I don’t remember anything of the sort. I think, at some point, Kyousuke mentioned that it was no one’s fault.
IIRC, the accident simply happened, just like the one where Riki’s parents died.
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I know this was mentioned by Aspirety in the thread somewhere but regardlessly…
The fact that they all end up living in the end end both surprised and bothered me for a few days and night… It just makes a lot more sense thematically and following up with the overarching theme to deliver the “bombshell” (their death). Wasn’t one of the main theme of Refrain was to move on? For Riki to grow up after having been taught of how to live life as an adult by Kyousuke? It just seemed so weird that they would all survive in the end (lol)… It’s kind of like the magic realism in Kud’s route; Key could have found several different way to convey the feeling that Riki’s friendship and bond with Kud but they decided to keymagic the gear into Kud’s hand (which works since it shows that their bond was so powerful that they could magically modify reality itself… the point is that I felt the same for the ending of Refrain, it seems like something that they didn’t have to do, but decided to anyway, to convey some other point that I haven’t understood yet.
And I remember someone (I think it was Aspirety) saying something about that it was about the point of them learning the value of their bond and growing together as a result of it… but I feel like if that was the case then it wouldn’t have really been necessary (if not, far fetched) for Kyousuke and Kengo to say things like having to leave Riki and Rin behind for them to grow up by themselves, I truly felt like the point of Little Busters! was what Kyousuke tried to accomplished throughout the show: to turn Rin and Riki into independent adults that can live by themselves. Kyousuke and the rest of them knew that they wouldn’t be able to cope with losing them so suddenly, so with their final wish, they would create an alternate world where Kyousuke would be able to raise Riki and Rin into adulthood so that they would be able to cope with their friends’ death, so with that wouldn’t the point of Little Busters be more about growing up and moving on?
Honestly, I don’t know, maybe in contradiction to Key’s previous works that inevitably involved some sort of heart-tearing death in the end, they really decided to stick with the more light hearted and comically nature of Little Busters. I wanted them to die (lol) but at the same time I was really happy that they all survived.
And they went on a field trip (the death-event that caused them to be here in the first place) at the end too, I thought that was the most ironically hilarious thing ever.
EDIT: so I read the thread again and Karifean mentioned that they decided took a different attitude in the end, which would result in having all of them survive the incident and going on continuing being the eternal Little Busters… Honestly, yeah, in that perspective I can definitely see that being one of the possibility, since Little Busters had a really wacky and (for lack of better words) shounen-y attitude to it, so if they decided the ending with the basis of that reasoning, I’d definitely buy into it (lol) so I guess even if it’s keymagic in a sense it does actually make sense and feel better with this context.
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I remember hearing in the podcast about Key in 2017 that Maeda Jun intended to only have the “it’s enough” end but another writer convinced him that that ending would have simply been too sad without another option.
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Yeah, the choice surprised me because all of the Key works have really sad endings lol, Little Busters other hand just had a really happy (fantasy-esque) ending in the end despite all that happen.
Casualty number is too high for the other writer to handle :komue:
Uhh, yeah, “reality.” Kud’s issue isn’t that some maniacs threw her in a rape dungeon. It’s the metaphorical rape dungeon she’s put herself into because she abandoned her country and family.
Up front, that is Kyousuke’s plan. Riki just happened to grow strong enough to say, “fuck you,” to that plan. It’s a real shame that seemingly all the screen shots in this thread have been nuked to oblivion because there used to be a post detailing how Kyousuke essentially predicts how Riki and Rin save the day. A part of him believed in that possibility.
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Did I hear someone complain about both Kud route AND Refrain? :kyouevil:
Yes, there’s much more to Kud’s route than just the writer “Keymagicing” their characters out of a hopeless situation. Just read your way through the Kud route topic where I’ve provided a detailed explanation on its easily misunderstood aspects. There’s some tricky parts to it and you need some knowledge from Refrain in order to fully understand them. To give you a hint on the way, it was never the goal of the route to physically escape from a dangerous predicament.
As for the ending of Refrain, I’ve stated my honest opinion earlier in this topic. In fact, I believe that the Little Busters surviving is part of what I think is the most powerful message in all of Key.
Rather than simply accepting tragedy in life, I believe that the point of Little Busters is to not only becoming stronger, but actually putting said strength to use. The Riki who said “it’s not enough” is much stronger than he would’ve been, had he simply accepted his friends’ fate. For only by going that extra mile did he overcome his greatest weakness and fear, namely narcolepsy.
