Little Busters! - Common Route Discussion

[Pepe]

I’ve just thought of something that I think would make somewhat interesting discussion both here and in the podcast. I know that Riki is a central character and his relationships between all the characters have been explored quite in depth. But, considering the group dynamics of the novel, I’m interested in knowing:

What do you think about the relationships between the newly inducted members of the Little Busters and the original gang? There’s not much to explore with Kengo since he doesn’t interact with them much, and Rin is a little too shy to get anything out of… But what do the newer members think of Masato? Especially, what do they think of Kyousuke?

That question basically got no reaction. But I am curious; and veterans, just try to remember when you first read to answer this: How did you react towards those scenes that break realism?

As many others have responded, these are the kind of things that I could categorize as “suspension of disbelief” for me. I’ve seen it way too many times in this medium, and little busters, when I first read it, had this all-too-casual feel that put all these sorts of crazy things on the backburner for me. Heck, even up to now, I don’t pay too much attention to Rin sprouting cat ears and whatnot.

[MagusVerborum]

May 24th was a good day, lots of foreshadowing and fleshing out of characters to be had. I really appreciated getting to see Haruka be genuinely nervous around someone, seeing her intereact with Rin and getting her to say her name out loud. I found it very interesting that Rin was able to use Haruka’s saving of two stray kittens as a sort of medium (cats are her safespace after all) to have confidence and communicate with Haruka properly. I feel as though haruka was pretty well summed up by a couple screenshots:

So, we know by this point that Haruka can actually feel insecure, and I’m pretty confident that a lot of her behaviour is an act to cover this sort of thing up. She puts distance between herself and others and can’t enjoy a genuine moment (like Komari falling asleep in her lap after practice) without doing something goody to cover it all up. She’s blatantly self-aware of this behaviour. What’s even more interesting is how oblivious Riki is, he seems to believe Haruka is incapable of acting talent. He still hasn’t figured out how she’s trying to distance herself from her sister Kanata (they’re so obviously sisters don’t even lie to me) but I’m sure that will sort itself out once on her route. Ah well. In general Riki is pretty dense. He’s good as a way of connecting the other characters together, but can’t really figure much out for himself. Maybe if he didn’t have all the Brain Trauma he’d have an easier time

I neglected to mention this but hey! We now have a full team! I really like how the baseball minigame is designed, how your goal of combos and batting your ball to your teammates becomes much easier the more teammates you have, how the field is slowly fleshed out by more and more characters. It really lends itself well to making me feel like we’re all in this together, we’re a club, a friendship group, a circle joined as one. Very cool stuff! Also there is clearly room for one more person on the bottom right there, I have to assume it’s either one of the EX-route characters or Kengo himself who joins later, I’ll have to keep playing to find out!

I feel like the days are getting shorter, apparently because I haven’t unlocked some of the other scenes that might occur with characters off-route. I guess this is true but i’m finding it also ramping up my hype for the inevitable baseball game, and whatever’s going to signal the end of the common route. I’m very excited to see what happens~

With that i leave you with this monstrosity:

I expect nothing but perfection from Best Girl Haruka

[HeliosAlpha]

With that i leave you with this monstrosity

The kanji on her cheek says 情熱 meaning passion or enthusiasm.

[StarfishBender]

What do you think of Riki? What makes him different from other VN protagonists?

My new comment here would be better noted in the Komari route thread but it does change my views somewhat on the Common Route, so without any spoiler…

I learned something that I hadn’t seen mentioned before ( or I missed it) about Riki’s past that puts him in a similar situation to me - albeit that not as a teenager in my case. It goes a long way to explaining to me why Riki sees Kyousuke as a mentor. Well, we don’t always learn everything about someones past experiences soon after meeting them after all.

Now this is why I like to hold off from making definite judgements too soon because Key VNs have this habit of dropping an unexpected shift in perspective - and is at least a part repayment in suspecting there is more bubbling away under the surface of what we see.

I expect this is far from the only change of perspective to be experienced here for further replays of the common route, along with the strong hint that there is some very clever storytelling wrapped up in the VN structure.

