I’m not sure if most people will be able to gain the same experience, but surely that is probably one of the most impactful scenes in the game should you indeed forget about it entirely.
Unfortunately I was not one of the (un)lucky few who gave in to Midori’s words. Maybe it made me feel better about myself, but it took away a lot from the experience while reading. I remember screaming to Riki internally “DON’T TRUST THAT DAMN BITCH” (or something along the vernacular; pardon the french)
What are you all talking about?
Mio wears glasses, the scene was Midori saying Mio didn’t wear glasses. It had a flashback to that sepia-tone CG, here’s the coloured original:
The reason why I think this moment is so crazy for me is because I have very good memory and If I had proper amount of sleep, I’m pretty certain that I would never have understood what Riki was feeling during that time.
WHY DOES THAT LOOK SO NATURAL!?!?
I remember not being that big on Mio’s route when I first saw and then subsequently read it, but I’ve come to appreciate it more over time as I heard more about what other people interpreted into it. I feel ready to approach this one with an open mind and hope I’ll come to love it this time around.
So I didn’t read the posts before me so sorry if I’m reiterating something but I didn’t finish rereading the route yet. So I just wanted to point out that holy crap the language switch is useful. I suddenly had the idea of switching to Japanese to read the name Mio and Midori and holy shit that made me lose my shit. According to what I remember of Chinese, the kanji for Mio can be read as beautiful fish whereas the kanji for Midori can be read as beautiful bird. So if that wasn’t already mentioned before, it connects to how the poem mentions the sea and the sky don’t touch. The fish stays in the sea while the bird stays in the sky but Mio as the fish wanted to become the bird. So yeah that thing.
My one thing with the Nishizono route is…how is it all possible? Key always relies on anime magic to explain some of the routes, but they’re always lore-abiding and make sense according to the story and universe they take place in. But this one still doesn’t make sense to me. What was Midori? An imaginary friend given form? A shadow given form? And how did she literally replace Mio, how did Mio literally just disappear, and how does swimming endlessly in the ocean and half-drowning somehow make you hear the two of them talking and then you wake up on the beach?
HOW IS IT ALL POSSIBLE? This is the only Key route I’ve EVER had trouble truly understanding.
Seventy-seven
Fifty-five in double U
Seventy-nine H
its Nishizono Mio
and she is a fujoshi
Mio is not bad.
I reread her route quickly.
The sorrow she felt,
was perfectly conveyed here.
I throughly enjoyed it.
Memories make us.
Experiences change us.
What is true and false?
“Believe in yourself, Riki”
But believe in others too
This route had symbols
in the form of colors
and some metaphors:
the blue of the sky and sea
the white of the bird and clouds
I said to myself,
“Organize your thoughts CJ”
so I used tanka.
Think like Mio and Riki…
…what the fuck just happened here?
Memories are true
Manipulation occurs
Memories are true?
Midori stop! Midori!
Mio had thin framed glasses.
Air cannot be seen
Nor can the blue of water
What can we trust then?
Fuck if I know, Midori?
Does she have good intentions?
This compilation
hosts my thoughts about Mio.
This shy reserved girl,
sometimes she fantasizes.
Natsume Kyousuke x Riki
(The x is silent and Kyousuke is two syllables I think)
Mio. Midori.
Beautiful fish of the sea.
White bird of the sky.
As much as they want to switch
the wind blows and then bad end.
The white parasol
symbolizes innocence.
It hides the shadow.
Regret resides underneath.
This is where the end begins.
In infinite blue
the white bird exists alone.
But where are the clouds?
Clouds keep the bird company.
And so does the bird’s shadow.
It’s one of those routes that really improves on a second read. It might be worth reading the route again, though I think you’re locked out of the route until you finish the VN.
I read it once through on the fan translation, so this English Edition playthrough is my second time. And I’m about to approach Midori’s appearance so hopefully I’ll like it and/or understand it much better this time!
Currently going through Mio common, and wanted to chime in on a thing most people would probably miss. Obviously we hang out with Mio in the courtyard a lot. Well as the you can see in the Busterpedia for green juice, the Japanese have a habit of referring to vegetables and greenery as blue. So when Riki talks about the greenery in the courtyard, he’s actually referring to it as blue not green.
There’s even more to it than that. The courtyard, in particular where Mio prefers to sit, is a shield from the sky. Despite the obvious reasons for why this is important, it also represents Mio’s troubles and everything she is bottling up inside.
The other key environment in Mio’s route is the beach, a place completely open to the sky. In regards to Mio, her peaceful moments are always within the courtyard or inside a building, whereas her moments of drama come from her losing that shelter.
