Little Busters! - Rin Natsume Route & Character Discussion (Spoilers for all pre-refrain routes!)

This I can agree with. All the other character routes were focused on just fixing one problem with the girls, and not really fixing up their personality traits. They end up more-or-less the same person by the end.

Rin is different because her route was absolutely meant to change her, whether for better or for worse

Yeah this is the biggest reason why I never ship Riki and Rin. They have absolutely no chemistry possibly because Rin has no feelings about love at least in a romantic sense. For lack of better words, I just can’t feel it between them

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Well well , we’re close to the last point.

Ok now starting with Rin , she is a character that manifest different personalities through the game. At the beginning she was an energetic kind of tsundere girl, then she suffer a dramatic change at the beginning of refrain showing a shy calm personality , but during rin2 she behaved childishly. You can think that many changes are ok but that might not be right,starting with her route she goes from an ok character to one that can be consider a little despicable or hateful. Why would somebody love her , you can just feel pity towards Riki, he’s doing his best but there is no reason why he should do it. He is just getting in more trouble just for Rin’s sake. Then during refrain you can see her changing due to the whole previous experience, depending only on Riki yeah that’s not ok too . She can hardly be taken or considered as character, she is just there with nothing to shine or particular, counting always on others. Making things worse she’s supossed to be your main heroine, come on it does not look like she is, in the end it doesn’t feel that way. You can consider everything as Riki facing everything alone, all by himself but of course he do that for Rin, so she’s just a motivation not an entity or character, yeah it feels void or pointless. As I previously mentioned in Kurugaya’s discussion I guess, Does Rin actually have feelings towards Riki ?

So, her character does nothing or not much to contribute in the game, so yeah it’s a low point here.

Starting with the route, continuing with what was said in the common route’s discussion, in here you can see that Rin has to leave to help a neighbor school that just suffered and incident. Rin suffered there and was affraid to ever going to that school again, so she stay with Riki for the weekend.

The secret of the world isn’t exactly revealed, but Riki get some interactions with Kyousuke, so one can start to infer what’s going on, but you may still be clueless. Kyousuke was the one who sends the notes with lenon to Riki and Rin in order to make them mature, or at least that’s what you know until this point.

Kyousuke discuss with Riki, about Rin having to go back to the other school. Kengo who was always distant with the busters lends Riki a hand confronting Kyousuke, which feels good since Riki now is a little confident that he’s not alone with this problem. A match is settle Kengo together with Riki are against Kyousuke and a myterious partner of his choice, who ended up being Masato. A baseball match between the male members of the little busters, that’s a good significant detail. Then the weather is getting worse, which makes you feel the climax of the match, after Kyousuke emerges victorious, apparently cheating in an unexplicable way, or at least until refrain .

After the painful loss, you had to think what would you do let Rin go or escape with her, of course that’s not up to you Riki decided they should run away. This is the part where Rin starts to feel more like a burden for Riki than a character. Riki spends the money his parents left him escaping with Rin to her grandfather’s house. Then he couldn’t use it since his guardian blocked his credit and told him to go back, but he ignored it. He started looking for a job, but failed due to his narcolepsy , so he just went to fish to survive. Meanwhile in the house they were spending time, there’s no clue about rin’s grandpa location they just thought he’s out due to his work and Rin was doing nothing more than play with cats.

Then when Riki goes to a store he heared people talking about the house they were and getting to know what actually happened with its owner. After that a poilce collided with Riki , which means more troubles. He luckily managed to escape, but he knew he didn’t have much time. Trying to escape with Rin she stopped him just for her cats, like what was about to happen when they escaped at the beginning. The police apparently caught them and you will never know about Rin again. A route ending badly that’s surprising but that this means that the route is actually good, well not exactly.

