular stuff. Maeda was writer #2 on the team. ^[c]^[g]

By the end of Kanon's development, the writers came to an ultimatum: one would leave.
Maeda was thinking about quitting so that he wouldn't be stuck under Hisaya's shadow, but Hisaya wanted to leave as well.
...how did it end up like this?

Let's talk Hisaya a bit. He was, like Maeda, one of the writers who applied to Tactics during the Dousei advertising... however, unlike Maeda, he didn't get the job. See, they had already hired Maeda by the time the advert Hisaya saw was published.
But Maeda wanted extra writers on the team, so the Nexton staff asked Hisaya to come in to see how things worked, one thing led to another, and Hisaya was hired as a part-timer. ^[d]
This awkward part-timer had no knowledge of writing, didn't know how to use a computer, and was basically taught everything by Maeda. After MOON., Hisaya became a full-time employee and work on ONE began.
There, Maeda said the goal was to make a story that looks accessible but is deeper than you'd think, so Hisaya worked with the aim of creating characters who unravel from a generic initial appearance.
Aside from that, the two didn't coordinate very much. They were two individual writers working on the same project.

I think Kanon is where you best see the differences between the two. Hisaya's stories have these very empathetic characters that try to hold onto their image until they break and you get the big cry scene. Maeda's characters don't hold their image; they slowly lose layers and layers of themselves while you watch it unfold.
Hisaya is moe; Maeda is psychology. By depending on one another, they became Key, but if you split them apart... it's as if they both suddenly felt the need to compensate for no longer having one another. It really shows in their next immediate works, Hisaya with Sola and Maeda up through CLANNAD. Sola digs into Maeda's style of setting, while AIR and CLANNAD are filled with girls defined by quirky moe habits.

Of course, their manner of making people cry is different. Hisaya's style relies on plenty of build-up, whereas Maeda just plays a sad song while a sad thing is happening. In his own words: Maeda's way of making people cry is like a blunt object. ^[g]
I, personally, would say that AIR and CLANNAD are two of the few works where this isn't true; foreshadowing is integral to the story's ultimate emotional beats.
But both he and Hisaya soon returned to their original styles for the most part.

Their workflow was quite different too. Hisaya would have an idea in mind then work until it was done, where the artists followed his vision. Maeda would work piecemeal, relying on the artists to fill in the gaps in his vision so he can tell what needs fixing. He's a "try and try again" kind of creator.
For this reason, Maeda always struggled to see his visual novels as his. Whenever the company launched a new game, he wouldn't go to the store to see people buying it... but he would refresh web pages to see what people were saying about his writing specifically. ^[c]^[h]

Even when he was leading a project, like with MOON., it was just a project he participated in. Maeda was a cog in the machine, Hisaya was the name on the box.

So for Kanon, Maeda spent his time studying Hisaya's prose. "Next time, I'll do my best to make the readers cry!" was his goal. So when the game launched and the first comment submitted to the official site was by a user claiming to have cried during Makoto's route, Maeda began to feel that he might be able to do what Hisaya does after all.
In the audio commentary for Kyoto Animation's Kanon adaptation, Maeda goes on to praise the route, and says he'll likely never surpass its quality.

Even so, he recalls reading Bugbug magazine and seeing that Hisaya was far more popular with readers... but that makes sense; after all, Hisaya is the man who invented Nakige! ^[g]
...or so, that's how Maeda feels, but Hisaya views his work as iterative. Kanon was a continuation of ONE, ONE was an answer to MOON., and MOON. was—prior to Hisaya joining the team—titled Tears. (涙。). ^[d]

So at the end of the game's development, the writers came to an ultimatum: one would leave.
Maeda was thinking about quitting so that he wouldn't be stuck under Hisaya's shadow, but Hisaya wanted to leave as well.
The rest of the staff were put in charge of deciding who would stay and who would leave, and Maeda won out. Even though, in his eyes, Hisaya was the genius writer everyone cared about, the rest of the staff didn't see it that way.

Even though, in his eyes, Hisaya was the man who made people cry... Maeda was the man who made Tears..

What I want to highlight here is how Maeda's viewpoint is always working against his own interests. He may talk about being unpopular in magazines, but in Comptiq's yearly awards, he was voted the second-best scenario writer in the entire industry, barely beaten by Hisaya. ^[i]
He doesn't recognize his own efforts, the things he made weren't truly his, he can't do anything alone, he's addicted to reading negative feedback, and he treats himself like the rookie no one wants. If it's not yet clear, you should know: Maeda isn't a happy man.

But none of those things were why Hisaya, the great genius writer whom Maeda could never match, left the company.
Hisaya left because he couldn't keep up.

From the moment he joined the MOON. team, Hisaya's goal was to meet the bar of a professional, the bar Maeda set, to ensure he wouldn't be fired. So he worked for a year at Tactics, and for a further 10 months on Kanon, all with very few breaks. He rarely even went to the office because the commute time would eat into his work.
Not to mention the fact that Kanon was being advertised as a big deal as soon as Key was formed in order to capitalize on the relevancy of ONE.

All of that effort, but as soon as Kanon was done, Maeda began immediately working on AIR. How did he do it!? ... That's supposed to be rhetorical, but the answer is he alternates between writing and music to avoid growing exhausted with either one. ^[e]^[b]
Hisaya couldn't do that; he was burnt out, and he'd remain burnt out for a long time.
Once the 22-month grind was over, all the tension that was fueling him had vanished, and without the stress, he couldn't write. ^[d]

Every creator is fueled by something; in order to bring nothingness into existence, you have to expend some kind of energy.
For Hisaya, it was the stress of meeting each deadline that kept him going.
But for Maeda, work almost seemed like an obsession. A normal person couldn't keep up with that.

Reasons aside, when the two stood in President Baba's office to discuss why the other was better suited to staying with Key, their escalating argument was cut short by Baba himself.
"You two may not get along, but all you do is compliment one another's skills."

AIR

Throughout the development of Kanon, Maeda had been unhappy and getting ready to quit the company... The last thing he expected was to be made the leader of a new project.

VisualArt's had hired more writers, and for at least one more work, Maeda had to write.

Was it awkward that the new writers were all Hisaya fans? ...kinda. But one of them, Fujii Tomotaka, would later become one of Maeda's closest friends.
Given that AIR's development began as soon as Kanon's concluded, the reception to Kanon and the thoughts running through Maeda's mind during its development were still fresh.

"For Kanon, I tried my best to catch up with Hisaya, but everything was so difficult that I often felt like I was going to break down.

The song Owarinaki Tabi released in 1998 by Mr. Children became my personal theme song at that time. The lyrics supported me as I somehow struggled through the work.

Maeda spent his days and nights struggling to pinpoint what a nakige was. How could he make people cry?
What ultimately came from all that questioning was the incredibly famous AIR, with its iconic opening, its tragic ending, and its popular anime adaptation.
On one half is a mythical curse that grows stronger each generation. On the other, a blessing that grows weaker as it passes down the bloodline, mirroring the declining state of Japan's economy and of the planet's health; the bad things slowly grow worse while the good things gradually diminish.
This fantastical metaphor worked as the backing to a story largely about broken families. Youths are left to deal with the baggage of their ancestors, and guardians struggle to raise the younger generation.
And it all begins with a young man, travelling in search of a winged girl who's trapped in the sky.

There's a strong mythos to AIR, however, it has rather ordinary messaging, with themes and morals that'll continue to be told through Maeda's works time and time again.
In retrospect, it's a very simple piece of fiction, but as many fans are aware, a lot of readers didn't really understand AIR's story when it first released. Many fans still don't.

"To be honest, we didn't really want it to be seen as a 'reincarnation' story, y'know?
We really wanted to avoid that; make it different to those 'endless cycle' stories."
"Really, I'd consider it the opposite of an 'endless cycle' thing."
- A discussion between writers Suzumoto Yuuichi and Maeda Jun. ^[j]

The goal of AIR, at the end of the day, was to tell a story about family, about the endless every day, and about overcoming the confines of the life given to you. It preaches a belief in happiness above all things, whatever that happiness may mean.
But somehow, in some way, a lot of that message was lost to readers who couldn't comprehend the fantastical elements of the script. The timeline was confusing, the setting was distorted, and the themes were hard to follow.

To Maeda, AIR was a disappointment, people didn't understand it, the conclusion was controversial, and interpretations of many plot points were debated by fans... however, in the hands of Kyoto Animation, it was a masterpiece. That's why it became so unfathomably popular.^[c]^[g]

So for his next work, Maeda sat down to try it all again, this time, moving the focus further into realism. Putting aside his own preferences, he began to think about what an audience might want from a story about family.

