I mean, people tend to want to see what would’ve comprised the “It’s enough” eding because it was one that would’ve validated everything Kyousuke and the others had done up to that point. Like a kind of recognition of the efforts he went through and the results it would’ve brought about if Riki had been his usual self and stopped at where Kyousuke indicated him.
Or at least that’s what fuels my personal curiosity and why I think it’s a shame that there’s no Refrain “bad end” in itself. It’d make the “It’s not enough” branch so much more emotional if you could see what a world without Kyousuke and the others was actually like…
Screw that noise. We need more Anime in our Visual Novels.
Far as I’m concerned it doesn’t invalidate jack, the internal logic of the story is that Riki can’t wake up until he is strong enough, he just redefined what ‘I’m strong enough’ actually means, even if you get to the end and screw up all the bus scenario decisions he’s still not out of the Dream World, the only possible situation he can have left it is if he himself is able to fulfill his own ‘wish’. Not to survive, but to save every single one of his friends without fail.
And besides, the characters still very much believe they’re going to die. I don’t think we should disregard that just because they will live in the end. Every moment we get to spend with them is their fighting with their last breaths to ensure they have no regrets. The important thing to me is appreciating what they do with the understanding that they have, not focusing on what will change in the future. That’s how I appreciate these characters.
Screw that noise. We need more Anime in our Visual Novels.
I totally agree with this.
While having a Bad End to Refrain would have been interesting, I think Little Busters is a story that tries to convey an optimistic message at its core: I don’t think a tragic ending would fit the themes explored on previous routes.
This is the objective truth and I’m definitely not saying this just because I would have cried myself to sleep if the canon ending was the bad one.
As much as I love having alternate endings or ambiguity as to which ending is the ‘real’ one (think Total Recall) I just don’t think Little Busters would benefit from it. This isn’t really a story designed to be endlessly debated over, but one to convey a strong message of friendship. The quote “Anime Bullshit” that goes on in the ending is very much justified as well.
I feel like there’s no real justification to say that choosing “It’s not enough” invalidates what the Little Busters have done up until this point. It was absolutely necessary for the whole process to happen in order for Riki and Rin to save everyone. Imagine the Riki and Rin from the first playthrough trying to save them. Even if you ignore Riki’s narcolepsy, it would never happen. Riki would panic, probably start hyperventilating and just try dragging the injured classmates out of the bus by hand. Assuming he’d be able to save anyone that way, he’d be making their injuries worse. Hell, that might even be the finishing blow for the more heavily injured. As for Rin, she’d just stiffen up like a stone and accomplish absolutely nothing. I can easily imagine them accomplishing nothing beyond getting themselves injured - or even killed - in the explosion.
I just went back and tried choosing all the stupid options, and Riki auto-corrects most of them. The biggest problem would have been Kyousuke’s rescue. Riki would have seen Kyousuke, thought of nothing but rescuing him, pulled him away from the engine and it would’ve been good-bye to the Little Busters.
Actually, the biggest problem comes even before that. Such a great amount of time passing in the dream world was necessary, since it took Kyousuke until - literally - the final iteration to cover the engine in the first place.
Kyousuke and the other Little Busters had been training Riki to be capable of rescuing everyone the whole time. Not to say that this was the goal, but they were trying to make him at least that “strong.” The only problem, as they knew, was Riki’s narcolepsy. Once this problem is solved, as we see, we get proof that everything they did paid off. I would argue that choosing “It’s enough” actually invalidates their efforts more.
I agree. It doesn’t invalidate their efforts at all. Kyousuke and the gang band together to help Riki and Rin grow so they can get over this tragedy, but what ends up happening is Riki (Rin as well, you could argue) instead uses their efforts to overcome another tragedy, the death of his parents. This allows them to avoid the bus crash from becoming a tragedy entirely. Kyousuke must have been dumbfounded.
What I like so much about the lesson Riki learns that allows him to overcome and deal with the tragedy of losing his parents is the exact same Kyousuke was teaching Rin.
The sadness of having to say goodbye to her cats at some point is better than not having met them at all. After all, Rin would be a lot less happy without all the cats around her. In other words, the encounter is much more important than the loss.
Gets asked why people have an interested in the It’s Enough ending, provide an answer I think pertains to the question, is suddenly faced with a mob of angry It’s Not Enoughers and their pitchforks…!