There’s also something to be mentioned about the color white, which is most prominently seen on Mio’s parasol (and also on the dress she wears while outside of her previously mentioned safe spaces.) The symbolism of white within the route is revealed when we learn of the poem about the white Seagull, which is a story of isolationism. Mio’s parasol is her isolation.
Personally I think that Mio is best represented by white—and so becomes the lonely Seagull, while Midori is the sky and the sea—the only companionship the Seagull can dream of reaching. In that way Riki’s “swim” was a symbolic joining of him and Midori for the purpose of saving Mio from isolation.
Fun tangential fact, since the Japanese system for identifying color was so different to western standard (interpreting the spectrum differently) they didn’t have words to identify some of the colors we recognize in the same way as we do. Green (midori) was essentially just a type of blue, and so a lot of green stuff that was in the Japanese lexicon >75 years ago is commonly referred to as blue. Note green had a name, but it wasn’t understood as an individually notable part of the spectrum.
This is also why some Japanese colors have alternative names in katakana. They made and re-purposed words to be more in-line with globalized usage.
Blue is a really important color throughout Mio’s route, and they’re fairly explicit about this fact. Late into the story, Midori questions where blue comes from, which is a blatant “where did I come from?” in context.
So this was… a route.
Uhm, so I like Mio as a character. She seems like a super delicate, shy girl, and it was nice to see her dry sense of humour and how well she pulls off the deadpan snark. I enjoyed getting to know her more even though dating her felt a bit out of place.
Rin was interesting this route. She started off more outgoing, which leads me to believe there’s some narrative purpose for her doing so. Maybe she maintains her growth across routes or something. This being my second route played, I also have come to appreciate the sheer number of scenarios available, which is awesome and I really appreciate it.
So as far as the route itself… I was pretty disappointed. It felt weird and out of place and the writing was repetitive and odd. So uh, here’s hoping I enjoy the next route more!
SO LETS TALK ABOUT THE MIDORI ROUTE.
Is the thing I took away the most from this reread, Midori is really good.
So, the route is good! Full of S Y M B O L I S M…perhaps a little too much, my blue? her white? the nothingness that exists? are memories real or just an illusion, some of this is either going over my head, or simply never meant anything to begin with. There is one piece of it though, that I firmly enjoy, the BIIIIRDS though, the bird symbolism is amazing, you have to realise Midori is written as ‘beautiful bird’, like how the first time they show up, Riki scares them away, like how he is the thing keeping Midori from winning in the latter half, and how Mio wants the birds to stay, it’s good shit, speaking of good shit, lets talk about…
Mio, Parasol Holding Silent Beauty
Mio is your classic, emotionless, quiet, megane bookworm character. Also not, at all. Her sense of humour is wicked, appearances can be deceiving, her personality is nothing like that tired archetype. However I must admit as much as I enjoy her sense of humour she can certainly lack presence, a lot. Not a bad character, not a bad character at all, but not the most memorable one. Jesus fucking christ I didn’t even intend to parallel her actual in universe issues with that last line. More interesting than Mio is the real star of this route, our dear villain…
Midori
As I hinted at the start of the post, I found myself really enjoying Midori this time around, perhaps thanks to foreknowledge of the route, knowing that she wasn’t truly the villain she played so very well this entire time, you can see the entire time, despite her words she always makes sure Riki remembers, actively being the sole reason he doesn’t forget several times, the whole time she is Riki’s most steadfast ally despite being the villain. This makes her so incredibly interesting, which, combined with her excellent personality lead me to really enjoy her. It’s a damn shame she gets very little attention in the fanbase, partially because her existence is a spoiler, she’s actually wonderful.
So who wants to talk about Glasses. Who wants to talk about how G O O D that scene about the Glasses is. I mentioned it earlier, but Mio’s archetype is often seen with glasses, and in fact, several of her battle accessories are glasses, her lack of them despite this is all to build up to this scene, it’s a wonderful fuck you to the player, to make even them rethink themselves, a great strength of Little Busters to me is it’s tendency to truly engage the reader, and this sort of shit was even brought up earlier in the route where Riki finds fictional and reality in a novel blend together, this route loves to mess with this idea constantly, it’s all very interesting. It also showcases how devious Midori is, it’s not ‘she wore glasses right?’, it’s ‘What kind of glasses did she wear’, stating the lie matter of factly so that Riki accepts it while trying to debate a meaningless technicality, stuff like this is why I think she truly excels at her role as villain, trying to make RIki deny her as much as she can.
