So some spoiler chat was going on in the discord #LBspoilers channel and we were discussing how Rin didnāt had as much experience or exposure to the hardships in the routes as Riki did.
The way i see it Riki and Rinās character developments are completely different. Riki is supposed to become someone who can support a person in their dire time (Rin) rather then only himself, While Rinās supposed to become more social able and be more confident about interacting to other people.
Their trials for this were also different. For Riki, he helped komari see the sadness in the world, he supported her when she was trapped in that nightmare state and helped her get out of it. Same with haruka where he stood beside her providing comfort when she was dealing with the familys and Kanata and with kud he pushed her towards the choice so that she doesnāt regret leaving her mother.
Rinās personality was dealt by komari and other busters. Komari first came and eased her fear of strangers by becoming her first friend outside of little busters. With her Rin came out of her shy shell enough to interact with other new busters, she became more confident with interacting with other people and we see that in progressive routes.
I think Kyousuke ment Riki to become stronger because he wanted him to support Rin when she (possibly) overcomes with despair from everyoneās death. He focused on Riki because he knew he can become the one who Rin can rely on from now on. It was necessary for Riki to face all those tragedies so that he can be that person.
Basically Iām saying that kyousuke put more faith in Riki and let him face the brunt of bat because Riki could handle it. While Rin couldnāt do that, i think overcoming her fear of people and becoming a Self-reliant person at the same time was too much for her. Maybe kyousuke thought that too so he focused that aspect on riki and only concentrated on making Rin more confident (that he also failed in because he rushed).
Another thing is that, the Rin2 baseball match in many ways reflects the bus crash. At first Riki is freaking out and losing his cool, heart thumping, and then Kengo calms him down and he pitches a perfect ball - until Kyousuke intervenes. Thereās been lots of little things showing his growth in preparation for the rescue. And in the rescue, he has finally learned to calm himself down. Also same music cementing that connection in Rikiās experience!
(I have not finished reading the topic yet so I apologise if this has already been said)
The Refrain arc, I believe, is the best part of the VN. Its so emotional (I was crying buckets).
By the end, I was so proud of Riki and Rin and how much they had grown. I mean, Rin was terrible with people, and Riki would always rely on everyone, especially Kyousuke.
That sorta character growth is why I read VNās 
Maybe the inclusion of the narcolepsy is a bit wishy washy, but it was always there. Iām pretty sure Riki has an attack in every single girlās route at some point (or in common before their route?). I think an interesting point to refer to is the bonus content in Kudās route. Kud makes a mention of how Riki often looks like heās having nightmares when he has a narcolepsy attack, and turns it into a talk about how she wishes she could help him overcome the tragedy that awaits him. The nightmare is mentioned at the very start of the game too, right after the OP plays. The nacrolepsy always brings him back to the scene of the accident. Could it have been handled better? Yes, but donāt ignore what they did do.
Another thing is, I see a lot of people calling out Refrain as going against the message of Komariās route. But in my mind, Komariās route is the perfect setup for Refrain. The ending is all about ārewriting a sad endingā, because not all endings have to be tragedies. Riki turns the little match girl into a story where, instead of the girl dying, she lives on and grows old. And at the very very end, Komari adds the note of āand then she passed awayā. Loss is something inevitable, it will come to us all eventually. Komariās message remains true. But that doesnāt mean we need to end this story on a tragedy.
But yeah, having finally caught up in the thread, Iāll say it again. Refrain is goddamn beautiful, and stands up to the test of time. I canāt wait to get deep into gushing about it proper on the podcast.
Itās actually used for something in the Yuiko route at least, though even that is minor.
I think Narcolepsy was the perfect affliction for Maeda to work with (an emotional hurdle to overcome, plus an easy integration into Maedaās signature focus on an inner world) but the rest of the writers found little use for it within the Little Busters! narrative. If the same Narcolepsy thing was thrown into CLANNAD or AIR, I think itād get more use.
