ジエントＰ
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I finished playing last heroine route of little busters and I figured that I'll write a review of the game. This will contain spoilers of everything, it's over a decade old and I don't think anyone here is interested in it or have already played it, it's a cult classic.
What is this?
It's a visual novel by Key studios with alot of minigames, it surpised me that there was a battle system, a baseball practice minigame a dungeon crawler, and a food server pack into something I thought only had text and text choices. You can't really pidgeonhole this VN into any sort of genre, but it's a nakige crying game, probably the quinessential one with Clannad. So you get introduced to a cast of characters then you spend time with one of them, she will become intimate and then reveal to you her life long trauma in some cryptic way before cullimnating into Rikki solving the girls problem, or at least accepting the current state of affairs and becoming stronger. Yep, the central theme of this novel is becoming emotionally stronger and overcoming adversity.
Introduction
They are stuck in a illusionary world created by kyousuke, he has Childhood friend group called little busters, and he willed the world into existance because they all got in a traumatic bus crash. blah blah blah, you probably already know that tibit of information. Well, his world he created where wishes come true and many traumas of the past present and future are all addressed in order for each individual to progress as a character. Alot of Key magic is involved which make this a pretty great story to read. I love Key magic, so this is a heavily biased review.
I think I'll break this down in Sections. One Music, I absolutely love the music in this, it's the best compositions you can ever have in games period, Shinji Orito, PMMK, and Jun are phenomenal artists. If you need make a background music to a anything, these guys are the guys to learn from. Two Art, Na-ga and the other one has a particular style that never really been very well implemented in the various adaptations, but the CG is amazing, think of 2dcg Anime VN's from the 90's then the 2000's, this is the peaks of the style, and the way they dipict the girls crying are beautiful. Three Writing, in prose, I think I'll also add in plot developments and certain character development motif.
I shall not proceed to disobey any kind of structure to this review hereafter
What is this?
It's a visual novel by Key studios with alot of minigames, it surpised me that there was a battle system, a baseball practice minigame a dungeon crawler, and a food server pack into something I thought only had text and text choices. You can't really pidgeonhole this VN into any sort of genre, but it's a nakige crying game, probably the quinessential one with Clannad. So you get introduced to a cast of characters then you spend time with one of them, she will become intimate and then reveal to you her life long trauma in some cryptic way before cullimnating into Rikki solving the girls problem, or at least accepting the current state of affairs and becoming stronger. Yep, the central theme of this novel is becoming emotionally stronger and overcoming adversity.
Introduction
They are stuck in a illusionary world created by kyousuke, he has Childhood friend group called little busters, and he willed the world into existance because they all got in a traumatic bus crash. blah blah blah, you probably already know that tibit of information. Well, his world he created where wishes come true and many traumas of the past present and future are all addressed in order for each individual to progress as a character. Alot of Key magic is involved which make this a pretty great story to read. I love Key magic, so this is a heavily biased review.
I think I'll break this down in Sections. One Music, I absolutely love the music in this, it's the best compositions you can ever have in games period, Shinji Orito, PMMK, and Jun are phenomenal artists. If you need make a background music to a anything, these guys are the guys to learn from. Two Art, Na-ga and the other one has a particular style that never really been very well implemented in the various adaptations, but the CG is amazing, think of 2dcg Anime VN's from the 90's then the 2000's, this is the peaks of the style, and the way they dipict the girls crying are beautiful. Three Writing, in prose, I think I'll also add in plot developments and certain character development motif.
I shall not proceed to disobey any kind of structure to this review hereafter
Komari
This is a very cute girl, I dare say the strongest character in the entire novel beating out Kud and Haruka. Her problem is that she had a little brother that died when she was little like Kaori, in a hospital because of a terminal illness, what made it traumatic was the little dutch fairy tails the brother and the grandmother told her and the fact he died while he embraced her. The brother had to do damage control from the grandmothers blunt stories that revolve around death of childern (specifically dog of flanders, and little matchlight girl) and made a picture book for her. It's a story about coping with loss. Seething and coping and shit, whatever nonsense internet apes like to say. but it's done in a way that it's a work of art. Rikki had to save her from dispair because she's apart of little busters, and that it will make him able to cope with whatever may happen from the crash that will (?) kill them all.
She apears in Sasami's route as a very strong and emotionally secure girl. She is the girl who will always try and smile and be positive even when everything hurts, maily because that's is one of the things that her older brother taught her.
I wish people are kind like Komari but unfortunetly they don't exist, people probably don't exist. The humanoids you see around you are sociopathic reptiles or something.
Here's a CG of Komari making up to Rikki.
Haruka
The outwardly facing upbeat single sidetail girl that has to face a very abusive family dynamic and bullying. the antithesis of online ape logic, this story is the bane of their existance. In fact bullying is a counterproductive and social ill surprisingly enough, who would've fucking thought. no amount of sophistry will be able to undo this age old truth.
Key and Na-ga likes to make some very powerful images one of my favorite images of the series is in this route, and the music that accompany it is amazing, I think one of my favorite, the instrumental version of faraway (haruka konata ver.).
The standing art of Haruka with the look of hatred is my favorite, the look of utter contempt. I didn't screenshot it but when you come across it you will know. I don't know why I identify with that one standing art in particular, but it speaks to me, the same wavelength.
Now, I just Image dumped without as so much as explained what her route is. Well in order to undertand it you have to go back to the Kuninotokotachi. No but it's a really long story that I'll unsucessfully try and convey in concise terms. So there's two families, the Saigusa and the Futaki families. They have this threesome weddings for some reason relating to the dwindling population within the family, I didn't comprehend it clearly enough but I think it had to do with something like not enough females so two males have to make one a wife. There's this toxic tradition in the Futaki side that the Saigusa family have to deal with, something to do with beatings and public face. The Futaki is absolutely obessed with positive public image and will go through this sadistic culling ritual where they beat the "bad" one and they make the "good" one the one that is fortunate. So this is where ape society goes bunkers, they love traditions where you beat your child for "correction" or kill them, so this story of the sisters overcoming this sadistic ritual is a very brave and controversial move by Key. So the main conflict of the first half of the whole Kanata-Haruka route was amending the estrangement of the sisters and finding out the motivations of thier parents. I was atually at a lost as to if they were foster parents or not but I'll clear up everything here. They both are the biological offspring of the parents, and it was the mother that realized the situation they were in, being in a family of Saigusa and Futaki, that one of the fathers decided to try and stage a crime in order to somehow get rid of the Futaki's abusive child rearing habits, because they were obsessed on public image and therefore would disown them in favor of adopting the Saigusa lineage, this was agreed upon by both the fathers and the mother. What went wrong was the Futaki took the twins in and rejected the one father who took the fall for the family. So they had to suffer for all the contrived lies the Futaki family made up to the defaced Saigusa family and to be extra cruel make up a situation where one of them were the father of the low life criminal. That probably got rid of alot of the plot twists and spoiled this but you are already been warned. It's a very heartwarming story. You will learn that she actually trusted her sister early on her childhood and lost trust and gave in to dispair and grown to hate her in the kanata route. It was basically their immediete family against the world more or less. I guess I could find similarities with Ideology in friction where the defaced royal family had to adopt the role of rebel to oust the sadistic king, they are both similar in blood but they are different. It seems to be a very japanese thing this blood family relationship dynamic in fiction.
The most strongest part of the story was when Haruka gained the courage to forgive the sister for all the things she and the Futaki family had put her through, and the plot twist that Kanata also struggled very hard to save her sister as well after being pushed into the role of the bully by the family under threat of death and/or roles being reveresed. I will go a little further to the family dynamic in the Kanata section.