Actually, that reminds me of one point I wanted to bring up again:
I think you’re both right and wrong in this point, @Odinbeard_McSparkles. You’re right that everyone waits for Kyousuke; the Little Busters is incomplete without him, after all (or anyone else, for that matter). But they aren’t waiting for him to lead them. At this point, I can say that Little Busters doesn’t even have a leader anymore: everyone has their own quirks that they bring to the team, and lacking any one of them would make the team less interesting than it is. Sure, Riki attempted to step up in Refrain, and become the leader of the group of five, but when we put everybody into the group, he isn’t a leader either. He is the one that can gather everyone around (which kyousuke couldn’t do, mind you).
But we all have to admit: Riki is horrible at thinking of fun stuff to do. Shogi? Painting Pictures? Even after everyone is saved, his suggestions remain boring. And that is why they needed to wait for Kyousuke. Because Kyousuke’s role in the group isn’t to lead them either, it’s to think up crazy fun stuff to do, and make that a reality with his resourcefulness. And when he comes back he proves that yet again, with a rented van and a driver’s license, of all things.
So yeah, I like to think of the Little Busters as a “self organizing team”, each member bringing a different role, with no single leader, but with each role being just as important as the other.
After taking a long time to read all of the posts here, my first impressions of Refrain may already have left my memory in full detail, even though I refused to read on precisely so that other routes would not tamper with my impression of this.
I was very hyped when I saw the first screen being a crashed bus. So there really WAS an accident. But…are they dead? Probably…
Hm, okay but now we go into common…no, it’s different. Very different.
Yeah, Riki has developed a massive lot. We could see his progression slowly during the different common route cycles, but Rin2 seems to have made him step up even more than everything that happenes before. He really is extremely strong now.
Seeing Rin like this was…sad. Despite her not being a great character compared to others, I still really like her. This made me want to protect her even more, but it was also sad that it had to come to this. I really wanted to protect her. Probably a good emulation on how young Kyousuke felt.
Kengo went on to be very mysterious for a bit, he clearly knew more of what was going on, but he told nothing if it. That just added to my suspense. Then, when answers slowly started popping up in Episodes Masato and Kengo, the suspense still rose.
I was screaming a little bit when we went back to Rin2 during Episode Kengo, it finally confirmed a continuity that the route was only (heavily) hinting towards.
It got clear that they were not dead, but close to dying in Episode Kyousuke. He is such a great guy. Just think about all the nightmares he went through finally getting to the new starting point, and setting it as starting point was another big amount of pain.
Riki, forming the Little Busters again, and the swap, it was handled SO well. I loved it.
I was certain that the farewells in episode Little Busters were coming, so I though myself prepared for the emotions coming. But here again, all of them were handled perfectly. Masato is such a bro. Kyousuke’s crying face was so different of all of what we’ve seen from him, even though we knew he had that side, to see his well hidden weakness and strong emotions…well, that and Faraway broke me as well for a bit.
With all the other PoVs before and hearing and seeing Riki, I did not even realize for a while that Riki was voice acted during that episode and his own PoV as well for a bit.
Well, they’re dead. Credits? This can’t be it, can it? No, is not enough!
I honestly did not understand what happened until reading this thread. But that did not matter, as the field trip sequence hooked me anyways. I love how Kyousuke told you exactly what to do during his Episode. Why is the music in that scene not officially anywhere? It’s good.
The episode is so very happy and you can finally relax from the tension. I like what happens during the extra Rin epilogue even more. Everyone is fine, is about to handle their issues in their real lives, and have a big group of friends now. Kyousuke is a showoff as always.
I can see why one would prefer the other ending, but this is just the perfect ending I want. The other ending was just too sad. Both hold a lot of potential though.
Overall, while Refrain was really a great experience, it still disappointed me. That’s mostly because my expectations where just so much higher. I was basing my expectations of Rewrite’s final route plus all the hype that Refrain got from everyone who has read it. I know that hype is justified now, but it raised the bar so high.
It is still extreme great, and the more time passes after my initial disappointment, the more I can see the route for what it is rather than for what I expected it to be. And it’s starts shining. I also think it’s the best non-ex route in Little Busters!
And the ending was really awesome. Good alternative version of the Opening and great visuals!
(And now, I can finally actually dive into the Ex routes!)
Well, after a brief but enlightening discussion with @Pepe about this particular thread, I can’t condone the absence of the “It’s enough” legion, which I know that exists in Kazamatsuri.
I’ll start by addressing some ideas that just don’t work in my mind from other posts and then I’ll proceed to explain my view on the matter. However, my ultimate goal is for the people hiding out there to come out and defend the points that I’ll present and introduce more about why “It’s enough” is the superior option.
