Bruh kud is amazing if you know where to place her. She works best when placed on the outfield. She literally stopped the enemy team from getting a home run
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And yet you claim the opposite of what’s been slowly explained throughout the whole thing?
For example, “It’s easy to tell someone to stand up and fight. It’s really easy… to just say it.” For example, how much time, effort and support it takes to actually come to terms with a decision of this magnitude. Even if Kud does decide, she’s unable to stick to it if left alone. And the whole point of this ending is to help her accept it. That’s the character development - to deal with that bad trait you’re so focused on. Why in the world are you blaming her for not having finished her development in the middle of the route, right when the actual conflict has only just begun?
While the choices in Haruka’s route are worded differently, it comes down to the same thing. Haruka doesn’t abide by her decisions if Riki doesn’t agree. She gives up instantly. Both girls demand Rik to tell them what to do and Riki is still the one making the decisions. Riki is the one who decides on the options. He’s the one who decides to force Haruka to make her own choice, but does not do so with Kud pre-Refrain. It took Haruka a long time to realize her actual problem step by step, while Riki carefully guided her. It didn’t all come crashing down on her with a decision she had to make in a short amount of time. Yes, Kud kept demanding Riki repeatedly to make the decision in her stead. But her decision was on a different scale entirely. While other girls were just facing their inner fears, Kud had to choose between abandoning her family and death. Between the the most important people in her life. And she only has three of those! Do you realize why making her stay is a bad ending, while letting her decide to stay is not? Because the burden of that decision is too much for just one person to bear.
And don’t even get me started on selfishness when there are girls who would (Refrain spoilers) try keeping Riki all to themselves, thus not only denying him his growth, but also denying other girls the salvation from their heavier-than-death regrets. I think you are being unfair.
A lot of the details you name are still mostly overinterpretation. There were no ‘faces’ in that scene. It was a complete black background. And of course Kud’s voice would be different because she just lost her family! Her face was described as pale! Kud told Haruka that her friends were still supporting her. She didn’t want her to go through the same experience at her and regret distancing herself from her family. She’s not a family issue expert. She’s a family appreciator. And she’s not an uninvolved party. Because Kanata already got her involved. Kanata made Kud her little sister. And at this point, Kud is on good terms with both. She knows both are good people. She has the opportunity, thus she tries helping as much as she can. All while also having to deal with her own trauma. She never ‘lectured’ anyone! She kindly offered an advice and then left. And in the end, it turns out Kud was absolutely right.
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By the time I mentioned this part, I was no longer talking about that specific scene any more. I meant this as a general thing.
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At the humble request of our modest leader @Aspirety, I’ve elected to post my thoughts on my second reading of Little Busters (or in this case, my first reading of English Edition). To paraphrase what I’ve said in my earlier posts, my thoughts are always subject to change, and that was certainly the case with my second reading of Kud.
Kud, as far as I could tell, is a literal mixed bag of influences and interests. Despite her heritage, she’s rather tied to Japan through her grandfather’s hobbies and her grandmother’s culture. She’s well-rounded, skilled in many things but not proficient in any of them. She has issues trying to fit in with everyone at the school since she’s so decidedly foreign. Being foreign is part of her individuality, and she’s proud of it, but she would rather not let that part of herself interfere with her friendships.
This and her textbook politeness is partially why, when the old dorm is repaired, she is unable to find a roommate by herself. Nevertheless, she has a hero in Riki, the only person who didn’t laugh at her eccentricities. With his help, she is able to feel included in the Little Busters, a group full of weirdos who can’t help but compulsively kill each other and hit cats with baseballs after school because it’s fun. 
For most of common, Kud serves as a beacon of joy and positivity for Riki and the Little Busters, although her personal issue are far from solved. Although Kud’s interactions with them fulfills the female nature of gathering allies around herself, it doesn’t provide the kind of close interaction she’s been yearning for. There’s a rather large disconnect between herself and the students at her school, although it’s not necessarily from bad intent like the faceless bullies in Kurugaya’s route. It’s precisely because her existence is so entertaining (similar to how Masato is always trodden upon for being stupid) that she feels she can’t find anyone who will see her as nothing more than a plucky mascot. That’s such an intelligent commentary on the nature of token mini-moe as a trope; how does one feel in those shoes? Someone as insecure as Kud wouldn’t feel comfortable around anyone who sees her as nothing more than a novelty, or in her own words, ‘a foreigner who’s gotten the wrong idea’. I certainly wouldn’t!