CLANNAD

AIR was too niche, too bold, too bittersweet, and too much of a failure.
If Maeda was to feel satisfied with his work, maybe he needed to cast a wider net. Think back to ONE: accessible, familiar, but deep and new.

As soon as AIR was done, UNICORN began! But that name, a temp title inspired by Maeda's friend Nakagawa's suggestions, didn't stick. Soon Key were working on a game named CLANNAD.
The designs were out the door in an instant, so writing needed to begin. As I said before, Maeda wasn't committed to another game after AIR at first, but no one else had good enough suggestions for a story, so once again, Maeda would take charge!

However, all this work with minimal breaks was beginning to do a number on Maeda's mental state.
CLANNAD, to put it lightly, was a development hell with a rotating door of writing staff, an overworked artist driven to becoming a recluse, and delays aplenty.

"I've said it countless times, but if the organizer were a genius, they could commission and direct perfectly the first time through since they know the right answer. So if the staff are working with a genius to make something, they won't have any troubles.

But unfortunately I'm an ordinary person. Therefore, I can't judge whether something is good or bad without seeing the finished product. The only way I can go about making something good is to realize the mistakes after it's finished, apologize, and re-commission with what I think is the correct answer."

Hinoue, the artist saddled with drawing all the sprites and CGs for this behemoth project, was stuck redrawing things under Maeda's strict supervision.
Some days, Hinoue wouldn't even go to work. Her confidence in her work plummeted as she was made to correct CGs over and over.
At the end of the tiring development period, a vaguely conscious Hinoue told Baba that she didn't want to work with Maeda anymore. She didn't mean it and forgot she even said it, but the word was out.
Fully understanding this, Maeda made sure that Key was restructured in such a way that he wouldn't be able to overwork Hinoue ever again.

Despite the damage CLANNAD's development did to the team at Key, it was a resounding success. By focusing on broad appeal, Maeda's writing was finally given the praise he'd been hoping for.
It was the story of a dreamless boy, damaged by family only to be saved by it. It took the ideals of AIR and pushed them into a space everyone could understand: appreciation of parents, love of children, respect for friends, incremental passage and change, and salvation in all the good you do.

In the end, CLANNAD was the first game Maeda could be truly proud of, but... was it worth the losses? Was it even the type of pride he needed to feel?
Was Maeda even writing the story he wanted to tell anymore? Or was he just carrying the weight of the responsibility that Hisaya left behind?
A soul searching journey was about to begin.

I've Always Been Looking For You

"I wanted to work in the music industry, but everywhere rejected me, so I had no choice but to write."

It should come as no surprise that Maeda hates the way he writes.
His prose is weak, so he prefers the write in shorter sentences. Furthermore, his scenarios tend to confuse people, and the longer his scenes get, the more of a problem that becomes. Fans didn't understand MOON., they didn't get ONE's Kouhei, the Kawasumi Mai route in Kanon went over peoples' heads, and AIR was widely misunderstood.

So it should come as even less of a surprise that what Maeda's really good at is the shorter stuff: poetry, lyrics, and music.

It's easy to focus on his output as a scenario writer, but that would be like focusing on his side gig. So let's take a look at some of that music of his.

Key+Lia

In 2001, the Key+Lia project began. This was an initiative by Key to create music not related to any games, and it began with Natsukage / Nostalgia.
It was popular enough to encourage Maeda and Lia further, resulting in the singles Birthday Song,Requiem and Spica/Hanabi/Moon in 2002 and 2003 respectively.
These are iconic, and every Key fan should recognize them. They show up in everything from the anime adaptation of Little Busters! to a random chapter of Heaven Burns Red.

Spice Ghost

At the tail end of 2003, for Comiket 65, Maeda worked with CLANNAD lyricist Hagiwara Yuu and Kanon&AIR Sky artist (soon to be Hibiki no Mahou artist) Izumi Rei on a doujin album under the collective name Spice Ghost.
This is an album of largely instrumental tracks, however the first and last song on the album are sung by Riya from Eufonius, the primary vocalist of CLANNAD, and it carries a similar sound.

Love Song

Continuing his doujin album work, Maeda began working on a song named Bokura no Koi, however, he became so endeared to it that it felt like a waste to release it without a professional company backing it up... so the decision was made to sell an entire album of songs under Key's record label, all based on Bokura no Koi.^[k]

So, in 2005, Maeda and Riya once again teamed up to create Key's Love Song.
As the title implies, it's a series of love songs. Individual short stories focused on love.
These songs match ideas and metaphors seen in ONE's eternal world, AIR's girl in the sky, CLANNAD's Illusionary World, and they will continue to be referenced and repurposed going forward.
Much like many of those titles, the goal of the story is in breaking free from eternity, but also in learning to love oneself and others.
Oh, and it's also the beginning of a long-running series that remains relevant today within Maeda's latest stories, so it's pretty important.

As a note for readers, when it comes to talking about lyrics throughout this article, I'll provide an off-site translation for the entire album/single.
However, I'll also be quoting select verses whenever they become relevant, using my own translations to ensure all the nuance I want to get across is captured.

The first track, Hajimari no Saka, is a good tone-setter. In it, the main character pedals up a hill while reflecting on their past. Once upon a time, they had a partner, and together they felt like they could climb any hill...
But that's not reality, and now the protagonist cycles alone, leaving the past behind.

One of the most interesting tracks has to be Ao no Yume, which takes beats from AIR's plot and mixes them with elements that'd later be captured by Rewrite.
In an endless cycle of eternity, a traveller chases their dreams while another follows behind. Whenever the traveller dies, the follower abandons life so that they may be together upon the next rebirth.

Let us always be together,
'til the end of eternity, this sky; that blue.

When you no longer wake, to the sky, I'll surrender.
I've always been looking for you.

This song becomes the connective tissue tying the album together, and these are the kinds of love songs contained within this album. They're often from an individual's perspective, lamenting and appreciating an imperfect relationship. Many times, those relationships have already ended.

I'm saying "relationship" and "individual" because these aren't just romantic love songs, and they aren't just about humans.
Take, for example, the recurring motif within Ao no Yume where an instrument mimics the singer's voice whenever she sings "I've always been looking for you."
A later song, Gramophone, tells the story of a gramophone who falls in love with a singer's voice and tries to sing alongside her.
It's not just about human love, nor romantic love. It's about trying to figure out what "love" is.

Putting aside the narratives of Love Song, a lot of songs from this album get remixed, covered and reused in Maeda's future work.
But this wasn't just paving the future; it was also pulling from the past. The tenth song in the album, Kooridokei, is a remake of the final song from the previously mentioned Spice Ghost album.

I of course have to mention that the final song (and namesake of the album) Love Song is later used in Tomoyo After.
The meaning of the song itself will continue to be relevant, so keep these lyrics in mind.

For the two of us, being alive
is a difficult thing to do.

But look, we're still
giving our all to continue.

For the two of us, being together
means our long, long dream
will continue to come true.

Hibiki no Mahou

Maeda was looking to work with Izumi Rei on something greater than a small doujin album, and a story from his school days was the perfect excuse to do so.

Hibiki no Mahou is about a young girl named Hibiki. She's not the smartest, but the professor she acts as an apprentice to is a prodigy in the field of magic.
The field of magic is, ultimately, the pursuit of immortality, and the professor's time is running out. Magic requires sacrifice, and he's been giving up his memories for a long time.
As part of his experiments, the two attempt to temporarily shift his soul into a squirrel, however, an ill-timed intrusion disrupts the spell, leaving him trapped in the body of an animal.
To escape those seeking out his research, the duo abandon his human body and escape to the capital, to the Royal Magic Academy, where Hibiki uses her teacher's fame to land a job. As she can't use magic or understand complicated theories, she's given the job of teaching a class of delinquents no other teacher wants to deal with.

Like this, the story of Hibiki, a girl with no talent who nevertheless tries her hardest, begins.

More than that, it's really a series of love stories, mostly bittersweet ones. One person holds another close, tragedy strikes, and the lone survivor develops a trauma that Hibiki's healing presence eventually soothes.

If Love Song was about the happiness of being together and the reality of needing to one day let go, Hibiki no Mahou is about moving on from that. It's about the healing process.

There's no 'happy ever after' in life; bad things happen. Even so, the happiness you've felt is a very precious thing. Take the happiness that life gave you and turn it into hope for the future.

Throughout the episodic stories of Hibiki no Mahou, the young talentless girl holds onto her belief that magic can bring people happiness... but really, it's not magic that makes people happy; it's Hibiki. Hope is her magic.