Of course, what made the happy ending possible in the first place is Key magic, but I always say that Key magic is a wonderful thing because it always rewards effort.
@HeliosAlpha, can we high-five now? xD
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The usage of “Keymagic” in my posts is just to identify a common trope within Key’s works, the fact that there’s a lot of people who don’t like this kind of plot device certainly exists, but I don’t fall into that section XP I used it to say that it was a plot device used to signify how powerful their bond was and how there were different way that they could have resolve it but instead chose “Keymagic” simply because it’s much more powerful but I guess the way that I phrased it was pretty misleading.
The same goes for Refrain of course, at the end of the day I was just wondering why Key decided to save all of them (then again I did made a lengthy point about how it doesn’t make sense)
But yeah in my edit I did agreed with Karifean about how Key chooses to have Riki save all of them to deliver a certain message. Thanks for clarifying on the most important message though, I can definitely accept this explanation since I really like the idea of Riki becoming strong enough to even decide his own ending and act upon it.
And as for Kud’s dungeon, I felt like it was realistic enough 
if anything the setting of Kud’s route was the most interesting and innovative thing that I’ve read: coming home into the midst of a fucking civil war? That’s something that I feel like could happen in real life, so in short I felt like Kud’s route was more about the predicament of her situation and how Riki’s bond with Kud saved her. Of course I could be entirely wrong, and of course the dungeon part alone would may very well be a metaphor just from the mysterious nature on its presentation.
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I think the Refrain Arc is living proof that even if a sad ending is supported thematically, it doesn’t have to be. Refrain is all about ‘carving out a new path’. Honestly, if everything worked out exactly as Kyousuke planned, then I dunno, I feel like it would’ve felt cheap. It’s like, we’re introduced to this conflict, and there’s no resolution, there’s just acceptance. I mean it’s lifelike, but from a storytelling perspective there’s not really any progression.
Little Busters is all about… You know that sad ending you had baked up? Fuck that, we’re gonna forge a new path because we’re the fucking little busters! You CAN have your cake and eat it too, because everyone DID grow stronger that day, and I’m sure they’ll be ready to face any hardships that follow as they grow older. But they don’t HAVE TO sit around being lonely every day.
Don’t get caught up in the mode of thinking that tragedy is the only way to form a cohesive narrative here. It’s not, you’re just too caught up in Kyousuke’s way of thinking. I know because I’ve been there. Sure, it’s a miracle. But aren’t miracles fine every once in a while?
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It’s not, you’re just too caught up in Kyousuke’s way of thinking.
Yep, this pretty much sums it up for me (lol), now that I think back I really was only referring to it in Kyousuke’s perspective when he’s not the only main character instead of looking at the bigger picture (what the Little Busters is all about) to begin with.
Despite Little Busters! being almost overbearingly optimistic with its “You can do anything if you’re strong” vibe I agree that this is an important theme, and ultimately its the reason I love LB so much. Riki feeling useless is a big part of the story, so the contrast in Refrain is noticeable. SO much has already been said about this already but to highlight it: growth is the point; don’t put mental limits on how much you can grow. Riki and Rin become strong enough to save everyone because they didn’t give up
But if there’s one thing that bothers me its this:
(CLANNAD and Rewrite tone spoilers)
Yeah every once and a while a happy ending is nice, but Refrain has a happy ending, at the end of CLANNAD’s After Story we got a happy ending, and Rewrite was similar with Terra. Not all Key stories have happy endings but happy endings get used a lot in storytelling in generally.
This really isn’t as much of a comment on Little Busters! itself as it is on Key/anime/storytelling in general. Everyone wants the impact of having a happy ending but not enough people want to write stories with bitter endings. So they happy ones don’t really stand out as much.
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Well this is it, the last chapter. Since this may be to long I don’t think I will be able to try to summarize it really well, but well let’s try to focus on some points, key points.
You’re here just starting something new that is call refrain a kind of different route an you’re wondering what just happened. Well the world was restarted and starting as always Riki trying to stop Masato’s and Kengo’s fight, but something is different. Kyousuke is nowhere to be found and yeah Masato and Kengo get injured, specially Kengo apparently with a broken arm. You’re everyday routine is a little diferent too, you eat with Rin in your bedroom and take her to a different school, since she’s completly different from what she used to be, yeah really a burden for Riki, but he seems happy or something like that.