Kud’s route begins with the simple goal of everyone gathering together to study for an exam. Naturally, Kud sucks at English, so many of the members (especially Riki) offer assistance. Coming into this second reading, it’s interesting to see how the other Busters interact with Riki and Kud as opposed to the other routes. It’s more or less what I’d expect a group of true friends to accomplish, and it’s always sweet to see Kud and Masato showcase their amazing chemistry. 
But I digress. As far as the romance with Riki and Kud are concerned, I take back what I said about it being forced garbage. Kud’s romance actually reminds me a little bit of Nayuki’s interactions with Yuuichi in Kanon, which I was of the opinion that she was slowly manipulating him into the relationship they shared during her route. Unlike Nayuki, however, Kud’s efforts to bring Riki closer don’t seem underhanded; in fact, they’re coated with an innocent puppy love that soon blooms into a quiet passion that can’t even keep up with Riki’s efforts to love her back by the end of the route. Her reasoning for roundabout tactics is quite understandable when you think about it. Unlike most of the other girls, who can hold their own in stature and forwardness, Kud is small and shy, so she resorts to being clever. She makes efforts to further her relationship with Riki, but she also knows when to step back and let him breathe. It makes me think a girl like Kud could hold a relationship well, even past the point where sexual interest is lost.
On another note, I both hate and like the fact that parts of the route change depending on Kud’s choice of roommate. It offers extra replayability, but it also requires careful observation of every single line of dialogue to see what’s different. For a casual reader like me, it sounds rather tedious to go through all the effort to read a route three times just to see all the differences. That being said, my choice of roommate in this playthrough was Haruka, as it felt like the most fun and safe (for her) way to go. Being spun around a few times a day is a small price to pay for keeping her pure. 
A major theme of Kud’s route is finding one’s identity, which manifests itself in multiple elements. The first is the picture book about the bat and the platypus, where Kud directly correlates herself with the actions of the bat. It foreshadows the inevitable decision she will have to make, one that may end the conflict between forces inside and outside of her sphere of control. It is also, in my point of view, one of the turning points of Riki’s relationship with Kud, as his answer to the question of making friends with the ‘bat’ helps her to understand how valuable an ally he is.
I want to make a quick shout-out to Kud’s voice actress, Naomi Wakabayashi. She gives a stellar, Oscar-worthy performance of Kud, showing complex, human emotions at just the right moments. This is especially prevalent in Kud’s answer to Riki asking her out, which is full of quiet, anxious joy that feels so heartfelt and genuine, it moves my heart. Her voice acting is also part of the reason the last moments of the route are so infamously sad, as it perfectly sells how broken and conflicted a person she has become.
Going back to the theme of identity, we come at last to the coat-of-arms scene. It seems to be a rite of passage in that it signifies the sacred bond between a man and a woman, almost like a marriage custom. We see in Kud’s ‘good’ end that this isn’t necessarily the case, as it’s more of a means of identifying someone based on the basic but powerful emotions of love and hate. It shows to both a single corner of one’s life and the entire world what you represent in their eyes. To Kud it’s representative of a shackle that she can’t loose from herself, the identity that she’s created for herself. She compares herself to a twisted gear, which in her view serves no purpose in the greater clockwork because she ‘doesn’t fit in.’ (Kurugaya and Refrain spoilers) It also calls back to the concept of gears in Kurugaya’s route as a metaphorical building block for the world in which Riki and the Little Busters live in. Despite that, Kud is one of the pillars holding the world together along with Kyousuke and the rest of the Busters besides Riki and Rin. Finding herself at odds with her function in the world because of her regret, as either Kurugaya or Kyousuke might have put it, is dangerous to the integrity of the world itself. But again, I digress.
Shortly after that scene, we discover that the land of her birth, the country where her mother lives, is under attack. Kud dumps information about herself and her homeland to us in a distant, monotone voice, clearly tortured from being torn between obligations to her mother and her new boyfriend. Kud wordlessly leaves the choice to stay or leave to Riki, and her reaction differs significantly depending on the choice.