Mio’s theme Approaching the Light always amuses me, on it’s own standalone it’s probably one of the weakest songs in the game, although certainly present, but I always mentally associate it with her making absolutely savage remarks which are completely at odds with the calming gentle theme and it cracks me up, I believe in part it’s intended to cause that contrast.
All that said, I do take issue with the route, I’m not the biggest fan of the finale, it all gets a bit TOO vague and symbolismy at that point, and well, perhaps that was the intent, far be it from me to critize the writing of Kashida Leo, I mean the guy made me enjoy a Tomoyo product with his writing afterall, but it falls just a little bit flat for me, there isn’t enough raw emotion involved.
Overall, not the best route, not the worst route, smack dab in the middle, just as I remember, but it was an enjoyable read all the same and I’m happy to gain this newfound appreciation of Midori.
There’s definitely a lot of references to specific literature in this route. Too bad they don’t mention the titles or writers by name, just kinda vague hints. I’m sure it’s really obvious if you’re read up on Japanese mystery novels, but I’m not.
They mentioned one in particular that seemed interesting. Something like every other chapter is fiction told by a character and as he gradually goes insane it becomes harder to tell what’s what.
Time to read up on moonrunes.
Okay, I’ll start off this post with a silly joke that just kinda escalated that originally happened in a PM thread with @Karifean (as it wouldn’t fit anywhere else).
She should read Umineko then. People die all the time there.
then again, her commentary might be “The detective is an inexperienced young man” for that.
seriously, you just need to change a few words, and this would be a summary of Umineko’s premise
screaming internally
aaaaaahhhh
I don’t even
…
The joke is writing itself here, with Umi’s reception
Little Busters falls into this, according to Aspi
Future me talking here, Mio’s route qualifies for that as well.
Also later on I could continue this joke:
Also said continuation is just one of many instances of foreshadowing.
And now I’ll actually start talking about the important stuff. I recently said on discord that Mio is basically me. That was at a point where I was still in common. So I didn’t yet know the reasons for why she acts the way she does. And I have to say, there are differences between us. The most glaring one is that I don’t loathe myself. I’m honestly pretty contempt with myself, which seems to be surprisingly rare. Perhaps I’m a bit arrogant thanks to that, but honestly, I don’t care. Anyway, back to Mio. Where we are similar however is that we both like reading, are a bit silent, and are both socially awkward and not. Now you are probably wondering “socially awkward and not? How does that work? Aren’t these things exclusive?” Well, let me explain. Mio is socially awkward in that she doesn’t interact with others on her own. Her reason for that is because she wants to be isolated because of the whole Midori thing. My reason by the way is that I’m just a bit afraid of complete strangers and what reactions they might have to me. In that sense, we’re both socially awkward. However, we aren’t actually socially awkward. We very much understand societal norms, and once we’re integrated in a group, we can do all the fun and crazy stuff as well. As a matter of fact, to speak of myself again, if you’re one of my friends reading this, you probably thought to yourself “You, socially awkward? No way!” So that’s Mio. But what of her shadow and twin sister, Midori?
Well, she’s way more energetic, and also pretty mischievous, and she plays the role of the villain in this route. I did expect that she wasn’t really a villainous character, although my reason for thinking this was different from how it actually was. Going from the coma theory, my thought pretty much was that the Mio we got to know in the common route is really just a part of the “true” Mio Nishizono, to be precise the part of Mio that Riki likes the most. I was expecting that the twist was going to go in a direction that Riki must accept both Mio and Midori being part of the same person, personality wise. (He still had to accept Midori so to speak in the twist this route was going for in the end though).
Now that I have spoken about both Mio and Midori, I wanna talk about the route itself a bit. And holy shit, that’s some amazing writing. The amount of foreshadowing is daunting. Already early on, when Mio talks about mysteries, she seems to be most fascinated by the twins, saying later on they’re her favorite characters. The mystery novels themselves also are great foreshadowing, giving the reader the idea of a duality where you can’t tell fact from fiction. And since this is such a central theme that needs to be established so that the reader doesn’t flip out once the memory screwage with Midori and Mio happens, it is no wonder that I was able to make a stupid Umineko joke in the beginning, considering that Fantasy versus Reality is one of Umi’s main themes. Continuing with the talk of presentation, let’s talk about the art for a bit.
This background is very obviously a real photo put through some filters. By doing that, the sea is immediately ingrained in the reader’s memory, along with the scenes happening there. And this is very much a concious choice, especially once you consider that the actual CGs that are shown at the sea have instead a typical anime beach drawn.