Riki is trying to recover Rin, asking for Masato’s and Kengo’s help, so Kengo suggest to play something and Rin get interested in baseball, yeah convenient. Next, Rin is making some progress with baseball so Riki came up with the idea to create a baseball’s team ( just what Kyousuke did) , Kengo disliked his idea and left and Masato stay with Riki and Rin for a while but he quit as well.
As a consequence of this Riki decided to restart the little busters just with Rin, asking her about how it all began. She told him that Masato was the first recruit and that Kyousuke made him join by beating him up.
Riki talked to him about joining them, Masato’s refused and left. The next day Masato was acting weird and was beating up everyone in his way , he even attacked Riki. Riki felt that history was repeating itself, so he decided he should fight him. After using different tricks Masato is beaten and he joins you , but you get to see his perspective and why he was acting weird.
After that the next one was Kengo, Kyousuke beat up Kengo’s father in order to had Kengo join the busters. Riki couldn’t find Kengo’s father location, so decided to confront Kengo itself expecting a change in his personality. However he was the same and told him that he will never join him and that Kyousuke is a liar. He talked with Kyousuke as well and he told him that Kengo is the liar and gave him a hint. Confronting Kengo again, Riki challenged him to a baseball match, of course Kengo is way more athletic so Riki didn’t feel confident, Kengo accepted and they faced off. Rin wanted to play as well so it was Riki and Rin against Kengo who emerged victorious over an astonished Kengo. You get to see Kengo’s perspective going back to Rin2 actually and returning to this point, getting to know interesting details, such as how Kengo and Riki lost against Kyousuke and Masato.
Now with Kengo joining you after his loss, the only one left is Kyousuke. Watching Kyousuke’s perspective of the events getting to see different things that are not easy to understand, Kyousuke in dark place trying to move to do something, but without making any progress every time he wakes up , yeah confusing. Then after finishing with this part Kyousuke is met with the rest of the busters and joins them happily.
Then the secret of the world is revealed, everything was set up by 8 members of the little busters (all of them without Riki and Rin) . The accident is revealed Masato and Kengo protected Rin and Riki with their lifes, but they were left alone in the world. Since they were not mature or strong enough all the busters put them in a fake world where they can grow, yeah nobody can explain how this just happens. Masato, Kengo and Kyousuke said their farewells and let them go to the real world since they’re ready to face it.
Riki and Rin wake up in the accident and they run away with Riki saving Rin and waking up in the hospital, glad that he saved Rin but not that much since all of their friends are dead.
Ok at this point it feels ok , but wait there is more at the end of this you had to choice it this is ok for you or not , was this really necessary. Anyways if you say it’s okay the game is over if you say it’s not okay, Riki and Rin create a new fake world in order to save everyone. This is where everything is screw up. Do not missunderstand I’m not saying it was a bad choice to save everyone, well not necessarily but let’s point out some details. Riki magically cures his narcolepsy yeah really cool don’t you think. Rin talks with Komari and reflect on her life and how everyone was important for her yeah her scene with Komari was supposed to have impact or her memories with everyone else, it has it but it was not strong enough. After their “experience” in this new fake world they overcame their weaknesses, manage to save everyone and they live happily ever after, yeah what a good ending don’t you think. No
Their first ending with Riki and Rin alone , was way better than the real one, or magic one and no don’t give me that , you choose what ending is real because that’s you know a damn lie. Even though the first ending may be better it is not something incredible it was ok or good at best. I mean yeah Masato’s and Kengo’s parts were good , Kyousuke well kinda ok it explain good points and was a little confusing at the beginning, then Riki and Rin parts yeah pretty magic and no don’t start with you don’t get the feels or the meaning or this scene or this one. If you want to hit me with feels you should give me characters that I should care about, little busters characters are not good or that strong to care about. I mean I can feel bad about Masato, Kengo or Haruka because they were built up (well not that much, but much more than anybody else) you can kind of understand them, but you want me too feel bad about Rin or Kyousuke characters that I don’t care since I know nothing about them, Rin is useless and Kyousuke is your always cool character with zero background so yeah It should hit me with feels right.