Kud
Oh boy, this was a trip. Her full name is Кудрявка Анатольевна Стругацкая (or just 能美 クドリャフカ(kudoryafuka)), I don't know her ethnicity exactly but I know she is a quarter Japanese and her grandfather used to have Soviet citizenship. She shares the name of a Russian partisan who died a horrible death by hideous black beings and had a relative who was a orthodox preist die in the red terror. Naomi is name of the voice actor, the characters first name is Noumi, I almost got that confused. Naomi is living a pretty happy life. Back to Noumi, her grandfather was born somewhere near Finland, or was there and got internally displaced into middle soviet union. After, he worked himself into the Space agency and was sent to some island in the pacific for the program. Well fast forward, he gets a Japanese wife and the Soviet Union fell, he couldn't file paperwork for retaining Russian citizenship so he decided on making citizenship with the newly founded Island nation and then try and obtain citizenship with Japan due to his Japanese wife. His daughter, Kudo's mother, decided to stay on the Island and develop her profession as a cosmonaut and give off the child rearing to her father while he, being more preceptive of the general political climate of the Island nation, decided to take Kud across the world while he does work for the space agency. The Mother was devorced for some reason.
Let us step away from the family drama for a moment and look at Kudo's character and relationship with Japan and Japanese. She is a foreigner so people treats her different, she doesn't really mind, but alot of her mannerisms are very Japanese which she picked up from his Japanphile Grandfather, which surprises her peers. But she kind of want to be seen as one of those lovable foreigners and not just a weirdo so she takes up english. She has to be good at a international language like english to make it in the aeronautics industry. At same time she barely knows Russian or the tuwa island language and she's bad at all those languages except Japanese. So she's stuck in a position that shes pretty much culturally/liguistically Japanese where she knows some complex kanji but is obviously seen as foreign and she doesn't actually have any foreign culture imprinted to her and it's more international because all the places she went around europe during her business travels when she was younger. She feels like she doesn't belong anywhere. I think I relate to her alot in this way. I don't really identify with "american" "culture" but it's my birthplace, my language is english but I rather not associate with england, but I'm forever grateful for the Crown for letting us escape a fate in europe like what Kud seemed to be fated to in her Island nation. I'm very confused with my national idenity like Kud is. Shes born from the Island nation but is born from a German (?) father and a Half Japanese/Russian (?) Mother, is culturally Japanese from grandfather/mother imprinting it on her.
Another thing I dentify with was her desire to be something great like a cosmonaut and academic struggles associated with it. I eventually gave up, I didn't have a role model in the same way Kudo has with her mother. Her struggle was english, my struggle was math.
Well spoilers, a incident happened and her mother died while launching one of the rockets to take her to space (it was unclear if it was sabotage or malfunction, the rocket blew up over the island). It so also happened that before that there was growing sentiment against the rocket program because a Island in the chain has sunk into the ocean, and the survivors were left on the capital island where the government couldn't manage the influx of people on the island and the malicious indigenous-foreigner victim ideology that pitted the blame on the island sinking to the government and allocation of funds to the space program over protective/preventative measures for the island sinking, they managed to transform a natural cause into a artifical cause of the island sinking.
Well, the problem is Kudo has to go back with her grandfather to find her mothers fate but the country seems like it will turn into a civil war (in my opinion, seems like a foreign orchestrated color revolution using victim ideology reasons to do evils). The bigger problem is if she was able to make it back or not and if Rikki should let her go or convince her to stay so she will live.
You can tell the theme of this VN is not that dark to let the heroines die (or is it?) so she will live, but in order for you to save her emotionally and her to cope with her mothers death you will have to let her go into the island with the precarious situation where communication lines are cut so she could find the whereabouts of her mother and for her to meet her again.
So I was expecting the hideous black beings, uhm excuse me, spiteful mutants to actually just kill her when breaching the room she and her grandfather was sheltered in after arriving on the island with the embassy staff like it was some liveleak video of some war criminals doing war crimes. The exception was that she and her grandfather was armed and somehow they managed to surrender and not be executed, her grandfather was taken away to not be heard again (Reminder: Rikki was the one who choosed to let Kudo go which lead to these events), and Kudo was taken to a nearby cove/cavern/cave with seawater rising to be left for dead. Maybe they had some consious not to kill a child but not at all, it had to be indirect and kill her without seeing her death which is just cowardly evil. Now here is where key magik comes in, the ritual body painting that Rikki and Kudo did as a practice for married couples on the island enabled their spirits to communicate telepathically but only under extreme emotion, like life threatening stress and trauma. Somehow that communication with Rikki make Kudo depressive state of dispair to disappear and to break free of her chains. The Visual novel didn't depict this but she managed to escape the island, I like to think it was some type of Metal gear solid type sneaking mission or something, she was apparently very afraid of using firearms but in that situation I'm not sure how she managed to find help, she was truely alone, the government forces was likely not present for they had been all killed or captured in the facility she was in before her capture. It could be inhabitants that smuggled her out but it's a 50/50 chance they would be hostile, I don't know if Kud would risk it. Plus she was naked. Oh wait, I forgot what music played during that scene of the escape but it was esctasy.
Sasami
You want to fuck a cat? This route is for you. She turns into a cat.
Well, I love key magic, there's just something about this fantasy that clicks all the right buttons. All of these cat, fox, transformations in stories are amazing and there's always something crazy like this that spice the story up. Going to get right to the point here, Sasami's trauma was that she had a pet black cat that she left in a house when the family had to leave it for demolishing it, the house was old and unstable or something. She took a liking to the cat and the family reluctantly agreed. What was heartbreaking was near the end of the story where we learnt the cat never died and that she had developed a adversion to cats due to this trauma of loss that she didn't even recognize her cat in front of her when she arrived at this school. The cat was suffering a life long case of neglect ever since her absence. This is a male cat. So it was Rikki's task to find the truth and bring it to light to Sasami about the nature of the cat.
What broke me was the last part where she had her last play session with the cat as it was dying. it was less of a pet animal dying and felt more like a infant dying in the arms of a mother. I don't know how they managed to convey it that way, I guess it's was how they managed to convey their relationship like a son being abandoned by a mother. I think that's the message, it always come back to family.
There was some foreshadowing of this event by playing Rin's route the second time. I actually thought the cat was already dead and it was that cat Rin put away, apparently it was a different one? idk.
Kanata
In this arc we delve into the details of the family and why Kanata had to behave the way she did to her little sister. In reality they were both beaten by the family but it was decided early on that Kanata just couldn't take the punishments when losing in the competitions the family set out to determine whe was the "good" girl. So Haruka had to take the place and withstand the beatings. See the two orange hair ties on the side of their head. Those were presents by the parents, so Kanata decided to share the gift with her sister secretly as a symbol of their deeply held bond.
Well the family caught wind of it and demanded Kanata to get rid of one of the hairties so as to punish Haruka from trusting her again, to symbolize her getting first place everytime and haruka getting second place.
Well it ended differently when you followed kanata, Haruka seemed to have made up to her in a very different fashion, it wasn't very memorable because I couldn't recall but somehow it addressed that lost of trust Haruka had in the agreement between the sisters and the mental angrish that Kanata had over that falling out they had after that one faithful track match when Haruka found out about the hairties. The bullying antics was very subdued in this route compared to Haruka's, most of it was from the family and it was Kanata the one trying to put up a facade for the family. I should mention the family was very controlling and they had observers in the shool to monitor Kanata's behaviour so she didn't make up to the "bad" child, therefore invalidating the choosen husband for Kanata, or swaping the roles.