Yiss finally got to finish Refrain. That was a ride. Iād say Little Busters! in general hasnāt really aged well for me (which Iām largely attributing to my own huge change in personal views from back when I first read this), but itās still a good story nonetheless. Iād still say this is the best VN from Maeda that I have so far read, and I think it has a lot to do with him being finally able to effectively use a plot device he likes using: the escapist fantasy-sort of ending everyone calls āKey Magic.ā
Needless to say, Iām also riding the āItās not enoughā train, wheeeeeee.
One reason is that Maeda was able to use Key Magic in LB! as means to bring the themes of the story to a full circle, rather than a mere need for his characters to have a āhappyā ending. I think this has already been explained here before, so Iām no longer expanding here. Though a bigger reason why I prefer the Itās not enough ending is because of the role Rin played here.
I really like how Rin gaining strength by her own accord became the key for everyone to achieve the happiest ending possible. Kyousuke and co. was unable to believe in that ending on one part due to guilt and on another part because they could no longer believe that Rin could get any stronger. We canāt blame them for believing that; their attempts at making her a stronger person failed horribly.
But one thing they missed out was that Rin is the kind of person who finds strength through the power of nakama people she cares about. Itās indirectly portrayed in how she gains more hissatsu pitching techniques (blame Ina11 for this haha) when someone hurts her cats. I canāt really think of a more concrete example from routes other than Refrain beyond that one quote by Rin in her route, but itās nice to see that trait of her surface in the happy ending.
I also really like how she gains that strength by her own accord. Sure, Riki did help her properly cope from her emotional trauma at first, but her biggest and most vital character development happened because she willed it, because she wanted to protect her nakama girl friends that she has encountered through her emotional journey. While I would have love to see more of how she developed friendship with other heroines, Iād personally chalk it up to the limitations of the medium and the game being too squarely targeted to male audience, but I do think it was foreshadowed well. Regardless, Rinās character arc in Refrain, and her dynamic with Komari, is still really great stuff. 
My score? Somewhere between 4.25-4.5, I guess.
((PS: I should have chosen Ravelās Bolero as Rinās classical piece, but haah she still named one of her cats āMendelssohnāā¦ unless Riki can count as a heroine? I mean I like how Bolero just gradually gets, hehe, stronger. 
Unless we think that Kyousuke is the true heroine, which I wholeheartedly agree, in which case I give him Dvorakās New World Symphony because, hehehehe New World. Also Kyousuke reads shounen manga and the piece was used in a shounen anime before (One Piece spoilers beware)ā¦ eh, obviously Iām just joking around with this gimmick. :'D ))
Oh looky-looky~ i call myself little busters fan and i havenāt posted my thoughts of it till now. Letās rectify this mistake.
Prologue
I open the screen and see a creepy image, yeah itās disturbing. Then riki wakes up and everything starts off normallyā¦ for a few minutes until Kyousukeās absence causes a great misfit. Things start to pick up now, the little busters have lost their leader and they break up one by one until only riki and rin remain. The mission begins now.
Masato
Masato the goddamm best friend you can ever have. This muscle idiot is the most sensible of our cast. Masato wanted one basic thing that all humans wantā¦ āfriendsā he wanted a place where he could have fun without worrying about stupid things which he found with little busters.
To be honest itās very difficult to find any fault in his character, he did everything that his role required. Getting himself on line so his friend can survive, keep being an idiot so they enjoy the last time they have with him. My favorite character from the Cast. 
Kengo
Kengo is a like a child. A stubborn child who wants to save everything precious to him. He took his time with busters in the real world for granted so now he regrets it. He wants to forever be with his friends, keep having fun. What he learns is very similar to Riki, āletting go of thingsā.
He finally accepts his fate (which i donāt fucking approve itās not enough man) and sees his friend off with a smile and a loving last memory.
Kyousuke
This man!. Heās great, awasome, faithful, brave,ā¦ The list goes on. Heās introduced to us in the beginning as some sort of superhuman, an ace. But how they portray his failure, is one of the few times i considered a character as though real human. The writing of his despair state, his faith in riki, the will to save his friends is absolutely incredible.