- If you choose to make her stay, her eyes droop immediately, and she accuses Riki of betraying everything that they’ve ever worked for in mending relations with her immediate family, but unable to choose for herself, she concedes to stay because she doesn’t want to lose Riki. Naturally, her mother is killed on live television and Kud breaks down, with Riki succumbing to his narcolepsy soon after.
- If you choose to let her go, her eyes droop when she begins to speak, and she accuses Riki of betraying her feelings for him, and the final scene with her and Riki in her bedroom takes on a whole new meaning. Nevertheless, she concedes to go on the same principle that she can’t choose for herself. In Tevua she is accused of being a failure and is chained up as a sacrifice. Through (Refrain spoilers) the power of the world’s secret she is able to communicate with Riki in her most desperate moment, and in a powerful act of resolution, she breaks free from her physical and self-imposed metaphorical chains and returns to Japan to tearfully reunite with Riki.
- (Post-Refrain content) If you give the choice to her, she becomes frustrated because Riki is her hero, her only means of progressing forward, and she’s too afraid to act on her own terms. With Riki’s encouragement, however, in a surprising twist, she elects on her own terms to stay behind with Riki. The bad ending happens as it normally would, but like Rin2 it continues forward, giving us a resolution to Kud’s route that is both inspiring and sensical within the context of the rest of the VN.
To close things off, Kud has gone from perhaps the most divisive route in the game to one of my favorite Key routes ever. Although long-winded and full of filler at times, Kud is a standout example of drama and intrigue that has captured my heart and dragged it across real and fictional nations. It seems unbelievable that such a small, cute character would be given so much attention and care and not be given a trash route, but Kud has a lot of heart. Kudos to Chika Shirokiri for giving her one, and for setting the storytelling bar high for Key novels today.
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That’s one hypocritical commentary considering that’s exactly what she is in the eyes of VisualArt’s.
Though Haruka actually pushes you towards the bad end. On the other hand, Mio is like a cheat sheet for a bunch of Kud’s motivations.
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While other girls have a variety of scenes in the common route that allow the reader to see different sides of them, Kud’s scenes are focused on very few points. Her events mostly revolve around moving in and finding a roommate. That’s because the most important things for Kud are to find a place to belong and to make connections. Think back at what we’ve learned about Kud’s situation. She failed at becoming an astronaut and gave up, distancing herself from her mother, whom she thought she had disappointed. She doesn’t have a real “home”, since she was constantly on the move throughout most of her childhood. Her grandpa is traveling the world. Kud truly is all alone in Japan, save for the dogs. Kud is always upbeat and lively, so you don’t actually notice on first glance, but the isolation she must be feeling is immense. And now that I think about it, it ties really well with who her potential roommates are:
- Mio, who (minor Mio route spoilers) is also seeking meaningful connections.
- Haruka, who (Haruka route spoilers) is also isolated and needs a sister.
- Kanata, who (Haruka route spoilers) definitely needs a little sister.
Both sides truly have a lot to gain.
What a meaningful relationship it is, being roommates! It’s on a whole different level from standard friendship, sharing your living space with someone else. Imagine the hell it could develop into if things go bad, especially for a foreigner who’s all alone? But Kud wants those connections and she doesn’t slack off.
I know that feel. I know it couldn’t have posibly been easy for her.
So, concerning roommates. Let’s take Kanata as an example. With her, Kud’s roommate dreams definitely come true. Kanata is kind to her, but also strict, which shows that she definitely cares. She always offerst help if asked for it. She keeps an eye on Riki, acting as a chaperone. She would lecture Kud, but keep her out of trouble with the other prefects, even turning a blind eye sometimes - which is an unbelievable thing for Kanata to do normally. I was quite surprised with Kanata’s reaction to Kick the Can, but I realized that’s how she acts around Kud.
The other major connection she makes is more obvioius: her relationship with Riki.
I actually expected way more people to adress what I believe is one of the, if not the smoothest confession in all of Key.
At the end of their date, spendig so much time with Kud made Riki light-headed, so he stepped out to calm down a bit. Kud not only becomes unexpectedly bold here, but also employs clever tactics, as @EisenKoubu pointed out. Like a huntress, not letting her prey escape and recover, she uses the opening to trick Riki into looking down, then kisses him and confesses. I was really blown away by how smooth and sweet it all was. And personally, having her confess in one of my native languages also added to the impact.