The ending was very confusing, for some reason Kanata and haruka escaped the Family grasp by one jumping them with thev rest of the little busters in front of the school before she was about to be taken away to the wedding and the other at some hotel where they used smoke grenades and brawling. It kind of completed the sisters route because they didn't have to deal with the family anymore. fyi, the cross and the iron cross with haruka's outfit signify Haruka's rebellious personality, midriff and armpits a sign of indeciency. As far as I know it doesn't have anything to do with Christianity apart from that they were considered as rebels and percecuted in Japan by association. So it's symbolic between tradition and progressive ideal, maybe some fusion between them? to rid oneself of the bad traditions while still witholding (immediate) family as the central pillar of the social unit. I'm not really actually sure with the moral of the story beyond bullying bad but family is very important so don't abandon them, they mean well (the sister, and the parents).
Rin
This is the central pillar of the story, between Rin and Rikki. They are the only two that Kyousuke thought he could save. Going to get this off my chest, The entire time you played through pre-refrain in every single route you have Rin confess her feelings to Rikki in a roundabout way, Rikki is a ボケ so he misinterpreted it between her and Kurugaya. If it was me I would have to confront her on that privately in order for her to be more honest with her feelings, or at least seriously contemplate it and try and work around a situation where she is in a more confortable state to express her feelings.
because of this misinterpretation she had to go through a arc where kyousuke had to make up a story where a girl was in love with Rikki and sent her a love letter, this resulted in a very sour love quarrel where she said that she will take Rikki out for a date before Rikki could solve the unrequited love letter problem. in the end it seemed to solve itself, the girl with no standing art was somehow fine with it. I just don't really like it, but Kyousuke does worst stuff that's much harder to forgive I'll get in later. but for now let's wrap up her introduction, shes a shy tsundere and that she has no friends apart from the little busters, she would be a neet playing with kids and cats for most of her life if kyousuke didn't invent the little busters childhood friend group for her to participate in.
So basically what happened was that we found out who was the one behind giving tasks to Rin through the cat Lennon. But Rikkis hasn't found out what the secret ot the world is yet, so what happened was that he got Kengo to help, Kengo knows what the secret of the world is but he witheld it because Rikki not knowing is what is keeping the world held on by it's fabric. I'n the first run we experienced Rikki suffering with Rin because she was transfered to another school where everyone was depressed over a school bus crash that killed most of the students, it was foreshadowing of the little busters not making it back except for Rikki and Rin, mind you in the first attempt in refrain Rikki was in the hospital and Rin had to suffer being alone during that time so it was very symbolic of that moment. Well, Kengo, knowing this series of events are a probablility warned Rikki that to take this route towards learning the truth of this world will end in darkness, but he also had his personal reasons I'll explain later. In the end they challenged Kyosuke, the SuperAdministrator of the world to a batting match in order to get Rin to stay at this school instead of going to the transfer school again. It goes as well as you expect, I'll add a little more detail later.
Now back to center on relationship with Rikki and Rin, in spite of the results of the match Rikki and Rin decided to run away together to and old counrty house their grandfather had when they were little and formed the little busters, without any of the other little busters knowledge. It's a idyllic village, a average Japanese rural town with a twist. Everything is desaturated and it screams that they don't belong here. You get a creeping sense of dread as you feel the circumstances of witholding knowledge from the other villagers and being outlaws living in their relatives houses that is abandoned. They planned on waiting for their grandfather but that never happenened.
In the end the police caught up to them and arrested them. Rin was taken to the transfer school and Rikki back to his school. It's a bad end on purpose.
So, Rikki I believe now has some knowledge of the previous playthrough, this is solidly in the refrain route. So now he knows some of the events that transpired in the previous two routes that he attempted with rin plus some of the others maybe, but the most important one is Rin, because that will help him push through this roadblock. Unfortunently all the previous progress you made with Rin was completely shattered by Kyousuke's decision to be rash and break morals in order to push Rin to become stronger by sending her back to the transfer school. Rin regressed back into a child like state at the beginning of refrain, going to a preschool to play with the kids, this was shortly before the main game started. Kyousuke this time is nowhere to be seen and Rikki had to fill in the role for him to form the little busters together.
Let's skip a couple steps and his character, because I'm still doing Rin and her development is not complete and I need to keep it organized.
Rin is completely clueless through the first part of refrain, I don't think Rikki attempted to get Rin to become stronger together as his goal was trying to form back the core of the little busters, Rin, Kengo, Masato, Kyosuke and himself. I think Rin was in a state of shock during that scene in Refrain, yes that one with the song Faraway with the singer, she was confused at what was happening. Well fast forward to the bus accident Kengo saved Rin from becoming disabled and Masato protected Rikki from becoming disabled from the crash, Kyousuke managed to hold the leaking gasoline from spreading to the engine block which gave Rikki and Rin enough time to escape from the bus. This was the first false end of refrain and the second false end of Rins route.
This part of the story it gets really amazing, after credits roll and you say it's not enough you have Komari make her own dream world instead of Kyousuke in order to help Rin become stronger, and not only once but twice There's alot of missing context and time jumps but see this image below.
(具) means Wife , the seemingly joke gag of Komari saying she's not fit to have a wife now rikki looked at her in that spot was acutally serious and not just part of her clutzy charater of stumbling around words and saying more embarrassing and ridiculous things. She actually confessed her feelings to Rin in those routes that we were only to take a glimpse of.
I don't think I actually seen Rin actually cry tears. the most we saw was her depressive text messages. It's amazing.
Holy, this is Amazing, I want friends like this.
It's just so touching. Maybe a baseball team will be the key... or something like whatever Kyousuke managed to cobble together. Serious Emo vibes.
Well in the final route with Komari Rin managed to become stronger and saved Rikki from his narcolepsy and then procedually carry out everyone on makeshift stretchers, and managed to save the Sacrifical hero, full of unconditional Agape Love, much like a Jesus, but much more flawed and human, Kyousuke.
Kyousuke
Rikki really looked up to Kyousuke, after his parents died he was much like Kyousuke in refrain when they both swapped roles. it was only when Kyousuke inducted him into the Little busters group did he get up in spirit. All so Rin could have friends, he started with Rikki after he and Rin.
Now the dark side of his character. See the two images below. This is what he did.
He killed them. he forced his world to become such a way as to force insane hardships on Rikki and Kengo. I don't think this helped at all, in fact I think it regressed the progress he made and he was going mad with being stuck in the dream world hence why rin went back to square one and Komari, the Strongest character, had to save Rin from her possible cursed fate (after I finished the VN I started seeing references to this thing called "groundhog day" in the various forums and then I read the wiki entry, it's the insane american (? maybe, maybe not, it's hollywood, take a guess) version of the timeloop genre where the mc went around killing everyone and manipulating them). Kyousuke is shown to be weak in how he managed to handle the timeloop, after telling rikki to go back from Rin's route and save the other girls he went mad and forced Kengo to see his Love, 古式, die. And then post refrain he has the audacity to torment a younger kid into suicide. I have some personal questions to ask him and why he fetishized some of his manga he read. Well, it is known his more lighter side to him is that he still pretty much act like a kid and loves to read all this shounen manga and make up wild adventures, hense why the majority of the VN was entertaining gags. as a consequence and as a double edge sword he seemed to not quite understand how to handle his friends feelings very well, I almost think he's sociopathic to a degree. There are better ways to handle Kengo's Love life (or very close friendship) without putting him through that amount of pain, and there is a gentler way of letting Saya go out of this dream world, a world where wishes ought to come true. This is just cruel Kyosuke, you're in a Key visual novel and this is a Nakige, not a Utsuge. I can only think of the moral Kengo had to go through, to let things go, but with Saya, what the fuck, there doesn't seem like any to that, is it because you're jealous? Why did you torment her? did you just not know she is young.... Okay, I'll continue on that train of thought to Saya's and Kengo's route. Oh boy do I have beef with him here that I want to personally settle.
