Okay, May 13th, the return of Kyousuke! (did he ever truly leave?)
We begin our story with a lot of loud shouting, I’m going to be honest it might me jump. I had forgotten that this story had voice acting and wasn’t quite prepared for the energy that Masato would bring to the table. I’m probably going to spend my time with this first chapter talking about my impressions of the characters and their design, I didn’t really notice anything super plot-related until May 14th. Anywho, Masato can really work up a storm and his motivational speech is enough to rouse Riki and order them to the cafeteria.
Let’s talk about Riki for a second, he’s the main character, after all.
Described as an ‘Ordinary boy’ he seems to be the typical ‘self-insert’ main character (MC) that we’ve all come to know and love. He tends to be a voice of reason in the midst of the madness created by the other characters, he seems to be about as smart as the average reader, and is voiceless. The only present-day image of Riki we see is the one present in the Status menu, depicting him looking away from the camera with his head down. Plain, serves as a point of view (pov) for the player, and gives off a slight sense of sadness or perhaps submission. The impression I get is that he is going to be dragged into almost anything that is asked of him, giving the player the chance to experience whacky hijinks ™ and that he is also our calm in the storm.
And boy what a storm it is, the novel wastes no time at all getting into a sparring match between Kengo and Masato, who apparently had promised not to fight until Kyousuke had returned (which is a very interesting statement but I’ll get to that in a bit). Let’s take a quick look at these new characters shall we:
what a nerd
just as big a nerd
Once again, I’m going to bring up colours (honestly what did you expect by now) and point out the clothing in particular. Comparing the two side by side they very clearly are represented by the trope Red oni, Blue oni, wherein we have a pair of characters with one being incredibly emotional and prone to following instinct (Masato) and the other being calm cool and collected in all circumstances (Kengo) both characters clearly wear their respective colours although Kengo wears his without any obstruction implying a high level of confidence in his actions, whereas Masato is wearing a black jacket over the top, so perhaps he is embarrassed or self-conscious about this side of him. We are also told that Kengo is abstinent, makes me wonder if this is for religious reasons his design is clearly meant to resemble that of a fighting monk. He is extremely focused and perhaps even has difficulty forming new relationships with others, makes me wonder what kind of stunt Kyousuke pulled to bring him into the crew. Masato on the other hand is kind of a class clown, swinging around his fists (breaking a table if I recall) and randomly selected weapon with little regard for consequences. Speaking of which…
SHE HAS CAT EARS
I was totally taken by surprise. Everything up until this point I was prepared for to some degree, but the moment Rin showed up and grew cat ears out of the side of her skull I knew I was on the wrong side of town. She interrupts the fight on the basis of stopping animal cruelty and kicks Masato’s butt soundly. I really like her a lot, she’s also fairly antisocial it seems but the writer’s commitment to the cat gimmick gives her a lot of life. The fact that she has a herd of stray cats following her everywhere is endearing and good gravy she even has a little catbell in her hair. Visually she has much larger eyes compared to the rest of the cast so far indicating innocence, and the large pink ribbon in the center of her chest denotes a child like attitude. I believe she will have difficulty focusing on more than one thing at a time and honestly i don’t know if i’ll ever be able to take her seriously.
I suppose I should talk a little about the man in charge, Kyousuke
We don’t learn a lot explicitly about him on this day, which is very interesting. He appears to be shrouded in mystery. He wears a buttoned up shirt and tie, denoting him as someone vaguely responsible (at least the most responsible of these five) and we learn that he is a year older than everyone else, so this makes sense. We learn through the latter half of this chapter the story of how Riki lost his parents and he was taken in by these four other children, fighting for great justice and smashing beehives. Kyousuke seems to be the mastermind behind all this and i do hope we get to learn about how he recruited everyone to the team. What peaks my interest particularly is the specific details that Masato and Kengo couldn’t have their duel until Kyousuke returned. Clearly Kyousuke has authority here but beyond that I get the impression that this wasn’t just a ‘I was gone for a day and you can fight once I get back from my walk’ situation but that the period of time was much longer. I couldn’t tell you honestly if it was a period of days or weeks or months since the two Oni’s promise to fight one another (fitting that they are demons needing to be controlled by a master) but I get the impression that Kyousuke has been off doing something important for a long time. But perhaps i’m overthinking it…
So we have our base cast of five characters, tied together by a string that extends back ten whole years. Judging by the way this day ends, with Riki’s wish that these pleasant days ‘could continue forever’ I feel as though my analysis of the title screen was fairly accurate. This is a story of the past, present, and future. Highschool life is often romanticized in Japanese media, and it appears that’s what we’ll be looking at with this story. Looking back at a perfect time with no worries, perhaps trying to forget? To reconcile? It’s not entirely clear, I’ll just have to keep playing to find out! 
Before I sign out, I do want to shoutout the sheer functionality of this release, the Busterpedia, the backlog, the UI of the fighting game which is just hilariously detailed, it’s all very overwhelming, but in a good way! I’m really enjoying the game so far~
EDIT: Ah man, there’s always something I forget in these posts
More evidence that Kengo is tied to religion, this quote is originally from the tale of Paul the Apostle’s conversion, which I wrote about quite a bit in my Planetarian analysis:
…and either is implying that this happened to Kengo in the past, he had a ‘sudden understanding of the truth’ or perhaps this is foreshadowing for when Riki finds out the 'Secret of the World" (something which I am aware of but haven’t uncovered yet). Perhaps it’s even implying that Kengo already understands the Secret of the World, wouldn’t that be fun? It would certain explain his attitude towards pretty much everything, going along with the club’s antics without really committing.