[Kanon]

I expect nothing but perfection from Best Girl Haruka

YOU GET MY APPROVAL.

[Hardscope]

Before I started reading Little Busters, I would often talk shit about Riki. I mean… Look at him. He’s scrawny, timid, and has a girly voice. Surely he can’t be a God Tier Key Protagonist like my man Tomoya Okazaki, right?
Well, Riki is actually a pretty cool dude. He’s not as strong as the others, at least not initially. But we see him sort of “grow up” a bit in the common route and in the only route I’ve finished so far, Mio’s route. (More on that later.)

Initially, I thought Riki should barely even be considered a character. He was a shy observer, and Kyousuke seemed to be the real protagonist. Kyousuke brought everybody together and he is the leader of the Little Busters. Riki Naoe never led anything in his life. Nobody gravitates towards Riki as they do the other Key protagonists.

Riki begins to grow out of his shell a bit thanks to his task of gathering members for the baseball team. He says something along the lines of “Wouldn’t Kyousuke do a better job?” (can’t remember the exact words) The newcomers to the Little Busters form a figurative circle around Riki, same as the old Little Busters gathered around Kyousuke.
There’s one particular point where Kyousuke really pushes Riki forward, which is where he has to be the captain and choose the batting order for the game. I had a screenshot, but I can’t seem to find it (edit: Magus put it in his post). Basically, this is where Riki decides “Alright, I’m gonna step up.” I consider this to be the climax of the common route, at least in terms of Riki’s development. Common route didn’t turn Riki into another Okazaki whose body is one big callus, but Riki developed an identity of his own and became a protagonist rather than a cameraman.

[Nirie]

So I started reading Little Busters and I’m about a week into the game (With in-game time). So I thought I’d post some of my thoughts about Riki and a few of the other characters so far.

Riki: Riki seems slightly reserved compared to some of the others. He apparently has no parents according to a line he said to Mio, maybe an orphan? His short voiced moments in the battles or practice actually surprised me a bit with how soft his voice, almost even girly.

Kyousuke: He’s pretty calm and cool, He seems to care deeply about his friends, but it’s a little hard to judge him right now

Rin: It’s a bit weird how much trouble she has just saying the names of the new team members, I’m curious if there’s a reason for that or if she’s just shy. I feel bad for sending her to her doom against Sasami every night though.

Kengo: I don’t really have much to say about him since he’s refused to join the club yet to focus on his Kendo practice, I’ll get you eventually, Kengo. He does seem to be somewhat noble, or just protective of his friends since he fought some strange thing (A bird or bat?) in the school at night when Rin was defeated by it.

Masato: Although he’s a bit of a muscle idiot he is a pretty funny guy. I’m hoping to learn a bit more about him and his rivalry with Kendo. He’s probably my favorite of the original group. I also slightly agree with him about us finding only mostly weak girls to join the baseball team, this match in the future might not go so well. . .

Nishizono: Seems very smart, although just like Riki, I can’t tell when she’s being serious or just making a joke. I’m very interested in what happened to her. I’m probably going to end up on her route, I’m also pushing for her to be Kud’s roommate.

Kurugaya: Probably dependable when she isn’t pulling pranks, I guess she’s the big-sister type?
Although she made some rather worrisome comments when I originally asked her to be Kud’s roommate.

Kud: I guess she’s a bit cute but I can’t understand half the things she says in her Engrish. She seems to have some worries about being a foreigner? I’m surprised they let her wear that cape over her uniform.

I also very much enjoy the baseball practice mini-game, although I find it kind of difficult to predict when to hit the ball after it gets thrown back by someone else…

And now that I’ve written this I think I’ll go dive back into it~

[MagusVerborum]

I’m just gonna say, the conversation Riki and Kyousuke have at the beginning of May 25th is basically everything i said about Riki in my earlier post. The writers clearly know what they’re doing, which is nice! When i sit down with a work I’m always looking for well-written characters with flaws that I can pray that they overcome, and Riki has exactly that. Let’s take a look:

Kyousuke brings the baseball arc to its climax as he places the mantle of team captain (and coach) firmly onto Riki’s shoulders. Riki rejects the responsibility and further devalues himself in the dialogue, honestly I wonder if Kyousuke’s teaching of Riki will sustain him after Kyousuke has graduated. I hope this is what we’ll get to see in Refrain, and this inner struggle for Riki, his stubbornness to avoid claiming responsibility for his own skills and work is what drives his character right now.