So he's a bit of a mystery when you think about it, in terms of what his deep character traits are. I guess his motivations mirrored Rikki's motivations when he took role of the little busters, but it doesn't seem to have any deep meaning to it. If you think of a anime protaganist it's him, but in this show the protagonist role is actually switched to Rikki a very normal looking kid, like the average Japanese male, dark brown hair, brown eyes, short stature and so on. Also how he's drawn it's very emo like, especially the picture above which I think is when he was in his lowest state mentally speaking in that dark room he never exits from.
Before he went hoops and bounds trying to get a saleryman job from far off cities and doing all of these favors to challenge all the headclub members to duel them in a baseball match. There is alot of charater development that wasn't really addressed when he was in charge of the dream because that's what the player was to discover and the writers didn't want to dwell on all the reasons he did this and that this far into the novel.
I personally like his themesong and that part at the begining when he was saying some poetic or nonsensical words when he was trying to get the little busters to form a baseball team, the "boys don't cry" soundtrack is really nostolgic for some reason even though I never heard of it in my life
Kengo
So this Kengo man is acutally a really soft and gentle man behind all the serious Japanese Kendo samurai fencing he does.
So you can see earlier that he has this girl earlier that he loves that committed suicide in the events before the Bus crash incident, so when the dream world was created he had partial control over the events of the world (I guess out of Kindness by Kyousuke), so that's why he is seen as this very hansome man like Kyousuke, he uses it to try and find a happy end for his love, but it took about two routes to see him rescue her, so maybe he didn't have full knowledge before then. His dad was a Kendo master so he trys to be one, but in reality he hates Kendo, he doesn't find joy in it and he doesn't seems to have freinds there, just admireers. So that was part of his desire to join Little busters, to have freinds and make memories. But I can't really fathom his reason to let go of his love because everything the little busters did was 「楽しい」 I guess Kyousuke really broke him down, Kyousuke really doesn't know how to handle other peoples feelings it seems like he devolved into some stolkholm syndrome to try and to accept the situation he's in. I don't really know how I would process the situation myself if I was in his shoes either.
Masato
So early on people picked on him, so he got angry and got strong and then beat them to a pulp, so it made people fear him. I love this part of his character, except for the beating part, he should just go lethal, they won't actually learn their lesson that way. Well, he got inducted into the little busters by Rin and Kyousuke beating him like it was a match of a good guy and bad guy bandit terrorizing people.
Well, he's really not a bad guy, he just has his own motivations to beat up people, the fact he was pushed around and then he lashed out in a violent matter seemed to strangely make people get confused, when the problem is clear as day. Well we also learned he was the silent henchman of Kyousuke, I don't really know if he really is aware of the situation he's in, but it seemed that he past the 5 stages of gief or not. I think his life was fullfilled when he joined little busters, he was strangely calm during that scene, maybe he just wanted to be valued as a person and the little busters gave him that. So he was tamed in a way to be "muscle idiot".
Mio Nishizono
A fujoshi with a imaginary friend who likes poems alot. This route really speaks for the Ted Kaczynski fans for you there that psychiatrists and their enablers are pure evil and [fed post redacted]. Also if you want MPD threesome with 2 menhera fujoshi gf of Mio and Midori, I know there's some out there on this forum into that.
So this story starts out with a very lonely girl, a single child. She was lonely so she looked into a mirror and then she saw her twin sister. Later on she told her mom and dad that and they passively accepted that for a while, later they schemed with a psychiatrist to take apointments and giver her the funny pills which made her head whoozy and mind blank, after a awhile she couldn't reacall her sister and that made her spiral into really deep depression even though her mother was happy about the revelation she can't see her anymore. But her mother is really sad because she still had not real life friends. She was so sad that she was deathly afraid of seeing her again because she feels that Midori really won't forgive her that she forgot her. to fix her problem Rikki had to undergo a near death experience and chase out into sea, learning about the famous poem by 牧水若山. About a white bird flying between the sky and the sea. Rikki swam out to sea like a madman and almost died. He was rescued by her and the shadow which was Midori materialized which means that Midori didn't materialize as a person anymore which is sad so they took some pretty wise and heartfelt words I can't remember to remind Mio that Midori is still within her and that she never left her.
Also look at this smug face.
Extreme Mesugaki energy. I know some of y'all are into this, don't you lie.
Kurugaya
I think I initally liked this character. I love the Oneesan trope, I love the perverted gags, I love she gets absolutely destroyed by cute girls doing cute things, I liked that she got demolished when Komari Kamikita destroyed her in a battle where she called her Yui-chan and she recived massive emotional damage. I love the pervert pranks she pulled. She really is a good comic relief character but I can't for the love of me see this route as well excecuted, it doesn't seem like she has anything going for her beyond her looks. Like, I forgot what was her overarching conflict to begin with. That her math teacher was a petty fiend and wanted to ruin her for being too good at math (he can only count up to the fourth digit of pi or something) so he teamed up with some delenquient girls who were really pissy she turned down the offer to join their gang to try and harrass everyone that is close to her from distancing from her. Honestly people like that seems to only be worthy of death and it seemed that Kurugaya agreed so she threatened them with death when her counter-blackmail didn't get through to them. But this seems so superfical, I was expecting some tragic backstory like the other charatcers. All I could recall was that she was overseas japanese and that she has western name called Lizabeth. For some reason she didn't want to be called by first name because she reserved it for her lover but Komari-MAX absolutely did critical emotional damage by cuteness overload. She had to rethink that strat.
Her personality is very Domnimatrix and a little sadistic, I like it. Some of the stuff she says is, perverted and I like it.
Saya
Her hair is so yellow and glowing in this image. I think I like how different her hair is in all the different settings, it's very vibrant and alive.
I used to have several problems with her route, mainly the premise, but also how and what was the message in this at all, it was so crpytic but after browsing some forums I think I was able to try and understand my own thoughts about this, there's just so many fan theory out there because the ending is left open ended, I think they left it like that because it probably didn't really fit a key style ending.
The problem here is much like Kyousuke's problem, she has a childish mind and seem to have a lapse in emotional understanding which makes it seem like a little bit of sociopathic tendencies. She like this manga called がっこうレボ (school revolution, I think) it's about a spy who enters a school to find a treasure under the school. The problem with this manga is apparently the protag is part of a spy organization that appears to be malicious and probably foreign, for they are ordered to kill any japanese citizens who witness their true identity. Normal spies would just abort mission and assume new role if they wern't, you know, foreign and malicious or something like the checka, but this is a manga and they seem to have to warp things to keep action or something, idk the mind of the mangaka who thought up of this. So she threatens to kill Rikki and then attempts to kill him three times before the script says to let him in to the secret and to force him to serve the spy.
So lets step back a moment, Saya never actually appeared in the story at all until 1. post refrain and 2 after you decide to retrive your notebook from the classroom at night. It really is a curveball and a emotional rollercoster, she's lucky she didn't get killed by Rikki, in that situation on the rooftop is all the grounds for self defense, no (good) agency would allow an agent to become so compromised as to become the perp of a self defense situation. That's a whole lot of legal trouble (unless it's foreign, again). Let's ignore my hangup yet again and focus on the story here. This is because she was never apart of the Little busters originally. She is a lost, poor soul who wondered into Kyousuke's dream world.
So she is much like the cat who had is dream world in Sasami's route, except she wondered into another with a very strong wish much like the cat, Kyousuke, and she have. She is in a near death experience from a landslide in a rainstorm on a construction site that was to build her fathers home after coming back from a very long trip overseas working as a international doctor in warzones. The reason why she entered Kyosuke's world was because the only "friend" (she didn't understand the english word for friend in her international travels) or playmate she had was Rikki. I'll show you the friend screenshot.
Well, yeah, she never had a normal childhood, everything was screwed up, I'm just glad she didn't get shot up by Mossad hospital mass shooters.