Starting with rin’s behavior , some may say that this is the point that she has to mature and change, but in fact did you actually see something like that take place ? Because trust me it doesn’t. You can feel Riki evolve, but not Rin , not even in her route nor refrain. Riki does everything for Rin and Rin barely did something. Even in refrain Rin didn’t do that much but lets keep that for the next discussion . Then we have the detail with the busters match and Riki facing the problems is this actually Rin’s route ? Because the good points weren’t exactly connected with her, I mean she was the cause the reason, but nothing else. She didn’t play a part she even had no idea what was going on and as Riki said she was like a small child.

So yeah the route may feel good, Kengo who was so distant helping you, and Masato who was really close and Riki’s best friend being away from him, apparently working out. The match between Kyousuke and the 3 of them for Rin’s sake, which at the end of the route you can understand that in fact Kyousuke may be doing the right thing, Rin needed to mature to grow as a person. However the way he decided to do it can be questionable. Riki struggling, figthing doing everything in his powers , failing due to something he can’t control, narcolepsy. You can really feel empathy towards him. As good as this route may look , as a personal route is awful or at least not good, but of course this is obvious since Rin isn’t exactly a good character to begin with.

Thank you, very much.

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When I finished Little Busters, I was so overwhelmed by refrain to think anything bad about the game. It’s been two months since I played it, and I think I’m ready to hear critics and thoughts (especially negative, or at least that does not idealize the game), which is why I find the way you depict Rin - the character and also the route - is very interesting though not really the same as mine.

First, I would not have qualified Rin as an useless character. I agree on the fact that Rin 2 (and refrain too) is mainly Riki struggling and Rin doing nothing, and it’s because she is too weak, plus I also think that she does not really strengthens during the two routes, but I guess it’s part of the character. I’m not sure how I would have felt if Rin had become stronger - and why not stronger than Riki. That would surely be great, but would that still be Rin ? I mean, the fact that she is shy and kind of weak is part of the character to me, so I’m having a doubt about whether or not it would benefit the character development. Kyousuke tries his best to make both Riki and Rin stronger, and if you look at it, both of them, considered as a group, is indeed stronger - Riki became more confident and Rin trust Riki even more. I kind of refuse to admit that Rin did not improve at all :stuck_out_tongue:

That point of yours made me think. It’s true that both Rin 1 and Rin 2 feature a love story between Riki and Rin, but the Refrain gave me the feeling that it was more like a deep, genuine friendship that linked them rather than love. I have the scene where you can see Rin sitting on a desk and humming a song (a great moment of the story, I think we can all agree on that… so much feels) in mind right now, which, in my opinon, radiate friendship - that’s even deeper than bare friendship at that point - but not really love.
I haven’t done the true Kurugaya ending yet so I can’t give my opinion on that, but i’ll probably do it on the appopriate topic when i’m done.

In fact, Rin routes are not my top favorites, because of all the reasons you pointed out. It stays a nice story though, and I like it also because it was the first I’ve done. Despite that, Rin is one of my favorite character, probably because of her shyness and innocence.

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To be honest, I’ve always felt that the romance aspect was rather pushed by Kyousuke in order to ensure they wouldn’t grow apart after the accident in their grief, so romance was the reasoned easiest way for them to support each other. rather than a legitimate element of the story.

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Rin2 is one of those incredible “oh shit” moments in visual novels, except it’s an entire route. Everything past the original route is filled with a sense of unease as previously firm bonds are slowly breaking like an unstable brick house starting to crumble, and it just doesn’t let up. Quite a dark twist to put on the “route that you unlock by clearing all the other routes”.

With this route I hope to try and completely lose myself in its pull. To be swept along as the happy times slowly come to an end and the state of things becomes more and more dire. And then make that critical choice at the end, and watch as New Game fades into Refrain… ah… such an incredible use of the medium. I’m tearing up just thinking about it.

Little Busters is really fucking good you guys.

Edit: In what I can only describe as sweet irony, I completely neglected to mention the romance of this route. Cause I don’t remember this as a romantic route at all. It really is a tale of a long time friendship falling apart and trying to stand on your own legs in life while still being woefully unprepared for it to me.