He certainly has. Riki is the soul of the team, the focal point for all the character’s interaction as a club. He brought them all here, and he’s the only who can’t see that (except maybe Rin but we’ll let her do her own thing) I’m really happy that Riki finally decides to take on the role of captain in this scene, and he sets about organizing everyone into a cohesive fighting force!

This was a pretty fun setup game. I don’t have any clue what I was doing except that i should ‘put Kud on first base’ but eventually I just went with Kyousuke’s suggestion. I asked Rin for input and she just gave some totally adorable answers:

Rin you munchkin

And then she just took herself out completely! What a nerd.

I managed to use up all of my Wandering time getting through all these suggestions but honestly i feel like my time was well spent

The final scene of the day is a chill chat with Masato, wondering how the big game is going to go tomorrow. Most of it is fun banter but the end lines stuck out to me:

No sprite, super ominous, probably greater implications.

Point is, I think the whole “everyone in the team contributes to the whole” isn’t just relevant to the baseball game, but the the friendship group. I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but the fun part of the characters is how they interact with each other. Like in the previous day’s horror competition, exploring the school at night and avoiding getting spooked. You can take any combination of the girls with you and there will be a totally different sequence of events. It doesn’t just give the novel some replayability, but on your different playthroughs through the common route you’ll get entirely different interactions, different observations from Riki, and the characters will have slightly different relationships with each other. Very cool stuff!

Finally i want to add some speculation to the point of the tasks, I’m sure they will lead us to ‘the secret of the world’ somehow but if we take a practical look at the tasks themselves they must have a purpose in the world. If we assume that Kyousuke and/or Kengo are behind it then they probably benefit the club in some way. There are two parties I can think of who would be interested in the school being cleaned up. They are:

Futaki Kanata
and
The leaders of the clubs

Now, this is kind of a long shot (most of my theories are) but I would hazard a guess that Kanata doesn’t like the club very much, even scolds Komari (the precious baby) for a slight during recess break. She knows that the club causes all kinds of trouble around the school, so what better way to placate the head of the disciplinary committee than by solving some odd problems around the school? Granted not all of the tasks are the most responsible (delivering a riposte to Masato seems more like a joke than a good deed) so that beings me to my second suspect.

Kyousuke is very mysterious about how he managed to gather the club members of the opposing team, and i would not at all be surprised if the tasks are being done so that Kyousuke can convince them to fight against them. The biggest weakness in this theory is that the leaders themselves aren’t really ‘characters’ in the story, so having them be the source of the tasks wouldn’t make as much sense.

The issue with both of these theories is the seeming predicting of the future with the cafeteria task, but as we know Kyousuke knows and sees all. He’s even aware of the wildlife making its way into the food storage rooms and giving people eczema. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to say that Kyousuke can see the matrix know when the staff members are getting ill.

Anywho, off to the big game tomorrow! Chaaarrrrgggeee!!!

[StarfishBender]

And then she just took herself out completely! What a nerd.

That did make me laugh when Rin made the excuse to not play and Kyousuke says something a bit sarcastic like “…match cancelled, forgot soy sauce”

[VyseGolbez]

This post will be entirely spoiler tagged, wahoo!

(common route after having completed Rin1 spoiler)So one thing I noticed during my first replay always skipping everything I’ve already read is that Rin was more confident in herself. She managed to say other people’s names earlier and with more confidence as one example of that. Now there are two possible reasons for that. The first would be that her shyness actually stems from interacting with Riki more (I didn’t pursue the tasks this time). This explanation doesn’t make the most sense to me, to be honest. The second explanation would be that character development somehow makes its way back through time, after all, her getting more confident is her main development of the Rin1 route. I currently subscribe to the second explanation. And if we start to think about how character development can make its way back through time, the whole memory/dream combination theory is even stronger. I doubt that we have a physical timeloop in the most typical sense, with people actually traveling back in time, and veteran fans will probably know why I doubt that.