Tomoyo After ～It's a Wonderful Life～

"It's not that the person who lives the longest is the happiest by default.
If you consider yourself to be happy, then that's that.

I think some people struggle to understand that. They're like 'Kanna was happy, but she could've been even happier.'"

After the success of CLANNAD, a follow-up focusing on Maeda's most popular CLANNAD heroine and Maeda's own favourite—Sakagami Tomoyo—was set for development. ^[l]
It would be the very first spin-off title Key would release.
It would be the first large Key title to launch with voice acting.
It would be the first large Key title to not feature Hinoue Itaru's artwork; she was on a year-long vacation and her relationship with Maeda was strained, so she was being replaced.
And it would be entirely linear, save for some bad endings.

All of these bold new decisions weren't enough, however, as once again, Maeda's focus returned to its usual place...
Maeda's gonna write a story he wants to write. Focusing on two characters with tragic backstories who, in longing for a happiness they didn't get to feel, try to start a family.
They have different stories, different talents, different social expectations, and different desires, but they're in love.
So, putting aside their own life experiences, they choose to believe in love and happiness. That despite hardship, life is wonderful.

In essence... it's like Love Song or Hibiki no Mahou but stretched out into a whole novel.

"Our strides didn't match well, but by walking slowly we could live side-by-side"

It was a ballsy decision considering the response to AIR, and naturally, the reception to the original release of Tomoyo After (and to the intimate message Maeda had left fans) was pretty controversial. Maeda was expecting some backlash, at least.
But it's a game that, even today, is infamously love-or-hate^[m]... so much so that the prepared-to-fail Maeda was shocked by just how much hate it got, and as a result, he was put on a short mental health break.
In the same way Hinoue watched as a new artist took her place for Tomoyo After, Maeda was now being replaced on the very same game. Quite fittingly, a song he wrote for Lia during this break was titled Karma.
He spent most of the downtime playing Shadow of the Colossus and later said that the game saved him.

A new writer, Tonokawa Yuuto, was brought into Key after the nightmare development of CLANNAD, and his first job was to rewrite Tomoyo After while Maeda was on a break, to make it into something audiences would prefer.
It restructured the game, added more foreshadowing and build-up to the final arc, and made the conclusion a bit vaguer so that readers could come up with their own interpretation, but it didn't drastically change the message, so I'm not sure how effective the changes were at converting haters into likers.

I've heard that originally, Tonokawa wanted to create a new ending entirely, however when Maeda learned this, they got into an argument and Tonokawa eventually had to give up on making such a drastic change. Instead, we got a "disguise the sadder details" type of ending.
I don't know where that story comes from though, so who knows how true that is?
However, I've also heard that the two butted heads once again due to Rewrite, where Tanaka Romeo wrote violent, bloody scenes uncharacteristic of Key. Maeda couldn't accept this, but Tonokawa pushed it through.
I don't have a source for these stories, so don't trust them. Tonokawa would leave the company before long, once Rewrite had run its course.

Even now, Tomoyo After's the kind of game that garners more 1-star and 5-star reviews than anything else. Unlike AIR, the difference in reception isn't due to a confusing plot or fundamental writing decisions, but is instead a difference in opinion. The themes of the work, the morals, are overwhelmingly present, so whether you agree with those morals or not can make or break the entire game for you.
Whether you'll love it or hate it, whether you'll prefer Maeda's original or Tonokawa's rewrite, it's impossible to know until you've already experienced one of them. It's an unfortunate position to be in.

But for that same reason, to the die-hard Maeda fans, this is one of his best works by far. It's Maeda's voice, loud and true. Therefore, it's wise to recommend Tonokawa's version to a general audience and Maeda's version to people who like Maeda's style specifically.

"(...) I argue that Maeda's intended message was perfectly unfiltered in the original PC version, from the angle that it acts as a follow-up to AIR."

- Inheriting the Treasures of Life by Tagamiya, from the fan-made critique collection book Life is Like a Melody.

Much like ONE and AIR, Tomoyo After was a rejection of eternity. A Beautiful Dreamer type scenario where everyone lives long, unsatisfying lives isn't what life is about.

Hopefully by now you're starting to recognize a pattern in Maeda's output. He's constantly grappling with priorities of expectation; does he make something good, or does he make something commercial?
Does he make what he wants to make, or does he fulfil the duty left to him when Hisaya left the company?
It's a battle he'll continue to have with himself, and it's something that'll divide the fanbase between Key fans and Maeda fans.

"(...) as I have said many times before, the reason I didn't was because I feel my duty is to make things that will sell. Now though, I'm starting to wonder if that mindset is wrong."

When it comes to Maeda's thoughts on Tomoyo After, one thing that'll shine through as the years pass is how much he likes the ending song, Life is Like a Melody, the chorus of which is amongst his favourite bits of music. ^[o]

During a live performance of the song for Key's 10th anniversary, Maeda spoke to the audience about the song's intimate relationship with Tomoyo After as a story, and how that story garnered a lot of hate, but he loves it even so. As he did so, the audience shouted their love for it.

"I think I ended up writing an esoteric theme, so mainstream fans were like 'what even is this?', but dedicated fans get it, and they really praise the game when given a chance.

There are people out there who really relate to this kind of story. I think this is really how life is."

Little Busters!

With the new kid on the block Tonokawa seeming like a hopeful recruit for Key's long-term future, Little Busters! was started as a project to train him and other staff.

Maeda, who for Tomoyo After had given up on trying to mimic Hisaya's moe-oriented character writing, had begun to accept his reputation for writing characters that women loved and men didn't care about as if it were fact. Due to this, he resigned himself to writing the "main characters", so the male members of the main cast as well as the main heroine Rin, all of whom would be the focus of the main route of Little Busters!.
The other heroine routes were left in the hands of the new writing staff who could better capture the appeal of cute girls, with Maeda only stepping in to correct things when one or more of the main characters were involved. ^[p]

Originally all of these characters were intended to be under the purview of Na-Ga, an artist the company had been training since the staff shakeup that occurred during AIR's development, however he refused to accept the project unless Hinoue was also brought on board.

These two aspects—the split writing staff and the split artists—led to a conveniently easy delegation of responsibilities: Na-Ga would draw for Maeda and Hinoue would draw for everyone else.

Once again, the story would be a rejection of eternity, where characters accept a degree of loss in order to move forward. From Masato's refusal to lose, to Kengo's loss of a classmate; from Kyousuke's grand plan, to Riki's final outcome.
Life is beautiful, it is wonderful, but it isn't eternal.

With Little Busters! done, Maeda announced that he'd be stepping away from his writing role at Key, and that the next game, Rewrite, would be left to Key's new writing team.
Somehow, the media took this to mean that he was retiring.

Angel Beats!

"Effort doesn't always lead to results, and without results, effort is rarely recognized."

Within the media, there was one certain individual. A young man named Toba Yousuke had graduated from university with three big goals:

Surprisingly, he tackled these three goals like a speedrunner. First he got into Studio Ghibli, proved himself, and became an assistant director on Howl no Ugoku Shiro.

As a producer at Aniplex, he used his connections at DengekiG's Magazine to try and launch a project with Maeda before his announced retirement. This would be his one and only chance.

The editor who had been involved with G's CLANNAD serialization, Nakatsuji Yukito, was expecting to meet with someone who was simply trying to latch onto the success of KyoAni's Key adaptations, but instead, he found that Toba was truly a fellow Key fan.

So, in 2006, the duo met with Maeda and assistant writer Fujii Tomotaka at the VisualArt's office to discuss the project. Toba ended up enthusiastically spending a lot of the meeting talking about how much he liked Key's works...

However Maeda, who was planning on moving away from writing after Little Busters! wrapped up development, didn't enter the meeting with much hope. "I can't write anymore", he said. "I can't tell emotional stories."

Planning began unofficially while Toba looked for a studio to finalize a production date with, but it was a slow process.
On Key's side, Maeda took up writing, Fujii worked in planning, and Na-Ga (now the lead artist for Key) was put in charge of character design.

Toba found himself talking to a support animation studio, P.A.Works, who were looking to transition into a studio capable of leading projects. Their first two projects, True Tears and Canaan, were already planned... but from those titles, it should be evident that the staff were big visual novel fans.

Conveniently, the staff at Key would fall in love with True Tears, so the excitement went both ways. ^[r]

With these partners involved, Angel Beats! was to be a multimedia project. Toba and P.A.Works wanted a TV show, Maeda wanted to sell music, and Nakatsuji wanted to print manga. It was touted as the Maeda Jun Festival.