The little busters work is not perfect is not even incredible, I mean you can consider it like that but that’s not true. It is a work ok for a casual fan, i’m not saying it’s bad, is actually good but just that. No don’t hit me with your subjectivity, the quality of the work is what I’m talking about, if you consider it perfect good for you, but that’s really far away from reality. The game is good, the second(true) ending a little innecesary (but you always need to have your happy endings don’t you, otherwise people will not like the product), it just make things worse there is a lot of Key’s magic. However, there are some good points in the game such as some routes or some parts of refrain, it could have been better but yeah seeing it as a whole it’s ok a good game nothing else.
Thank you, very much.
Well now a very… personal take you have of Refrain there.
This is a very controversial topic, to be honest (and if you read the previous posts, you’d know exactly why) which is why I can’t really argue with you on that one. However, for everything else…
That’s not a damn lie because that’s exactly how visual novels were meant to be and you know it. But hey, in a fictional world, nothing is real, after all.
I think it was made pretty apparent that the whole thing with Kyousuke “not moving” was a parallel to Riki, and how, when Kyosuke first inducted Riki to the Little Busters, Riki was the one stuck in a rut and not moving. The complete role reversal in Refrain and Riki growing to be like Kyousuke is probably the epitome of the story.
Hoo boy, you’re going to make a lot of enemies with that statement. But really, if at this point in time, you failed to care about Kyousuke, Masato, Kengo, Rin, Riki and all the rest of the little busters, then you’re probably missing something in the experience. Perhaps there’s a lacking perspective, or perhaps it fails to make things apparent to you as a reader. But, either way, by failing to care for the characters you also end up failing to care for the story itself. Just by saying:
Simply means that you failed to see the background that was shown to you. I won’t blame the writer, and neither will I blame the reader. Perhaps it’s just a disconnect in the mindset. After all, in creative works like this, it is pretty much impossible to satisfy every single human being.
But hey, I think Little Busters succeeds in hitting most bases for most people, so I guess it was just a strike for you, and you’re out.
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I agree with @Pepe on his stance regarding your entire post, but I’m actually going to have to pay attention to this specifically because it seems based on the idea that nothing Little Busters do is within logic and it just refers to good old Key magic.
That’s not the case.
It may have used otherworldly imagery to represent it, but Riki’s narcolepsy wasn’t cured by “magic”. It was cured by him exploiting the world’s instability in regards to the dream worlds (the otherworldly imagery I mentioned) to confront the reason he’d grown narcoleptic in the first place: it was his coping method to avoid sadness and further traumatic events after he lost his parents. Riki decided to face his psychological issues because he’d realised that he would never be able to help anyone even with all the support he had been given otherwise.
This is a bit of speculation here, but let’s forget the “it’s not enough” scenario and head onto the “it’s enough” scenario. Rin2 shows that there was no way that Riki would’ve been able to support Rin through their mutual depression of loss with Riki remaining narcoleptic and being unable to have a job they could both live off of, and there were also problems in regards to the possibility that even with the Little Busters’ world to help her grow as a person, Rin could have developped psychological issues of her own after the accident or even something as simple as a fear of getting attached to anyone but Riki moving onwards.
If you paid attention, you’ll also realise there was a pattern and point to Riki’s narcolepsy attacks throughout the story, they weren’t just randomly put in because “oh crap NARUKOREPUSHI”.
What’s shown here isn’t “magic” as you seem to prefer putting it down, but rather a show of his psychological growth that none of the Little Busters could have forced on him because of how inherently traumatic his condition was and just how desperate he was to not waste Kyousuke and the Little Busters’ gift towards Rin and himself. It may have been supported by Key magic, but I find it insulting to the work that the psychological implications that went behind it aren’t being considered here.
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Yeah, I thought this was pretty obvious. Riki was getting over his mental block by finally remembering and confronting the situation. He went through a traumatic experience and couldn’t get through it until he faced it head on. The narcolepsy existed because Riki made it so, and so the problem resolved when Riki finally stopped it.
While it is imagined through a metaphorical rebirth, the idea is pretty normal. One of the most normal parts of the VN really. This ain’t Butterfly Effect, this is normal mental progression.
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Hey guys let’s see, I understand your points, also I want to say that yeah waiting 5 days to answer a discussion is kind of problematic, since It would like to give a response as soon as possible, but let’s see.