Incidentally, I found the way Kud and Riki expressed their feelings throughout the route to be very sweet. I didn’t find Kud’s boldness out of place. Reading a route with this level of intimacy on a regular basis was a pretty new experience to me, compared to the other Key routes I had read so far. It fits with Kud’s desire to hold onto the people she loves and to show just how precious they are to her.
Soon after becoming a couple, Kud solidifies the connection with her lover with the body painting ritual. Both of them engrave a part of themselves upon their partner and it really pays out! The symbols connect the two lovers when they are continents apart, allowing Riki to support Kud and help her overcome her self-deprecation and encourage her to live on and return to his side.
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That is a pretty interesting take on things! How does a character, aligned to such a stereotypical representation of a trope, truly feel about being such? Take the tsundere archetype for example: it has gone from being a fad (back in the louise/shana/taiga/tohsaka rin era of anime) to being a metajoke (with MCs outright calling tsunderes as “tsunderes”) to god-knows-what it is right now. But writers never really take the chance to look into how being assigned that specific archetype represents the character’s motivations.
In a way, Kud’s does. Her stupid english and multiple quirks (wafuu excluded) are well-explained as being part of her social strain. In a way, it also doesn’t, as she still keeps some quirks unexplained. And even if Helios says
That’s pretty bullshit, because the views of the writers do not represent the views of VisualArt’s as a business. Perhaps they designed a mini-moe trope to begin with, but Chika Shirokiri went above-and-beyond, and went in to explain how being like that really affects her as a person.
That’s one thing that I like about the romance: it is, without a doubt, innocent. Kud is a pretty clingy girlfriend, and, considering the background of her “love at first sight” with Riki, it gives context as to why she was always so eager to invite him to hang out with her. She’s aggressive with the way she expresses her fondness for Riki but, at the same time, she isn’t forceful about it. It’s a kind of fondness that we don’t see from most characters in this medium. Most other “anime girls” would be shy and sweet about it (which the fans go crazy over), or aggressive but in denial about it (which the fans also go crazy over…?) or just outright tells them to come along (a la Tomoyo and Kurugaya).
It’s a unique perspective and it would have worked really well… It’s just that there were about 2-3 scenes too many after they already made that point clear that it personally got tiring to read
but one thing is true, continuing from both @EisenKoubu and @Naoki_Saten ‘s thoughts: Kud’s route is all about identity and all about connection. This entire route journals kud’s own discovery of her own identity, through her trials and tribulations. She learns that, at the end of the day, as long as she can find what is important to her, that will become her identity, and she doesn’t need to follow others’ identities. This identity itself is shaped by her connections: Riki helps her realize this, as does her roommate, no matter who she ends up staying with.
I’ve recently finished the additional scenes post-refrain and I have to say, it does make things much more impressive in this regard:
Before Refrain, when Riki chooses for her, she needs to sacrifice herself, and realize that that is wrong in order to find her own identity. Now that you let her choose for herself, there is a different spin on this! She makes the decision to abandon her family, throwing away her regrets. But Riki makes her realize that she should not do that. That she should accept her family as her identity, no matter what may have happened in the past, and continue striving to be her own gear in her own way. The problem does not change, but the solution does, and I know I did say that if she ends up staying, she’ll end up blaming herself to the point of no return; but Riki finds a way to help her overcome that, and it’s just beautiful.
This ending changes the route from a good one to a very good one, in my eyes
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I haven’t actually got to Kud route yet, but
Ah, media ownership and control, my favorite topic – the amount of creative freedom a writer has in their stories in the context of mass media as a business is a very complicated one, that which depends on whether or not the writer’s interest conflicts with the business’. It’s possible that Shirokiri is compelled to comply with the business interest, but still decided to sneak in a low-key commentary in a way she could get away with it. That sort of thing happens quite a lot across all media of various cultures, actually.
I like the idea that Kud may be a commentary on the token mini moe trope, though I’ll be hypothesizing that she is both that and still a token mini moe played straight for reasons I explained earlier. Still, I’ll be putting that into mind as I read the route. ^^
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I have to say on a second re-read I did enjoy Kud route much better. I’ll state my pros and cons.
Pros:
-I think they make a cute couple, even though I didn’t really feel that romantic take like in Kurugaya’s route. As others said, it feels very innocent and not a deep romance that had time for us to invest in (I guess that is why Kud Wafter). I feel it could’ve been played up a bit, but I did love the painting scene.