No one could have expected this three-pronged attack to be as successful as it was...

"It was incredibly tough, but I took it on; I felt that the higher the wall, the more wonderful the view would look from atop."

The success of Angel Beats!, not only as an anime but as an IP, would go on to define VisualArt's as a company. The money from the project would bankroll Key during a turbulent time, and the use of a single new IP to access multiple markets at the same time soon became standard for the company, as did collaboration with other companies. ^[t]

While working on the show with staff both familiar and unfamiliar to him, Maeda began to feel his age. The people around him were getting married, starting families, and living normal lives.

From life-long friends such as Nakagawa to long-time business pals like Lia... even that younger writer Maeda got along with (Fujii) had become a real family man.^[s]

Although Angel Beats! was financially successful, its reputation was far from perfect. Fans with high expectations were disappointed with Angel Beats!. To a vocal minority, it was rushed, repetitive, derivative, unfinished, commercialised and unfunny.

Once again, Maeda fixated on the negative outcry, and as a result, Angel Beats! became a failure.

In his head, it was both a commercial success he'd forever struggle to replicate, and it was a drastic failure that audiences hated, further proof that Maeda was a bad writer.

So when Maeda, at a low-key event, announced that they were beginning to work on a visual novel adaptation, one that may take more than 5 years to develop, the mass of new fans were overcome with excitement.

Owari no Hoshi no Love Song

When it comes to Rewrite, a project led by Hinoue now that she was effectively out of a job, Maeda didn't have much involvement... but he did write some music.
Orito, who was also composing for the project, worked with singer Yanagi Nagi on a couple vocal tracks. Much like Riya's jump from CLANNAD to Love Song, Yanagi Nagi's work on Rewrite would lead her to sing for Owari no Hoshi no Love Song.

Released by Flaming June—yes, you read that right: Flaming June—Owari no Hoshi no Love Song was a spiritual successor to the Love Song album.
This time following on from Rewrite's enviromentalist themes, the stories would all be set on a dying world. Nature is going wild, people are going crazy, the planet is nearing its end, and there's little hope for the future...
In such a world, what love songs can be written?

A young girl falls in love with the boy she grew up alongside, but he falls in love with someone else. Distraught, the girl leaps back in time to try and change how things unfold, but in doing so, she erases her past self from existence.
When she arrives in the past, no younger than before she lept, the child she grew up alongside is in a panic. He's searching for a girl who went missing.
After watching him grow more and more distant, she (against her better judgment) admits the truth: she's the girl he's looking for! But the moment those words leave her lips, a hole in space opens up to swallow her whole, sending her back to where her journey through time first started...
In a grey, lifeless world, a girl stares at an old photo of a boy she once loved. She puts the photo aside and walks away, into a world that's already met its end.

These are love songs from a dead planet, post-apocalypse type media, and stylistically it's all over the place. Maeda, now putting more focus on his music career, was using this album as a way to try things he hadn't done before.
But plot-wise, there's a very clear thread: it's all about finding a meaning to live.
A lot of the songs are... depressing, but sometimes they come with a glimmer of hope. Unlike the original Love Song, the topics covered here are disparate due to it including a healthy mix of older songs that never got wide distribution.

The ninth song in the album, Yuki no Furanai Hoshi, is a cover of a song from Maeda's university days. The original is better.
It's about a duo who spend their time together, laughing and having fun. It goes through the winters they spend together, year after year.

I felt we could live without knowing any sadness.

Eternity isn't real, but maybe it could be.

See, another year passed, but the two of us are together.

As if this sort of life could go on forever.

Those kinds of thoughts.

Of course, the song eventually ends, so... it didn't last forever. Is there happiness to be found in denial? Maybe...

You can find other retreads of old material in different senses, such as Last Smile, a science-oriented adaptation of Hibiki no Mahou's popular beats. A dumb boy struggles to learn from the professor he admires—a professor on death's door—in order to reassure her that her findings will go on to save people long after she's gone.

The twelfth track, a collaboration between Maeda and KIMELLA bandmate Nakagawa, tells the story of a boy who longs to be a hero. He travels the ruined world, hoping to gather the world's legendary figures (the characters from previous songs) together so that they can save everyone! But he utterly fails and no one joins him.
Upon realizing his powerlessness, he returns home to entertain the children, unknowingly becoming their hero in the process.

But really, the highlight of the album has to be the cover song, the finale, Kono Hoshi no Birthday Song.
It begins, ever so simply, with a man listening to his pregnant wife share stories of the world she used to know with their child. There were seasons, there were stars... the simple beauties of reality.
But her partner worries that bringing a child into such a world is the wrong thing to do...

Alone, they won't be able to live,
but as long as we're a family, it'll be fine.
So imagine it, dear.

The dawn of the planet -
- that birth brought with it pain.

So I'll give birth too.
In the blessing of life,
I believe,
and I'll keep on believing.

Despite the depressing themes, it ends on a message of continuance and togetherness, a theme that, in time, will paint a strong picture of Maeda's dream of life.
Almost a direct mirror to Tomoyo After in its final lines - belief in the beauty of life, of Earth, and of the person beside you, will bring you eternal happiness. Even when things are sad, you'll have learned that life is wonderful.

Hikikomori no Uta

"Happiness is important. Ordinary people would be happy if they got married, had children, and watched their children grow older."

Fans of Maeda like to say... his singing voice is a scream from the heart. That may, to some, sound like a polite way of saying he's not well-trained, but... it's an incredibly apt description.
His voice is like a desperate howl, so what better way to professionally debut than with a desperate howl of a song?

Hikikomori no Uta tells the story of a man named Maeda Jun. You might've heard of him.
He spends his life in a room, watching anime, playing guitar, and imagining himself as a rockstar on a stage.

I haven't played any games lately;
following a guide is too much effort.

I'm fine just watching anime;
that's all I care for.

Sadly, he's not talented, so he'll never be a star. He's growing older, so his body is becoming less capable. His interests are beginning to dry up, and he no longer has the energy to play video games.
He lives aimlessly, having nothing to believe in and no one to love, but even still, he lives.
Using his music to make pop songs that'll succeed commercially or fit into games aimed at a general audience.

Dreams alone are worthless;
what matters is making a living.

I've been struggling to live with that.

The song ends on the idea that... he's alive, trapped in this buggy world, but because of that, he can play music and sing. And sometimes, very rarely, that music sounds beautiful.
He wants you to know that.

Like he did when he wrote that final track of Owari no Hoshi no Love Song.
Like he did when he wrote Tomoyo After.
Like he'll continue to do.

Angel Beats! ...again!?

"I feel I'm already at the limit of making visual novels. I realized this during Angel Beats! -1st beat-. That time I tried to give all I had into writing, but people's impressions were mostly 'It's short and seems like a digest,' and since then I've lost all my confidence. That wasn't as long as a novel, and it's nothing like a novel, but I can't write one."

Angel Beats! -1st Beat-

Making good on the five-year promise, Maeda's VN adaptation of the Angel Beats! storyline released in early 2015 to decent reception.
However... Angel Beats! -1st Beat- wasn't a full adaptation, rather it was a small portion of a planned mega project, with each entry adding a few alternate routes to the anime plotline.

This decision would allow them to create a truly gigantic story without dedicating an entire profitless decade to the development. Angel Beats! had, since 2010, been the primary IP for Key's merchandising, so the constant stream of new stories from the IP would allow them to continue to push figures of Kanade, posters of Yuri, and CDs of Girls Dead Monster. What an incredible idea, right?

The lukewarm reception to the first entry wasn't a great sign, but it wasn't a death sentence either. The prequel manga was drying up, the mobile game had ended, but the IP could still push on! So long as Maeda was willing to bear with the online negativity and keep writing.

But then, on February 26th, 2016, Maeda rushed to a local hospital believing to have suffered a collapsed lung.
He hadn't, but the staff advised he admit himself to the hospital. He didn't want to be a bother, so he refused.
Two days later, Maeda's condition got much worse. He doesn't entirely remember, but he seemingly returned to the hospital, and that night, he suffered a heart attack. Nothing the hospital could do could help, so he was transferred to a major hospital where he was brought in to undergo emergency surgery. ^[n]

Angel Beats! -The Last Operation-

Ultimately, the Angel Beats! Visual Novel project was cancelled, and the last hurrah of the franchise was given to Asami Yuriko, the mangaka who worked on the prequel manga Heaven's Door. Maeda would write the script from his hospital bed.

