I always thought Kengo understood it, but didn’t agree with Kyousuke’s ideas. Masato understood it until the “let’s play baseball!” part.
I think they both understood the meaning about dreams and youth, just not Kyousuke’s baseball idea.
Because that’s for Riki and Rin~
Hence Masato’s confusion being somewhat (maybe a stretch) insightful- Because with that in mind, it seems like him forcing everyone into a baseball team makes them collateral for his goal. Just, his goal isn’t really for himself. It’s for them.
Didn’t make it in time for Kyousuke’s birthday 
I gotta say though, Kyousuke is my favorite character in Little Busters. Everything he planned was for the best. It was just sad how he was driven to desperation and I think it shows how even the most stable characters can bring out their cold side because of what needs to be done. Does seem to be one more sign of “growing up”
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I really like Kyousuke. He’s an admirable character, in my eyes. A very capable and dependable leader, and it seems like hanging around him would never get boring. Someone you can have an infinitely good time with. That’s something Riki got across really well. But that’s just the beginning.
Even at a young age, in his ‘mission’ to find a circle of friends in which Rin feels comfortable, he gives Masato a place to belong, shows Kengo the world of fun he actually really desires, and snaps Riki out of cold depression. And he just does that, because he can, and he wants to.
Fast forward through I don’t even know how many awesome years, up until the bus incident. An immense tragedy about to destroy everything, leaving the two lone survivors in despair and depression until the end of their days. No. It must not go this way. The two of them must survive and live on. And through a miracle, a world is born.
Fast forward to Rin 2. This is where Kyousuke’s dedication towards his goal is more than clearly shown, and not in a good light. He doesn’t care about remaining in this world - to use this miracle to have some more good fun until their end. No, he wants to mature Riki and Rin and send them on their way, and to that end he will use whatever means he deems necessary. This is where we see Kyousuke’s “dark” side, and without love, you may see him as an antagonist. I never did. But, Kyousuke does mess up, he overestimates their accumulated strength, and just about all progress on Rin is lost.
Enter Refrain. Rin is even less sociable than at the start of the game, and Kyousuke, fully aware that it’s all his fault, lives in depression.
Or does he?
No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t let that failure get him down. He pushes on. He realizes that while Rin suffered a deep wound, that very same event gave Riki all the resolve and strength he had wanted him to get in this world. Through Lennon he still led Riki on, to baseball, presented himself as the equivalent of child Riki before Kyousuke met him, and ultimately he caused Episode Masato. Kyousuke led Riki through Refrain, until finally, everything was ready. They would live on, and that was enough.
Yes, he’s ruthless. He violates morality, as he himself says, but he does know how to achieve his goal. And he knows how to have fun doing it, but he never loses himself in that fun. I find that very admirable.
And besides all that he has the most awesomely random ideas ever, something the visual novel really manages to convey by more than just Riki telling us he does. Harye Hore UMAU!
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Why are you here? This is a topic where spoilers run free. Do not come back here until after you finish refrain.
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As long as he doesn’t look at any other replies it’s fine~ Though this should probably be moved anyway
This is something I’ve been meaning to throw around for some time and for the good old sake of discussion, but I was waiting on finishing LB (though replaying Saya may give me some further ideas on this), but when I thought a little about it, I’ve been wondering.
Why is Riki Kyousuke’s best friend?
Sure, we know the other way around. Kyousuke has always been a source of support, protection and encouragement for Riki since the moment they met and Riki looks up to how strong and reliable Kyousuke is no matter how cunning he can be; taking pretty badly the fact that he couldn’t trust him anymore in Rin2.
But as far as this side is concerned, you see evidence of this all around even if we ignore the fact that he openly said it to Riki in one of their unconscious communications and pretty much their entire interactions in Bokura no Asa: it’s not like he ever had favourites but Kyousuke always seemed to care for Riki at least marginally more than for the other Busters besides Rin (as evidenced by the frequently evoked hand-holding between the two and the fact that every childhood scene depicted them as nearly glued to each other and if not, within very close proximity) and just overall was more oriented towards talking to Riki than to anyone else when the Little Busters as a whole weren’t messing around. The fact that RIki openly declares that he’d never felt like a burden when his narcolepsy acted up in front of the others also somewhat implies that Kyousuke (or even the others) don’t dolt on or see him any differently just because he’s ill, so even if that was the starting point of Riki’s recruitment into the group, I doubt it became the founding factor of their relationship.