Please tell me where in all the routes and common Riki learns how to properly drag people out of a burning bus. Sure, without all of the events pre-refrain, Riki wouldn’t be able to do shit but he would’ve still tried because he loves the Little Busters. However, his probabilities of saving everyone remain almost unchanged, because he never received training in those situations. If anything, after all the pre-refrain events, he now has the ability to choose between it’s enough or it’s not enough. Because let’s face it, without his development, Riki would have rushed in there without thinking.
So all in all, Riki is doomed no matter what if he tries to save everyone. The fact that he manages to do so in Refrain is sheer luck (or retrying if you think of him as the reader), and by the same sheer luck, he might have managed to pull it off before the events. And I know the counter-argument to this is going to be the almighty narcolepsy, which I’ll save for later on.
Also, this part in particular:
The whole process is also absolutely necessary for the other choice, so what’s your point with that statement?
Yup, it would totally not fit Komari’s theme of accepting death as a part of life.
But what if “It’s enough” is also a story about friendship? Because I don’t see how choosing to follow Kyosuke’s instructions eliminates friendship as a theme or a message.
On the “It’s enough” ending
So let’s get back to what ignited these last posts.
Sure some people might think that, but in my eyes, the reason is more fundamental one. It’s not about recognizing the efforts. It’s about making the message of the VN consistent. Yes, Riki could’ve mindlessly done what Kyousuke told him to honor his and the rest of the busters’ deaths, but, there’s something that no one seems to realize. Riki, after learning all that he’s learned, might actually be able to choose “It’s enough” by himself without Kyousuke asking him to do so.
All the heroine routes have various messages but in their endings, they all share a common thing: accepting something undesired or simply accepting reality as is. Kurugaya reminds about the loop and how her pursuing her dream is selfish, Komari accepting her brother’s death, Kud accepting the catastrophe with her mother’s launch and how the fact that she failed in the past (when trying to become a cosmonaut) isn’t that big of a deal, Mio accepting Midori as some kind of double that doesn’t actually hate her, so that Mio doesn’t actually have to disappear herself…
So with all of this, Riki maybe would have taken a hint and decided that the wise choice is to accept the accident and not risk their own lives as well. Regarding @MagusVerborum’s concern about the message of friendship, it’s still there: their friendship was so strong as to accept each other’s desires of leaving things at where they are; their friendship made Kyousuke create a fucking parallel world to prepare Riki for the journey (because let’s face it, Rin makes some progress, but she kinda just tags along); their friendship allows them to wish for those days to never have ended. Their friendship is fucking everywhere regardless of the choice.
However, if you choose that it’s not enough, you essentially saying that you don’t want to accept death. Right, the message changes, and it becomes one of doing the impossible and where the power of friendship makes you save the day. I won’t argue about whether that’s good or bad in itself, but if you think of it including the rest of the route’s themes, you’re making the message of accepting the cruelty of life useless.
Komari, Riki (and I want to think that the reader as well) learn that accepting death is part of everyone’s life. What’s the point of this message if you ignore it when you have to best opportunity to put it in practice?
So to sum it up, my main issue is theme and message inconsistency. It’s building up, shaping and making characters grow to throw their progress out the window with an unbelievably lucky ending when the alternative is validating all of the themes exposed by the VN up to that point.
On Narcolepsy and its relation to both endings
The use of Narcolepsy throughout LB is sloppy at best. It is presented during the very first part of common, disregarded in pretty much all of the routes and then suddenly becomes the angular stone of the story in Refrain. There’s no buildup, no attention. It gets presented as something important at the beginning only to get to the end and be “Oh yeah, our main character had this condition, I don’t know, let’s make it a metaphor, a trauma or something that makes our character show his growth”.
After disregarding the issue of Narcolepsy for so much time, when we suddenly get it in the bus scene I can’t help but think “Oh for fuck’s sake what does this have to do with the problem at hand?” Then we see Riki getting over his trauma and stuff, so yeah, he overcame his trauma and, in turn, narcolepsy, but now what? How does that enable him to reliably save everyone? (This is mainly an addendum to the response to @machelmore).
Before I proceed, let’s make some different things clear:
Up to the infamous choice, Riki had the same development.
Riki making one choice or the other isn’t something to be regarded as significant development when it comes to overcoming Narcolepsy.
Riki losing the Little Busters is comparable to Riki losing his parents.