Angel Beats! -The Last Operation-, marketed as "the Angel Beats! that Maeda wanted to create!", was an unfinished adaptation of the anime (of questionable quality) and was widely criticized.
Releasing between 2018 and 2020, it had no notable differences to the anime and was at times more rushed.

"There's a tweet going viral that's like, 'If this is the intended version of Angel Beats!, then what was the Angel Beats! that you put up on TV 6 years ago?'
The TV broadcast of Angel Beats! 6 years ago was a version of the story suited to anime. Now we're looking to see what we can do with an Angel Beats! manga.

The statement 'The real Angel Beats! that Jun Maeda wanted to make!' is just a marketing subtitle written by the magazine writer. I wouldn't say something as irresponsible as 'that wasn't what I wanted to make' about a work that so many people worked hard on."

With the reputation of the franchised tarnished by underwhelming, cancelled work after underwhelming, cancelled work, the IP fell silent in 2020, save for a pachinko slot machine in 2021.
But in 2023 the franchise would return in a couple of small ways, first as part of a collaboration with another Key title, and then as a spinoff comedy manga titled Tabisuru Tenshi-chan.

We'll get into that 2023 collaboration, as it was handled by Maeda, but first... let's switch our attention back to him.
Why did he suddenly fall so ill, and what impact did it have on his future?
To answer those questions, we have to step back to 2014.

End of the World

"During the simultaneous production of Charlotte and Angel Beats! -1st beat- in 2013-2014, I fell into the first songwriting slump of my long creative career, and I reused some songs I wrote in my school days to get through it."

In June of 2014, an overworked Maeda began to feel incredibly ill. A mysterious disease or something had suddenly struck, and his heart had begun to pound like crazy.
He went to the hospital, but as Maeda has a known panic disorder, the doctor attributed it to that.
Not wanting to make a big deal about it, Maeda returned home and dealt with the constant panic attack for six days. Eventually, he decided to take a heap of sedatives, and that finally calmed his heart.

In 2015, as part of a new anime project involving the team that put Angel Beats! together, Maeda rebooted his Satsubatsu Radio show, where he casually told this story...
But in retrospect, Maeda had likely spent those six days walking around despite a heart failure. This was almost certainly a major factor in his 2016 hospitalization. ^[n]

Charlotte

That new anime project was titled Charlotte and it was an attempt by all involved parties to recapture the magic (and profits) of Angel Beats!.
With an even larger cast of quirky characters, a school setting backed by supernatural powers, 2 whole bands to make albums for, multiple manga series announced out of the gate, and statements from staff that they'd avoid the mistakes of their previous project, the Charlotte project seemed to be going all-in on surpassing Angel Beats!.
But was it successful? Hell no!

"I was excited, thinking that your song playing during Charlotte's big emotional moment would surely drive viewers to tears.

But with each passing episode, Charlotte's ratings decreased, and in the end, my work became the target of criticism. The Blu-ray and DVD sales were awful compared to Angel Beats!. It was a disappointment."

Much of Charlotte ran with Yake Ochinai Tsubasa, an old song from Maeda's band Sailing Ships, as the ending song, but for the final episode's ending song, Maeda worked with singer Kumaki Anri, notable for singing the theme song of Shinkai Makoto's Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo.

The resulting song, Kimi no Moji, is a beautifully sentimental track that tells of a lonely boy who has grown distant from the people he loves, while lamenting his loss of an ordinary life.

I want to live a peaceful life.
I could, with you beside me.

Well, I don't know if that's true...
But if I could live beside you,
I think that's all I'd need.

Rewrite

Shortly after, Kumaki Anri would look to team up again, which was a surprise to Maeda; Charlotte was a failure, so why would they still want to work with him? Maybe they're hoping for another Angel Beats! to happen?
Either way, the next song on the docket would be Maeda's chance to write for the big Key novel he had little part in: Rewrite.

Instead of focusing on the action and violence, Maeda made good on his word of staying true to Key's spirit and put the attention squarely on... a romance during the end of the world.

Everything was lost to the light;
my everything was, too.
With just a hand, I reached out to hold you.

For the last time, please smile,
even if it's the end of the world.

"Eventually the company's president told me that they did a KSL live concert. He said Kumaki sang Kimi no Moji and End of the World.

At first, I couldn't clearly remember writing End of the World. Was it something I wrote just before ending up in hospital? What kind of song even was it?

I was in the general ward, so my phone was all I had. I looked up the TV-Size version on the Visual Art's channel and gave it a listen. And I cried.

Long Long Love Song

Surprise! Maeda and Kumaki made a Love Song album! And remember the final track of Love Song?
"For the two of us, being together means our long, long dream will continue to come true."
Well this is the Long Long Love Song.

Produced during in-and-out stays at the hospital, Maeda's newest album has a long long story behind it.

I recommend giving all the songs a listen, of course, but one particular track may catch the attention of casual onlookers above all others: a CLANNAD-themed lullaby sung to Ushio by Tomoya.
This was a song Maeda had written spontaneously during the airing of KyoAni's CLANNAD adaptation, and he debuted it during a legendary performance back in 2009 for Key's 10th-anniversary celebration. During the event, he sang a bunch of his own songs on stage and told stories about their creation.
The full setlist was:

He wanted to sing Karma too, but left it to Lia, who was also at the event. She actually snuck on stage during the final day to sing the last bit of Natsukage with Maeda.

Anyway, Long Long Love Song... What listening through the song list and reading the lyrics won't tell you is... well, prepare yourself for the depression spiral. We've got yet another diary! This time, it's named the 'Long Long Love Song Production Diary, Sometimes While Hospitalized'.

The main focus of the diary is on the album's direction, including Maeda's constant battle between making something meaningful to himself or making something commercially viable.

"Make thirteen songs that'll sell well and audiences will like. I thought that was my responsibility doing this job."

"While Angel Beats! and Charlotte were airing, thousands of people were flaming me every second. Coming from that rough of an experience, I'm fine being true to myself this time. I'll be ready to take on the hate."

A decent portion of the diary is spent on detailing his journey to (and time in) hospital.

It's not like I liked alcohol that much, I just couldn't live life while I was sober. That's it. If I wasn't drunk, I couldn't handle it. That's life."

"I held onto hope and believed that I was seeing a nightmare and the next time I awoke, I'd be in my bed back home. But no matter how many times I woke, the nightmare continued, so eventually I had to accept that this was reality. I began to go crazy. I thought... it'd be better to just jump to my death, but then I wouldn't have even been able to reach the window."

"I'm a writer who tells stories about miracles, so being able to use the word about myself was news. A lot of people said things like 'I want more of your work, so please live'.

But of them all, it was the singer of Little Busters! ~Refrain~'s theme song, Suzuyu, who said, 'You don't have to make anything else, just please live. Don't leave us.' It brought tears to my eyes."

"For what to do next, I asked Twitter for ideas. I got all kinds of responders, but all the replies were like... requests for a novel. I can't write a novel.

Sometimes I write scenarios or music that people think are good, but I want to specialize in one of them. I can write game scenarios but I can't write a novel. I can write songs but I can't arrange them. I can't write or make music by myself. Without help from anyone else I can't even complete a job in my own trade."

"So now I've thrown out the rough idea I'd already given the okay to, and I've asked them to try it again. Once again, I'm the dictator of dumb retakes, parading my power around and making constant trouble for everyone else."

The defining song of the album's legacy has to be the one represented on the CD jacket: Kimi Dake ga Itekureta Machi, a track that tells the bittersweet story of a young woman living in an abusive household, who sticks around to be with the man she loves.
That man happens to witness one of her father's acts of abuse and begins to assault him, the police are called, and the man winds up in jail... but the girl he loved goes on to live a happy life.
With enough time, she moves on, falls in love with someone else, gets married and starts a family, forever thankful to the man who saved her.

This is, like ONE's Nagamori route, like Tomoyo After's original version, a very divisive story.
In his diary, Maeda explained that he was considering changing the ending or making it lighter, but after spending some weeks thinking about it, he ultimately decided to leave it the way it is. There'll be people who hate it, but changing it would dilute the message.

That was, at the end of the album's development, the answer Maeda settled on:
It doesn't have to be loved by everyone, so long as the people who understand it like it.

Satsubatsu Kids

So despite the rocky reception to Charlotte, Maeda seemed to have finally found some focus. The wishy-washy "do two things decently well" approach wasn't satisfying him, but with the pivot towards making music, surely things would improve, right?

