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.
List of Kanon episodes
The first anime adaptation under the title "Kanon" is produced by the Japanese animation studio Toei Animation, directed by Takamichi Itō, written by Ryota Yamaguchi, Makoto Nakamura, and Michiko Yokote, and features character design by Yōichi Ōnishi who based the designs on Itaru Hinoue's original concept. Thirteen episodes were produced which aired after midnight between January 31 and March 28, 2002 on the Fuji TV Japanese television network. Except for episodes three, four, and seven, the titles from the episodes are named for tracks on the visual novel's original soundtrack. The episodes were released to Region 2 DVD between April 1 and October 2, 2002 by Frontier Works. Spanning seven volumes, each volume contained two episodes except the first which had one. The series was re-released as a seven-disc DVD box set on December 22, 2004 by Frontier Works in limited and regular editions in Japan. In March 2003, an original video animation episode was released on DVD containing the single episode "Kanon Kazahana" also produced by Toei Animation and directed by Takamichi Ito. The episode is set at the same time as the last episode of the anime series. The DVD was released via a promotional campaign and was given to anyone who bought all seven DVDs for the first anime series. Two pieces of theme music are used for the episodes; one opening theme and one ending theme. The opening theme is "Florescence", and the ending theme is "Flower"; both songs are sung by Miho Fujiwara.