You know man, it actually is. When you are talking about a piece of art, I think this can be considered as something like that since it can be considered as a book or piece of writing, you see what is the message that the author is trying to give, what is his work trying to accomplish , that is what you’re judging when you talk about quality. So yeah in this case there’s nothing as I choose what I like or what is real to me, the intention of the autor is what should be analyzed. Since there are two endings, it’s pretty obvious which one the author will consider real, even though he will not necessarily say it. So yeah doesn’t matter if I consider or anyone consider the first one as real, the second one is which the author consider, which means the verdict about the quality will of course consider this much more meaningful than other parts.
I said the part was ok, just a little confusing I’m sure not everyone understand it immediatly, besides it was weird that kyosuke has to hurt himself in order to move in the real world, maybe because the busters needed to concentrate or something like that to maintain the artificial world. Yeah still weird considering the artificial world.
Enemies ? I’m not looking for something like that, but yeah people let their feelings talk really fast. I’m trying to give something impartial and more objective, but whatever. If you check what I said I never said the story was wrong, I mentioned that a low point were the characters, also there’s something you need to know. It doesn’t matter if your story is good the characters are the ones that deliver it, which means if your characters are not that strong or good it will lose a lot of impact. That’s why if your character is not that good why would anybody should care, not only me. The story was ok, was good, but the characters were not good enough, which leads to the next point.
I never said that I didn’t care about the busters at least Masato and Kengo, even Riki , because as i mentioned they were build, they gave reasons to care about, they had development. On the other hand, about Rin she didn’t had that much, really she didn’t. On her last part it shows the intention but yeah just intention, and in her ending in the hospital with Riki you could see possiblities, but again there’s nothing in the game, so yeah it won’t matter. Anyone can speculate about her future, but yeah the content just show that her character is not good. Now about Kyousuke, where to start, should I care about him ? What do you know about him ? He really is similar with Kurugaya, by that I mean two things. One, He really is your perfect character ( good at everything) and two you know nothing about them, so why would someone care. Yeah he’s the leader of the little busters, yes he care about his sister and Riki, but man is that all. What anybody understand or what it should be understand it is that maybe all the busters are the main characters ( the original 5 ) but Rin nor Kyousuke feels like it, even side characters feels more as an important characters for example Haruka in her route. Maybe background wasn’t the best word but I hope this can explain.
Last I’m not talking about success with people, popularity is not quality. I’m giving a little of analysis to this work which i said in the end it was good, but not as good as many people overhype. I give perspective, of course a different one, I’m not forcing anybody to agree with me. But it can be worse at least people weren’t responding just with feelings like some people use to do.
Man you may be saying is not magic, but still feels like it. Ok I understand your point but let’s talk about it a little bit. Narcolepsy, what is the cause? oh yeah is none of the ones you mentioned since its cause is unknown, some say that it can be something with genetics but yeah how can you cure something that you’re born with. If that isn’t magic then what it is. Of course I understand that there are psychology and many things involved, but did that really matter since you’re going to do something impossible such as curing narcolepsy and also inventing a cause for it?
Also since you’re saying that Riki narcolepsy were not random, yeah I noticed so should I just see it as a simple plot device to move everything? I considered it a reason to care about Riki was that one, his sickness, since is something horrible and that caused him difficulties, but now that you mentioned it can be consider it as something as simple as that. This makes Riki’s character no favor since you’re just limiting him on purpose an things are even worse since you’re curing him from his “controled” decease, so yeah. Riki’s character is not the best MC, he has development and was average, but with this man It look even worse his limitation was mental and never existed , I thought their narcolepsy can be consider it as real, but I might rethink that.
Anyway, the little busters is still a good work.
Guys it was good discuss with you; but I guess I will leave it here, I have to follow the rules about posting within days, but for a discussion that’s something I don’t like. I will like to respond directly and in the moment you answer me. Also I feel I can express myself better talking. So yeah have a good day.
Maybe you can look for me on Discord.
Thank you, very much.
Personally, the goals of a work aren’t the thing that determines the quality of the respective work. It’s a tricky bar to rely on because, in most cases, no one but the creators know what those goals were. Some don’t even have goals beyond existing. I may not even care about certain accomplishments or efforts, and I certainly don’t care about the author’s intent. I care about what I see.
But let’s say we know the author’s intent and we care about it, in that case I think it’d be better to judge how well it accomplishes that goal. A work could be as simple as just telling jokes and it could be amazing, or it could set a tall hurdle and completely fail to clear it.