I think she is like the age of 14 or something but the start of all that monolog said she was four when all this traveling happen. Now the thing I'm absolutely furious about Kyousuke about was these set of dialog.
He said only way to leave is to shoot yourself. He says this every single fucking time. Did you go insane from stabbing yourself with a glass blade every time to reset the time loop in the bus crash or something. Sure, you might've been mistaken that her identity was a manga character and this is just some fun sidetrack Rikki fell into but this is certainly after you knew the truth. What the fuck is wrong with you. Do you not care what Rikki thinks of this? It's fucking cruel, I thought you cared for Rikki, you wanted to solve this girls wishes didn't you? Did you get a kick out of making Kengo's mentality expire? I truely thought you were caring and that this stuff is supposed to be a lighthearted sidetrack from the main game post-game.
Rant over, I don't know, did I get through to him? It seems like he gets this way when he's close to completing a route and absolutley screws up everything for the Heroine like what he mistakenly did to Rin, now he does it to Rikki's mental state. I really believed this route would end with Rikki saving the day, I knew that CG was in there and I thought there would be this dramatic and heartwarming climax where Rikki hugs her or something. But it seems Jun just shot me down, I'm not sure her time traveling thing really ended good either, the story ended really open endedly, it really got me asking "is this really a Key Studio story?". But apparently this is Jun's favorite story so I have to respect his work, I just wish you ended it better than this, it just left me with a hole in my heart man, hyperbolically speaking.
Well, I really enjoyed the gameplay of this route, the clock position minigame was pretty good, I think that helped me get rid of that parsing issue with Japanese numbers, now I feel I can probably point or get orders to face directions in japanese and I wouldn't stall, but I probably will have lapses, my memory is sometimes like that.
This is a very cute girl, I dare say the strongest character in the entire novel beating out Kud and Haruka. Her problem is that she had a little brother that died when she was little like Kaori, in a hospital because of a terminal illness, what made it traumatic was the little dutch fairy tails the brother and the grandmother told her and the fact he died while he embraced her. The brother had to do damage control from the grandmothers blunt stories that revolve around death of childern (specifically dog of flanders, and little matchlight girl) and made a picture book for her. It's a story about coping with loss. Seething and coping and shit, whatever nonsense internet apes like to say. but it's done in a way that it's a work of art. Rikki had to save her from dispair because she's apart of little busters, and that it will make him able to cope with whatever may happen from the crash that will (?) kill them all.
She apears in Sasami's route as a very strong and emotionally secure girl. She is the girl who will always try and smile and be positive even when everything hurts, maily because that's is one of the things that her older brother taught her.
I wish people are kind like Komari but unfortunetly they don't exist, people probably don't exist. The humanoids you see around you are sociopathic reptiles or something.
Here's a CG of Komari making up to Rikki.
Haruka
The outwardly facing upbeat single sidetail girl that has to face a very abusive family dynamic and bullying. the antithesis of online ape logic, this story is the bane of their existance. In fact bullying is a counterproductive and social ill surprisingly enough, who would've fucking thought. no amount of sophistry will be able to undo this age old truth.
Key and Na-ga likes to make some very powerful images one of my favorite images of the series is in this route, and the music that accompany it is amazing, I think one of my favorite, the instrumental version of faraway (haruka konata ver.).
The standing art of Haruka with the look of hatred is my favorite, the look of utter contempt. I didn't screenshot it but when you come across it you will know. I don't know why I identify with that one standing art in particular, but it speaks to me, the same wavelength.
Now, I just Image dumped without as so much as explained what her route is. Well in order to undertand it you have to go back to the Kuninotokotachi. No but it's a really long story that I'll unsucessfully try and convey in concise terms. So there's two families, the Saigusa and the Futaki families. They have this threesome weddings for some reason relating to the dwindling population within the family, I didn't comprehend it clearly enough but I think it had to do with something like not enough females so two males have to make one a wife. There's this toxic tradition in the Futaki side that the Saigusa family have to deal with, something to do with beatings and public face. The Futaki is absolutely obessed with positive public image and will go through this sadistic culling ritual where they beat the "bad" one and they make the "good" one the one that is fortunate. So this is where ape society goes bunkers, they love traditions where you beat your child for "correction" or kill them, so this story of the sisters overcoming this sadistic ritual is a very brave and controversial move by Key. So the main conflict of the first half of the whole Kanata-Haruka route was amending the estrangement of the sisters and finding out the motivations of thier parents. I was atually at a lost as to if they were foster parents or not but I'll clear up everything here. They both are the biological offspring of the parents, and it was the mother that realized the situation they were in, being in a family of Saigusa and Futaki, that one of the fathers decided to try and stage a crime in order to somehow get rid of the Futaki's abusive child rearing habits, because they were obsessed on public image and therefore would disown them in favor of adopting the Saigusa lineage, this was agreed upon by both the fathers and the mother. What went wrong was the Futaki took the twins in and rejected the one father who took the fall for the family. So they had to suffer for all the contrived lies the Futaki family made up to the defaced Saigusa family and to be extra cruel make up a situation where one of them were the father of the low life criminal. That probably got rid of alot of the plot twists and spoiled this but you are already been warned. It's a very heartwarming story. You will learn that she actually trusted her sister early on her childhood and lost trust and gave in to dispair and grown to hate her in the kanata route. It was basically their immediete family against the world more or less. I guess I could find similarities with Ideology in friction where the defaced royal family had to adopt the role of rebel to oust the sadistic king, they are both similar in blood but they are different. It seems to be a very japanese thing this blood family relationship dynamic in fiction.
The most strongest part of the story was when Haruka gained the courage to forgive the sister for all the things she and the Futaki family had put her through, and the plot twist that Kanata also struggled very hard to save her sister as well after being pushed into the role of the bully by the family under threat of death and/or roles being reveresed. I will go a little further to the family dynamic in the Kanata section.
Kud
Oh boy, this was a trip. Her full name is Кудрявка Анатольевна Стругацкая (or just 能美 クドリャフカ(kudoryafuka)), I don't know her ethnicity exactly but I know she is a quarter Japanese and her grandfather used to have Soviet citizenship. She shares the name of a Russian partisan who died a horrible death by hideous black beings and had a relative who was a orthodox preist die in the red terror. Naomi is name of the voice actor, the characters first name is Noumi, I almost got that confused. Naomi is living a pretty happy life. Back to Noumi, her grandfather was born somewhere near Finland, or was there and got internally displaced into middle soviet union. After, he worked himself into the Space agency and was sent to some island in the pacific for the program. Well fast forward, he gets a Japanese wife and the Soviet Union fell, he couldn't file paperwork for retaining Russian citizenship so he decided on making citizenship with the newly founded Island nation and then try and obtain citizenship with Japan due to his Japanese wife. His daughter, Kudo's mother, decided to stay on the Island and develop her profession as a cosmonaut and give off the child rearing to her father while he, being more preceptive of the general political climate of the Island nation, decided to take Kud across the world while he does work for the space agency. The Mother was devorced for some reason.
Let us step away from the family drama for a moment and look at Kudo's character and relationship with Japan and Japanese. She is a foreigner so people treats her different, she doesn't really mind, but alot of her mannerisms are very Japanese which she picked up from his Japanphile Grandfather, which surprises her peers. But she kind of want to be seen as one of those lovable foreigners and not just a weirdo so she takes up english. She has to be good at a international language like english to make it in the aeronautics industry. At same time she barely knows Russian or the tuwa island language and she's bad at all those languages except Japanese. So she's stuck in a position that shes pretty much culturally/liguistically Japanese where she knows some complex kanji but is obviously seen as foreign and she doesn't actually have any foreign culture imprinted to her and it's more international because all the places she went around europe during her business travels when she was younger. She feels like she doesn't belong anywhere. I think I relate to her alot in this way. I don't really identify with "american" "culture" but it's my birthplace, my language is english but I rather not associate with england, but I'm forever grateful for the Crown for letting us escape a fate in europe like what Kud seemed to be fated to in her Island nation. I'm very confused with my national idenity like Kud is. Shes born from the Island nation but is born from a German (?) father and a Half Japanese/Russian (?) Mother, is culturally Japanese from grandfather/mother imprinting it on her.