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Playing through all the routes and eventually playing Rin2 it looks to me that Rin is introverted and show signs of social anxiety being an introvert myself this story clashes with me and brings around how important it is for introverts and people with social anxiety to have good friends. I however do not have social anxiety, but I do know some people who have it from online communities.

In my eyes this story shows the importance of supporting somebody who has a hard time socializing with others, needs to have people that back them up, after seeing Rin’s behaviour and how it changes playing through the visual novel i have to say I’m really liking it, it shows the positive effects of how an introverted person or person with social anxiety can change.

Other than that i have say that Rin’s personality is very likeable with the cats it makes everything that much more cute.

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So I like Rin, I liked watching her develop and grow throughout the VN up to this point. As far as the actual route… eh. She got pushed in to a situation she wasn’t comfortable in and Kyouske made it worse by throwing her in the deep end at once instead of allowing her to have contact with her friends while going through a hard time, but running away like that was a pretty silly decision. There were a lot of silly decisions. I mean, I guess they are teenagers and teenagers are notorious poor-decision makers. But I dunno, I just personally wasn’t feeling it. Things are certainly starting to ramp up in intensity though and I am excited to see where things go from here.

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Indeed, running away is not always an option, but you can’t forget they are really weak Riki and Rin they both depend on their friends allot and suddenly Rin lost all her friends and Riki only had Kengo left to support him. You can understand that when your at place where nobody no longer supports you and forces you to do and look at something you don’t want the only option they have at that point is run.
I also agree watching Rin progress is really nice to see throughout the playing.

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Oh I get what you’re saying. I’ve been in some awful points and I just ran away and it was a bad decision to make. It’s just watching it from the outside I’m like “aw, no, don’t do that” because I am invested in the characters and don’t enjoy watching them make silly decisions, you know?

Yes, but the social support they get from those around them are a deciding factor for those decisions.

So, Rin2; what I said in the Common Route: cats are devil spawn :smirk_cat:

I’m not sure what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t that, I think it’s quite a brave choice though and gives you a big appetite for Refrain

I can’t put it any better than that myself. After all the emphasis on the character routes on friendship overcoming the challenges, it’s a bit of a jolt to see it all falling apart - I like it!

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And here comes the route I was the least enthusiastic to read again. Turned out better this time.

Rin, Legendary No-con

Aaaaand this helps, I liked Rin more this time, in the past I’ve always considered her a bit bland, that she’s just as dumb as a sack of bricks and has excessive anxiety issues that I cannot relate too. Not to say both these opinions on her are gone, but I still ended up finding her more enjoyable this time, she’s cute, and I really did enjoy her more this time around, but she’s far from a favourite.

So the route starts off with one of the best god damn scenes in the VN with Miles the cat, Rin’s mugshots where she’s holding him, and the CG and just the entire situation given such a somber and mature atmosphere and it makes me mmmmmmmmmmm~

Then the usual Rin1 stuff plays out, nothing wrong with this, nothing outstanding, it’s what comes after that is far more interesting. When Kyousuke becomes the villain.

The glorious CG of the reveal, along with the question the player hasn’t heard since the very start of the game. "Have you figured out the secret of the world?’, oooooooh it feels good, and the SYMBOLISM of them running away after but Riki lets go of Kyousuke’s hand, in that single moment Kyousuke shifts from the dear friend and older brother to the eerie and ominous villain.

And what a fucking villain Kyousuke plays the part amazingly, ‘A world where nothing happened’ goes from an extremely rare song to making common appearances with him, and what a song it is, I hate it, it’s so unpleasant, on it’s own I’d never want to listen to it, but as atmosphere setting music it’s perfect. It all builds up and builds up to the pinnicle of Kyousuke’s villainy, the glorious scene where after supposedly employing some Cheap Tricks, he looks down, smug look on his face, declares that he won, and walks away. It’s absolutely chilling.