A doctor informed him that his lung capacity had been drastically reduced. Maeda's dream of singing his own music was now impossible. ^[v]^[w]

Hikikomori Songs

Maeda passed his songs over to someone else, and thus, Satsubatsu Kids was born.
Point of attention #1 of this initial album—titled Hikikomori Songs—is that it includes Hikikomori no Uta, now sung by Hyon.
It still sounds nice, but without Maeda's piercing vocals, it doesn't hit the same way.

Notable songs that the Hikikomori Songs album includes:
Birthday Song=Requiem - a reference to the Lia single of a similar name.
Hanabi - a cover of the Lia song.
Haiiro no Hane - a cover of the Love Song track.
Real - a cover of a song from Charlotte's How Low Hello.

Aside from the fanservice on show, the meat is in the lyrics. Look at Birthday Song=Requiem, for example. It's a song about him losing his ability to sing, and a follow-up to Hikikomori no Uta.

I hear it in the back of my mind,
"He's great; you're not."
I'm playing music to keep myself going.
I'm drowning it all out.

Sound familiar? That's Maeda during Kanon's development, listening to a Mr. Children song in order to stay focused under the pressure of Hisaya's fame.

This is an honest Maeda song, as are a lot of his "newer" songs, and you might get a sense of that if you listen without context... but you probably won't realize how honest he's being without the knowledge we now have.
Maeda himself is the story of these albums, and unless you've... I dunno, read his geeky notes on random videogames via different diaries, the change of him growing bored of games to then selling them (in Hikikomori no Uta and this song respectively) won't resonate as strongly.

If you haven't read the story from the Kanon development diary about the team collectively dying after eating too much pizza together, the line in the song where he's begging for a pizza delivery guy to save him won't have much emotional heft behind it.

And if you haven't read Tomoyo's route, the pain of trying to walk alongside someone far more talented than you might not connect in the same way.

Dis-Love Song

The Dis-Love Song single includes:
Dis-Love Song - a rejection and begrudging acceptance of the themes seen in the love song albums.
Life is like a Melody - a cover of the Tomoyo After ending song.
Toki wo Kizamu Uta - a cover of the CLANNAD After Story opening.

What we have here technically isn't a Love Song album. The track of the single, Dis-Love Song, imbues that depressed teenager energy defining Satsubatsu Kids into the usual formula, with a lyric sheet partly-scribbled over out of regret or shame.

The lead character considers himself to be ugly and talentless. He won't be loved by anyone, he won't have that special encounter that all the Love Song characters had. All he can do is imagine that someone is there beside him.
It's a literal dis-love song.

The sense the protagonist of this story gives, that "do I deserve to be with someone else?" is a hallmark of Maeda's writing, going all the way back to MOON..
Some of his earliest routes, Nagamori in ONE, Mai in Kanon, Tomoyo in CLANNAD, all incorporate this sentiment and make it the defining drama of the story.
In Maeda's fiction, a crucial hurdle to finding love is in escaping that self-loathing.

But what I find most fascinating about this album is what it includes:
1) A counterpart to Love Song. That makes sense.
2) The Tomoyo After ED. A bit random, but it's a favourite of his and is from a story where he was similarly open and honest.
3) The CLANNAD After Story opening. Why...? How does this fit in...? We'll find out later.

Requiem for the Heaven

Once again, the team got back together to make an original anime: Kamisama ni Natta hi.
Various staff spoke about all the errors they made in the past and vowed to refine their formula.

Maeda had learned that he's bad at writing anime scripts, so he would be extra attentive towards the pacing of this one.
He knew that people didn't cry at Charlotte's ending, but this time he'd be going all-out.
This will be his greatest work; it has to be.

Maeda was about to, once again, hole himself away from a loud, negative response, and this time... the degree of negativity was going to be overwhelming.

Karma

To people looking back with hindsight, Maeda's confident marketing of the show as the best thing he'd ever made may seem foolish or deceitful or just dumb... but it makes more sense when you consider his perspective.
Everyone involved had learned some important lessons during the previous two anime projects, and Maeda was more aware of them than ever. The second episode of the show would go on to parody his own failings, as the cast tries to film a movie but repeatedly rushes to a conclusion.
Furthermore, the show would be, partially, an adaptation of a song Maeda once wrote. First featured in 2006 on Lia's album Dearly, and placed immediately after a cover of Kanon's opening, was the song Karma.
Karma was, like Life is Like a Melody, Maeda's pride and joy, one of the best songs he'd ever made.
If you thought you were getting a break from the endless chain of love songs, you were mistaken.

Karma tells the story of a girl who, even though she was clumsy and hopeless, was said to be able to save the world at the cost of her own life. The people dressed her up in fancy clothes and treated her as a hero.
A boy, in love with her clumsy demeanour, resented this. He didn't care about the legend people were spreading and saw her for what she was: a cute girl who couldn't crack an egg properly or sing very well. She can't save the world, so don't take her away. He's fine doing the singing, he'll crack all the eggs, so just let her be.

Kamisama ni Natta hi

What is happiness? That's the question that Kamisama ni Natta hi asks.
If you could quantify happiness, scientifically, wouldn't that be great?

A young girl named Hina, dressed in the habit of a nun, introduces herself as a god. The boy on the other end of the conversation, Youta, doesn't believe her. And yet... her ability to predict future events is startling.
So her prediction that the world will end in 30 days, surprisingly, is never really taken seriously. I mean, the world won't just randomly end in a month's time, right?

With the first half of the show almost entirely dedicated to episodic comedy, viewers are strung along by the small mystery of a heroine claiming to be a god.
The second half begins an arc in which the protagonist helps his little sister (a film student) produce an original film. That film is, of course, Karma.
Youta plays the hero and Hina plays the heroine. There are some personality differences between them and the original characters, but the thematic parallel works, and so it acts as the throughline for the final six episodes.

The problem with it was, unfortunately, that Karma was a mere throughline. The events surrounding it were far more divisive.

With all the hype that the marketing played, those claims of them learning from their mistakes and making the saddest thing ever, a negative backlash was sure to arise.

But for what it's worth, I do think they made good on some of their marketing promises. When it comes to pacing, they certainly improved. A concerted effort was clearly put in to start the plot-relevant stuff earlier than usual and to make it take up a larger bulk of the script.
But in responding to the criticism, some other elements fell to the wayside.

It was far from the most heart-breaking anime of all time, the cast wasn't great, and it was maybe the worst-looking of the three.
For a show like this, in isolation, such negativity was misplaced.
For the third entry in a line of disappointments, backed by poor marketing... maybe some frustration was justified.

Were it any other team with any other writer, it'd be a perfectly fine anime, but Maeda is a man who people have expectations of.

Love Song from the Water

It appeared that, since the hospitalization, Maeda's role had been reduced to one of music many won't care about and anime that people hate... but behind the scenes, something was brewing.

Last July, when I got out of the hospital, the president—worried for my health—decided, "you're not allowed to work on any big projects for half a year."
With far too much time to waste, I decided to write a bunch of songs. Now that half a year has passed, I'm suddenly living under a pile of work I'd find impossible to get through even if I were healthy. My writing is in high demand, it seems. ^[n]

HEAVEN BURNS RED

A Maeda-made RPG always seemed like a possibility. He was talking about his love for them even before joining Key. Fans had speculated during the Angel Beats! teasers that it was an RPG ^[y], and for the VN adaptation, an RPG system was considered. ^[z]

So when it was announced that Maeda would be writing and composing for a VN-RPG hybrid, the excitement around it was... well, it was a live-service mobile game with gacha mechanics, so the PC crowd wasn't overwhelmingly happy about it... but there was an excitement of some kind.
At the very least, Maeda was back writing, making his first original game in 15 years, and this time, it was being paired with the music he'd been working so hard to focus on throughout the past decade. People were happy.
If Angel Beats! was the Maeda festival, this was to be the Maeda theme park.

The reveal came with music composed by Maeda and sung by Yanagi Nagi, the same duo behind Owari no Hoshi no Love Song.
A collection of their songs would be collated into an album titled Love Song from the Water.

The game would also feature a band named She Is Legend, with both albums and singles planned throughout the game's development.

Beyond those, there were further Yanagi Nagi songs produced. One I'd like to highlight is Sailing Ship (Broken Ver.), the name of which may sound familiar if you have a good memory. It's a reference to his university band days, and it's not the only callback to his older output in HBR.
No, this game is, as I already put it, a Maeda theme park.
If you, for example, listen to Satsubatsu Radio before playing it, you'll recognize a bunch of the conversations characters in-game have as ones that happened in a radio broadcast.
If you reach the end of a chapter and the credits begin to scroll, you may find yourself thinking "Wasn't this song on Lia's single Birthday Song, Requiem?"