Another thing I dentify with was her desire to be something great like a cosmonaut and academic struggles associated with it. I eventually gave up, I didn't have a role model in the same way Kudo has with her mother. Her struggle was english, my struggle was math.
Well spoilers, a incident happened and her mother died while launching one of the rockets to take her to space (it was unclear if it was sabotage or malfunction, the rocket blew up over the island). It so also happened that before that there was growing sentiment against the rocket program because a Island in the chain has sunk into the ocean, and the survivors were left on the capital island where the government couldn't manage the influx of people on the island and the malicious indigenous-foreigner victim ideology that pitted the blame on the island sinking to the government and allocation of funds to the space program over protective/preventative measures for the island sinking, they managed to transform a natural cause into a artifical cause of the island sinking.
Well, the problem is Kudo has to go back with her grandfather to find her mothers fate but the country seems like it will turn into a civil war (in my opinion, seems like a foreign orchestrated color revolution using victim ideology reasons to do evils). The bigger problem is if she was able to make it back or not and if Rikki should let her go or convince her to stay so she will live.
You can tell the theme of this VN is not that dark to let the heroines die (or is it?) so she will live, but in order for you to save her emotionally and her to cope with her mothers death you will have to let her go into the island with the precarious situation where communication lines are cut so she could find the whereabouts of her mother and for her to meet her again.
So I was expecting the hideous black beings, uhm excuse me, spiteful mutants to actually just kill her when breaching the room she and her grandfather was sheltered in after arriving on the island with the embassy staff like it was some liveleak video of some war criminals doing war crimes. The exception was that she and her grandfather was armed and somehow they managed to surrender and not be executed, her grandfather was taken away to not be heard again (Reminder: Rikki was the one who choosed to let Kudo go which lead to these events), and Kudo was taken to a nearby cove/cavern/cave with seawater rising to be left for dead. Maybe they had some consious not to kill a child but not at all, it had to be indirect and kill her without seeing her death which is just cowardly evil. Now here is where key magik comes in, the ritual body painting that Rikki and Kudo did as a practice for married couples on the island enabled their spirits to communicate telepathically but only under extreme emotion, like life threatening stress and trauma. Somehow that communication with Rikki make Kudo depressive state of dispair to disappear and to break free of her chains. The Visual novel didn't depict this but she managed to escape the island, I like to think it was some type of Metal gear solid type sneaking mission or something, she was apparently very afraid of using firearms but in that situation I'm not sure how she managed to find help, she was truely alone, the government forces was likely not present for they had been all killed or captured in the facility she was in before her capture. It could be inhabitants that smuggled her out but it's a 50/50 chance they would be hostile, I don't know if Kud would risk it. Plus she was naked. Oh wait, I forgot what music played during that scene of the escape but it was esctasy.
Sasami
You want to fuck a cat? This route is for you. She turns into a cat.
Well, I love key magic, there's just something about this fantasy that clicks all the right buttons. All of these cat, fox, transformations in stories are amazing and there's always something crazy like this that spice the story up. Going to get right to the point here, Sasami's trauma was that she had a pet black cat that she left in a house when the family had to leave it for demolishing it, the house was old and unstable or something. She took a liking to the cat and the family reluctantly agreed. What was heartbreaking was near the end of the story where we learnt the cat never died and that she had developed a adversion to cats due to this trauma of loss that she didn't even recognize her cat in front of her when she arrived at this school. The cat was suffering a life long case of neglect ever since her absence. This is a male cat. So it was Rikki's task to find the truth and bring it to light to Sasami about the nature of the cat.
What broke me was the last part where she had her last play session with the cat as it was dying. it was less of a pet animal dying and felt more like a infant dying in the arms of a mother. I don't know how they managed to convey it that way, I guess it's was how they managed to convey their relationship like a son being abandoned by a mother. I think that's the message, it always come back to family.
There was some foreshadowing of this event by playing Rin's route the second time. I actually thought the cat was already dead and it was that cat Rin put away, apparently it was a different one? idk.
Kanata
In this arc we delve into the details of the family and why Kanata had to behave the way she did to her little sister. In reality they were both beaten by the family but it was decided early on that Kanata just couldn't take the punishments when losing in the competitions the family set out to determine whe was the "good" girl. So Haruka had to take the place and withstand the beatings. See the two orange hair ties on the side of their head. Those were presents by the parents, so Kanata decided to share the gift with her sister secretly as a symbol of their deeply held bond.
Well the family caught wind of it and demanded Kanata to get rid of one of the hairties so as to punish Haruka from trusting her again, to symbolize her getting first place everytime and haruka getting second place.
Well it ended differently when you followed kanata, Haruka seemed to have made up to her in a very different fashion, it wasn't very memorable because I couldn't recall but somehow it addressed that lost of trust Haruka had in the agreement between the sisters and the mental angrish that Kanata had over that falling out they had after that one faithful track match when Haruka found out about the hairties. The bullying antics was very subdued in this route compared to Haruka's, most of it was from the family and it was Kanata the one trying to put up a facade for the family. I should mention the family was very controlling and they had observers in the shool to monitor Kanata's behaviour so she didn't make up to the "bad" child, therefore invalidating the choosen husband for Kanata, or swaping the roles.
The ending was very confusing, for some reason Kanata and haruka escaped the Family grasp by one jumping them with thev rest of the little busters in front of the school before she was about to be taken away to the wedding and the other at some hotel where they used smoke grenades and brawling. It kind of completed the sisters route because they didn't have to deal with the family anymore. fyi, the cross and the iron cross with haruka's outfit signify Haruka's rebellious personality, midriff and armpits a sign of indeciency. As far as I know it doesn't have anything to do with Christianity apart from that they were considered as rebels and percecuted in Japan by association. So it's symbolic between tradition and progressive ideal, maybe some fusion between them? to rid oneself of the bad traditions while still witholding (immediate) family as the central pillar of the social unit. I'm not really actually sure with the moral of the story beyond bullying bad but family is very important so don't abandon them, they mean well (the sister, and the parents).
Rin
This is the central pillar of the story, between Rin and Rikki. They are the only two that Kyousuke thought he could save. Going to get this off my chest, The entire time you played through pre-refrain in every single route you have Rin confess her feelings to Rikki in a roundabout way, Rikki is a ボケ so he misinterpreted it between her and Kurugaya. If it was me I would have to confront her on that privately in order for her to be more honest with her feelings, or at least seriously contemplate it and try and work around a situation where she is in a more confortable state to express her feelings.
because of this misinterpretation she had to go through a arc where kyousuke had to make up a story where a girl was in love with Rikki and sent her a love letter, this resulted in a very sour love quarrel where she said that she will take Rikki out for a date before Rikki could solve the unrequited love letter problem. in the end it seemed to solve itself, the girl with no standing art was somehow fine with it. I just don't really like it, but Kyousuke does worst stuff that's much harder to forgive I'll get in later. but for now let's wrap up her introduction, shes a shy tsundere and that she has no friends apart from the little busters, she would be a neet playing with kids and cats for most of her life if kyousuke didn't invent the little busters childhood friend group for her to participate in.
