Jun Maeda (artist)

Jun Maeda ( Japanese 麻 枝 准 (stage name), 前 田 純 (civil), Maeda Jun ; born January 3, 1975 in Mie Prefecture , Japan ) is a Japanese author , mangaka , composer and songwriter . He became known mainly for his work on the Ren'ai adventures Kanon , Air and Clannad .

Career

Early life

Jun Maeda began writing his first smaller works at elementary school age and wrote his first amateur playbook . Originally he was inspired by the first two editions The Castle of Darkness and The Den of Dragons of the Grailquest playbook series, which James Herbert Brennan created. In middle school he worked for the school newspaper and published some of his short stories in it. At the Kaisei high school he began writing lyrics and composing music. At this time he also increasingly turned to the fantasy genre. When he nor the Chūkyō University visited, he managed some of his short stories in the by Kadokawa Shoten published his - Light Novel magazine The Sneaker publish. While working on his thesis, he developed a stronger relationship with techno music and completed his studies in psychology .

orientation

While he was still at university, Jun Maeda thought about working as a composer for video game music , working with plans for one of the big game developers such as Nihon Falcom , Namco or Capcom . He was denied this, however. Ultimately, he was invited to an interview by the game developer TGL, but was turned down because the documents were incomplete. When he finally realized that he would have no chance as a musician, he decided to apply to write scenarios. In the mid-1990s, many of the computer game writers were still very inexperienced, so Jun Maeda decided to advocate adult games. In a month he wrote a 300 page erotic story to sell to a game developer. So he tried it first at AliceSoft , but ended up with the company Scoop. There he wrote the scenario for the 1997 game Chaos Queen Ryōko . However, he did not agree with the working conditions there and left the company after completing this game.

Tactics

After leaving Scoops, he started working for the developer Tactics, which was newly founded under Nexton . There Jun Maeda wrote the plot and composed the music for Tactic's second game Moon. In 1998 he worked on the title One - Kagayaku Kisetsu e and noticed the positive reception of these two works. As a reaction to this, he left his previous employer together with some employees of these two games and founded the game developer Key under Visual Art’s together with Itaru Hinoue , Shinji Orito , Naoki Hisaya and OdiakeS .

Key

Kanon was the first Ren'ai adventure produced by Key,which was released in 1999. Jun Maeda wrote the plot with Naoki Hisaya and composed the music for Kanon with Shinji Orito and OdiakeS. Naoki wrote most of the scenario, but left Key after it was completed. In the follow-up title Air , he took over the majority of the plot and worked again as a songwriter and composer of game music. Four years after the last release of a game by Key followed in 2004 with Clannad, the longest and most extensive game so far, in which Jun Maeda wrote most of the lyrics and the plot.

With Hibiki no Mahō he wrote his first manga in 2004 , which was based on a short story when he was a student. Further work on the game Tomoyo After - It's a Wonderful Life (2005) and Little Busters! (2007) where he was also involved in the plot and the music. In February 2007, he announced in an issue of Comptiq that he would no longer work for Key as a writer. Still, in December 2007, he admitted within Dengeki G's Magazine that he might work on the music for the next game, Rewrite . In the same year he also composed the music for the credits of Himawari no Chapel de Kimi to for the developer Marron and also contributed to the music of the game 5 by RAM , which was released in July 2008. As indicated in advance, Jun Maeda did not leave the studio completely and has been working as a composer and quality inspector on Rewrite , Key's seventh game , since 2008 . In 2010 he came up with the idea for the anime television series Angel Beats! , wrote its plot and was also involved in creating the music. Building on the same scenario and plot, he also gave the direction of the adaptations of the series, which were published in the form of mangas and light novel editions.