[Echo]

I’m addition to that, Rin (common after Rin 1) starts identifying the other main characters like Mio if they meet them during the Sasasasasa battle missions. On the first playthrough when Rin is asked who the classmate she met was she says “I don’t know” but from the 2nd playthrough she identifies her as “Hmm… maybe… Nishizono san?” This could mean that along with raised confidence, her social skills also increases little by little every playthrough

[MagusVerborum]

May 26th, the day of the big game. The first (and probably only) game of baseball that the Little Busters will play in. It would be no false assumption to make that I’ve been putting off writing this post for a day or so, because though I did enjoy quite a bit of this day, I may also have a, uh, controversial opinion or two. I shall do my best to clarify going forward and I hope that we can come out the other side of this post as a team.

The day starts off with more comedic gold, Rin really doesn’t want to pitch today, she forgot the soy sauce, she only had seven and a half hours of sleep instead of seven and forty five minutes (honestly I’m impressed she’s managed to maintain that range, that’s like a perfect amount of sleep), she probably forgot to feed her cats too! Thankfully she’s got Kyousuke to pull her through, and she eventually brings herself to commit to the event, on the proviso that when she gets too nervous the other club members will gather round her like on that one match-plan she drew up for us. have I mentioned how adorable Rin is?

Riki is also having his doubts, especially when the other members of the team start to break down. But Brousuke is here with some helpful advice:

Now, Riki does completely fail in trying to unify them in any sort of order, but honestly I wouldn’t expect less from this band of misfits. The leadup to the baseball game is so heartwarming, an watching Riki stand up and act and then seeing the other characters stand up behind him is inspiring in itself.

Starting with Komari, who is slowly but surely pulling herself out of my worst girl folder, all of the characters show their support in Riki’s time of need. I have to wonder if the way this day plays out is any different depending on whose route you’re aiming for, or what your progress is like. I have to assume that this is the scene where the tenth person shows up, I just have no idea how one might trigger that scene. Anyway, Kurugaya reminds us of the thing that Riki is still patently oblivious to

Everyone gathers around Riki and we get started on the big game that the Common route has been hyping up since near the very beginning~

deep breath

So, I’m not a big fan of the baseball game. It’s unfortunate, but true. I might make a big post over in the minigame discussion thread breaking it down but as many people have pointed out to me the baseball game itself isn’t really important. What is important is that the baseball team is one giant piece of symbolism for how the new Little Busters are all coming together, sharing their time, creating memories that matter, and having fun. Now, I don’t think that really excuses the fifteen minute long RNG based tedious powerpoint slide filled with nothing that i sat through, but I definitely have no shame at all in choosing the ‘give up’ option on subsequent playthroughs.

I will say, the scenes with everyone crowding around Rin were excellent. I would have loved it if they were the entire sequence, with maybe some CGs in between showing off Rin using her Meow Ball and some incredible levels of character-driven anime bullshit to top it all off. Just so that I’m completely transparent, here’s a look at my final scorecard:

I didn’t really care that I lost, and I don’t think that had any effect on my negative perception of the baseball game. I literally do not care about winning. I couldn’t hit higher than a 2-Combo in the daily baseball practice minigame and I enjoyed the heck out of that, but i honestly can’t understand how the finale of the Common route fell so flat.

We get another peek at Riki’s inner monologue before we retire to our rooms for the night:

Now what’s interesting is how futile Riki’s attitude is. He should know by this point that things are changing, and not only that we are (looks at calendar) one day away from the end of the common route. Clearly these times cannot continue forever, and the baseball game wasn’t enough to inspire a change in attitude from him. Not yet anyway.

Now, I honestly have no clue what’s going to be going on for the next little while, nor what to expect from the ‘routes’ of the characters, which apparently only start after May 27th. I’m not particularly familiar with route-based VNs so I’m excited to see what comes forth next! Onward to Komari’s pancake party!

[Kanon]

but i honestly can’t understand how the finale of the Common route fell so flat.