Oh right Rin is in this route. See this is the part I was concerned about, after they run away, I remembered it dragging on and being boring, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I remembered, but it’s definitely the weakest part of the route and not something I really have anything to say about, especially after Kyousuke’s villainy completely and utterly stole the show. Honestly I find the interesting parallels this part of the route has with Hanabi far more interesting, a song Maeda composed in 2003(before Clannad’s completion!) that has striking similarities to the end of Rin 2, suggesting that Little Busters, in some form, was conceptually swirling around in Maeda’s head for at least four years before it’s release which I find super neat. The fact the song was dug up and used in the Rin 2 Anime is the most damning evidence.

ALSO I’M STILL MAD WE DON’T MEET NATSUME-JIISAN. He sounds like a Kyousuke with a lifetime of experience, I’m sure he’s A M A Z I N G.

Overall the route is a bit weak as a ‘Rin’ route, but it’s very good at it’s real purpose, being the prologue to Refrain.

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Okay, I’m still not done reading Rin 1, but I need to talk about something that legitimately bothered me.

Just to let you know, if the principal or whoever is saying something like this to you, a student, out of the blue, lash out in full glory and call the police. This is sexual harassment and it’s not something you should just be prim and proper about.

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But what if it’s Masato saying it to me?

Kyousuke made Masato say that to distract Rin from her training, but it looks like Rin isn’t the only one who got affected :umu:

その後しっぽりむふふ・・・といきたいものですな

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The route was actually much shorter than I expected, so I don’t have too much to say.

Let’s talk about Rin as a character. I like her. I hated her as a first impression, but she grew on me when I read Rin1. I realized she has a cute side to her, not just a violent one. Aside from being a cat-lover, cute, shy and violent, there is not much more about. Which makes her rather boring.
She does develop a little bit during the multiple readthroughs. But not much. She stays boring. I was hoping she’d hae bit more development to make me like her even more, but that did not happen.

The first part, that played even before the Rin1 content, with the dying cat was, I am pretty sure of it, foreshadowing to Refrain. It gave me goosebumps, like a lot of the earlyier scenes of the route.
The content after Rin1 starts with confirmation on who was bringing this task. Kyousuke was pretty much expected at this point. But the music and the CG…left a very ominous feeling. @Kanon described that part of the route pretty well:

That’s basically the impressions I got.
Oh, and Kengo is totally aware of his Cheap Tricks, and probably how he did it. I am not though - yet.

Then…things quited down. A lot. Again, I agree with @Kanon:

It was relaxed, but the tension going from so high to so low was a bit disappointing. It was nice to just see a … well, not really happy, but okay life with Rin. They clearly felt close, but I did not really feel much romance. I know that is what they were going for, but they might as well only have been close childhood friends at that point with no additional romance. Not saying they aren’t close childhood friends.
The whole situation did not really feel very desperate to me either.

I think however the cats represent something. Actual people probably. Not only with Kyousuke giving her the cats, and he is a big mastermind here, I am pretty sure they hold more significance. Them not following her past the school gate, Riki not wanting her to return to them before they leave. Her getting a bunch of new cats - it’s probably significant that they went from 2 cats (Riki and Rin, one caught by each of them even) to 5 cats at first (original Busters), and an unspecified higher number later. I’ll see soon enough.

And yeah, I’d liked to have met her grandfather as well. Too bad we couldn’t.

And then it just…ended? The sudden and abrupt end shocked me, I figured we end up on a more happy note. Well, that keeps my hopes high for Refrain ending happy.
I agree that Rin did that bad ending to herself, like a lot of you stated, after all Riki did for her.
The final scene, after the credits, conveyed a good feeling of helplessness that Riki must feel.
Well, let’s become stronger!

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I’ll leave the good parts of Rin2 for another time and mostly focus on the second part of the route. This might be a rare chance for me to make a Kanon-style rant (hope I won’t get sued for copyright infringement here) :ahaha:

Welcome to Rin2, where everyone is a fucking idiot. (Except for Masato.)