Writing style and topics

In many of the scenarios that Jun Maeda devised and implemented as Ren'ai Adventure, the theme of a family or the connections between people is always the focus. In Clannad in particular , family relationships are used intensively. For example, he portrayed the broken relationship between Tomoya Okazaki and his father, as well as with the family of Nagisa Furakawa, a so-called “perfect family”. But earlier works also addressed the relationship between family members. So got into Moon. the protagonist in conflict with her mother. On the other hand, Maeda rarely went into detail in the treatises ( Clannad is an exception) about the causes and backgrounds of the situations. He also repeatedly picked up a realistic concept of magic in order to be able to make the stories more exciting and interesting. Elements from Japanese legends were incorporated into Canon . The boundaries between the magical and the real world become blurred. As in Clannad , another purely magical world is presented parallel to the actual plot , which does not influence the plot, but depends on it. This concept of parallel worlds, between realism and magic from One - Kagayaku Kisetsu e has been compared to the novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami . At the same time, such parallel worlds as well as the tragic situation of the protagonist in a Ren'ai Adventure are seen as typical for the genre.

After the completion of Moon. and his melancholy storylines, Jun Maeda decided to pursue this type, which became known as Nakigē (English: "tearful game"). In the games One - Kagayaku Kisetsu e and Kanon , he used this element to "move the player to tears". So he consciously built depressive elements into the storylines of the characters Makoto Sawatari and Mai Kawasumi in Kanon .

Musical work

During his time at Tactics, he composed only one piece of music for Moon. It was not until Key that he was involved in the music production of all games, with the exception of Planetarian - Chiisana Hoshi no Yume . For the games that were created with his participation at Key, he wrote the lyrics and composed the titles and background music together with Shinji Orito and OdiakeS.

Albums and singles that were created with his participation in Key were marketed under the independent label Key Sounds Label . Three singles and one album were released under the label, which were created solely through his work as a composer and songwriter . These were Natsukage / Nostalgia , Birthday Song, Requiem , Spica / Hanabi / Moon and Love Song . The titles of the first three publications were sung by the singer Lia , while the latter was interpreted by Riya .

He also worked with Lia outside of Key and wrote the music titles Doll and Human , which were sung in duets by Lia and Aoi Tada . Doll was used in the credits of Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino- . For the game 5 developed by RAM, he wrote over 20 titles for the background music and the titles for the opening and closing credits.

Web links

• Jun Maeda in the Encyclopedia of Anime News Network (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Scenario Writer Special Talk . In: Colorful Puregirl . July 2004.
2. ↑ visual style 2008 1 vol.01 巻 頭 イ ン タ ビ ュ ー 麻 枝 准 . Archived from the original on July 12, 2009 ; Retrieved February 17, 2015 (Japanese, Jun Maeda interview in the January 2008 issue of Visualstyle). 
3. ↑ Jun Maeda: Hibiki's Magic . Vol. 1. Tokyopop .
4. ↑ Interview with Jun Maeda and Shinji Orito . In: Dengeki G's Magazine . MediaWorks , October 30, 2007.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Rewrite. (No longer available online.) Visual Art's, archived from the original on October 16, 2008 ; Retrieved October 17, 2008 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ 『ひ ま わ り の チ ャ ペ ル で き み と』 . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 23, 2008 ; Retrieved October 21, 2008 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ RAM Official Page. Visual Art’s , accessed October 21, 2008 (Japanese). 
8. ↑ Key シ ナ リ オ ス タ ッ フ ン グ イ ン タ ビ ュ ー . In: カ ラ フ ル ・ ピ ュ ア ガ ー ル . March 2001, archived from the original on August 27, 2009 ; Retrieved February 17, 2015 (Japanese, interview with Jun Maeda and Yūichi Suzumoto from Key about the successor Air .). 
9. ↑ 特殊 ジ ャ ン ル (本 に あ ら ず) . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 19, 2008 ; Retrieved May 25, 2008 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ Oren Ronen: Otaku Immersion - The Depiction of the Protagonist in Visual Novels. (PDF; 485 kB) (No longer available online.) Tel Aviv University , March 29, 2008, archived from the original on July 23, 2011 ; accessed on September 16, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ↑ Girl games come of age. freetype.net, archived from the original on January 11, 2008 ; accessed on August 19, 2008 . 
12. ↑ 麻 枝 准 . In: ErogameScape− エ ロ ゲ ー 批評 空間 -. Archived from the original on February 3, 2009 ; Retrieved October 4, 2015 (Japanese). 
13. ↑ 麻 枝 で す。 宣 伝 に き ま し た. . Visual Art’s , June 18, 2008, accessed October 21, 2008 (Japanese).