I’m especially intrigued by this because the novel never really tackles things from his perspective prior to Riki and Rin’s lives being endangered (IT COULD’VE IF WE’D GOTTEN NATSUME AFTER 
) , and even though Riki hasn’t been there for Kyousuke nearly as much as the other way around, it still feels like that side of the bond is just as important to him as it is to Riki, so I figured getting some thoughts from recent read-throughs of LB could be pretty interesting.
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I can actually see two possibilities for that:
- Kyousuke has always felt the need to protect Riki, much in the same way he was protecting Rin. The game does mention that Kyousuke somehow sees him as a little brother figure (which would be impossible for Masato/Kengo)
- Kyousuke has always known about Riki’s potential. He has, ever since they were children, known that Riki was the person people would all come together to; the kind of person that anyone would feel comfortable hanging out with. In a way, maybe Kyousuke was secretly admiring Riki for this…
Perhaps, until we really do get that Natsume After, we may never know 
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I do agree that the first option is very likely, but I can’t help but feel intrigued on what it was for Kyousuke in a more casual setting since they appeared to be extremely close even prior the accident since the two seem to have a closer bond (whether sibling-like or not) than even Rin and Kyousuke do.
On the other hand, I’m not too sure about the second idea namely in that… that’s a very young adult Kyousuke reasoning. The way his character is portrayed in Refrain makes it clear that to his childhood self, there was never anything deeper about what he did and he just did it because he liked having and spreading fun. To him, regardless of how it saved the Little Busters’ members. It was nothing “praise-worthy” or even worth mentioning as evidenced by him claiming he’d never done anything important or that mattered in his life, and a child likely doesn’t reason that way anyway at that age since it’s a bit of a deep notion that people have potential that can be drawn out even for mature children.
To be fair, though, I do acknowledge that not everything has to have a profound, deeper meaning to matter in regards to how characters are written and portrayed. I just wish they’d elaborated more on Kyousuke’s feelings towards the Little Busters prior to knowing death awaited most of them and potentially expand on him as more than a reliable leader (which I guess wouldn’t have gone well alongside Episode: Kyousuke since its focus was Kyousuke’s struggle which was an inherently very altruistic episode) and make him exponentially more amazing of a character he already is. 
If Visual Art’s won’t give us Natsume After, we may need to make it ourselves for the greater good…
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While you do raise a point, I would definitely not be surprised if even child Kyousuke secretly had that sort of thing going around in his head. Like, I have no doubt that his real intent in inviting Riki to the Little Busters was to get Riki out of his slump. But what kept them close may have actually been his secret admiration… or not~
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On this topic, I think it was more about Rin at the start. He wanted Rin to have friends, but she didn’t seem interested, so he went out to find weird and interesting people (and to do weird and interesting things.) Naturally once he learned there was more to these people than “weird and interesting” he wanted to help.
If you’re looking at the original gang, Masato is weirdly expressive, and Riki is weirdly introverted. Mixed with the weirdly serious Kengo you have a good group of contrasting personalities.
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Kyousuke is a very relatable character. When I happen to have an older friend who I look up to, and the friendship I have with said person makes me think of the relationship Riki and kyousuke have. He is a very good character.
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I’m in thorough disbelief that I hadn’t shared my thoughts on Kyousuke previously, but now that I’m rereading Little Busters I figure it’s a pretty good time to collect my thoughts and share.
For starters, Kyousuke is my favorite character in Little Busters by a not-insignificant margin, and I find his implementation into the story to be both fascinating and quite brilliant. Upon his introduction and for the vast majority of the visual novel, Kyousuke is the perfect guy - he’s the only one capable of reigning in Masato and Kengo, he’s great at nearly everything he attempts, and his personality is magnetic to the point where people will just accept complete nonsense from him for no reason other than he’s the one saying it. Riki’s view of Kyousuke almost borders on worship, and his first response to nearly every problem is to go to Kyousuke for help. Kyousuke’s abilities seem more or less supernatural, with an evidently flawless ability to predict events and make things that he needs to have happen reality. All of this makes Kyousuke seem like the most ridiculous Gary Stu ever, but it’s precisely these traits that make his role in the story so effective.
