Little Busters! - Refrain Arc Discussion

Key Discussion
#142

You’ve misunderstood.

They aren’t. Everyone’s dying wish revolves around their regret. Kyousuke however is the one who sets this goal, and he is the leader, so it makes sense to say that the leader’s objective is the main one.
He can’t do it without the other characters fueling the world with their regrets, but those characters can’t clear their regrets without Kyousuke leading them. So at the start, it’s basically the heroines working for their own benefit.

As the routes progress, they begin to share Kyousuke’s wish, and it starts to take utmost priority.

#143

Oh OK, indeed I did misunderstood. We were actually agreeing. Perfect :+1:

#144

I always had this idea that even if the other girls didn’t chime in without their regrets, Kyousuke would still be able to sustain that world. He just realized while making it that he could get Riki to help solve their regrets and that would make Riki stronger. Thus a win-win situation which he allowed to happen.

#145

I disagree. The world is done by regrets. It wasn’t created only by Kyousuke, but each of the girls contributed with their regrets/wishes to create the world.

#146

From what I remember Kyousuke was able to maintain the world but it was created by the regrets of Kyousuke, Kengo and Masoto since they won’t be able to protect Rin and Riki. Kyousuke wanted help to make Riki and RIn stronger so he borrowed help from those who had regrets and gave them a second chance with their regrets.

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#147

If that’s the case, then the world should have disappeared after the girls’ regrets were fulfilled

#148

The world became weaker as the heroine routes were completed.
It was falling apart after the final baseball game.
It ended after Riki and Rin looked at their past… If it ended at all.

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#149

you also have kengo and masata’s regrets too. The world ends after completing their regrets with kyousuke’s limited amount of time. I have forgotten how he made check points in reality but i’m preety sure his physical body in the real world affected how long he can manipulate the world.

#150

My own theory as to why it was getting weaker was because, after Rin2, Kyousuke started losing his hope of his regret being fulfilled. Just a theory, of course~

#151

I think we have different interpretations of Kyousuke~
Post-Rin 2 Kyousuke was a tired guy, who didn’t have much time to spare. The time he did spare was spent emulating Riki from the past, so that the current Riki would step up and take on the leadership role.

#152

I also had that impression, that Kyousuke wasn’t really despairing or anything but rather a combination tired from jumping worlds and imitating past Riki. I think it’s implied during Episode Kyousuke.

#153

I don’t remember the VN enough to say, but it’s heavily implied in the anime.

#154

I totally did not get him acting all dejected on purpose to get Riki to step up. I thought he was genuinely dejected and hopeless!

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#155

I’m kinda conflicted on this whole thing about Kyousuke. Because while what Taka and Karifean say makes sense, while I was reading I thought what Pepe was thinking.

So we can agree he’s tired, yes? Tired from supporting the world with increasing less help from the girls as they’re regrets disappear. And tired from traveling back and forth between the two worlds, experiencing the pain of being almost dead over and over again.

So is he actually dejected and hopeless? Well, he certainly has reason to be. His plan failed. Instead of becoming stronger, Riki and Rin fell into darkness, and Rin was now stuck there. Kengo doesnt trust him, Masato is acting as he always promised to act, Rin’s mental state is shot, and Riki (at first) still can’t remember any of it. The Little Busters are dead. The most prominent evidence of the whole thing NOT being his plan is his comment that “He’d never seen the gears of this world so messed up before.”

But I’d say dejected, yes. Hopeless, no. Because he continues to try to fix everything, by himself yet again. As already mentioned, he kept going back to “the World Where Something Happened,” trying to fix, to change the circumstances, to contribute to Riki and Rin’s survival. But in the Fake World too. He causes Masato to go crazy. He tries to rebuild the Little Busters.

The only thing I’m not sure of is whether he was purposefully trying to imitate the past Riki, and turn Riki into the past himself; or if that was the ironic effect of Riki becoming stronger, while he continued to be alone, stuck in the darkness.

#156

I think Kyousuke was in that state because of both reasons. Yes, he was tired. In the Real World, he was seriously injured and had to try to stop the pouring gas a lot of times. And yes, he was dejected because he wasn’t seeing any improvements on Riki and Rin, and to make things worse, Kengo was rubbing it in his face that his plan was a complete failure.

#157

I quickly went through to see what exactly Kyousuke had a part in.
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The idea was that Kyousuke would get to the bus and stall for as long as possible, so that Riki had time to reform the Little Busters.

Something else that no one has mentioned. The ending of the VN was predicted by Kyousuke’s imagination. Was it all his dream? Not long after this, Kyousuke in the real world gets a shard of glass to bring his own “death.” Apparently the world begins again from here, just as Riki comes to get him.

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While I was looking through, I quickly got a screenshot of this.

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If we go by this, then all of the characters apart from Riki, (maybe including Rin, though she was forgotten in this part of the VN) are aware of the mechanics of the fake world in one way or another.

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#158

This actually reminds me of one of @Bizkitdoh’s Angel Beats theories…

But that last line, “If they actually did that, everything would be without meaning.” is the most interesting of all the ones you quoted. We see what happens when Riki does indeed do those things; obviously Kyousuke wasn’t expecting Riki’s “It was not enough.” Kyousuke thinks Riki’s and Rin’s only chance of survival is if they run immediately. Which is curious, because the scene he imagines demonstrates Riki’s strength and growth much more than Riki’s having the strength to run away.

[quote=“Takafumi, post:157, topic:203”]
If we go by this, then all of the characters apart from Riki, (maybe including Rin, though she was forgotten in this part of the VN) are aware of the mechanics of the fake world in one way or another.
[/quote] That would be during Rin2 in the timeline, right? So at this point all the girls would have know about the secret of the world if you go by our theory of them all knowing by the end of their route.

It’s also possible that Kengo is just referring to the four people who are present when he’s thinking that: himself, Kyousuke, Masato, and Riki. Of whom Riki most certainly is the only one who doesnt know.

#159

These are the lines that made me think Kyousuke was not dejected at all:

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Timeline-wise this monologue happens just after the world starts anew at the beginning of Refrain. This really makes me believe that Kyousuke wasted no time being dejected, and rather just immediatly continued his plan, disregarding whatever the others might think of him. He does have inner conflicts about the fruitlessness of his plans while crawling in the other world, but he still goes on because his faith in his plans still far outweighs his doubts.

Btw, Kyousuke even says “Never make it so, Riki” when he imagines Riki and Rin saving everyone because if they did that all of his sins would have been for naught. Don’t worry Kyousuke, your sins are vital to even making that possible in the first place.

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#160

Well, I can’t really refute solid proof like that, now can I ^_^; I seem to have not noticed those things while playing (and they sure weren’t brought up in the anime either). I stand corrected, then!

#161

Actually, Lennon is literally a part of Kyousuke. Like an extension of his consciousness. I can’t go get screenshots right now (I’m sure someone else can, I believe its in Rin2), but he explains it when he’s asking Riki about whether or not he’s figured out the “secret of the world” yet.

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