Little Busters! - Mio Nishizono Route & Character Discussion

[Pepe]

If Mio’s very existence is being transferred to Midori, why would Mio need to remember Midori in order for her to continue existing?

I was about to explain it but it seems you’ve got it on-point here:

the idea that her changing would mean that she is no longer herself is the source of the contradiction.

That is exactly it. She thinks that, should she forget Midori, an integral part of her “self,” she would no longer remain to be herself. It’s a bit of an odd situation that she has put herself in, but I guess the shadow thing is a perfect analogy. Other people wouldn’t really notice if you lost a shadow; but you would feel as if you are incomplete without it.

So, at least in the context of the route, losing her shadow means losing Midori, and the reason why she doesn’t have it in the earlier parts of the route is because she is still stuck on that whole idea of losing midori means losing herself.

But, in the end, Riki helps her realize that, even her self changes, even if Midori is forgotten, Riki would still recognize her as her. This is what it means for Riki to be her blue. To go alongside her and still accept her existence as “Mio”.

[Bread]

Rather than her being a split personality, I see Midori as a sort of compliment to Mio, embodying outwardly the psychological traits that Mio does not frequently display. In her longing as a child she imagined this personification of that which she didn’t have that most well made up for what she didn’t show. Together the two girls display fully the spectrum of the human psyche, with one completing the other.

[Kanon]

What do you believe about Midori’s existence? Is she a figure of imagination, a real person, or an alternate form of Mio?

I mean her shadow literally disappears.

Midori is a thing. Just imagination doesn’t make that happen.

[Tidulimar]

I’ve just watched the first common route part of Mio in the anime episode dedicated to it and I realized omething. (and I don’t remember if this was brought up already, but I don’t think so)
Mio states that she feeds the birds to bind them to the ground, as she hates it when they just leave her, all while “feeding” Riki stuff that she originally intended for the birds and he in turn ends up staying with her for a while and even returning.
So, Riki is a bird?

Joking aside, I think that even shows that her true wish is having people around her, ideally those she does not need to bind to her with food, unlike the birds that just leave her at any time, without her being aware of it yet.
I should probably give the route another readthrough to appreciate the writing more, but I can already see a few great thinks about the writing.

[Takafumi]

So, Riki is a bird?

This is strangely relevant to a post I made in the Spoiler discussion post of Litbus, entirely in reference to a section of the anime adaptation’s Opening… Yes, it could be argued that Riki is a bird. Him and a certain someone else.

[Pepe]

So, Riki is a bird?

Little Busters Bookclub Podcast 2: Mio Route

The second key point to take from this podcast is that Riki is, indeed, a pigeon.

I’m pretty sure they tried to sneakily imply that in the story, yes. I mean, why would anyone be satisfied just eating bread crusts

[Ganesh_Swami]

So i don’t know if anyone knows about this but the BD ‘Nishizono Mio’s Locked-Room Murder Case!?’ was translated in English.

It’s translated in text. If you want to read it here’s the link http://shiranehito.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-238.html

[BlackHayate02]

I’m really falling behind, but I’m glad to have finished reading Mio route. It’s a good one, actually, but it’s as hard to read as a poem. But being a route whose central motif is Japanese poetry, I think that’s the point, and it’s what makes the route so interesting, along with its musings on identity and agency.

Before I talk about that, the gimmick. If I could describe Mio and/or her route with a Classical music piece, the first thing that comes to mind would be that one piece from Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake suite. As for why Swan Lake, it’s because of the swan thing, plus Mio and Midori reminds me of Odette and Odile a little, which I’ll get into later. As for why that particular excerpt, it’s because it really captures this feeling of isolation often described in this route, and also I’m a pleb who haven’t actually listened to the entire suite. (I am so sorry.)

Anyway. For the route itself, there’s a lot of weird magical things going on, but without delving too deep on spoiler territory, here’s an excerpt from one of the bad ends (which I’m glad I read, or I’ll be scrambling for non-spoilery explanations here):

In other words, the world they are in is weird in a way that whatever’s going on is influenced by the whims of its inhabitants. Our enjoyment in reading this route for the first time hinges so heavily in how much we can suspend disbelief, and to be honest, I was pretty confused about what went on the first time I read this. But really, I think anyone will be able to make better sense of this route if we just read the bad end. Haha.