Many times I’ve seen that Riki overcoming narcolepsy is the pinnacle of his development, and I agree with that. But why have I never heard that Riki overcoming narcolepsy is guaranteed if he chooses “It’s enough”? According to the points above (and in fact, the second one isn’t even needed), Narcolepsy already has all that he needs and even more than with the other choice to overcome his trauma: He has exactly the same development and he has accepted the death of the Little Busters, something of the same caliber of his own parents’ death. There’s no way he can’t look at what happened to his parents and think “Hey, isn’t this exactly the same that happened with the Little Busters? Why am I still suppressing those memories with narcolepsy?”
Conclusion and final thoughts
I understand why many people love the “it’s not enough” ending. It presents a strong message and saves the characters that they love. As Magus said:
But come on guys, don’t tell me that the “It’s enough” ending can’t be good too? I’m not telling you that it should appear to be better than “it’s not enough” on your eyes, but at least try to understand how the other ending is a completely valid alternative to your favorite one.
And to the ones that I know that like the “It’s enough” ending the most and haven’t said anything so far: SPEAK UP. Sure, this discussion has been had many times in the recent years and it’s always ended with it being just a matter of subjective tastes, but isn’t that the beauty of it? Both endings can be both argued for and against and still be valid. Don’t let the bookclub end with just my post defending the inherent beauty of Riki’s development in this ending.
I think the difference with my viewpoint from yours is that you see of a message of “acceptance” throughout the VN, whereas I only really thought the message was there in Komari’s route. While I understand how you’re getting a somewhat similar message from some other routes, I don’t think it’s relevant and similar in the way of accepting the deaths of your friends and the deaths of the other Little Busters. For me it’s a bit of a stretch to interpret the routes like that, and I just don’t really see it. Which is the main reason I can’t agree that there’s inconsistency from the way you describe it, because I don’t think acceptance is the main message of the VN as a whole. I’ve had enough of that message from a certain previous VN, anyway.
See, I don’t think this is quite the case. I think the “it’s not enough” ending is the fruit of Riki growing stronger throughout the routes. I think it is because of him growing strong he is able to stay calm and collected, which allows him to save erveryone. I imagine that pre-refrain he would’ve panicked too much, and it’s why even having the choice as the player to pick the option to “calm down” is so significant. Riki has always shown to be quite clever and intelligent as long as he’s focused. So I would very much argue against it being mere luck, because all I see is Riki using his wits.
I won’t argue the narcolepsy part too much, you make some valid points but I didn’t have any problems with it personally. Obviously overcoming his narcolepsy is very relevant for saving everyone considering the things I explained in the paragraph above.
I can’t speak for the others but I never once thought the other ending can’t be good. I just don’t like it. So you can have your “superior” ending where all my favourite characters are dead and be happy about it for all I care, but I’m glad I have another option.
Mind not being so aggressive? Let’s not forget he’s speaking up in favour of a specific subset of people, and if people were more open to the possibility of both endings without falling to a mob mindset of “happier is better no matter what”, he wouldn’t have to intervene here.
The problem in this thread is that there’s no acknowledgement that It’s Enough has integrity within the story and just because It’s Not Enough is the “true route” doesn’t mean it should be backlashed against so badly when the precise point of that message is to see how fruitful Kyousuke and the others’ efforts were.
I didn’t meant it to be that aggressive, but I probably worded it very badly. While it’s already been quoted so there’s no point in editing my post at this point, I just meant to stress the point that I’m happy there’s an option for both sides. I don’t think happier is always better, but in this case specifically I liked it a lot more.
Looking at it again I did get too passionate there. Sorry about that!
Though I disagree with a lot of your points, I agree that it’d be good to see more “it’s enough”-ers around so we can have a broader discussion. I - and everyone else, I’m sure - didn’t join the discussion just to agree with each other on everything, disregard dissenting opinions, and call it a day. When I said that I feel like there’s no real justification on it, I was just getting my own opinion out there, not trying to tell anyone that they’re wrong.
With that said, I’ll get around to addressing why it is that I disagree with your points.
This is where I disagree. Throughout the events of the dream world Riki grew more capable of handling pressure and thinking things through. The problem is exactly what you said at the end.
He would’ve just run straight in there, moved Kyousuke away from the engine without thinking it through, and been blown to smithereens. He’s capable of calming himself down and thinking it through first because of how much he has grown in the dream world.
We see in Refrain a few times how Riki has grown craftier, demonstrated in the two traps he uses against Masato and Kengo respectively. Before the dream world, it never would’ve occurred to Riki to make a makeshift stretcher.
