But but… they were just so cute in Haruka’s route T3T
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THEY WERE AMAZING IN HARUKA’S ROUTE.
It’s the best romance in the VN aside from RikiKyousuke.
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I wouldn’t even call them random, tbh. People typically kiss in these situations.
b-but muh Saya
I don’t hate kissing scenes in romance, but I feel like Shirokiri thinks that throwing two people together and having them kiss is considered chemistry. Instead, it just makes me uncomfortable. For Haruka, it’s only a nitpick, but it’s a problem I have with Shirokiri’s writing style, in general.
I’ve never been in that kind of situation, but I’ve been raised on standards where even oral sex is only acceptable within the bonds of marriage.
The occasional kiss in romance is fine and dandy, but in real life, I would not put myself in that kind of situation until I am happily wed to the woman of my dreams, and even then, I would only kiss her.
I would have agreed with you for Kud’s route that the kissing may have seemed a tad bit out of place. But for Haruka’s route, I think they were done pretty well. While I don’t want to chalk it up to your own preferences, I just wanna give my opinion on how I feel the romance was handled.
I am a romance nut, after all
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Hopeless Romanticmatsurians unite.
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You miss the part where Haruka craves attention/contact/love to make up for a severe lack of it earlier?
And Riki is just a deviant who takes any chance.
Of course they kiss a lot.
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This is confirmed in other routes, yes
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Which of the two bad endings are you talking about?
I’m specifically talking about the bad ending where Kanata tricks Riki into giving up his search. I haven’t seen the other bad ending. 
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The other one isn’t exactly a second bad ending, as it ends with the generic bad end scene, but it shows us a new Haruka’s sprite.
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There are basically three reasons why I think Haruka’s route was the worst of Little Busters!:
First, the forced drama. I wasn’t really moved by this route’s drama at all. I pitied Haruka, but much much less than I pitied Komari or Kud, for example. The whole thing didn’t feel natural at all. It seemed like a fight between two female teenagers, when the two are trying to make you pity them to win an ally. And the resolution of the conflict felt extremely artificial and made no sense. If things were that easy, why couldn’t Kanata solve the problem earlier?
Second, the plot. The plot of this route also felt artificial. It didn’t really slowly progress towards a climax, like in other routes. They just moved it along, trying their best to extend it. But the result felt like a boring investigation story. The plot moved in parallel, rather than an increasing straight. Without build up, they just threw up the ‘main drama’ in the end, and other elements in the story.
And third, the romance, while lacking also was damn boring. Even Komari’s route, that lacked romance much more, had better ‘romantic scenes’. It seemed just like two kids playing, and I couldn’t feel their chemistry at all.
So, this is why I think Haruka’s route is the worst route of LB!
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that. I felt like the backstory explanation made perfect sense, and the way the sisters were acting because of it seemed believable taking into consideration how they had been treated for their entire lives.
While I can see how you might take it that way, you must remember that Kanata must have been extremely conflicted. She had always been told that she must hate Haruka, but she had no reason to besides that. She wanted to do what her parents told her, but she also felt badly for her sister. It was much easier for her to escape that confliction by simply continuing to do what she knew best: take everything out on Haruka.
I’m… not really sure how you could think that relative to all the other romance in this VN. Admittedly, Little Busters! wasnt really about romance, but Haruka was really the only girl who seemed fitting romantically for Riki to me.
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While I also dislike the route for the same reason, this is exactly what it is supposed to be, and it handled it almost perfectly. Riki is a kid caught in a battle of hatred and confusion, with the two ugly participants lying and manipulating him to their side. It was a forced drama, and it wasn’t natural. That’s what the problem was. These two kids were fighting over something that neither of them were for.
The problem wasn’t solved easily because those caught in the drama didn’t believe it could end so easily. This was their whole lives. They didn’t expect it to just change, and they didn’t feel good enough to be the change. All they could do was try to refuse the way life is.
To me, this is one of the many things in story telling where I’m like “getting the atmosphere and effect of this story is great writing, but I don’t like it.” Haruka’s route is good from an analytical standpoint, but bad from a personal standpoint. I have the same thing with F/SN and some other things.
You missed something then. It wasn’t an investigation story at any point of the route. It was a story about understanding, or the inability to understand. There’s a pun in there somewhere.
You just like Komari. All of the routes had the same awful romance. The only one I’d say doesn’t, is Yuiko’s, but I like Yuiko, so maybe it is as bad as the others and I’m just blind to it.
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No, they’re all pretty bad. There doesnt seem to be any realistic progression for any of them. Some, like Yuiko and Haruku (imo) are less blatant than others, but as I said, this VN isnt really about the romance. I guess its just supposed to help display the connection between Riki and the girls.
(Im sure this contributes to why the H-scenes in EX seem so execptionally out of place.)
