Who wrote Kanon?
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)
Between June and August 2004, Ohzora also released five separate volumes of manga based on "Kanon" drawn by five separate artists. Ohzora later collected some of the previously published manga anthologies into two volumes titled "Kanon Anthology Comics Best Selection" released in December 2006 and January 2007. Additionally, Ohzora released another 13 volumes of an anthology series titled "Kanon" under their "Twin Heart Comics" label. The now-bankrupt publisher Raporto also released 21 manga anthology volumes titled "Kanon" under their "Raporto Comics" label between November 2000 and October 2002. The last manga anthology, a collection of four-panel comic strips released in a single volume by Enterbrain titled "Magi-Cu 4-koma Kanon", was released in January 2007 under their "MC Comics" label. Each of the anthology series are written and drawn by an average of 20 people per volume.