Now that I’ve got to reread this, though, I think it’s a really good one. Like I mentioned in Twitter, what I got here is that Mio truly wanted agency, and honestly believed that she can only gain that agency through isolation. But before I even delve in that, I need to mention an important assumption. The similar-looking Odette and Odile are often played by a single ballerina at the same time. Mio and Midori, I’d dare say, are rather one and the same, but it’s a little more complicated.

Midori is indeed Mio’s shadow and reflection – her personality is so starkly different because reflections always appear opposite to the object (Mio). But she’s also a part of her self; I’d like to say that she represents her desire for isolation: that’s why Midori takes the role of pushing Riki away from Mio. (Talking to yourself sounds like a pretty lonely thing to do, heh.)

That’s also why I don’t exactly agree that Mio hates herself. Her own self-esteem isn’t the problem her, but it’s the dilemma of losing a vital side of her if she decided to connect with others. She began thinking that way because people around her (her mom, the doctor) have willingly took away Midori. Her mom is happy to lose Midori. Not wanting to reject a part of identity for somebody else’s happiness, plus the added guilt of herself forgetting/rejecting that part of her, she decided that for her to maintain that agency, she’d rather isolate herself.

But as Midori said in the bad end, it’s not that simple:

No one wants isolation because it’s connections that makes us human. The swan can only be described as white by the blue of the sky and the sea, after all. So I said earlier that Midori is Mio’s desire for isolation, but that’s not the whole story. She keeps pushing Riki away from Mio, but it really comes off as her testing the strength of his feelings towards her, if she can love her unconditionally.

So the story of this route becomes about trying to find the middle ground between agency and connection for her, and here’s Riki’s conclusion:

Good stuff.

With all that, I have yet to talk about the “awkward implication” that I mentioned earlier. It’s actually kind of my feminist reading on this:

I’m not really too fond of the idea that women need a man’s company to define herself. Buuuuuuuut I doubt that’s the point (though it could have been better if this was a more equal thing, though in hindsight Riki did define himself by his connections with the people around him i.e. Busters), so I’ll let this one slide, hehe.

Overall, good stuff. 4.25/5.

[Aspirety]

Yeah I really don’t think that’s a comment about women, but rather a comment on the nature of the mind. I’m a firm believer that a person’s psychosocial identity can only be developed through interactions with others. It’s like, by meeting and clashing with different people, you learn what differentiates you from someone else. By interacting with someone who is noisy, you may notice that you yourself are more of a quiet person. However, without spending time around noisy or quiet people, you may never realise this about yourself. In the extreme, if you’re a feral child raised without human interaction, you may be completely lacking a sense of self. In that sense, you can only be ‘yourself’ by spending time with others who are NOT you. Spending time with others and learning about others is equivalent to learning about yourself.

[TomoyaOkazaki]

I finished Mio’s route a while ago, but I wanted to wait until I had a chance to read some other routes before I composed my final thoughts (by now I’ve finished Komari’s and Kurugaya’s routes as well). Mio’s route carries an air of mystery to it, that to me creates a magical feeling akin to something such as Clannad: After Story. (Not that the other routes aren’t great, they simply foster different emotions in me personally as I read them). This emotion I can best describe as a floating sense of wonder, albeit a sad one in some parts, but wondrous nonetheless. Such a feeling sets Mio’s route apart from those I have read since, and helps to make her route all the more unique and special to me.

