Trivia / Keit-Ai

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: A Reddit comment in reply to the similarities between Your Name and Keit-Ai noted this strange coincidence:
  Redditor: The strangest thing was that the posters and trailers for that film were actually shopped to make fake 'promotional material', before anyone even knew what the plot of Kimi No Na Wa was about. Then it came out, and the resemblances did not escape the attention of /a/.
• Defictionalization: Keit-Ai was originally a concept for an anime that doesn't exist written Just for Fun on a thread on 4chan. Though it never actually became an anime (Your Name doesn't count), it did spawn multiple original stories, fan fiction, and an honest-to-goodness webcomic through "meme magic".
• Follow the Leader:
  • The original author of Keit-Ai, Hataki, was originally inspired by Toradora! (2006-2009) in terms of its matchmaker romance. As the original pitch◊ claimed, Keit-Ai is basically Toradora with Alternate Universe shenanigans.
  • However, as the copypasta's popularity/infamy in 4chan grew, anons started making connections to the copypasta's plot and the usual modus operandi of one Makoto Shinkai, particularly his works before 2015 (a love story involving distance and longing, often ending bittersweetly).
  • Naturally, many fan works made for Keit-Ai somehow involve Shinkai's works or at least works reminiscent of his films. This then culminated to people thinking/hoping/presuming/joking that his 2016 film Your Name is basically Keit-Ai in animated form.
• Referenced by...: Click here.
• Vaporware: Unfortunately, Your Name by Makoto Shinkai is probably the closest thing to a Keit-Ai anime that we're ever going to get barring some meme magic miracle happening in the future.
• What Could Have Been: Before the domain of the collaborative Wiki mentioned below expired, it featured a Google document listing the emails of the 4chan anon collaborators, proposals to name the characters as "Hoshikawa Satoru" and "Takahashi Katsumi", the story first taking place during Tanabata, and Satoru receiving Katsumi's phone contact with strange pixel distortions included (which signaled the involvement of the Deus ex Machina).
  • The Google doc also featured an early concept art◊ for Keit-Ai for good measure that prominently showcased cellphones and the Red String of Fate.

---