I believe it’s accurate to label Kyousuke’s goal as more or less making Riki and Rin more like him - more sociable, more capable, and most importantly enabling them to face significant adversity. To begin with, these ideas are reflected in Kyousuke’s stats as he’s quite above average in every area - in stark contrast to Riki and Rin who begin significantly below average in most respects. This sets up a literal numeric view of the progress towards Kyousuke’s end goal, as their stats steadily inch closer and closer to Kyousuke’s own. His character establishes an ideal end point by which to measure the growth of Riki and Rin - his role in the story would not be nearly as potent if he weren’t so apparently perfect.
This is all great from the perspective of how it ties into the development of the main characters, but Kyousuke himself is still just a ridiculously perfect dude, yeah? What makes him so likable? Of course, there’s all the fun shenanigans that he is at the source of, but what else is there?
This is where my real admiration for his character comes in. I’m not terribly fond of seemingly omnipotent characters, but Kyousuke is neither omnipotent or perfect. The seemingly illogical capabilities behind him function as a foreshadowing to the secret of the world. Everything seems to bend to his whim because it’s literally an artificial dream world - his establishment of the baseball game, all of the absurdities of the battle system, the unknown lifeforms, all of this is possible not because Kyousuke is just that amazing, but because they’re not living in reality. Of course, the creation of the dream world in and of itself requires some suspension of disbelief, but Kyousuke’s character provides a substantial amount of insight into the nature of the setting before it’s all made clear. But even then, by Rin2 and then on into Refrain, we begin to learn much more about his character…
And the image we have of this perfect Kyousuke is shattered. He makes terrible mistakes, and then falls into a depressive state over the errors in his judgement. For the first time, we visibly see Kyousuke fail, and fail quite dramatically at that. Rin is emotionally broken by his gamble, and now Riki has to pick up all the slack.
Despite this, Kyousuke still presses on, and even more dark aspects of his personality are unearthed. We come to see that Kyousuke is driven to a terrifying extent. He manipulates his friends and exploits their past traumas, all to give Riki the last push towards the finish line he needs to salvage his plan. His devotion and love for the little busters is demonstrated in destructive way, and he does this all using the nature of the world they’re in that was foreshadowed by his own feats. The source of much of his apparent perfection is now being used in ways that are hurting his friends, and goddamn does he seem like a massive bastard while all of this is going on.
But he ultimately succeeds, with Riki replicating Kyousuke’s actions in their childhood and bringing the childhood friends together. This is the clearest demonstration of Kyousuke’s end goal - Riki has become strong enough to replace him as their leader. And then we get “THE scene” in Little Busters. Kyousuke finally truly breaks down, screaming about how unfair it all is and how he loved the little busters more than anyone else. I can say without exaggeration that for me this is probably the single most powerful moment across all of fiction, as the last vestiges of perfection in a character previously viewed as being flawless are obliterated in an instant. Midorikawa really fucking sells this scene.
And whew that ended up being quite the stream of conciousness. Kyousuke is a great character, ya’ll.
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So this has been a very tough topic for me to bring up because, well, I really don’t know how I should approach it. I’ve tried making a draft on the refrain topic, but it started getting too rambly. I was thinking of waiting for the podcast, but I don’t think I’d be able to put my thoughts into words that well. And I figured that, really, the only place I should put this thought of mine is here, in Kyousuke’s topic.
This is, after all, my analysis into the mind of the great man we know as Kyousuke Natsume.
Let’s get the facts straight first. Bus crash happens, Kyousuke sees that Rin and Riki are the only ones likely to survive, he screams in desperation, and a world is born. But, what exactly was it he wished for in this world?