To be honest, it took me a while to fully grasp everything in the route, there’s a ton of reading between the lines here; which is appropriate considering the literary theme running throughout the arc. However in reading the routes I have, I always see two things that really stand out to me; the specific emotions that a route creates through its dialogue and character interactions, and the way that music is used to further those emotions, either by carrying the tone of the dialogue or sometimes painfully contradicting it. For example, the use of “Faraway” as the arc reaches its climax does a wonderful job of bringing that magical feeling to the surface, as well as something akin to a sense of relief/joy during its chorus. The song “Thin Chronicle”, which as long as I’m not confusing routes, appears in Mio’s bad ending, almost sounds like a song that’s falsely happy, full of a fake sense of joy that’s decorated with insanity and constantly assuring you that everything is fine, truly believing that, while oblivious to the dark reality looming ahead (This song had a huge impact on me and fills me with a sense of dread every time I hear it, more on that in the Komari and Kurugaya posts). In Mio’s route, it promises that you’ll stay with her, just her, forever, only to have that promise broken almost immediately. With all the anxiety surrounding her character, at first I was glad to accept that promise, I let the music lead me on, until it harshly reminded me that no, such things will never be.

While Mio’s route never fully resonated with me, I do understand the ideas it wants to convey and can relate to some of them; I too, had to overcome a desire for isolation in a sense when I was younger, and her arc reminded me of what that was like. At the very least, Mio’s arc stands as an example for me of what exactly in Little Busters moves me, and helps make the VN not just a good one, but a great one.

[Realta]

So I just finished Mio’s route and considering it’s the first character route I completed of Little Busters I can’t say I’m disappointed. The glasses scene with Midori definitely messed with my head for example as I was starting to question if Mio actually wore any at some point during the route. I was confused for a long time as to what was going on with Mio suddenly disappearing and assumed Midori was a “bad” person for trying to make Riki forget about her, but as I found out about the details of Mio’s and Midori’s past I came to appreciate Midori a lot as a character.

I’m not always a fan of the more stoic characters but I’m glad I can say Mio definitely wasn’t like that for me, I liked her development a lot throughout the route and she also had some amusing quirky sides to her. I saw some people suggesting Midori was possibly a split personality of Mio, but I personally didn’t get that impression. It wouldn’t explain everyone suddenly forgetting about Mio for example, though I’m not sure if I understand why people suddenly lost their memories like that.

[Pepe]

She began thinking that way because people around her (her mom, the doctor) have willingly took away Midori. Her mom is happy to lose Midori.

Ok not entirely related to your post (but great post nonetheless!), this reminded me of a discussion I had with @Aspirety about Mio route a few weeks ago…

A lot of people do give her mom and that “evil” doctor shit for taking Midori away from Mio, but I’d like to put some real-world perspective into it (even though this is, after all, a fictional story). If you were Mio’s mother, and you saw your child speaking to an imaginary friend long after the age where children normally talk to imaginary friends… wouldn’t you be worried? Wouldn’t you genuinely want your child to be more normal and assimilate into society successfully? Heck, wouldn’t any parent want that for their child?

And wasn’t the doctor only doing his job? At the end of the day, he is a medical professional. He saw a genuine mental problem with Mio and, with the help of modern medicine, fixed that problem with Mio (although, as we all saw, that fix was merely temporary). How can we fault him for that?

This begs a much deeper question which is totally unrelated to the message of the route: what would you have done, were you in Mio’s mother’s place? Or were you in the doctor’s place?
I think many would argue that, at least in Mio’s case, they should have made themselves aware of what Mio was struggling for, why she needed Midori, and find a way to ease her mind into being confident enough to keep both sides of her.

But, as they say, hindsight is 20/20, and neither the mother nor the doctor had any way of knowing that at the time. In fact, I would argue that the way Mio’s mother dealt with it was one hundred times better than doing what most other Japanese parents would do, should they be faced with their child being afflicted by a mental condition: ignore it, sweep it under the rug so as to remove any and all shame from their family, and force them to shut up and comply.

She sought medical help and genuinely wanted her child to be better. Did it fix the problem? Sort of. Was it the best way of dealing with the problem? Hell no. Would most other people do much worse? Definitely.

So what really should one do for the best case scenario, when dealing with mental issues? Can we really just “talk it out” with them to get things to be better? I mean, I’ve heard stories about people afflicted with depression and for those cases, simply talking it out doesn’t seem to be the best option. Additionally, I’m probably the last person who would like to think that mental issues are just a “phase” that needs “talking out” because many of them have scientific evidence that treatment is necessary for them to re-assimilate into society, much like physical therapy is needed for anyone who had a major fracture.