So basically what happened was that we found out who was the one behind giving tasks to Rin through the cat Lennon. But Rikkis hasn't found out what the secret ot the world is yet, so what happened was that he got Kengo to help, Kengo knows what the secret of the world is but he witheld it because Rikki not knowing is what is keeping the world held on by it's fabric. I'n the first run we experienced Rikki suffering with Rin because she was transfered to another school where everyone was depressed over a school bus crash that killed most of the students, it was foreshadowing of the little busters not making it back except for Rikki and Rin, mind you in the first attempt in refrain Rikki was in the hospital and Rin had to suffer being alone during that time so it was very symbolic of that moment. Well, Kengo, knowing this series of events are a probablility warned Rikki that to take this route towards learning the truth of this world will end in darkness, but he also had his personal reasons I'll explain later. In the end they challenged Kyosuke, the SuperAdministrator of the world to a batting match in order to get Rin to stay at this school instead of going to the transfer school again. It goes as well as you expect, I'll add a little more detail later.
Now back to center on relationship with Rikki and Rin, in spite of the results of the match Rikki and Rin decided to run away together to and old counrty house their grandfather had when they were little and formed the little busters, without any of the other little busters knowledge. It's a idyllic village, a average Japanese rural town with a twist. Everything is desaturated and it screams that they don't belong here. You get a creeping sense of dread as you feel the circumstances of witholding knowledge from the other villagers and being outlaws living in their relatives houses that is abandoned. They planned on waiting for their grandfather but that never happenened.
In the end the police caught up to them and arrested them. Rin was taken to the transfer school and Rikki back to his school. It's a bad end on purpose.
So, Rikki I believe now has some knowledge of the previous playthrough, this is solidly in the refrain route. So now he knows some of the events that transpired in the previous two routes that he attempted with rin plus some of the others maybe, but the most important one is Rin, because that will help him push through this roadblock. Unfortunently all the previous progress you made with Rin was completely shattered by Kyousuke's decision to be rash and break morals in order to push Rin to become stronger by sending her back to the transfer school. Rin regressed back into a child like state at the beginning of refrain, going to a preschool to play with the kids, this was shortly before the main game started. Kyousuke this time is nowhere to be seen and Rikki had to fill in the role for him to form the little busters together.
Let's skip a couple steps and his character, because I'm still doing Rin and her development is not complete and I need to keep it organized.
Rin is completely clueless through the first part of refrain, I don't think Rikki attempted to get Rin to become stronger together as his goal was trying to form back the core of the little busters, Rin, Kengo, Masato, Kyosuke and himself. I think Rin was in a state of shock during that scene in Refrain, yes that one with the song Faraway with the singer, she was confused at what was happening. Well fast forward to the bus accident Kengo saved Rin from becoming disabled and Masato protected Rikki from becoming disabled from the crash, Kyousuke managed to hold the leaking gasoline from spreading to the engine block which gave Rikki and Rin enough time to escape from the bus. This was the first false end of refrain and the second false end of Rins route.
This part of the story it gets really amazing, after credits roll and you say it's not enough you have Komari make her own dream world instead of Kyousuke in order to help Rin become stronger, and not only once but twice There's alot of missing context and time jumps but see this image below.
(具) means Wife , the seemingly joke gag of Komari saying she's not fit to have a wife now rikki looked at her in that spot was acutally serious and not just part of her clutzy charater of stumbling around words and saying more embarrassing and ridiculous things. She actually confessed her feelings to Rin in those routes that we were only to take a glimpse of.
I don't think I actually seen Rin actually cry tears. the most we saw was her depressive text messages. It's amazing.
Holy, this is Amazing, I want friends like this.
It's just so touching. Maybe a baseball team will be the key... or something like whatever Kyousuke managed to cobble together. Serious Emo vibes.
Well in the final route with Komari Rin managed to become stronger and saved Rikki from his narcolepsy and then procedually carry out everyone on makeshift stretchers, and managed to save the Sacrifical hero, full of unconditional Agape Love, much like a Jesus, but much more flawed and human, Kyousuke.
Kyousuke
Rikki really looked up to Kyousuke, after his parents died he was much like Kyousuke in refrain when they both swapped roles. it was only when Kyousuke inducted him into the Little busters group did he get up in spirit. All so Rin could have friends, he started with Rikki after he and Rin.
Now the dark side of his character. See the two images below. This is what he did.
He killed them. he forced his world to become such a way as to force insane hardships on Rikki and Kengo. I don't think this helped at all, in fact I think it regressed the progress he made and he was going mad with being stuck in the dream world hence why rin went back to square one and Komari, the Strongest character, had to save Rin from her possible cursed fate (after I finished the VN I started seeing references to this thing called "groundhog day" in the various forums and then I read the wiki entry, it's the insane american (? maybe, maybe not, it's hollywood, take a guess) version of the timeloop genre where the mc went around killing everyone and manipulating them). Kyousuke is shown to be weak in how he managed to handle the timeloop, after telling rikki to go back from Rin's route and save the other girls he went mad and forced Kengo to see his Love, 古式, die. And then post refrain he has the audacity to torment a younger kid into suicide. I have some personal questions to ask him and why he fetishized some of his manga he read. Well, it is known his more lighter side to him is that he still pretty much act like a kid and loves to read all this shounen manga and make up wild adventures, hense why the majority of the VN was entertaining gags. as a consequence and as a double edge sword he seemed to not quite understand how to handle his friends feelings very well, I almost think he's sociopathic to a degree. There are better ways to handle Kengo's Love life (or very close friendship) without putting him through that amount of pain, and there is a gentler way of letting Saya go out of this dream world, a world where wishes ought to come true. This is just cruel Kyosuke, you're in a Key visual novel and this is a Nakige, not a Utsuge. I can only think of the moral Kengo had to go through, to let things go, but with Saya, what the fuck, there doesn't seem like any to that, is it because you're jealous? Why did you torment her? did you just not know she is young.... Okay, I'll continue on that train of thought to Saya's and Kengo's route. Oh boy do I have beef with him here that I want to personally settle.
So he's a bit of a mystery when you think about it, in terms of what his deep character traits are. I guess his motivations mirrored Rikki's motivations when he took role of the little busters, but it doesn't seem to have any deep meaning to it. If you think of a anime protaganist it's him, but in this show the protagonist role is actually switched to Rikki a very normal looking kid, like the average Japanese male, dark brown hair, brown eyes, short stature and so on. Also how he's drawn it's very emo like, especially the picture above which I think is when he was in his lowest state mentally speaking in that dark room he never exits from.
Before he went hoops and bounds trying to get a saleryman job from far off cities and doing all of these favors to challenge all the headclub members to duel them in a baseball match. There is alot of charater development that wasn't really addressed when he was in charge of the dream because that's what the player was to discover and the writers didn't want to dwell on all the reasons he did this and that this far into the novel.
I personally like his themesong and that part at the begining when he was saying some poetic or nonsensical words when he was trying to get the little busters to form a baseball team, the "boys don't cry" soundtrack is really nostolgic for some reason even though I never heard of it in my life
Kengo
So this Kengo man is acutally a really soft and gentle man behind all the serious Japanese Kendo samurai fencing he does.
So you can see earlier that he has this girl earlier that he loves that committed suicide in the events before the Bus crash incident, so when the dream world was created he had partial control over the events of the world (I guess out of Kindness by Kyousuke), so that's why he is seen as this very hansome man like Kyousuke, he uses it to try and find a happy end for his love, but it took about two routes to see him rescue her, so maybe he didn't have full knowledge before then. His dad was a Kendo master so he trys to be one, but in reality he hates Kendo, he doesn't find joy in it and he doesn't seems to have freinds there, just admireers. So that was part of his desire to join Little busters, to have freinds and make memories. But I can't really fathom his reason to let go of his love because everything the little busters did was 「楽しい」 I guess Kyousuke really broke him down, Kyousuke really doesn't know how to handle other peoples feelings it seems like he devolved into some stolkholm syndrome to try and to accept the situation he's in. I don't really know how I would process the situation myself if I was in his shoes either.