That’s cuz the Finale is for if you win.

[MagusVerborum]

…May 27th? Wow the entire day was just the pancake party. Well at least I had a great pancakey time before the emotional rollercoaster that will be coming my way shortly. Guess I’ll upload my Battle Rankings for everyone’s perusal and move onto Rin1!

I was particularly happy with Brousuke and Kengo’s titles. And Haruka’s title should really just be permanent

[StarfishBender]

One thing I’m finding a bit tricky now is knowing which new scenes I see are

a) “shared” common route scenes only as a result of different choices from earlier reads; or
b) brand “new” ones as a result of finishing Rin1 and Komari so far and now in the middle of Yuiko.

It kind of gets difficult to know sometimes if things should be discussed further in the characters’ routes topics or the common…because newly available scenes could be regarded as spoilery?

Bear in mind on my 1st read I went for minimal interaction so as to get the bad/generic Common End; I didn’t really mean to skip Mio but I’m already on Yuiko and so on the 4th read through. I suppose I could pick Mio at any time after I finish Yuiko as long as I do Haruka and Kud in that order?

I read through the sleepover scene for the first time in this 4th readthrough, and it just seems a bit odd a as that makes it feel Riki has “regressed” a bit after the “progress” made finishing Komari. OTOH perhaps if you read this on first playthrough and not subsequently that doesn’t apply so much? Not sure if I’m making any sense so if not just ignore my blabbering…

I definitely see already just how convoluted this all is and just how hard it must be write a walkthrough for it all. Even now I only have about 20% of all the CG, 40% of the Busterpaedia entries, but over 50 hours of reading!

[Aspirety]

May 23. “Isn’t it a great morning, dear fellows?” After a morning greeting by Kyousuke, we get a scene with Kud talking to her roommate in the corridor on the way to class, or at least I think so; she was interacting with Komari for me. We have the next mission for Rin, “Perform a riposte on 2-E3”. If you don’t want to get on Rin route, it gives you one last chance to back out here. If you continue on, you get a very quick and fun minigame about performing violent ripostes, or tsukkomi on Masato.

If you go get a drink, we get the first proper introduction of the the head prefect, Kanata Futaki. She’s presented as a villain from the very onset by scolding Komari and Riki for sitting on the lawn, and what interests me about this scene is how it illustrates how the antics of the Little Busters certainly aren’t appreciated by everyone.

And then bam, Kurugaya to the rescue. She criticises Kanata’s behaviour, and Kanata is surprisingly receptive. We don’t know what’s happened between these two, but their relationship is very interesting. They’re complete opposites with very opposing worldviews, yet somehow they seem to share a bond of mutual respect.

I forgot to mention this in my last post, but from the 22nd of May onward with the Little Busters fully assembled, you can jump out of batting practice mid-way to listen to what the girls are doing, and you get funny scenes with the girls asking Kurugaya for advice. This one is about Haruka asking Kurugaya how to make her boobs bigger, of course.

There’s also a scene here where Mio adds everyone in the Little Busters to her phone’s address book, which highlights some great group dynamics, and Masato’s complex about having only Riki and Kyousuke in his call list.

In the cafeteria we have Masato’s “magical endless katsu”, and at night we have…

All of Rin’s night missions from the 22nd on are replaced with group scenes like this, so look forward to it. This one is pretty funny, and interestingly the first playthrough is the only time you can actually skip it. The highlight for me this time was how Kurugaya completely sees through everything, and instead enacts a live version of Kyousuke’s One Question One Answer.

Kyousuke’s impression of Bob is so beautiful to listen to, makes we wish we had the entire Q&A voiced.

---

Also, as @Naoki_Saten requested, I’ve prepared a chart of all the character relationships as of the common route 1st playthrough!

Little Busters! Relationship Chart

Feel free to leave comments to any adjustments you feel I should make. It was a lot of fun to put together!