Would letting Mio and Midori remain to coexist also be the best option? Well, maybe, in a world where people wouldn’t find it weird for her to talk to somebody that isn’t there. Unfortunately, our world isn’t that forgiving, and even if it were, I can imagine it could cause problems for Mio internally regardless of how society finds that sort of thing.

At the end of the day, what I am trying to say is that mental illnesses are a big deal that shouldn’t be taken lightly. And much like physical illnesses that have yet to have known treatments, the best thing we can do is to take that risk, and try out treatments which may come at the risk of further damaging our own body and/or mind. Because, at the end of the day, both us and our loved ones want us to be healed.

(thankfully all she needed to heal herself was some TLC, but other people don’t have it so easy, unfortunately)

[Hardscope]

This begs a much deeper question which is totally unrelated to the message of the route: what would you have done, were you in Mio’s mother’s place? Or were you in the doctor’s place?

The mother and the doctor don’t seem to be inherently bad, and in fact seem to have good or at least neutral intentions. I think it’s safe to say any of us put in that position would have proceeded the same way.

[Naoki_Saten]

Before I get into the actual question, let me tell you that whenever you write “assimilate into society”, I read “die”. I wouldn’t want to raise my kids to be gray masses of zero individuality who become invisible in a crowd to match the wishes of a faceless majority.

Now, if my kid has a mental or medical issue, I would definitely consider asking a professional. My child is suffering, after all and I absolutely have to help it. But here’s the thing. Mio’s parents and the doctor pulled that shit entirely behind her back. Mio said she thought she had hidden Midori’s existence from them. That means they never talked to her about it! And the doctor? This dude just pretended to be an ally before pulling out the mental backstabbing scalpel on her. And then, together they hoped Mio would forget their betrayal along with Midori forever. That’s what pisses me off. They did the whole thing behind her back, like she has no say about what’s gonna happen to her head. Are they fine with the possibility of her never trusting them again? I wouldn’t be surprised if Mio were to never return home after finishing high school.

Listen here. Kids are not dress-up dolls you can mold into a shape of your choosing. And humans heads aren’t machines you can just “fix” because you want them to work exactly like the others. Messing with people’s minds is an extreme measure. A big enough change in personality is no different from death. A big enough erasure of memory is no different from death.

But, as they say, hindsight is 20/20, and neither the mother nor the doctor had any way of knowing that at the time. In fact, I would argue that the way Mio’s mother dealt with it was one hundred times better than doing what most other Japanese parents would do, should they be faced with their child being afflicted by a mental condition: ignore it, sweep it under the rug so as to remove any and all shame from their family, and force them to shut up and comply.

I don’t accept the “it could be worse” reasoning. It can always be worse, so by that logic, everything could be excused.

So, the very first thing I’d do is what parents are fucking supposed to do on a daily basis: talk to my child. I want to know what’s wrong. I want to find out what makes them suffer. I want to hear their thoughts on the matter. And then, I want to do whatever I can to help them. Of course, mental issues can’t be just “talked out”. Obviously, I am not a psychology specialist, and neither is Google. And naturally, children aren’t authorities on the topic of how they should be raised. I’m still the one making the decisions and it’s my responsibility. But I need my child to be on board with this.

So of course, I’ll ask a trained, certified and experienced professional. And I’ll have him tell me what the problem was. If it’s not caused by genetics or physical trauma, chances are, I’m the one who messed up unknowingly. It’s my duty to fix whatever I’m doing wrong with my parenting. And it’s my duty to let my child know what’s happening. And THEN we’ll do what the doctor says needs to be done.

[Natsume]

Opinion that’s gonna piss off the Mio/Midori fans ahoy.

First, I’ll lay down the fact that I fully agree with the notion that psychological procedures must be carried out with the patient’s understanding and consent, so that’s not an argument I’m trying to oppose here, but that said, any other answer to what would’ve been done to their stead is borderline delusional.