This is my personal interpretation on this whole thing. I think that 90% of Kyousuke’s intentions in this world were for Rin. Call it bias, since Rin is his sister after all. But I honestly believe that Kyousuke believed that Riki would, by himself, be able to overcome their deaths. I think Kyousuke knew that Riki would, even with them gone, find a new meaning to live, especially if left alone with Rin. And I think he was more worried about Rin, because he knew that even if Riki would be able to cope with the loss of his friends, Rin would most definitely not be able to do that. And Riki, as he is, would only be able to help himself and not Rin. It’s hard for me to prove this, especially since Riki reverted into a regressive state when he was a child, but I think my biggest basis for this is the existence of Rin1.
The reason why Rin1 happens, and why we are shown Rin1 is simple: it’s the Rin route where Riki remains a wuss and refuses to let Rin go to the sister school. And it takes Riki 5 routes plus another go-through of Rin’s route to accept that “yes, Rin needs to do this to grow.” And this is something that only Riki could do for Rin; nothing Kyousuke can do or say would convince Rin to go to the school. But imagine if this wasn’t an issue. Imagine if, on your very first playthrough of Rin1, Riki was strong enough to tell Rin to go. I am confident in saying that that would have fast-forwarded Kyousuke’s entire plan (and it still would have failed, mind you). My biggest point here is that Kyousuke wanted Riki to grow solely so Riki could tell Rin to go to the sister school.
That was Kyousuke’s master plan, after all. He wanted Rin to grow by pushing her to interact with people she doesn’t know. More importantly, he wanted Rin to become aware of the possibility of him and the rest of the crew no longer being around, by having her interact with people who are in the same situation as what would happen to Rin and Riki. Kyousuke choosing the “bus crash for the sister school” wasn’t just an in-game hint for the readers. It was done for Rin. And the only way he could continue with his master plan was to make Riki strong enough to let her go. And the only way he could do that was to ask for help.
It might be coincidence that the rest of the girls ended up in that world. Or it might be their own selfish desire to solve their regrets that put them there. Either way, Kyousuke saw that as an advantage, and used that to push Riki to interact with the girls, solve their problems, and grow stronger. Masato remained neutral, and Kengo remained adamant (until, of course, Kengo realized he was wasting his own life). And then comes Rin2, and we all know how that ended up.
Kyousuke’s master plan failed miserably. He was aware of that. And his only way of mitigating the damage that had been done was to wake up from the dream world, prevent the gas from leaking, and buy time for Rin and Riki to escape. While he was doing that, though, he noticed something. He noticed Riki owning up to the challenge, trying to create what he had destroyed. So, despite it being extremely taxing on his body, Kyousuke pushed Riki in that direction. He abandoned all morals, put Masato and Kengo through hell, all so he could make Riki into not just the man that could handle himself after they were gone, but the man that could handle himself and Rin alongside him. And he succeeds! Despite it being a back-up plan, it worked as he had hoped, and he could rest easy, knowing Rin would be in good hands, even if she wouldn’t be able to face reality immediately.
Or could he? While he himself was satisfied, he knew, in the back of his mind, there was a chance for something more. We see him mulling over this possibility in Episode: Kyousuke. But pulling this off would need more than just Riki being strong enough. It would need Rin to be strong enough. And that was something that he couldn’t seem to figure out how to do, since his master plan failed, and his back-up plan focused only on getting Riki strong enough. Despite all that, he gives them the option. Is it enough? Or is it not enough?
This is an answer that not only Riki makes, but Rin herself makes. And that’s what surprises Kyousuke the most: that Rin herself wants to grow, the same way that Riki wanted to grow. And with that, he allows them to create their own dream world. The new dream world where Rin learns from everything that happened and Komari is able to do what Kyousuke was not: help Rin grow. The new dream world where Riki tackles the final obstacle needed to save them: his narcolepsy. The new dream world where they can have the chance to learn and simulate what needs to be done in order to save everybody. And once they have all that done and over with, that’s when we get the ending that we all hoped for.
I guess, at the end of the day, what I want to point out is that Rin’s growth by the end of Refrain is just as important as Riki’s. And while Kyousuke’s plans were totally different from the beginning, he adapted to his failures and made the best of the whole situation. A truly respectable character, and I’m glad he will continue to live on with the Little Busters
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