So I finished the Kanata route a little while ago and I enjoyed her route as much as I did Haruka’s. It nicely wrapped up the loose ends I was wondering about at the end of Haruka’s route, and the Wedding Busters part was amazing. I actually came to like Kanata’s character a lot, and she ended up being one of my favourites. Maybe a controversial opinion to have, but I can’t help it
So the scene of Kanata and Haruka just before the Wedding Busters part confused me a bit… and I don’t think I’m the only one. But judging from the dialogue I think I can assume Kanata’s route takes place before Refrain, also considering Haruka is not sure whether or not she and Kanata will see eachother again. She mentioned that “when the time comes, it’ll be alright for Riki-kun and Rin-chan to decide.” I think she might be referring to the “it’s not enough” or “it’s enough” choice? There’s also the fact that Haruka is sleeping in a bed when waking up afterwards, with her arms wrapped in bandages which leads me to believe the accident had just happened.
This raises the question of how much Kanata remembers from the dream world afterwards… possibly nothing at all? She is not part of the Little Busters and should not be involved in the accident, so I’m wondering if Riki had to start from scratch again with her (assuming you went with the “because I like you” choice earlier in the route). It’s all a bit hazy and I’m not sure about the sequence of events and how much time there was between the accident and Kanata’s wedding for example. They never show if and to what extent the relationship between Riki and Kanata got reset, and whether or not he has made any new progress since the accident in the real world. But I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
On another subject, I was actually thinking that Kanata might have been aware of the secret of the world all along. One thing I found interesting was how different her behaviour seems to be when compared to Haruka’s route. Does she retain some memories of it? I don’t think the change is only caused by Haruka’s different attitude towards her for example. There were also some other things she said during her route that made me think this, but I can’t remember them at the moment… One thing I do remember though is my post from Haruka’s route where I mentioned the following:
I wrote this before I read Refrain, but afterwards it seems to make a lot more sense… but only if Kanata is actually aware of the secret of the world. Maybe I’m completely off track with my ramblings but it’s something that was curious to me.
Anyway, this route is definitely one of my favourites and I should probably give it another read fairly soon. My emotions mostly have the upper hand when reading and it doesn’t give me much room to think and analyze, so writing coherent posts on routes afterwards is more difficult than it should be