I don’t think the fact that he didn’t receive specific training for the situation while he was in the dream world means that he was no better off afterwards. The premise that he wouldn’t have been able to save pretty much anyone before the dream world, but is able to afterwards thanks to how much “stronger” he had grown - specifically due to the efforts of the Little Busters members - is why I think that choosing “It’s not enough” validates their efforts even more.
I agree that had the dream world situation not happened, it wouldn’t have been a choice, Riki would’ve run in and gotten himself killed. But here’s how I see it. A “weak” person wouldn’t be able to accept the situation and would try and fail to fix things at all costs. A “strong” person would be able to accept the situation and we’d get the “It’s enough” ending. An “even stronger” person however - someone on at least Kyousuke’s level I’d say - doesn’t have to settle for that, because they can do something about it. It’s made pretty clear that Riki surpassed Kyousuke’s expectations of his growth, and here’s where we see that.
Is Riki’s narcolepsy not caused - and triggered - by the fear of losing people? Just to name an example of when this is demonstrated, there’s Mio’s route. I’d say if it he doesn’t have a narcolepsy attack when confronted with the reality of all his closest friends’ inevitable deaths, then he wouldn’t have narcolepsy at all.
Because in the “It’s not enough” ending it’s not overcome by naturalistic means. The strength of Riki and Rin’s wish to save everyone enables them to create another dream world, wherein he overcomes it. I’m doubtful of the idea that he can just go “I don’t need it anymore” and then it’s just gone.
I’m in a weird state of half-agreement with you on this point. I agree outright with what you’ve said, but I also find that it’s not like any of the routes actively discourage striving for something more either.
I can see the “It’s enough” ending as good, but… part of it is just that it’s so sudden I guess. If you choose It’s enough, the game basically ends immediately. It feels incomplete to me at least. Maybe they should’ve built on it a little more.
I still don’t see how calming yourself down is a necessary and suficient condition for him saving everyone. That’s all that his progress allows him to do, because:
In a VN that is centered around solving psychological problems 99% of the time with the battle ranking and baseball being a completely optional minigame that doesn’t affect the story a single bit, I’d think of Riki growing his physical abilities as bullshit (not that it isn’t feasible). What I mean is that it’s something that has nothing to do with what the VN has centered around and wants to tell you, because I bet no one here got the idea that this VN’s message is “Train your crafts to become Macgyver”.
Completely subjective. For me going in is the action of a weak person, who can’t accept reality and is just childish, while saving your own life knowing that your friends are fine with that and lived a happy life and have no regrets requires a lot more emotional strength. Yet again, this is one of the reasons why this discussion is bound to not have an end.
What I mean with that is that the narcolepsy is so little touched upon in other routes that when we see it in that scene it feels like an undeveloped plot device that gets all of the development in the last minutes of the VN. Others might simply call this a waste of potential with an amazingly interesting condition for a main character
It’s not that he tells himself that he doesn’t need it: his narcolepsy comes from a trauma. He has overcome the trauma, ergo he, in turn, has overcome narcolepsy
Here’s a matter of what you pick as the most important message of the VN up to that choice. For me, it was what I explained. This is what’s nice about VNs, Novels, LNs and pretty much every media out there: you can choose what the message is, or rather than choose, there’s always going to be something in the media that will leave a deeper mark than the rest. Keep this in mind as I’ll come to it shortly.
YES. See, the problem here is that if you get from the whole VN the idea that the main message is to accept things as they are, picking “It’s not enough” is denying your own view of the VN. Don’t worry, it’s cool, we all know that every reader can consider as true the route that they want and so on and so forth, but, if we’re talking about what the VN wants to tell us and not about what the VN actually tells us, it’s pretty clear that the meaning of the VN lies within the “It’s not enough” choice.
Why’s that? Well, as you said, it’s a very sudden ending, as if the developers didn’t want you to stop there. There’s no ending theme (ofc Little Busters doesn’t fit in there, but come on, Song for Friends boys), there are no credits, no well developed epilogue.
When you choose “It’s enough”, all you get is “This is what happens, now go pick the other choice”. The VN is telling you that it doesn’t care about what you learned yourself and is essentially telling you that it’s cool, but you should probably rethink the message of the VN and go back to the other choice. Well, fuck that I’ve read through this and I’ve drawn the message that I want to draw. Can I at least get a half-developed ending, an ending theme or something that tells me that my choice also makes sense according to what I have personally read?
So yeah, if we’re talking about what the VN tells you the answers are plenty and all of them valid, but if we talk about what the VN wants to tell us… There’s only one answer and the ones that think otherwise are wrong.
there’d be nowhere to run.