We’re are talking about a fictional entity with no actual manifestation within the real world, making her an imaginary friend whether your and Mio’s attachment to her matters or not. I feel that people are too biased from having seen Midori as a character and not just a figment of Mio’s imagination as she’s basically always been. I know a lot of Mio apologists here will raise the pitchforks and tell me that Midori was an entire element to Mio’s identity, but from a realistic perspective then I would’ve done the exact same as her parents and doctor did on the sole reason that because what must be done isn’t always the most pleasant thing. Why?

Because Midori was an actively harmful part of Mio’s life, a fictional entity she’d called upon to quell her solitude and as a result never actually felt the even remote need to develop a social life (which a lot of modern-day mavericks think is fine, but it’s really not when you grow up and you lose most opportunities to form bonds with other people) even when approaching middle school, and something that Mio had to hide from her parents which means that not only was she at least partly at fault for the way they approached the matter (even if her parents had approached her, likely it would’ve been that she would’ve denied cooperation, making the entire problem relay on her lack of trust towards her parents whether it’s justified or not), but also indicates she had awareness that there was wrong in the current situation but didn’t want to fix it.

From the perspective of someone whose duty is to raise their children into being fitting members of society so that they can survive in how cruel the world can be without entirely losing themselves, there’s a latent accusation towards Mio’s parents of backstabbing her for what’s an acknowledged psychological condition that she would’ve openly refused treatment and denied her circumstances for. And for someone whose duty it is to oversee their patient’s well-being, there was no tiptoeing around the issue at the age Mio was when she was forced to put behind her imaginary friend to carry on her life because if you’d even remotely mentioned getting rid of Midori, Mio would’ve started closing up and it would’ve made the matter a lot more difficult and psychologically harmful towards the adults surrounding her.

So yes, I would’ve done the same, because just adapting to whatever makes a child currently happy without taking the necessary, even painful, is only a romanticised version of education that can be as equally damaging as being “mentally backstabbed”.

[Pepe]

I wouldn’t want to raise my kids to be gray masses of zero individuality who become invisible in a crowd to match the wishes of a faceless majority.

I guess this is just your interpretation of the term since I genuinely think that one does not need to lose their individuality in order to assimilate into society when i say that, all i really mean is finish basic education, get a job, enough resources to pursue what they want from life, and being able to interact with other people in society to achieve all those things.

Listen here. Kids are not dress-up dolls you can mold into a shape of your choosing. And humans heads aren’t machines you can just “fix” because you want them to work exactly like the others.

Pardon me for being a bit rude about it but uh…
I genuinely do not think a child at Mio’s age when she was diagnosed would be able to make a sound decision about how she wants to handle an entity such as Midori, let alone know the risks that keeping such an entity unchecked entails.
Ergo, I’m confident that if you told her that “you need to say goodbye to midori” she would not yield to that, and vehemently refuse any attempts you make at trying to do such.

And is that really ok? Lettin a child make such big decisions in life at that age?

No, children are not dress up dolls, but there are times that these children still do not know how to even dress themselves up. And it’s up to the parents to do that for them, when they see that the child is struggling with doing that.

But you do raise a good point that no parent must ever forget: communication is important in any relationship. Even if I am right, and Mio would vehemently refuse any attempts to remove Midori from her life, the parents should still try to communicate their rationale behind it. Let Mio know the risks, and why it needs to be done. And if she still refuses, you may have to take matters into your own hands, and hope she understands that you had the best intentions at heart.

[BlackHayate02]

But you do raise a good point that no parent must ever forget: communication is important in any relationship. Even if I am right, and Mio would vehemently refuse any attempts to remove Midori from her life, the parents should still try to communicate their rationale behind it. Let Mio know the risks, and why it needs to be done. And if she still refuses, you may have to take matters into your own hands, and hope she understands that you had the best intentions at heart.