But with the blend of old came a whole heap of new, from swathes of new music to the modern Maeda style featured in titles like Angel Beats! and Charlotte along with a couple collaboration stories focusing on characters who were intended to get routes in Angel Beats! -2nd Beat-.

A light in plot main quest follows rockstar-made-child soldier Ruka, who lives in a depressing post-apocalypse scenario. The player explores memories of normality within the dying world, resulting in hours of conversations about food, manzai comedy routines, and army operation planning.
It's an appreciation of normal life in a setting where such a thing needs to be fought for.

Surprisingly, this kind of game became popular with audiences old and new. Maeda himself was perplexed at how positive the reception was even though he hadn't done anything different from before. Why is everyone in love with this but not Kamisama ni Natta hi?
Whatever the answer, Heaven Burns Red was an immediate success, and it'd continue to soldier on, with frequent side-stories and single releases keeping fans engaged.
But one has to wonder... all those new people who love Heaven Burns Red, how would they react if these references to Maeda's past became the centre of attention?
How much of it would they be able to appreciate?
It's an interesting question to ask.

Nekogarizoku no Osa

In the mid-2000s, Maeda found himself browsing a BBS where people were announcing their marriages. He looked at those messages and thought "ah, so these are normal people." ^[aa]

A question you may have wondered earlier on in this article, specifically around Hisaya's inability to keep up with Maeda's endless pursuit of work, is... why was Maeda overworking himself? Why didn't he take a break in between each game?

"It didn't change how I saw the world at all; I wasn't sick. See, this is just normal to me."

There was a blip in Maeda's schedule. His big projects were all either complete or at a point in production where he couldn't help out, so he had a bit of free time. With this free time, he drove himself crazy. He couldn't just stare at his phone all day, distracted, like ordinary people could.

A man from the welfare centre, focused on mental health, told Maeda that he could drop in and chat whenever, but Maeda didn't want to be a bother, so he declined.
But one of the man's suggestions somehow made it through Maeda's barrier of rejections: "If you have so much free time, why not write a novel?" It was an innocent question that only someone who doesn't know Maeda could suggest, and maybe that's why it worked.

Maeda would, for the first time in his career, create something all by himself.
For the first time, he put aside his responsibility of continuing the legacy of 'nakige' and wrote whatever he wanted.

It was a depressing story, darker than even the company's president expected, but therein lay the honesty; it was a work he could be proud of.

"I never asked to be born into this world, get it?"
"Eh...?"

A weak voice escaped my lips, so quiet, it could be lost to the wind before ever reaching her.

"I'm saying I didn't ask to be born here."
She took one step forward, looking ready for a fight.

"I'm just a victim of my parents' selfish desire to have children. Honestly, I do have the right to make them sad. They brought me into this world; I didn't want that. And I know there'll be more people sad about it than just those two - Yeah, that sucks, but they can complain to my parents. They gave birth to me without telling me a thing, so it's what they deserve."

A young adult named Tokitsubaki has taken over for her grandfather in monitoring a famous suicide spot. It's this youth's job to convince people not to give up on life.
As it so happens, a woman looking to jump from the cliff turns up, and the two have a confrontation. She claims that she wants to see 'outside the world', a place one arrives at upon death.

This throwaway fantasy blends with some comedic narration in between the initial drama, so it at first appears to be the usual Maeda storytelling affair, albeit with an immediately darker subject matter than usual.

"I'm not one of you ordinary people. Everything in life is a pain or it's too much effort, and there's no fun or happiness here. I'm a real sad person."

What's wrong with this woman? Just lay down in bed and look at your phone and the days will pass themselves by.

In case it's not already obvious, the lady looking to kill herself is a representation of Maeda.
She visits her parents maybe once a year.

She drives herself mad whenever she isn't distracted by writing music, which is in itself a draining process.
She looks down on pop music for being easy, commercialized slop, but it's how she makes a living, and making a living is what matters.
She doesn't like to rely on others because she doesn't want to be a bother, plus, she values herself much lower than the people around her.

She sees herself as not being one of the "ordinary people" and she can't get by without a drink.
She has social media brain rot, feels she's incapable of love, and is at the age where her body is all aches and pains.
Also, she's weirded out by mundane technologies like umbrellas or train handles. I get that. Don't look at someone driving in a car for too long; the reality of how odd it is to see a person sat in a stationary box pulled along by four spinning wheels will begin to set in.

Anyway! The lady's pen name is Jyuuroumaru. She's a composer.
She's her own character of course, not a lazy stand-in for the author, but it's crystal clear who the author behind her is.

In truth, there's no fantasy to the tale, just belief. 'Wanting to die' sounds like a bad thing, so Jyuuroumaru is instead focused on the next thing. There's not much hope for this world, but maybe the next world is better, and maybe dying will get her there.
Maybe that world will be fun, or maybe she'll be different, or... basically anything other than reality.

Like the dolphins in an aquarium, some accept life and coast by, but some of them must feel sad. If they died, maybe they'd be reincarnated as one of the people smiling beyond the confines of their glass cage.

It's a reincarnation theory, and in that endless cycle of life, some are born on the outside and are blessed with happiness, while others get trapped in an unfair world.
Having known someone who went through a very long depression period, she too believed a similar thing: that it was okay to have lived such a sad life because the more important life she has in some greater world beyond our own is yet to be lived.
A lot of the novel is like that; I recognize her thoughts and actions as something from my own life experience. The target audience of the work is firmly "people like Maeda", but as someone who isn't like Maeda, the book is incredible at making me recognize and think about the depression of others in my life.

Maybe it's because of the people I've known, or maybe it's because of how close she is to Maeda, but Jyuuroumaru is a very well-realized character. That's the essence of the work.

The contrast between a happy person working a mundane job and a depressed person working alongside celebrities becomes an obvious point of attention, and this spirals into a whole heap of conversations about topics that pertain to the 'perpetually depressed musician' lifestyle, during which, the depressed girl is prone to long rants about the world.

"On Saturdays and Sundays, people usually go see a movie or spend time with friends, go on dates or get some family time. That's what normal is, right?
But I'm not normal, so life's full of blank hours with nothing to do. I sit and wait for Monday to come - when the world will begin to move again - while endlessly enduring those blank hours as they come.
Those other guys probably don't live just to do their job; they've got friends, partners, families, meaningful private lives and stuff. So of course they enjoy the weekend, but me? I don't have that. All I have is work."

It's a slow-paced, low-stakes story full of long protracted rambling from a depressed woman in mundane scenarios, and so... you can really tell it's not meant to be a commercial product like Maeda's Key works.
It is, in essence, another AIR or Tomoyo After or Love Song, but even the more honest VNs he worked on had some spice or drama to keep them entertaining to general audiences. Nekogarizoku no Osa has none of that.
It's a simple story, the entertainment value of which depends wholly on whether you find Jyuuroumaru interesting or not. Does the gap between her stunted maturity and ample life experience keep you turning the pages?
The only fallback is Maeda's usual comedic style: a character says something silly and another points out how silly it is. Other than that, it's a heartfelt piece.

"I'd like to try loving someone. I'd want to fall so deeply in love, I'd be willing to give up everything for them. Then I'd be invincible."

I'm explaining all this not only to highlight how specific this story is, but also to make a contrast to Heaven Burns Red which, weirdly, is quite similar.
HBR is exaggerated and cartoony, and it has a high-stakes mystery acting as the backbone of everything, but a majority of the text is essentially a lighter-hearted version of what Nekogarizoku no Osa is; it's a lot of food talk and manzai.

To put it plainly, Heaven Burns Red is a little bit more fictional, but I feel like, at this point in time, the line between what Maeda wants to write and what he actually produces is blurrier than ever.
But that really makes me wonder... how blurry can you make that line before people start to complain?
How much can Maeda write himself into his characters before mainstream audiences catch on?
How true to himself is he allowed to be?

"The only fictional part is that Tokitsubaki arrives to rescue Jyuuroumaru from wanting to die. There wasn't a Tokitsubaki in my life, so I'm stuck cursing the world while getting sick of my own buggy brain."

"Maybe the reason I keep writing all these scripts and music is because I'm waiting for that day when my Tokitsubaki appears."

Utsukushii Hana Saku Oka de

"What your treasure may be, and how you can obtain it, is something that nobody knows, but you will surely find it someday."

For now, at the very least, Maeda's purpose in life is clear: to make music for She is Legend. If writing for Heaven Burns Red is a job, making the music for it is a hobby.