[Bonecuss]

@Aspirety

[Tidulimar]

Alright, second readthrough done, Rin1 route. I guess I’ll talk about it here

(as such, spoilertagged for Rin1 content)

First of all, Rin is quite interesting that she keeps going with all the tasks because “it’s fun for now”. I guess it’s cool to shake up your daily life.
I think however that’s a lot what contributes to a certain trend I have seen during her route: she starts getting more and more selfconfident. Especially after you are actually on her route.

I was very surprised when she proposed starting to date. With a lot of confidence as well. Out of the blue. That’s part of what I said about her getting more confident. I also think the little we have seen of Riki and Rin as a couple is just SO cute. Once more, I like Rin a little bit more than before.

Btw Rin, how hard is it to remember Sasami’s name correctly? I mean it is hard to say fast but it is not that hard to remember. It’s hilarious and a bit ridiculous at times on how different she calls her. Speaking of jokes, Masato is the victim of sooo many gags this time:

Let’s get into the serious stuff.
First off all, I noticed there are quite some lines that must be different in…a different situation. The route itself seems to have some variations in itself, which is cool.

"Quote, using this instead of spoilertag for better readability

This group we’re hearing about, only if you’re on the path for the good end by the way, really reminded me of our Little Busters. So what if that’s our traumatic event, that Riki is pushing away here as having happened to someone else, and that Riki and Rin are actually the two students that survived?

I agree with VyseGolbez here, I think that might be the case. In addition, something might have changed in Rin’s behaviour in spring? Would fit into that.

Obviously, Riki is very upset - more than everyone else in the group - of Rin potentially leaving. I am pretty sure this is not just because she is his girlfriend, but because Riki does not want to change his good times with his childhood friends. From the end of the route, I think that’s what we’ll go for when doing Rin2.

There is also a line about crossing the border between reality and dream. That may mean narcolepsy, but might also be a hint to the secret of the world (given the theory of dreams or brain trauma that I support)

There is also Rin’s cats being all over Riki in a scene, and Riki saying “It’s not something mysterious like magic, I’m just physically unable to move”. It could just because of the cats, there might also a hidden second meaning in this. Maybe I am just trying to find foreshadowing by now, when there actually is none (too be honest, that probably is the case…whatever)

The only lines I think are important but cannot really make a lot of sense of is “But at that time. — We hadn’t even come to know love yet.” I am curious to finding out (and/or hear other people’s theorycrafting).

(maybe I will just use [details] the next time for this kind of spoiler post)

And now, I am quite excited to finally go into blind territory! (might still post something if common route presents me with some cool new stuff that I missed before and is worth making a post about)

[wha2les]

So I sped through the common route and Rin1 (just to make sure I would make it), and man there is a lot of plot to think about.

So while I am still digesting and throwing the story around in my head, I must comment on the game play.

The way the plot works, the developers knew that the actions would be quite repetitive. So they implemented that battle ranking and ball practice. This works fabulously with the story! Every so often, as you click through, sometimes new and strange would occur. Some example includes the new and random pitches that Rin throws at you during practice. The first time she threw that Purrve, I must admit I made a fool of myself haha.

There are some RNG in terms of battles, and people reaction to you, but it really works towards gripping you and luring you into the story more and more. You can really deeply skew the competition so that your favorite character becomes top of battle ranking, or get more of those angry Rin pitches when you decide to hit the cats.

Another thing is that most of the choices in the common route doesn’t make a whole lot of difference in terms of direction of the story. You could either go the faster route that goes directly to the next plot line, or you can take detours by choosing more CGs.

These things really help give you incentive to invest more time into the route. It help you stick with the story, builds character development, provide entertainment as much or as little as you like. The ability to tailor the experience to your preferences really make the experience unique and enjoyable for new Vners.

[Natsume]

Yeah. There’ve been a couple of very smart approaches to common route perspective in visual novel history, but personally I’ve always found Little Busters’ way of writing its common route to be simply endearing.

Whether you speed ahead or not, it offers enough choices so that it’s never really the same even through different playthroughs, and the minigames are fun enough in their own regard to be worth the detour (God knows I usually hate things that distract me from the plot). I appreciate how the entire staff just took the idea of “friends messing around with each other and making every day entertaining” and incorporated it in the common route itself. As I said, pretty damn endearing.