I like this one a lot. Since I’ve raised agency as an important aspect of the route, I’ll note that one of the biggest mistakes that parents tend to do is forgetting that their children have agency, too. This typically comes in the form of intrusion of privacy (jesus even until now my Mom sometimes browse the contents of my bag without asking), but this can come in the form of pushing their decisions/wants/whatever to their children without asking them what they really feel or even at least discuss with them about it. The latter felt more like what happened with Mio (like seriously they just did the thing to her and she’s not even aware), and we wonder why she has serious trust issues.

As for your question, I’m still trying to gather my thoughts, but seeing others’ answers gave me some ideas. The thing is, I have been in Mio’s position to a small extent, though it’s more like for years a lot of people have made me feel that I was “abnormal” because I seemed like a kid with autism (as I said before, I have never really been diagnosed). On my parents’ part, they were less obvious about this, and I’m sure that they just wanted to protect me from awful people, but they were pretty much pushing for me to change without really considering much if I feel comfortable about it (or even consulting a professional; I really wish they did). I never really got the trust issues that Mio had, but this experience affected my self-esteem terribly.

If I was Mio’s mom though, I’ll certainly agree that there is a problem to her isolating herself like that, but I’ll definitely ask her about what she feels – if there are problems with school or with us or whatever. And more or less what Pepe said here, but I’ll also add that I will makes sure she knows that I may be trying to protect her from being looked down by people around her, but I want to let her know that I’m willing to listen to her and accept her for who she is. That even if the entire world turn against her, she could at least have someone to trust.

I’m sorry about being rambly here; I had a bit of a hard time organizing my thoughts about this.

[Naoki_Saten]

I think you have misunderstood about 50% of my post. We actually agree on a lot of things.

Pardon me for being a bit rude about it but uh…

I genuinely do not think a child at Mio’s age when she was diagnosed would be able to make a sound decision

And is that really ok? Lettin a child make such big decisions in life at that age?

As I said,

And naturally, children aren’t authorities on the topic of how they should be raised. I’m still the one making the decisions and it’s my responsibility.

I’m not going to mistake foolishness for kindness. The one making the decision will be me. And I side with the opinion of trained professionals. But the kid needs to know what’s happening and why. Of course they can disagree. They are a person, they have the right to do so. And then it’s my job to explain it, to make them understand. No taking the easy way out by pulling stuff behind their backs or proceeding without an explanation. Parenting is about choosing what’s right over what’s easy. If parenting seems easy to you at any point, you’re doing it wrong.

Mio’s parents failed because they never tried understanding their daughter. Understanding was what the whole route was about. There was a problem. Mio was lonely. Midori was a side-effect of it, a way of dealing with the loneliness. The parents became aware of Midori and decided to remove her. Because they thought she was the problem. Talking to people who aren’t there is not normal, so they have to stop it. Why? Because society? They didn’t spend much time looking for the truth. They mixed up cause and effect. They did away with the side-effect behind their daughter’s back, thinking it was a job well done, but the problem remained. Of course they messed up. They couldn’t possibly have found out the truth without talking to Mio about it. Heck, the lack of communication was the very cause of the entire problem and the parents remained forever ignorant of that fact. They failed at their parenting and caused a problem, then they tried solving it and failed even harder.

It’s not a question of whether or not clinical intervention was necessary. It’s about caring enough about your kid to understand the problem before taking action.

[Natsume]

That’s your stance, though.

Don’t forget Mio’s recollection of the past is from her own biased perspective. You can’t comment on one route that all sides of the story are important to the whole picture and on the other accuse her parents of not taking the necessary steps, even knowing Mio would have not cooperated.

[Pepe]

Glad to see that we each misunderstood 50% of each other’s posts but ended up agreeing on 90% of things But yes, understanding and communication are the things that Mio’s parents and the doctor sorely lacked. As you put it so succinctly:

It’s not a question of whether or not clinical intervention was necessary. It’s about caring enough about your kid to understand the problem before taking action.

The only thing I remain to disagree with is:

Talking to people who aren’t there is not normal, so they have to stop it. Why? Because society?

As there are many more reasons aside from just “Society” (such as internal conflict and identity crises) that are a good enough reason to seek medical intervention…but that’s as much as I’m going to go with this topic