Jun Maeda
After forming Key, Maeda worked on the music and scenario for their first title "Kanon" released in 1999, which proved to be very popular in the adult game market in Japan. Beside Maeda, the majority of "Kanon" scenario was written by Naoki Hisaya, but he quit Key shortly after "Kanon" was produced. Following this, Maeda wrote most of the scenario for Key's next title "Air", along with again working as the lyricist and one of the composers for the music featured in the game. After a period of four years in 2004, Key released their third and longest game "Clannad" where Maeda did a vast amount of the writing for the game; in all, Maeda put in around 75% of the work that went into the creation of "Clannad". Also in 2004, Maeda began writing his first manga entitled "Hibiki's Magic", which was first conceived as a short story he wrote as a student. In 2005, Maeda worked on the scenario and music for Key's fifth game "", followed by Key's sixth title "Little Busters!" released in July 2007 which he also worked on in regards to the scenario and music.
Kanon (visual novel)
Five adult light novels written by Mariko Shimizu and published by Paradigm were released in Japan between October 1999 and August 2000. The cover art and internal illustrations were drawn by Itaru Hinoue, the artist who drew the artwork in the visual novel. The basis for each novel was one of each of the five heroines and had titles that were taken from the musical themes pertaining to each character in the original game. The first two released were and in December 1999. The third was released in April 2000 and the fourth novel was titled "The Fox and the Grapes" (Makoto), released two months later. The final novel titled was released in August 2000. Paradigm re-released the five novels in conjunction with VisualArt's under their VA Bunko imprint, which removed the erotic scenes, starting with "Yuki no Shōjo" on June 27, 2009, and ending with "Hidamari no Machi" on December 26, 2009. To make up for the missing erotic content, Shimizu wrote additional content for each volume. A sixth novel titled for the supporting character Sayuri Kurata written by Shimizu and illustrated by Zen was released on March 31, 2011.