-I did enjoy the change of pace of leaving the school, even though it was a bit brief
-The language difficulties I found was a good way to play integrate her culture into the story
-Her backstory, the metaphors, and name meanings were really well done.
Cons:
-The scene with her chained in the cave, half naked was a bit too far for me. I wasn’t immersed enough at that point in the other country to feel much of what happened there.
-The events of Kud in her home country seemed brushed over.
-The choice for Riki to decide what she should do. As a few others pointed out having her choose to go home or stay. I think it should be what she decides on how you interact with her. Or even if it was worded differently.
Though I do wonder for the gear if it is implied to be part of the rocket or was it part of the bus. My mind wandered between the two. Unless I missed something.
Also is it me or did her mom survive in the original? My brain can’t remember and I think back to the anime and also can’t remember either XD
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Personally I didn’t care that much either about the home country. That said, Kud cares. That’s the important thing. I empathized with her so much in the cave scene and honestly didn’t care how she got out, just that she got out. I didn’t think it was enough to just let her stay there so, a healthy does of ANIMEEEEEEEE really sold that ending for me.
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Okaaay, so I asked a similar question earlier in the topic, but I want to elaborate on it.
So, the scene in the cave. There are a number of people who take the scene at face value, hat being that Kud was in reality chained up inside the cave, and key magic teleported the gear from Riki to Kud so that she could use Key magic to break her chains. Then there’s me, who thinks that the chains were symbolic, showing that she wouldn’t let herself leave because she could be a “useful gear” by sacrificing herself. Then there are people like @Kanon who think the entire situation was metaphorical.
I could honestly believe any of them. I only recently touched on the idea that the chains were symbolic, and Kanon’s interpretation is basically like taking mine one step further.
So, I ask the podcasters: Which is it?
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That might be the very reason why she stopped writing for Key after Kud Wafter. Perhaps the moege market just wasn’t the niche she was most comfortable writing for. If that’s the case, I’d totally understand that, even though it makes me rather sad as a fan of her writing. 
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Just finished Kud Route. This time, I want to start this with the Classical Myoosik gimmick, which was literally the only reason why I didn’t skip this route. I’m personally fond of my pick for Kud: I came up with this idea few years ago, and my music knowledge back then was much more limited than today, so most of my picks for each routes have changed since… well except for Kud. Actually, this piece was even the reason why I have this gimmick in the first place: Frederic Chopin’s Valse du Petit Chien. Not The Bat Overture, not The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, but Puppy Waltz… okay I’ll see myself out. XD
For the route itself, there’s something I’d like to say first: in hindsight, there really is something that Kud and I have a bit in common. So, I grew up in a province in the Philippines where practically everyone speaks in Kapampangan. My father lives there and speaks that, while my mother came from a different province and speaks Tagalog instead. Father worked overseas for most of the time, so it wasn’t surprising that my main language turned out to be Tagalog despite living in a Kapampangan community.
Fortunately for me, because the national lingua franca Filipino is almost entirely based off Tagalog, I can speak fine with other people around me. It’s a different story when I encounter Kapampangan conversations around me though, which I can only understand for half of the time. Meaning, my grasp of the language isn’t terribly strong.
I realized this the most when one day I tried speaking Kapampangan in front of my elementary classmates. Needless to say, my classmates made an amusement out of my attempts at speaking it. :'D
So yeah, there really could have been a potential for me to relate to Kud, and admittedly at some point I did. The problem is that, perhaps due to change of taste, Kud is hard for me to take now: I found a huge part of her character so blatantly lolicon-bait that it actively gave me a headache. She’s played like a helpless ultra-cute eight-year-old despite being fifteen, but at the same time she’s like, I dunno, sexually objectified. Really bad combination.
Fortunately, her character isn’t all bad. I actually really like the exam portion of the story. Most of it was boring fluff, but it gets interesting once we see how she feels offended about being objectified by her classmates as a mere Token Mini Moe, who has to fail cutely for other people’s amusement. It confirms my earlier thought that she’s a combination of the trope played straight and deconstructed, and it’s great stuff. It really is.
Too bad the story after that devolved into a poorly-written mess. I can see what the story is trying to do, and I appreciate everyone’s discussion here as it allowed me to understand what it was all about: a journey towards realization of self-worth. But there is such a thing as less is more, and this part of the route suffered from being so severely over-written that not even the context of Refrain salvaged it for me.