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Not really. They kept pushing their sadness in order to make Riki pity them. It can be something subjective, but it was forced imo.
It makes sense why she was doing that, but then, why she “solved” the problem didn’t. It would require some sort of character development to make her change her mind, and not something pulled out of nothing, that was quite out of character.
So I guess the same thing applies to me: I didn’t like it what it was, even when it did perfectly what it was intended to.
It wasn’t that, it felt like that. They way the plot went forward and back, forward and back, it was tiresome and boring. I said investigation because they were trying to find out the truth first, and that was what the conflict in the middle of the route was about.
Mio has good romance too. And no, it’s not just because I like Komari. I dislike Kurugaya, but I think her route has some good romantic moments. Komari has better ‘romantic’ moments than Haruka.
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Romantic ? As in the HarukaxRiki ? Anyways. I found myself loving Haruka. Her story was the best out of everyone’s route in Little Busters in my opinion. It showed the struggle of the attitude she had, how miserable her life was, and how miserable she became after Kanata did all the bad things to her, such as cut the bench when that was the thing she loved most about the school. I found Haruka’s route to be beautiful too. Haruka pretty much had a new route that wasn’t already told in Key stories. I mean, Komari’s background can be related to Sayuri from Kanon or Yukine from CLANNAD in a way, about her brother. Nothing new, just an overused Key story. I find Komari’s route as the least sad of the LB. Haruka’s route was beautiful. It showed the struggle of how she lived as a kid. And to get on with what I’m saying, Haruka’s route was probably the best in Little busters and the most impactful I’ve felt from Little Busters.
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Before responding to this, allow me to first explain what I think is the definition of “forced drama”. I believe that forced drama refers to the sudden introduction of a situation whose only goal is to introduce drama into the story. Was this true in Haruka’s route? I believe not. Ever since common route we have seen this conflict between her and Kanata and we are slowly introduced to the backstory in her route, and how the drama between them had spurred, showing us the crux of the problem.
I would definitely call the drama well-paced. If anything, Komari’s and Kud’s route had the most “forced drama”. Komari was just Oh everything is happy OOPS I SAW A DEAD CAT I’M CRAZY NOW, and Kud’s was I have a problem fitting in and being accepted in society in Japan OOPS WAR IN MY COUNTRY I GOTTA GO BACK TO SEE MY MOM. If you can make such an assertion towards Haruka’s route, feel free to do so. Otherwise, give another definition of what “forced drama” means to you, because Haruka’s route sure isn’t that.
That’s what makes it a lot more human, I think. A lot of real life drama is exactly like that; the solution is a lot simpler than what the people make it out to be, but because of circumstance and human emotions, it can’t just be easily solved like that. It is exactly a fight between two female teenagers, and is very much grounded in reality. Which is why it becomes interesting, because it is something you can relate to real life.
Although I guess if you don’t like seeing real-life drama, then I can imagine disliking that sort of thing xP The world is filled with things that become overcomplicated because of human emotions, after all. And that, in my opinion, is the best kind of drama~
I always thought that the choice in the game was the climax, and the sudden reveal of Kanata trying to trick Riki. Like, we could see Kanata plotting something towards that, and when that happened, it all came crashing down just how desperate they both seemed to try and one-up each other. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding the definition of climax which implies that it has to involve the solution to the problem.
Either way, I don’t think the build-up to the main drama was a problem at all. Rather, the slow-down to the solution was rather anti-climactic… Much like many of the LB routes are, actually >_>
B-but the cute kissing ;_; the sharing headphones ;_; How would that not be romantic?
(granted these are all personal views; don’t look too much into it)
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You just described what happened in Haruka’s route. Haruka is trying to know who her dad is, Kanata is being portrayed as jerk as always, and then SUDDENLY OOPS LETS FIX THIS NOW I LOVE U HARUKA LETS YURI, IM A POOR LITTLE GIRL WHO IS THREATENED TOO, I CANT STAND DIS ANYMORE.
Regarding Kud, I agree. But not Komari. In her route there were hints all along, from the old man too of the drama source. And it actually progressed, we had the cat drama scene, and then it built up until the final epic rooftop moment. Unlike Haruka’s route, that was a straight line, that suddenly went up from nothing.
RL drama is pretty boring imo. And this is called melodrama, a pointless drama. That’s exactly what happened in Haruka’s route.
’
It was too sudden, like they just thought: “Hey, if we put this here it will be really cool. Let’s put it then.” The slow down to the climax, the built up for it, everything didn’t seem to progress or fit in the same place.
Of course it’s not. It happens in real life all the time. And you have to agree that RL romance is the most boring thing ever.
I’ve shared headphones with a lot of girls, but I wasn’t dating or flirting with any of them.