First of all, why did Riki let Rin go? So that she can grow up and learn to love.
How did Riki explain it to her? “You just have to go. And you’re stupid.” And then he bitched about how she didn’t understand him! How about you give her a damn reason for leaving behind EVERYTHING SHE EVER HAD, if only temporarily? Bruh…

So then AMAZING stuff happens but I’ll talk about that sometime later.

Riki and Rin just run away. It’s a harsh trial, but surely, their love will pull them through… oh wait, they don’t have that. So, in a crisis like this, cooperation is essential. Thus, the labor is divided equally: Riki goes out to procure food while Rin just sits around doing nothing. Wait, what?
Just so we’re clear, playing with cats all day is a fucking shitty survival strategy - cause you sure as hell don’t look like you wanna eat them.

But no matter how hard it gets, Riki keeps stacking up those man points. He never complains, never tells her to help cause teamwork can go suck it. But then the police comes knocking on their door.

And THIS is the part that completely FUCKS ME UP. This is some Brutus-level backstabbing right there. How the hell could this brat be so ungrateful? He gave up Kyousuke for you! He gave up the Little Busters! That was literally worse than death for him! No lack of love could possibly explain her literally biting the hand that feeds her. But because muh random cats are more important, it’s game over.
People be wonderin’, “How could you possibly dislike Rin?” THIS is why!

Kyousuke’s at fault too. You fucked up big time, brah. You thought just cause she can talk like a normal person now, she’s ready to depart for despair island? You shoulda installed some brakes on your Plan train, cause the signs were clearly there.
Like, open your damn eyes, man. She was completely destroyed within just a week. And more importantly, her mental age is still on the clock! Which brings us to:

Rin - adorable little sister character

What’s “love”? Is that a TV show? Can you eat that? What kind of wood do I need to build a relation-ship? Hell if I know. Guess I’ll ask the cats.

Anyway, Rin completely fails as a heroine. Romance doesn’t work if you can’t love. She’s clinging to Riki, but not helping much, then ditching him without a second thought because cats.

So, Riki, my boy man. Just let her be a little sister character. She’s quirky and cute and super fun as long as it’s just fun and games. Let her play with the cats in a corner. But don’t ruin your own life over this kid. If Kyousuke thinks he’s so fucking smart, let him take care of his own damn mess. Surely, he’s got a plan for that…

Don’t get me wrong, fam. I absolutely LOVE this route. I also love the mistakes (almost) everyone’s making. I just skipped all the good parts the deliciously good side of things to make a clean rant. Everything about this route was pure awesomeness… except for Rin. Not saying she’s pure evil or the only one at fault and I didn’t miss that she did try helping in her own way. But overall, I simply find what she did in the end nigh unforgivable.

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Because the entirety of Kyousuke’s plan was to make Riki stronger in order to protect and support Rin, it didn’t work out as a plan to make the two stronger since Rin was scarcely ever confronted to the heroine’s problems

You have to understand that Rin is written as a character who has a need for attachment and habit to a safe environment (much like cats, yes) because she’s not grown enough as a person to be able to stand on her own if she doesn’t have a single place to rely on when she needs to, which, with her early-game personality, is something she needed to do a lot.

Not to mention that, as you said, Riki never properly explained things to her because he wanted to provide that exact environment that Kyousuke always did: let him do everything and live your life. She’s shown in the game to be very comprehensive even if reluctant as long as everything was explained to her properly, but was that ever done? No. Riki precisely didn’t say anything and that’s what Rin took as a go-ahead, especially in her familiar environment of her grandfather’s house.

He wanted the change in her life and environment, separation from the brother she trusted and the only friends she’d made in life to not impact her. He wanted to be Kyousuke’s replacement to her to make sure she’d never have to worry about anything much like how he did for the both of them their whole lives. While this does make Rin a terribly selfish character as a whole for never realising that she should’ve stepped up on her own, the fault lies on both of them for not establishing things before running away and planning accordingly.