Rin
Yeah Rin though is a big character sheās ultimately overshadowed by the guys big time. Sheās only there for the most part of refrain and there isnāt anything too special about it. Her dream is a part that rectifies it somewhat but i find it very short.
Riki
Riki means āstrengthā and yeah like his name this character displays strength throughout the story. Both mental and physical. His will is incredible, he goes to any length when a friend is in trouble or if the situation calls for it. This is the best trait a character can have. His friends are everything to him and heāll do anything for them. Getting stronger plays a very important part in his development. Itās something we can all relate to as we all get stronger through various obstacles in our lives. For those people who think Riki is a boring normal protagonist, most people in real life are like that āpeople who live daily repetitive boring lives and enjoy little things with their friendsā.
And itās because of this normalness, the miracle he pulls off is much more meaningful. Even a normal person can do amazing things.
Epilogue
Iām not gonna go deep into this. Iād say itās not enough is my go to choice cause like Riki i would like to live with my friends rather than alone.
Though there is one thing. On the second playthrough of refrain you have the choice of selecting weather you want to say yes to Rinās proposal or not. We get few romance scenes between riki and rin with that option. But preferably i like the no option, the romance is good and all but it feels out of place after refrain, it feels childish and doesnāt give sense that the characters grew up.
This is a really fundamental question, and exactly because of that Iām not sure thereās an answer to it, but thereās no reason not to try and find one:
How much of what happens is Kyousuke, and how much isnāt?
If you ask me, the latter half of the question is likely to be much easier to answer āHow much of what happens isnāt Kyousuke?ā, because I tend to think that the vast majority of what happens is at least guided if not directly controlled by him. I know there are people who reject the idea that Kyousuke basically has omnipotence within the dream world, but, well, thatās why Iām asking.
I bring this up because of a conversation I recently remembered that I had with @cjlim2007 and @HeliosAlpha after the Komari podcast. We tossed around the idea that Kyousuke had set everything up on the day where Riki and Komari go out together and find that dead cat in the rain.
Not only is Kyousuke the one who suggested that they go out together
but we know from Refrain that he can actively control the weather. Itās not impossible that he set it up all the way from making it rain in order to cancel baseball practice that day.
In particular, itād be interesting to find out exactly how much he knows about whatās going on in Mioās and Kurugayaās routes. He acts like he knows nothing, but I personally have a hard time believing that.
By the same logic, we could say that Masato is the one setting up everything, because more often than not, Masato is indirectly giving Riki subtle hints on how to get onto a route or showing up with perfect timing. I remember Masato predicting a rain at least once whle the weather was still clear, for example.
But I think thatās not because Kyousuke and Masato make things to happen a certain way, but because theyāve seen it happen several times before. Events repeat until a route is resolved, but Rikiās reaction to them is not a fixed one. So itās not strange for them to guide him a little bit, like showing him the way to a milestone he had reached before.
Man that route was something special. All the guys had excellent screen time like the fight with Masato, Kengoās determination to protect Riki and Rin, and the seemingly perfect Kyousuke falling to depression due to his own personal failure and then recover. Before I said that Rin transferring schools in her route didnāt seem like such an enormous issue so Iām glad that I was proven wrong as to why that was. I was pretty shocked during the CG where Riki extends his hand to Kyousuke since I realized then the guys most likely died, and even more so when I learned that also included the heroines besides Rin too. As appealing as the idea of an ending where Riki becomes a hardcore badass after the gaining the strength to move on from his friends dying is. Iām the kind of player who will always choose the endings in games to save as many characters as possible like in Mass Effect/Devil Survivor so Iām extremely content at this ending where Riki and Rin manage to save everyone through their own power. My one complaint is how if you choose to make Rin your girlfriend in the second play through it doesnāt wrap it up too well during the epilogue since it will abruptly move back to the scene where Kengo returns from the hospital. But aside from that it was a really phenomenal route and will definitely need to watch the anime version later.
Alright, Iām back to pick up on some unfinished business I have here, because Iām petty like that.
