One’s answer could vary greatly depending on one’s answer to Echo question. As Midori says she was “filled” by Mio taking Riki’s hand, I’d say the moment is the same as when Mio fell in love.
2 Likes
I think of her as a split personality of Mio. The way she acts is exactly opposite of mio. Mio has is calm while midori is more active and energetic , mio is less talkative and socialable while midori is more approachable than her.
Since this is a fantasy genre we’re talking about, i might even consider her being a real person who was born about of mio’s imagination and gained a personality of her own.
2 Likes
I’ve always thought of her as either a split personality or figment of the imagination (which is still up for contention), (refrain spoilers) who was given individuality by the rules of the dream world.
As for the question of split personality or imaginary, there’s still a lot of debate about whether dissociative identity disorder really exists and to what extent (although it might not matter, since it’s not the real world, such a thing could easily exist in Little Busters even if it was fact that it doesn’t here), but from what I know such things generally stem from trauma. It’s been a while since I read the route, but I don’t remember anything devastating about Mio’s past before Midori appeared. If anything the most traumatic thing that happened to her was being forced to forget Midori. Mio’s parents and the doctor from her past all seemed to agree it was an imaginary friend, and I guess I also lean in that direction. As for the part about Midori being her shadow, what meaning does a shadow have? You could interpret a shadow as proof that you are there, or to take it a step further, that you are yourself. Does it take a shadow to make some their “complete” self? In which case, losing your shadow would be the same as losing part of yourself.
I think it’s a contradiction in what Mio’s trying to do, to remain herself, without Midori. If Midori isn’t with her, yet is a her shadow, a part of her “self”, it’s not even a question about remaining herself anymore. To bring it all together, I think that Midori is probably a figure of Mio’s imagination, who represents an important part of Mio’s subconscious that she lost.
3 Likes
There are three different states of “existence” in this route, indicated by the owner’s shadow.
- Existence - Being there and having a shadow. Mio’s state after the resolution of the conflict.
- Semi-existence - Being there but not having a shadow. Mio and Midori’s state throughout most of the route.
- Non-existence - Being out of reach and only be remembered by a special few (technically still existing in some way). Mio’s bird transformation would end in a transition into this state.
Throughout the route, Mio’s shadow, and thereby existence, is slowly being transfered over to Midori. Midori is coming into existence while Mio is fading out. Midori starts appearing while people have trouble perceiving Mio. This would allow Midori to fully exist while Mio would shift into non-existence.
By disappearing, Mio is also “protecting” Midori, because that way, nothing can influence Mio into forgetting her. It’s as Pepe explained:
4 Likes
Isn’t that a contradiction in of itself though? If Mio’s very existence is being transferred to Midori, why would Mio need to remember Midori in order for her to continue existing? At one point Mio says, “As long as other people recognise her as Mio, that’s who she is.” “And ‘I’ am nobody but ‘I’.” Doesn’t this mean that at this point, it’s the recognition of others that determines who’s who? Of course, this whole point is kind of fraudulent, because Midori can continue to exist either way.
And would putting herself into a state of “non-existence” really qualify as “remaining herself”? I know that she would still “exist” on some level, but I ask that without Midori, would she really be existing as “herself”? Or would she just be “existing”? I think that she needs to be her complete “self” in order to remain herself, and the idea that her changing would mean that she is no longer herself is the source of the contradiction.
The question of whether she would remain herself even if she forgot Midori again is one I’m still thinking on, but to that end, I think other questions that need to be answered first are “If she forgot Midori again (after the route’s end), would her shadow disappear again? Would it disappear when she remembered Midori? At that time, would they no longer be one as they were at the resolution of the route?”
This all isn’t to say I think your view is wrong, or even that I disagree with it. I’m honestly not sure. I’m just trying to present doubt in order to make sure that the discussion on the topic doesn’t come to a premature conclusion. If I had to say what I personally think about it tough, I do still think that Mio is doing something contradictory, which she does kind of allude to herself.
3 Likes
I was about to explain it but it seems you’ve got it on-point here:
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”.
5 Likes
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.
4 Likes
I mean her shadow literally disappears.
Midori is a thing. Just imagination doesn’t make that happen.
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.
3 Likes
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.
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
1 Like
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
4 Likes
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.
6 Likes
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.
8 Likes
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.
4 Likes
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.
2 Likes
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)
6 Likes
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.
5 Likes
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.
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.
6 Likes
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”.
8 Likes