Another presentation thing I wanna talk about are the names Mio and Midori. And I’m just a little bit peeved that @cjlim2007 already presented this information, and from memory to boot. Reason for that was that I was really excited about that. Both @Karifean and this discord log can bear witness to that:
I guess I can still provide some links proving his claim of the meaning of the kanji:
Mi:
Oh:
Dori:
What I find interesting here is that Mio is the beautiful fish and Midori is the beautiful bird, even though Mio is otherwise linked to the bird in the poem. But once you think about it, it makes perfect sense. First of all, I think that the bird and the fish in their names are more a reference to the sky and the sea, and less the actual bird in between them. Second, it fits that Mio is the fish because a fish is silent, out of reach in the ocean, and thus isolated. A bird meanwhile is loud, especially during mating season, and generally seen as more juvenile and lively. But then we get to third. Mio wants to be the bird. So once the two switch, Midori becomes Mio, thus giving free the bird.
But I didn’t want to stop there. We saw that the given names of the two were chosen conciously. So what about her given name, Nishizono? Well, I decided that I would research this as well:
Nishi, meaning either west or Spain:
and Zono, or Sono rather (what I had to enter to find it), meaning park, garden, yard or farm:
Now the zono part is pretty obvious, referencing the courtyard, that place under the zelkova tree, which you could consider to be a park. But why west (I doubt they were going for Spain)? What’s the meaning behind Nishi? Once we consider that this plays in Japan, I think we can explain west. Because then west could refer to the West, where many of the forum users live, Europe and America basically. And what is the West for a Japanese person? It’s foreign, alien, and far away. Just like Nishizono-san is when Riki first meets her. Furthermore, Mio likes all kinds of fiction, both Japanese and Western alike. So that could reference that as well.
By the way, I think I’ll try to research each name for their respective routes, see if there’s meaning to find as well.
I have come so far and I’m still not done gushing about the writing. One thing that stood out to me was the usage of Thin Chronicle in this route. I really got concious about the theme when it was playing in scenes with Midori, namely in ones where she was still playing the role of th villain. You have this confrontation thing going on, where you’re cheering Riki on to not give in, and yet such a happy tune is playing. So I started thinking “Why is this theme used?” Then I remembered MagusVerborum explaining the symbolic meaning of bells back in the common route discussion. It’s used both to signify happiness and a transportation to the spirit world, or to view it more generally, going from one world to another. And, well, I think this second one is what the usage of the theme is going for here, as viewed from a metaphoric view, Midori is Riki’s entrypoint to first not forgetting Mio and second entering her world.
Another great thing is how the choices form a bookend. The first really important choice still during the common route is when Mio loses her book and you’re asked if you assume Itou to have good intentions or bad intentions. And what is the final choice?
So overall, this route seems to be the token “Throw common sense out the window”-route. From what I’ve seen and heard every Key game has such a route. Unlike the other Key games though Little Busters! doesn’t give any sorts of hints that we have a slightly supernatural setting to begin with. So for that reason this route shouldn’t fit. But once we assume the whole coma/brain trauma theory to be correct, then the supernatural things like people forgetting Mio or the two literally not having a shadow, or the symbolic imagery heavy ending can perfectly happen. I think that what really actually happened is that Mio did open up to Riki at some point, but in the reality Riki wasn’t able to find a happy ending for her and Midori. Since Mio was a philosophical person to some degree, it isn’t too much of a stretch to assume that Riki’s imagination was influenced by that. For that matter, I think this route gives us a big hint why we need to complete all routes before we can go into Rin2 and Refrain:
Fun fact: at the beach scene we get to see Mio’s shadow (or I guess the clothes’ shadow) and it’s extending behind her when she looks towards the sea at sunset. This means she is facing west and therefore flies off in the Western direction, contrary to her wish of riding a paper airplane to Hawaii.
Bird with wings of white,
I wonder, is she not sad?
Left alone ne’er touched
By the blue of yonder sky,
or the blue of hither sea…
Above is the poem repeated many times through Mio’s route. It took me some time to collect my thoughts about her route but after re-reading the route again as many people suggested, I was able to turn my mixed feelings into a post.
So first to begin with, I’ll try to write my overall feelings about the route in general. Despite the feeling of Mio’s mysterious atmosphere lingering in the air, the route opened up in a quite friendly way. Then the dramatic change happens once Midori appears.
Since she was brought up, let’s talk about Midori a little bit. She was a very interesting character to me. At times she would play the role of the antagonist but later on, she helps Riki out in finding Mio.