I just canāt quite let this go. Rikiās narcolepsy is a medical issue. Trauma - yes, even emotional and mental - has a profound effect on the anatomy and physiology of the brain. There are neurological pathways that never would have opened up in the developmental stages when they were supposed to in Rikiās case, as well as various other effects to the brain Iām not qualified to speak on because Iām not a neurologist. But my point was, even if Riki overcame his trauma on an emotional level, that doesnāt mean his brain will just magically fix itself. At best, he might lose his narcolepsy over time as his brain normalises itself, but as I mentioned before, there are neurological pathways that never opened up when they were supposed to and such, so I think hoping for even that much is somewhat optimistic. I would be more optimistic if he had overcome it a lot sooner - when he was younger - because the brain loses elasticity as you grow older, and because heād have made it in time for some of those pathways I mentioned, but at his age Iām a lot more doubtful that heād recover quite so easily. Again, Iām not a neurologist, so I canāt say for sure what would happen, but the odds seem stacked against him.
I mean, we could, except that Masato clearly canāt control things to the extent that Kyousuke can, and that we already know that he chose to stay out of it. Thereās definitely a part to the boysā behaviour and interactions with Riki that come from having seen it all before, but that doesnāt really deny that Kyousuke set things up either. We know heās a mastermind behind certain things, so I donāt think itās strange to question if he was behind anything else. Heās making a directed effort to mature Riki and Rin, so I find it hard to believe that after the point where Riki enters the heroine routes, Kyousuke just doesnāt do anything.
Edit:
Iām not sure how this would translate medically/practically, and so I canāt say whether or not this would feasibly work. Iād still say that at the very least it would take time, because his brain needs to physically change. But aside from that, that would only cover the attacks where something actually triggered his narcolepsy. The ārandomā attacks - which we see at several different points - wouldnāt be affected by this.
I presumed the narcolepsy acted as a mental protector for Riki, to shield him from reflecting upon his traumatic experience. Once he got over it there was nothing left to trigger the protection.
Basically the narcolepsy isnāt gone, but the mechanism that induced the narcolepsy is gone.
In universe, Rikiās narcolepsy is obviously caused and healed by suffering a trauma and getting over it, but since you seem eager to bring in medical terms, Iāll argue on those as well.
Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder, true, but that doesnāt mean that itās related to brain tissue or neuronal pathway alteration. Narcolepsy is an autoinmune disorder, which basically means that the bodyās own inmune system detects the host as an unknown hostile entity (as if it was a foreign bacteria, virusā¦) and tries to eliminate it. Of course, autoinmune diseases donāt make the immune system target the whole body, but rather a part of it, in this case, the disease targets a group of neuronal pathways that dictate the changes between REM and no-REM sleep so that no-REM sleep is a lot rarer in narcolepsy-affected people.
The causes of narcolepsy arenāt 100% clear, but thereās a clear genetic and hereditary factor, and some other factors that include immune system diseases, stress, trauma and hormone-related diseases or sudden changes in their levels.
And as for cures, the bit that you were addressing in your postā¦ There are none that are known of, and the disease has never magically disappeared, so if we were taking things seriously, Riki shouldnāt have ever been cured of its narcolepsy. The only methods available are controlling the sudden sleep stages with constant medication (something that Riki doesnāt use).
So what do we get from all of this? Donāt try to analyse things realistically when Maeda isnāt a Doctor or researcher and even shows like House M.D. and such are unrealistic when treating with diseases. Stick to what the universe offers you or nothing will end up making sense.
By the way, in case you were asking yourself about the source, I took it all from the NINDS.
You seem to be missing my pointā¦ Regardless of the specifics of the disorder, youāre right, we have to look at things within the context of the universe. You said yourself
so if it were to magically disappear, it would need to be done within the known āmagicā the LB! universe presents us with. In your original post you argued that heād get over his narcolepsy even in the āItās enoughā ending just because he got over his trauma, which we now both agree canāt really happen. The magic of the LB! universe shows us the mechanics of the dream world, but thereās no āmagicā outside of that to magically cure his narcolepsy in the āItās enoughā ending, where he doesnāt do so within the dream world. So youāve basically just agreed with me and presented it as a refutation.
First of all, no, we donāt agree.
