Kanon (visual novel)
Most of "Kanon"s development staff originally worked for the visual novel publisher Nexton under the brand Tactics. After the release of the brand's third game "", most of Tactics' staff left Nexton to pursue work in another publishing company where they could have the freedom to produce their next game. Itaru Hinoue, who had previously worked at VisualArt's once before, introduced Key's founding members to the president of VisualArt's, Takahiro Baba. Baba gave the developers the freedom they desired, and they officially transferred to VisualArt's where they formed Key on July 21, 1998 and started production on "Kanon". The planning for the visual novel was headed by Naoki Hisaya who was also one of two scenario writers with Jun Maeda. Hisaya wrote the scenarios for Ayu, Nayuki and Shiori, while Maeda wrote the routes for Makoto and Mai. Art direction was headed by Key's artist Itaru Hinoue who worked on the character design and computer graphics. Further computer graphics were split between three people—Dinn, Miracle Mikipon, Shinory—and background art was provided by Torino. The music in the game was composed by OdiakeS, Shinji Orito and Jun Maeda. "Kanon" was the first and last visual novel developed by Key that two of the main staff—Naoki Hisaya, and OdiakeS—worked on before pursuing a similar line of work in other visual novel studios.
Kanon (visual novel)
The first "Kanon" manga illustrated by Petit Morishima was serialized in MediaWorks' manga magazine "Dengeki Daioh" between the February 2000 and July 2002 issues. The individual chapters were later collected into two separate "tankōbon" volumes published by MediaWorks under their "Dengeki Comics" imprint released in September 2000 and on July 27, 2002. There are six chapters in total, three in each volume. Aside from the prologue in volume one and the epilogue in volume two, the other four chapters concern four of the main heroines. From chapters one through four, the main heroines presented are: Shiori Misaka, Makoto Sawatari, Mai Kawasumi and Ayu Tsukimiya. To make up for Nayuki not getting a chapter of her own, the story is altered in that Nayuki is in most of the scenes Yuichi is in. The first manga is different from the visual novel in that Shiori's, Makoto's, and Mai's stories are not told in their entirety. Near the end of each of these girls' stories were originally intended to give the viewer the remaining answers, but the manga version ends these girls' stories prematurely. This was due to the manga putting more focus on Ayu's story.