Masato
So early on people picked on him, so he got angry and got strong and then beat them to a pulp, so it made people fear him. I love this part of his character, except for the beating part, he should just go lethal, they won't actually learn their lesson that way. Well, he got inducted into the little busters by Rin and Kyousuke beating him like it was a match of a good guy and bad guy bandit terrorizing people.
Well, he's really not a bad guy, he just has his own motivations to beat up people, the fact he was pushed around and then he lashed out in a violent matter seemed to strangely make people get confused, when the problem is clear as day. Well we also learned he was the silent henchman of Kyousuke, I don't really know if he really is aware of the situation he's in, but it seemed that he past the 5 stages of gief or not. I think his life was fullfilled when he joined little busters, he was strangely calm during that scene, maybe he just wanted to be valued as a person and the little busters gave him that. So he was tamed in a way to be "muscle idiot".
Mio Nishizono
A fujoshi with a imaginary friend who likes poems alot. This route really speaks for the Ted Kaczynski fans for you there that psychiatrists and their enablers are pure evil and [fed post redacted]. Also if you want MPD threesome with 2 menhera fujoshi gf of Mio and Midori, I know there's some out there on this forum into that.
So this story starts out with a very lonely girl, a single child. She was lonely so she looked into a mirror and then she saw her twin sister. Later on she told her mom and dad that and they passively accepted that for a while, later they schemed with a psychiatrist to take apointments and giver her the funny pills which made her head whoozy and mind blank, after a awhile she couldn't reacall her sister and that made her spiral into really deep depression even though her mother was happy about the revelation she can't see her anymore. But her mother is really sad because she still had not real life friends. She was so sad that she was deathly afraid of seeing her again because she feels that Midori really won't forgive her that she forgot her. to fix her problem Rikki had to undergo a near death experience and chase out into sea, learning about the famous poem by 牧水若山. About a white bird flying between the sky and the sea. Rikki swam out to sea like a madman and almost died. He was rescued by her and the shadow which was Midori materialized which means that Midori didn't materialize as a person anymore which is sad so they took some pretty wise and heartfelt words I can't remember to remind Mio that Midori is still within her and that she never left her.
Also look at this smug face.
Extreme Mesugaki energy. I know some of y'all are into this, don't you lie.
Kurugaya
I think I initally liked this character. I love the Oneesan trope, I love the perverted gags, I love she gets absolutely destroyed by cute girls doing cute things, I liked that she got demolished when Komari Kamikita destroyed her in a battle where she called her Yui-chan and she recived massive emotional damage. I love the pervert pranks she pulled. She really is a good comic relief character but I can't for the love of me see this route as well excecuted, it doesn't seem like she has anything going for her beyond her looks. Like, I forgot what was her overarching conflict to begin with. That her math teacher was a petty fiend and wanted to ruin her for being too good at math (he can only count up to the fourth digit of pi or something) so he teamed up with some delenquient girls who were really pissy she turned down the offer to join their gang to try and harrass everyone that is close to her from distancing from her. Honestly people like that seems to only be worthy of death and it seemed that Kurugaya agreed so she threatened them with death when her counter-blackmail didn't get through to them. But this seems so superfical, I was expecting some tragic backstory like the other charatcers. All I could recall was that she was overseas japanese and that she has western name called Lizabeth. For some reason she didn't want to be called by first name because she reserved it for her lover but Komari-MAX absolutely did critical emotional damage by cuteness overload. She had to rethink that strat.
Her personality is very Domnimatrix and a little sadistic, I like it. Some of the stuff she says is, perverted and I like it.
Saya
Her hair is so yellow and glowing in this image. I think I like how different her hair is in all the different settings, it's very vibrant and alive.
I used to have several problems with her route, mainly the premise, but also how and what was the message in this at all, it was so crpytic but after browsing some forums I think I was able to try and understand my own thoughts about this, there's just so many fan theory out there because the ending is left open ended, I think they left it like that because it probably didn't really fit a key style ending.
The problem here is much like Kyousuke's problem, she has a childish mind and seem to have a lapse in emotional understanding which makes it seem like a little bit of sociopathic tendencies. She like this manga called がっこうレボ (school revolution, I think) it's about a spy who enters a school to find a treasure under the school. The problem with this manga is apparently the protag is part of a spy organization that appears to be malicious and probably foreign, for they are ordered to kill any japanese citizens who witness their true identity. Normal spies would just abort mission and assume new role if they wern't, you know, foreign and malicious or something like the checka, but this is a manga and they seem to have to warp things to keep action or something, idk the mind of the mangaka who thought up of this. So she threatens to kill Rikki and then attempts to kill him three times before the script says to let him in to the secret and to force him to serve the spy.
So lets step back a moment, Saya never actually appeared in the story at all until 1. post refrain and 2 after you decide to retrive your notebook from the classroom at night. It really is a curveball and a emotional rollercoster, she's lucky she didn't get killed by Rikki, in that situation on the rooftop is all the grounds for self defense, no (good) agency would allow an agent to become so compromised as to become the perp of a self defense situation. That's a whole lot of legal trouble (unless it's foreign, again). Let's ignore my hangup yet again and focus on the story here. This is because she was never apart of the Little busters originally. She is a lost, poor soul who wondered into Kyousuke's dream world.
So she is much like the cat who had is dream world in Sasami's route, except she wondered into another with a very strong wish much like the cat, Kyousuke, and she have. She is in a near death experience from a landslide in a rainstorm on a construction site that was to build her fathers home after coming back from a very long trip overseas working as a international doctor in warzones. The reason why she entered Kyosuke's world was because the only "friend" (she didn't understand the english word for friend in her international travels) or playmate she had was Rikki. I'll show you the friend screenshot.
Well, yeah, she never had a normal childhood, everything was screwed up, I'm just glad she didn't get shot up by Mossad hospital mass shooters.
I think she is like the age of 14 or something but the start of all that monolog said she was four when all this traveling happen. Now the thing I'm absolutely furious about Kyousuke about was these set of dialog.
He said only way to leave is to shoot yourself. He says this every single fucking time. Did you go insane from stabbing yourself with a glass blade every time to reset the time loop in the bus crash or something. Sure, you might've been mistaken that her identity was a manga character and this is just some fun sidetrack Rikki fell into but this is certainly after you knew the truth. What the fuck is wrong with you. Do you not care what Rikki thinks of this? It's fucking cruel, I thought you cared for Rikki, you wanted to solve this girls wishes didn't you? Did you get a kick out of making Kengo's mentality expire? I truely thought you were caring and that this stuff is supposed to be a lighthearted sidetrack from the main game post-game.
Rant over, I don't know, did I get through to him? It seems like he gets this way when he's close to completing a route and absolutley screws up everything for the Heroine like what he mistakenly did to Rin, now he does it to Rikki's mental state. I really believed this route would end with Rikki saving the day, I knew that CG was in there and I thought there would be this dramatic and heartwarming climax where Rikki hugs her or something. But it seems Jun just shot me down, I'm not sure her time traveling thing really ended good either, the story ended really open endedly, it really got me asking "is this really a Key Studio story?". But apparently this is Jun's favorite story so I have to respect his work, I just wish you ended it better than this, it just left me with a hole in my heart man, hyperbolically speaking.
Well, I really enjoyed the gameplay of this route, the clock position minigame was pretty good, I think that helped me get rid of that parsing issue with Japanese numbers, now I feel I can probably point or get orders to face directions in japanese and I wouldn't stall, but I probably will have lapses, my memory is sometimes like that.
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