So my score for this lie somewhere between 2.5 and 3, and by far my least favorite route. 
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Okay so there was a thing in fan LB translation that bothered me.
People interpreted it as kud throwing her regret (of not being there with her mother) so she could move forward without them weighing her down. But i didn’t agree with that, i couldn’t agree with that. i feel regrets painful and sad as they are, they are still a important part of our life. Regrets aren’t meant to be thrown away, if we throw them away then It means everything that happened was pointless.
I know that regrets are hard to bear but if we try, instead of weighing us down regrets can turn into our strength. if we accept them, if we accept our faults and learn from them, so that we wouldn’t repeat them then it’s a great thing to accomplish. Regrets are ours to bear as seen the added scene in LB EE.
Refrain spoilers.
Kud accepted it and instead of burden it became her strength.
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I liked the route. I thought Kud was very brave and resilient.
Its not my favourite route though (that would be Mio’s) 
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I was dead certain this had been explained already but apparently not.
What is the joke behind 'Wafuu?’
On the surface it’s supposedly a dog-like noice, though I never really got that. Like, the onomatopoeia for a dog’s bark is ‘Woof’ in English and ‘Wan’ in Japanese, so it’s kinda close…
Anyway, the other half of the joke is 和風, read as ‘wafuu’ and means “Japanese Style” basically. Kud introduces us to the first kanji, 和, in the story. It means “Harmony” but also refers to the country of Japan replacing the old 倭 because they didn’t want to keep getting called dipshits by China. (Wa also refers to a social mentality of sorts. Read More) The second kanji, 風, just translates as “Wind” but can also refer to a style or fashion in which something is done.
I think that might be the entire joke. I didn’t commit much of my re-read to memory, so I might be forgetting if it was relevant to anything else.
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Alright, this is gonna be my first post in the book club, since I didn’t find this forum until after finishing refrain. I’m gonna try and make any future posts a bit more detailed if possible, but Kud was the last regular route I did, so I’m not really ready to reread the whole thing and take notes… ;>_>
Also, uh, be warned for several spoilers about refrain and other routes? They’re behind spoiler tags, but just thought I’d mention it. I played Kud right before moving on to Rin2, so a lot of my thoughts about her route are very much in relation to the routes I read before and after her.
So, I’m gonna be honest, I feel really conflicted about Kud. I mean, I like her - she’s a cute kid, she has some legitimately really good moments with Riki in her route, like the body painting scene, and her interest in space is the sort of thing that usually rockets a character to a place among my favorites… but dammit, so much of the first half of the route just made me uncomfortable. Why did they give the loli possibly the most sexualized moments in the game? …And yet at the same time, it’s deeply unfair to her character to boil her down to just being a loli, but then that argument triggers a pavlovian disgust association in me with “she’s really a thousand years old she just looks and acts like a kid” arguments and augh…
Anyways, putting aside my own hangups with her ‘focus group appeal’, so to speak, I didn’t really like that the slice of life section of her route felt so… disconnected from her common route scenes, to me? Like, her common route was all about finding a roommate and moving in and all that, so I was expecting a heavy focus on that pre-established plotline, but then it seemed to just kind of veer off into something completely different even before the foreign conflict kicked off. (Refrain)Although based on what I saw in my re-read to get the post-refrain content and the TRUE END OF LITTLE BUSTERS(kinniku yay yay), that may have been partially just because at this point in my playthrough Mio’s route was long gone. Overall, there were a few really great moments in this part of the route, but I think that my instinctual reaction to the romance in this route just kept me from enjoying all but the best moments in it.
I really liked Komari’s presence in this route; hers was the first route I saw in my own readthrough, so her scenes really made it feel like a book-ends to the open-ended section of Little Busters. The reminder of her picture books was neat, I loved how she helped build Riki’s resolve for the climax of the route, and it was especially nice to see her theme of “saving” a sad story recalled(or set up, I guess, if you read Kud first) outside of her route. I have strong Feelings about this theme and think it’s ultimately a lot more important than it seems to get credit for in what I’ve seen so far of the discussion about this game, but that’s an essay to prepare for another day.