Now let’s analyze what Midori is.
Midori is Mio’s imaginary sister that’s for sure. However she is also described as Mio’s lost shadow. To lose one’s shadow symbolizes detachment from the real world and it is hinted that Mio, at one point of time, wished to be truly alone. It is impossible for someone to be perfectly alone, people are everywhere. An exception to this would be… your own world. Yes, Midori is Mio’s wish to be alone personified into an individual identity representing the boundaries between the real world and Mio’s world.
At the same time, a shadow also is a symbol of internal conflict. In this case, this could mean the battle between Mio’s desire to stay with Riki and her determination to be the lonely bird in Midori’s place. If so, that would explain why Midori shows affection towards Riki. It isn’t to impersonate Mio but she is the symbol of Mio’s desire to stay with Riki.
And by now it’s obvious what it means for Mio to become one with Midori or in other words her lost shadow; she is returning to the real world and choosing to stay with Riki.
I wonder why I cry at this so much
That’s enough of Midori, now let’s go to Mio. She left a very huge hole in my heart for a few days ( one of the reasons I couldn’t make the post as soon as I finished the route) .
The reason she managed to affect me so much is because I too, sometimes want to be completely isolated and imagine what it would be like to have someone only you are able to talk to.
Sure I have a few good friends whom I opened up to but I still haven’t told them everything they need to know about me.
But I wouldn’t say Mio is exactly like me since we’ll… I’m not really much of a reader 
About the route as a whole, I felt it was very well written and as much as I liked the true ending where Midori and Riki work together to bring Mio back, I really enjoyed the bad ends and a really nice yet scary detail in them.
If you choose to accept Midori as Mio (after the kiss) , you will notice that in the dialogue box, Midori’s name is changed to Mio.
The same thing happens if you look everywhere except the beach too ( believe Midori has bad intentions) but this time around, Riki forgets about Mio completely and later comes to the conclusion that he was always alone.
Both the bad ends narrate a scenario where Riki too has given up on his reality and has brainwashed himself into believing that Midori is Mio.
I enjoyed this kind of ending too because it made me re-think about reality and it really evoked that feeling where Riki was the one who was isolated from reality all this time.
But although Mio says she wanted this, that’s not what she really thinks is it?
It might have actually been that way if Riki hadn’t talked to Mio but her unexpected meeting with Riki changed Mio’s feeling towards the real world with Midori finally convincing Mio in the end to not disappear.
…
Congratulations if you read through all of that text. Sorry for not being too clear with some of my points but in the end… It’s just what I think and you may agree or disagree
Oh my god thank you for ending your post with a sprite of Mio in her casual clothes. That reminded me of another little detail in the visual design of this route I liked. When the scene leading up to the appearance of Midori happened, so when we first see her casual clothes, I was expecting something dire to happen. Main reason for that is that the main color of Mio’s outfit there is black. To me, it almost seemed like the kind of clothes you might be wearing at a funeral, or perhaps even clothes that people put on you for your own funeral, which might be what they were going for here, since in the conclusion of this route the isolation of Mio is likened to closing a coffin. At the same time, the usage of the color black might hint at the whole “one being the shadow of the other” deal. Granted, the story only ever talks about Midori being Mio’s shadow in a way, but once they switched, you might even say that at that moment, Mio is Midori’s shadow.
This is probably the point that has me the most conflicted. I really do love when stories play around with their language, but something doesn’t click in this route. Currently, I’m thinking the culprit is over-saturation and a lack of finesse. Like, you’d struggle to find a major scene that doesn’t mention the color blue. Then again, I enjoyed myself until the date, so that doesn’t really explain my reaction.
So what happens at the date? Well, the story slows to a crawl for one. Like Riki describes, the third act is a strange amalgamation of anxiety and drowsiness. If nothing else, I can’t say it’s not a daring decision to write it like that. (I really don’t have a conclusion here, but something about the route didn’t mesh with me.)
Reading this, I can’t help but think that Riki kinda did jack shit in the final confrontation. Mio returns because Midori puts the cards on the table. Riki is just kinda there as the thing to return to, the prize so to say, like a fine piece of meat.
What does he actually do in the route as an agent?
I guess the point would be that Mio wouldn’t return if he didn’t show that conviction, but he actions during the climax definitely don’t seem relevant to the result.
Fuck off, 2015 me, glasses are supreme! Fetishes aside, I might have said that in the sense of no glasses being better because you’re avoiding the bookworm tropes more. Purely aesthetically, though, glasses are always better than no glasses