Utsukushii Hana Saku Oka de, a song from Heaven Burns Red, is one performed by the same HBR band as usual, though the style of it is very different from their backlog.
It's a spoken-poetry rock hybrid, very trendy with younger audiences^[ab], but not something Maeda has ever done before. The closest thing to this is maybe Kooru Yume.

Anyway, it had a bit of vocal hate levied against it for multiple reasons of varying degrees of negativity:
Firstly, it's not the kind of music the band would perform.
Secondly, the singers don't suit the track - it's more of a Satsubatsu Kids song.
Thirdly, the lyrics don't suit the story.
And finally, it just sucks. It has a bad genre or a bad sound or... whatever mean things people on 2ch were saying.

That's right, something Maeda made is immediately garnering hate, which can only mean one thing: it's a song for Maeda fans.

Naturally, no one's translated the lyrics for this one, so forgive me for writing them directly into the page...

Dear users, what do you all do for fun?
Duo-comedy competitions? Browse social media? Watch streamers? Gaming? Anime?

I once sang "I'm fine just watching anime",^[ac] but in less than 25 minutes the episode's done.
Gimme something exciting. I want to reach a world beyond today's humanity.
Sci-fi's the only thing still interesting to me.
I mean, this plain world's never been fun.
Every idea has already been thought. There's a limit to originality.

If I proposed, we'd stand upon a cliff where beautiful flowers bloom.
That's the best kind of fantasy; an illusion that can never come true.

I'd work myself mad attaining sales goals in the office!
Then sincerely apologise when customers call in with complaints.
But because you're with me, I'd put my all into it.

Open Your Eyes!

I once sang "It's only you, it's only you"^[ad], but you don't seem to exist.
Others don't interest me; I'm cold and lifeless.

Don't go thinking it's easy to ask someone to dinner. I've spent 365 days a year by myself.
I don't go home or show my face to my parents. Life is peaceful but my heart is like hell.

Once in a while, I hope for something good to happen,
one of those movie-like meetings. So, where are you?
I want you with me. Come and get me. I'm right here.
I've been waiting all this time, a hundred years in solitude.

I'll propose. In space, upon a floating cliff where beautiful flowers bloom.

I'd board a busy train, and even after being stepped on, I'd give a perfect presentation!
Then I'd face down a storm with my umbrella, standing strong.
All because you're with me.

Why do I live? Give me an answer.
Neither the doctor nor the councillor can help me.

Why do I live? Give me an answer.
Then once I have a reason to live, I'll propose.
Upon that floating cliff in space where beautiful flowers bloom.

I'd work myself mad, content with a big homemade lunch.
And all the days I felt dead would begin to sparkle.

All because I met you.

I met you.

We met, right?

Did we meet?

I feel I met you.

That's all it was.
I dreamt it.^[ae]

But I get it.

That's life.^[af]

Inside these lyrics, there are a bunch of direct references, but also some similarities in its messaging to songs and stories from Maeda's past. It is, after all, a response to the stories Maeda had been writing all this time. It's incredibly self-indulgent and something that can only be fully admired if you are mad enough to go through all of Maeda's creative works... but here we are.

We could look at, for example, the earlier quote I gave from Maeda responding to a fan's question about the meaning of life...

"Happiness is important. Ordinary people would be happy if they got married, had children, and watched their children grow older."

It's easy to miss, but this is basically a non-answer. He says "happiness", and gives one definition—what ordinary people would find happiness in.
He didn't, however, give his own definition. If the meaning of life is happiness, what is his happiness?

Why do I live? Give me an answer.
Neither the doctor nor the councillor can help me.

Like fans talking about AIR, Kanna was happy but she could've been even happier!
...is there any meaning in that? Didn't Kanna already find her meaning in life?
"Happiness" is short form for something else; something that's different to every person. For some, it's marriage; for others, it's not.

As you can imagine, despite some negativity around the song, people who like Maeda really liked this one... but it's hard to argue that it suits the game's band. The main sentiment I saw (browsing public tweets at the time^[ag]) was that it wasn't She Is Legend singing; it was Maeda's soul shining through. As if, after writing so much fiction, he grew rebellious and spoke through the characters.

How much of this did he want to write? How much of it is he allowed to write?
When the creator's voice conflicts with his responsibilities, which do you favour?
What is his purpose? Why is he doing this?
What is happiness?

And So The Story Ends

With that, the long long story of our storyteller's life has reached the modern day.
Resigned to a life romance never found its way into; a life where he can't write stories that people like, where he can't sing songs on a stage like he dreamed of, and where the normality of enjoyable daily mundanity sounds like a dream.
And yet he's in demand, and everyone has high expectations of him.
A burnt-out flame, forever uncertain whether to write for himself or for others, unable to retire for fear of having free time, continuing to go with the flow of life until it leads him to the Styx.

I'd like to believe there's hope, and that all the connections Maeda has made throughout his career, from his childhood friend on the radio to the assistant writer who has worked alongside him since AIR, and even the relationships he fumbled, will one day bring the light he's always been looking for into his life.

I'm not sure there's much power in belief though. Maeda would surely call that a dream.

I've really been working with just my own brain for over a decade now. Before that, I was stuck at a school I hated, wasting my life away.
There was never the time in this eternity of mine to ask for another's opinion, to ask for their help.

(...)

For most, that scene in ONE where the goofy protagonist switched off the lights will be a forgettable bit of comedy, but for one boy, it changed his life.
The author of that scene will never know.
I'll never be able to tell him. That's just the reality of things.

If people love a scene I write as much as I loved that scene in ONE...
I'll probably never know.

That's the reality of things.
It's evident from my writing here—from word choice to theming, and from the length of this article as a whole—that Maeda Jun's works have had an effect on my creative output.
He'll never know that, and if he did, it wouldn't mean anything. The mass of fans doesn't mean anything; there's little validation in a distant, analytical voice.

"I liked a thing you made, so thank you" is a nice thing to say, but it won't erase loneliness from a man's life. It won't thaw a frozen heart or mend a broken brain.

"But of them all, it was the singer of Little Busters! ~Refrain~'s theme song, Suzuyu, who said, 'You don't have to make anything else, just please live. Don't leave us.' It brought tears to my eyes."

Praise from a fan will never be what he really needs, but these connections may be it.
Maybe he'll find more reason to live than carrying on the responsibility left to him by Hisaya.
Maybe he'll find more things to enjoy than 20-minute anime episodes and making or listening to music.
There are a lot of possibilities, but there's only one reality.

I'm not sure there's much power in belief, but I'd like to believe there's hope.
Maeda, I'm sure, would call that a dream.

In the words of a forest bear he once wrote:

[v] Satsubatsu Kids『Autumn Song』 (via Youtube):

大病を患って手術してから体力も肺活量もがくんと落ちたし、音痴なままだしで、歌うことは諦めました。なので自分で歌う予定で作ってあった曲を代わりにひょんさんに歌ってもらいました。アーティスト名は、自分がアーティスト活動に使おうと昔から考えていたものです。反響あればＣＤ作るかも？（麻枝）

[ag] "『美しい花咲く丘で』今まで虚構を書いてきた麻枝准さんのフラストレーションが溜まって遂に爆発したような。そんな感じの曲。" - @butter_piko

"美しい花咲く丘で、シーレジェが歌っていると言うよりは麻枝准の魂が歌ってるって感じしたな" - @n0_t_

"美しい花咲く丘で、曲としてどうこうとかは置いておいて、正直五十鈴感はないよね" - @BGCL_MBJR_ill

"美しい花咲く丘で殺伐キッズが歌えば皆満足なんだよね" - @key_akakika

"美しい花咲く丘で賛否両論って感じみたいやね

MOROHAを意識してるなら自分（麻枝本人）の言いたいことを言うのがベストなんだけど、純粋なヘブバン・シーレジェファンからすると「何これ？」と感じるのは当然やね" - @uuzii0426

"美しい花咲く丘でに対するご意見をちょいちょい見かける

どうも過去に麻枝さんが書いた曲のオマージュをSiLが歌っているのがおかしいという意見が多いように思う。自分は割となんでも許せる(というのも烏滸がましいのだけど)タイプなので、「嬉しいサービス演出」くらいのつもりで聞いていたのだけど

きっと、思い入れが深いが故に、思うところがあるのだろう。自分はアニメ版CLANNADからようやっとkey作品に触れた人間で、AB！もLoveSongも真剣に聴いてこなかったので、その感覚は羨ましく思ったりもする。

だがこれはkeyというブランドがファンの新旧を問わず心を揺さぶってきた証だとも思います。" - @tenteketen_f5