Actually, I feel like Kud route in general had a lot of neat little references to other routes, like Komari and the star chart, or the fortune-telling fad that shows up in both this and Haruka. Although I guess I might have just been seeing them more since it was my last route…
I also really loved Masato’s contributions in this route; I think he’d proven himself one of my favorites already around my Haruka playthrough, but this route really hammered in just how hard he tries to help out, with him going so far as to try and help with the studying (even if his annotation of the physics text, if technically correct, was a little unhelpful.)
I really liked the more geopolitical parts of this route. I mean, I frigging love space, so obviously the fact that a space program was at the center was an automatic boost for my opinion, hehe… Kud’s route definitely had some of the highest holy shit quotient out of the baseline routes, imo - only Mio really came close, and even with her the stakes were still much more personal, as opposed to Kud being caught up in a country-wide conflict. In general, it worked really well as the last base route I read, from Kyousuke’s hint in the bad ending to Riki finally learning that sometimes he has to let people leave for their own good (a particular reason why I think doing Mio early and Kud late was a great choice - (Mio)Mio relies on the better side of Riki’s refusal to let go of people he cares about, while Kud route can sort of be seen as teaching him to make the other choice when necessary, (Rin)a good lead-in to him finally crossing the bridge from Rin1 to Rin2.
Kud leaving was a legitimately really sad moment, and then the whole sequence of events after she left did an amazing job of ratcheting up some serious tension imo. And although I’ve read some arguments from people who disliked the super-metaphysical ending, I really enjoyed it since it showed Riki proactively making use of all the bizarre stuff for the first time and was pretty much the perfect way to get hyped up to finally pursue the secret of the world. (Refrain)Although I haven’t really re-evaluated it in the lens of what the secret of the world actually was, since I was seriously off the mark with my guesses at that point.
(post-refrain alt)I also really liked the post-refrain alternate ending, and how it sort of ended up being like a rin2 to the bad end of the route. One of this end’s Mio scenes also brought up some more really nice themes and such that tie into the end of Refrain really well imo, but that’s still an essay to prepare for another day.
Overall, I’m kinda mixed on this route. There’s definitely stuff in there that turns me off, but there are also some really high high points. I ultimately don’t think I like this route as much as Komari(I will die on this hill) or Haruka, but it definitely wasn’t bad by any measure, and was even quite good by several of them.
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I really love Kud and her route, probably my favorite heroine alongside Kurugaya, she was just so adorable and sweet. Kud on a very frequent basis managed to bring a smile to my face whenever she was on screen because of how friendly and funny she is, like in Sasami’s route where her advice to Riki for getting 2 people together was basically “If she can’t talk to him, I think she should start with talking to him.” which killed me, or whenever she’d join Masato on his antics. Kud is also such a sweetheart with how much she tries to help her friends like how she and Komari are always the first of the girls willing to help out, or how Kud gives Masato lectures of healthy eating saying he’ll never grow bigger otherwise. Kud having a husky for a pet is also a huge plus since that’s the same breed as my dog. The irony of me liking Kud so much is that normally I have never really liked MOE all that much in the past, yet every time Kud was on screen was so good. I could see it as me growing up and becoming increasingly grouchier with life making me more appreciative of the light of moe, but I’ll just go with just being attributed to how well Kud was written instead.
Another surprise I from Kud I really liked was her route’s intensity. Usually I don’t watch/play many slice of life anime/VNs since I prefer action/thrillers but still wanted to play LB because of how much I love Key, so I was very surprised when the VN about friendship and youth in high school escalated to a war zone in a foreign country. I was tense as all hell whenever it cut to Kud back at her home country and it tore my heart apart when I saw her in the cave. Like I mentioned, I thought Kud was such a lovable sweetheart so her romance scenes with Riki were so sweet to read like the MUSCLES body painting. And I absolutely loved the moment of such a tiny girl managing to prevail and escape the life or death situation she was in at the cave.
Can’t wait for the Wafter movie now (and hope it doesn’t suck like I’ve heard people say about the VN).
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We’re going to be focusing on the EX alternate Kud Route in our After-Refrain Podcast which will hopefully be happening next weekend, so let’s focus some effort on discussing it! I know a lot of people just didn’t read this, but it’s quite a substantial bit of content and really raises the route up in my eyes.
Oh and, you should probably use Spoiler tags when talking about it. It’s a minor inconvenience but it doesn’t really make sense to talk about it anywhere else.