Even that, a single method of judgement, is nowhere near practical. If either of these methods of judgement were the sole method, then every work would be timeless, and we all know that isn’t true.
You say the author’s intention is all that matters. In that case, why do Visual Novels exist? Why do any non-circular routes matter? The entire reason they exist is that the reader decides the truth (to some limited degree.) The big reason I started reading VNs was because the ending of an anime named Shuffle didn’t satisfy me. I went and got the VN, followed the heroine route I wanted, and got the ending I desired.
Even looking at a Key VN, Kanon, it has no confirmed ending. Even with the individual routes, they have no clear ending; they almost all have interpretive endings. I don’t know what Maeda or Hisaya intended with such endings, all I can assume is that they wanted the readers to see their own ending… Because for most writers, the ones who aren’t entitled, reader interpretations matter. People see so much more in a work than an author could imagine.
You’re gonna fail to do that 100% of the time. The fact that people can even disagree with you proves that. Funnily enough you go on to write an opinion piece on the Busters, purely based on emotion with no talk about why you received the work in such a way.
I agree that Rin was forgotten, I agree that Kyousuke sucks 
and I do think that Little Busters isn’t all that good, but… I completely disagree with what you’ve written. It seems like you missed something, or that you’re ignoring things. Maybe you just aren’t explaining your thoughts very well…
I dunno why I said maybe there… You aren’t explaining your thoughts very well. Throw something with substance at us. You’re making me want to hate on this VN for you.
Spoiler the cause was the car crash Riki was in. The one that killed his parents and left him traumatized in a hospital until Kyousuke came and plucked him out of the darkness. Pretty standard stuff. The natural cure comes from getting over the trauma. Trauma cause, no trauma no cause. For a more relatable comparison: fire burn, no fire no burn.
Hoo, I don’t think you can say that anymore. Maybe 10 years ago, but political correctness is going strong right now.
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“Personally”, when you said it you’re talking just about yourself and not in general, but let’s see you might be right forget about the goals. However, as I said the quality is related with the message the author is trying to give, that’s how it is with any kind of art.
That have to be some kind of bad joke, right. Why would a work just telling jokes will be amazing ? That might just be to you or a group of people, but you know standards exist. People can have their opinions yeah, they could like or hate something, but that doesn’t make something good or bad, if they like or hate something that’s just for themselves.
Man I am talking about quality of work or art. Visual novels exist yeah you can choose what is good or bad for you, however as a story it can be analized, everything can be considered and yeah I gave an analysis to any route and of course to the last one and the final verdict included all of the work. But yeah the work is judged by what it has. Not speculations or possibilities of what it could be or what could have happened
I’m giving an objective analysis. I’m analyzing the work nothing else, not what people feels or think about the work. I’m not even saying my personal opinion about this work, I’m stating some facts about story and characters and how it afffects the quality of the same work. Yeah maybe you’re right , maybe I’m not explaining myself that well , but this has nothing to do with if I like the work or not. This is critical judgement. People can disagree or agree with me , so what ? yeah maybe impartial was not the right word, but I’m being objective. Whether people like it or not.
I guess you’re missunderstanding the point. Narcolepsy is a real sickness which has unknown causes and no real cure as i mentioned before ; but of course the game has to invent something , doesn’t it .
If you hate it or not does has nothing to do with me. Maybe you’re realizing is not a good work and you don’t like anymore. But hey why are you blaming me ? As i said I never put how i feel about the little busters. I’m talking about points and facts about the game nothing else. If you change your mind that’s up to you. I’m just providing a different perspective. In order to give a good analysis the feelings, personal thoughts, personal opinions, etc should not be considered since they cloud the judgement.
Not specifically talking about Key VNs but, like comedy exists. Like a good comedy movie or even a stand up show would basically just be telling jokes and with a good execution its amazing. I’m not trying to invalidate your opinion but I’m seeing that you aren’t understanding what the others are saying.
This is literally impossible. You cannot have a conversation on a work of literature by having an objective analysis unless you’re literally just giving a summary of what happened in the story which isn’t helpful at all here. It’s fine to state your subjective opinion, and its very much encouraged (or else what’s the point of the forum?) but you need to know when something you know is completely true or when you are interpreting the story.