This references the real world disease, not what can or canāt happen in Little Busters.
You keep thinking that LBās narcolepsy works like real world narcolepsy, when, if it did:
LBās narcolepsy just doesnāt work like the real world. It is clear that, Riki got cured of narcolepsy in the itās not enough choice, and at that point heās outside any imaginary LB world. At that point Riki is in LBās reality, and I donāt care how he got cured this point anymore, the point is that he got cured. Thatās enough evidence to say that the disease in LB doesnāt work the same way that it works in the real world, because in the real world, it canāt be cured.
And so because of this, trying to argue with real world medical terms is nonsensical.
Iām arguing under the premise that the only difference between the real world and the LB! universe world is the existence of the dream world in the LB! universe. I thought that was a given. If youāre not arguing under that premise, then no, we donāt agree. But we donāt even really disagree either. Weāre not even arguing about the same thing. Your position makes a lot more sense to me now. I disagree with the core premise, but thatās whatever.
Well, Iād like to see how this core premise that you talk about explains Riki getting cured in the one scenario that we see him get over his narcolepsy, from a medical standpoint. Remember that LBās dream world has no physical influence over LBās reality.
And even if that could be explained, what sense does it make for Riki to get medically cured by means of medicine, brain reparation or similar stuff, when getting over a trauma and what Takafumi said makes way more sense from a literary viewpoint? Weāre trying to understand and see the possibilities of what the VN wants to tell us or have us learn, while youāre digging deeper than necessary to explain a meaningless physical reality that adds no value to the VNs message itself. Otherwise, please explain where you want to get at.
This seems like a weird thing for you to say. You were the one that presented a hypothetical and claimed what would have happened in a scenario we werenāt shown, and then you say to me
Meanwhile my position is corroborated by the VN itself.
My point is that it doesnāt need to be explained medically if the magic of the VN is the cure. But in your proposed hypothetical, the use of the magic we see in the VN is discounted, so it would need to be explained medically. And as for your latter paragraph writing it that way, while it might make more sense from a literary viewpoint, it would be medically unsound, which seems like bad writing to me. In the āItās not enoughā ending, itās explained how the magic in their universe was used to cure Rikiās narcolepsy. If his narcolepsy was also cured in the āItās enoughā ending, they would need to explain it.
Concerning narcolepsy, I agree with @Mogaoscar. I doubt that the authors of Key have made any detailed investigations concerning the medical background of the disorders they are using. Heck, they are definitely taking trauma too lightly in LB. The characters are cured too easily, too quickly. But thatās how things work in the Little Busters universe. Their aim has never been to provide a detailed and scientifically accurate insight for trauma and the problems that come with it.
My take on narcolepsy is the following: Itās 100% self-induced. When Riki had decided to not to be born in order to never lose anyone precious again, this is how his subconsciousness had manifested it. Every time he is about to lose someone, he faints. Itās a self-defence mechanism to knock him out before the shock of ālossā hits him with its full brunt. He temporarily disconnects himself from the world.
What I mean is: Itās all in his head. His organs, tissue, blood flow, etc. had not been actually been tampered with. The brain controlls it all. Therefore, the moment he made the decision to face his fears and to ābe bornā, the now obsolete mechanism got removed.
The thing is, just because Kyousuke has made some things happen doesnāt mean he made everything happen.
Iām so sure of this due to what I think how the dream world works. Attributing everything to Kyousuke means denying some of the properties of the dream world.
Based on what Midori said in one of its ends, itās a world that fulfills wishes. The wishes of those that create it. Itās a function with a direct connection to its properties. The girls all had regrets they wanted to deal with before dying. That enabled them to create the world in the first place, along with the LB boys. Therefore, it makes things happen so that those regrets can be resolved. Therefore, events that are directly connected to the heroineās regretsā¦ happen. Events that contain information Kyousuke couldnāt possibly have known unless he had somehow read through all the heroineās memories. Stuff like what happened to the heroines, how the people and places involved looked like, etc.
I have probably explained that in detail somewhere on this forum, so I hope this suffices for now.