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First, I wanted to say quickly about what I think about Kud’s route first.
This is my 2nd least favorite route in LB! overall. I really do appreciate the discussions you guys made and I learned a lot of things while reading through the thread and listening to your podcast. But I just can’t shake the feeling that there are still some negative things in here that holds back to be a good route in my eyes. I guess I’m not huge fan of too much stuff and a bit of a messy writing, at least that’s how I see Kud’s route.
Now I’ll go for the Post-Refrain alternate end:
One thing I can commend in this route that there’s a small replayability value in here. Although it’s a bit inconvenient especially for casual readers, but I personally think it’s really worth your time.
I really want to talk about the opinions of each heroines with regards to the choices if Kud should go or not or she should the one to decide, which is really interesting.
The scene varies depends who you choose as Kud’s roommate.
Basically Kanata and Mio are the ones that tells Riki to let Kud go.
While Haruka is the one that tells Riki to not let Kud go, which will lead you to a bad end. It really shows one of Haruka’s weakness, running away and refuses to see the things that she doesn’t want to see. And also thinking that she will be lonely if she’ll lose a roommate if Kud wouldn’t be able to come back.
For Rin, when you choose to let Kud decide, there are some scenes hinting that she should just stay.
For Komari, I think she’s on the neutral side, which is very like her.
But the best part for me of this alternate ending is that, how Kanata and Mio practically blames Riki for not deciding a choice for Kud, albeit Kanata is a bit harsh towards Riki. (Thanks to Komari for knocking some sense to her, I really love this scene. Plus points for Komari)
And I really wanna quote a great dialogue from Mio.
“To accept the reality before you…that alone is not strength. You have to face it and make a choice… To not make one and just keep going forward. That is probably weakness.”
Anyways…
Is it really Riki’s fault that this happens to Kud that she lost her smile and broke her down? Or is it because of Kud’s indecisiveness, claiming that she finally decided to herself but she’s just lying and putting up a façade in front of Riki?
I really do feel bad for Riki when he really blames himself for not deciding a choice for Kud. At first, I was irritated at Kud for being so indecisive and Riki was lifting the burden of her indecisiveness. And I kinda disagree with Mio and Kanata (despite them being my favorite) for blaming Riki because he did not decide a choice for Kud (even though they are actually correct and guiding Riki to a proper path). Because I think Riki has a point that Kud should really decide for herself, so instead, I blame Kud for that.
But looking back and re-reading this again made me realize that it’s really unfair to have a blaming game here. And Mio and Kanata made sense here when they said that Riki should’ve decide for Kud.
While I have a personal belief that we should decide for ourselves when making a decision and not completely relying on others, it’s not really that bad and not wrong to ask someone to decide for us. Riki was the one that Kud’s love the most and the one that she has a stronger connection with, so she really does rely on Riki into deciding a choice.
I believe that Kud is weak on herself, but if she has someone that has connections with, someone who will shoulder her burden and regrets together with, they would be able to become stronger and have a strength to overcome the obstacles, like what happened in the good end for example.
So it’s really better if you have someone to connect hands with and have a firm a decision with, rather than deciding on your own and accepting what you think reality is, and having indecisiveness while moving forward to uncertainties. If you let Kud decide on her own, she wouldn’t be able to face her own problems and it creates a rift between her and Riki.
It’s not a weakness to rely on others, we people are weak on our own in the first place, so asking others to decide for us especially facing such a huge dilemma is not wrong. Sometimes you just need other people to make you realize what you really want to do in life. We can’t figure everything on our own most of the time, even if people say ‘you know what you want, decide for yourself,’ it’s easier said than done and we have to understand that not everyone is same as you.
The theme of blaming oneself/others and the theme of connections is really present here and I really like it. Shirokiri did a good job tying these themes together and how she made it present in each of her routes.
And one last thing is how ‘no evil ones’ appears here.
After this dialogue, there’s like a quick flash of Kud’s CG, chained in the cave, which is very intriguing.
While I really like this alternate ending, it’s still wasn’t enough to save the whole route for me. It’s really a wonderful addition, really, and I completely appreciate it, and it’s certainly a plus point. But, I still can’t turn a blind eye to its negative points of the writing of Kud’s route, which is honestly a shame for me.
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