There’s one thing that has bothered me for the entirety of Rin2 all the way up to playing Refrain. As we all know, Kyousuke wanted Rin to grow. That’s why he sent her off on that mission to the sister school. Unfortunately, his means were a tid bit too extreme, and we all know that that did not end up well. At all.
But that begs the question: What does Rin actually need to grow?
Kyousuke thought he knew what she needed, but he was wrong. And, seeing Rin how she is, it’s a very difficult question to answer. How can you get a girl like that, childlike mind as she is, totally antisocial, to grow into a person who can stand on her own two feet? I’ve thought about this for a while and I’ve realized, Rin has a whole bundle of problems, all of which need to be solved:
- She needs to open herself up to people, and not isolate herself in fear of being changed by others
- She needs to face the sad things in this world head-on, and not sweep them under the rug
- She needs to learn what it means to feel, and what it means to love
- She needs to learn that there are truly no evil ones in this world
- She needs to build her own self-confidence, and find what makes her useful in this world
But, most importantly:
- She needs to make more friends
Does all this sound familiar to you? Well, allow me to explain my Eureka moment from Episode: Rin
(everything following this will be spoilers to the Refrain route; I was tempted to put it in that topic, but this is all about Rin, and in Rin’s topic it shall stay)
All throughout Refrain, we see Rin being as childlike as ever. She pays no attention to the problems that Riki is facing, and she just wants to have fun. Even as the boys are parting, she is completely oblivious to the situation, and just keeps pitching the ball as Riki instructs. One could blame this all to her regression after Rin2 but, really, hasn’t Rin always been this way? Hasn’t she always been completely oblivious, not facing the problems, and just finding the fun things in life?
She has. And that’s why she could never grow. Even after Kyousuke sends her off to the sister school. she refuses to see her purpose there, and shuts off from the entire world. And her growth remains stagnant…
Until we get to Episode: Rin. What I believe Episode: Rin implies to us is one simple thing: Riki isn’t the only one who learned from the girls’ stories. Rin was there. As much as a background character she might have seemed in the other routes, she still watched Riki from the sidelines. She observed the other girls, saw their problems, and watched as Riki helped fix these. And this growth is kept all locked up in her head until we get to Episode: Rin and she remembers everything.
Her parting with the girls came as a heavy-hitting blow to me, emotionally. And they never do explain, why is it that Rin has these scenes with them, but Riki never does? Wasn’t it Riki who learned and grew from these routes?
Yes, Riki did grow. Grow enough to be the man who can support Rin. But Riki never had the problems that the girls did. He couldn’t heal himself by learning from them, since he couldn’t relate to those problems.
But Rin did. And Rin learned, from all of them. These were all things that Kyousuke couldn’t teach Rin; they were things that he didn’t even know Rin needed to learn. With Komari being the one she had to learn from, more than others. Komari’s wish was that Rin could face all the sad things with a smile. As her hairpin fell, akin to a shooting star falling from the sky, her wish was granted. It was at that moment that everything Rin observed from her friends, from all the other members of the Little Busters, came to her. It was at that moment that she realized that: she has to open up to others to grow; that she has to face the sad things in life; that she learned to love; that there are no evil ones trying to push her down; that she has to find her place in this world; and that she truly did make friends in this small, temporarily world.
And it was at that moment that Rin grew.