The way you said this sounds a little condescending to me I guess? I’m not sure if that was your intention. But if it was then, I believe too that narcolepsy is used as a plot device but is there something inherently wrong with that? To me, it seems like you think it is, and maybe you’re justified in thinking so. However, I don’t believe it’s anything like a deus ex machina or magic out of nowhere. The writers don’t use it out of no where for no reason. There are specific reasons and patterns and the point is to analyze that to understand what the writers are trying to convey.
By the way I don’t really want to sound like I’m attacking you but the more you seem to dismiss LB, the more I feel the urge to write a response.
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Of course. I am only one person, as you are only one person. We can only speak for ourselves, and for our interpretations of others.
Because it can be entertaining. Because it can be interesting. Those are the two obvious reasons, but comedy is used to say many things about the world. Franky I dislike comedy in almost all cases, but there is a real appreciation for it out there.
In some ways it does. One factor of being good is enjoyment. If someone likes something, they’ll probably say it’s good.
I’m not entirely sure what you believe “good” and “bad” are. You’ve said it isn’t mass opinion, and you’ve said it isn’t personal opinion, so what is it? If the ultimate end goal, the decider of whether something is good or not, is to find an audience and appeal to said audience, then it doesn’t matter what the process is. The end point decides if it is good or not. I’d disagree with that limited idea of success, but it’s the only “objective” take on good/bad I can think of.
But what if “what happened” is purely speculation? Do you believe the literal take or the metaphorical take? Sometimes a work simply doesn’t have. It presents possibilities, but it doesn’t have a truth. Speculation is part of a reader’s job, word is to be interpreted.
Let me quote some opinions from your posts…
“I said the part was ok, just a little confusing”
You said you found it confusing. Other people didn’t find it confusing. It’s an opinion.
“it was weird that kyosuke has to hurt himself”
You found it weird, other people didn’t. Opinion.
“Now about Kyousuke, where to start, should I care about him ?”
The problem here is that you never cared about Kyousuke. Some people did care about Kyousuke. Opinion.
“i said in the end it was good, but not as good as many people overhype.”
You don’t believe it’s as good as other people say it is? Opinion.
“the little busters is still a good work.”
I disagree, but I respect your opinion.
I dunno if that was a clear enough presentation of opinion, but in a nutshell you are sharing your opinions, you aren’t being factual or impartial. There’s nothing wrong with having opinions, there’s nothing wrong with agreeing or disagreeing. The only objective truths about a work are the words written down. The only objective take on a story is a synopsis or a refocused establishment. Say anything about the quality of a work and you are speaking an opinion.
I think Litbus is trash. Do you agree? No, you say it is a “good work.” Some people think Litbus is the best Key thing out there, but hey, some people have crazy opinions.
I think you read my sentence in a different way than I intended. I said I want to hate on this VN for you because you’re failing to raise any points. The only discussion here is meta, beyond Little Busters. It’s hardly fitting for this topic honestly. It makes me want to explain why I dislike Kyousuke and why I think Rin is a nothing.
As for not liking Litbus, I realized it sucked years ago, when I first read it. I don’t think you’ll change anyone’s opinion by saying something to the effect of “no but I objectively disagree.”
On this note, I do believe there is further objectivity to present, or at least something between objectivity and subjectivity. You can talk about the structure and direction of the work. This can be lumped under the “summary” banner, but I think it’s well distinguished from that.
An objectivity for example would be "Little Busters Refrain is a tale of Riki being Kyousuke, up until the final moment. Sounds like an opinion in some ways, and maybe it is a perspective change, but when you think about how everything Riki does is everything Kyousuke has done and further planned to do (such as Riki saving everyone in the exact way it was dreamed by Kyousuke earlier in the story) it’s like… Oh yeah, that’s an actual part of the story. That’s what they were doing. Again, kind of a synopsis, but it requires reflective interpretation. It’s a thin line.
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You’re not too far off – narcolepsy irl isn’t shown to have that much link to psychological trauma. The thing is, I’ve seen few sources saying that that some people do respond to stress by falling asleep, and I’m guessing Jun Maeda played a bit with that for LB!. That or Riki was misdiagnosed and it just happens that he doesn’t take stress too well, which started from an unpleasant childhood experience, so he copes by falling asleep. Could be anything.
It’s been a long time since I read LB!, so I can’t talk yet about the story as a whole. So all I can say to you for now is this, and that objectivity is a myth and there’s nothing wrong for your opinion to be an opinion. (On a side note, I can also argue that plot summaries aren’t objective either. They’re also, in a way, interpretations.)
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