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)
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.