TL;DR: Rin was selfish as fuck, but it was also Riki’s fault for not setting down their relationship prior to escaping and trying to replace Kyousuke’s role and place in her life instead.

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DAYUM LOOK AT THIS MAN, HE’S A SAVAGE.

kindaofarightsavagetoo

Rin2 was a wild ride and I really enjoyed it. That said, my favourite parts of it actually had no Rin in them. The reveal of Kyousuke holding Lennon curled up in his arms (which is spoiled by his trading card. Nice work guys! Thankfully I had friendos to keep me away from it), and obviously the baseball game where Kyousuke sets himself up as both a villain and a Christ figure for Riki, were such beautifully executed scenes. I was fully expecting the novel to pull something like this, but that in no way lessens the perfection of the first half (two thirds?) of Rin2.

I mainly want to focus on Kyousuke, he’s such an interesting character. He’s been foreshadowed as a Christ figure for ages, all the way back when he was reading his manga by the windowsill he was ‘holy’ and ‘innocent’ and all this other jazz because of Riki putting him on this unreachable pedestal, pure sweet perfection that Riki can never reach. And then, in Rin2, Kyousuke tears all of that down at a breakneck pace. He pulls a bunch of what I can only describe as Game Master Bullshit and puts himself very intentionally in a position where Riki thinks of him as a bad guy, forcing Riki to act. Thinking back on all of the previous routes, we’ve learnt all about the good intentions of humans, how no one is evil, and honestly Kyousuke’s plan to help Rin mature is Kanata-levels of nonsense.

This isn’t even a theory-crafting session, it is 100% clear to me that this is a test or ‘mission’, whether it will be revealed that Kyousuke in-universe is testing Riki or whether this will just pan out by the end of Refrain to be a final test for Riki, I’m not entirely sure. What I can say for sure is that I will not make Kyousuke my enemy. He’s so clearly being set up as Riki’s antagonist that I can’t possibly believe it can last. Riki also sees almost every other Buster as an enemy, this is totally blowing things out of proportion and I fully expect to have a ‘getting the band back together’ sequence either as the initial conflict or somewhere towards the middle-end to show how much they’ve all grown as characters.

I also noticed the final nod to the field trip at the end of the route, it’s happening. We’re heading full speed ahead towards a tragedy of Visual-Novel-starting proportions and I look forward to seeing how it all pans out. I honestly don’t care too much at this point about like, ‘predicting events’, I think the time for that is long past. Of course I will be constructing an interpretation based on the ending, but I’m not the kind of person to reach for a crazy interpretation, this is the part to take in what the novel is telling me (bearing in mind the themes of the previous routes) without restraint.

That said, if I may, I had mixed feelings on uncovering that Rin isn’t supposed to make it to the field trip. I wonder if that will change? I would find it strange if she were not part of the route, and certainly the ‘constructing the van’ portion of the novel that I think exists should involve all of the Busters. My current theory going in is that she also was part of the accident but Riki isn’t sure if she survived, and so only by believing that she had the strength to survive can he too pull himself forwards to face the truth, whatever that may be.

Anyway, enough theory nonsense, enough flowery words. I embark on the greatest journey of my Kazamatsuri experience soon… I’ll see you all on the other side of Refrain! :maeda:

Gee whiz would you look at the adorable spoiler… oh and there’s a Lennon there too :kyog:

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I tooootally forgot to post in this topic because I was too excited to start Refrain. I guess you can’t blame me. Refrain is great, after all.

Now, I don’t have much to say on this route, because I don’t have much to think about this route. It is, after all, an incomplete story. But I do have a lot of feelings about this route…

And boy did this route sure make me uncomfortable. Their entire journey, starting from Riki challenging Kyousuke, to running away with Rin, just made me feel awful. Maybe it was because I knew that this was the wrong decision to make. Maybe because I knew that they only had despair waiting for them. Maybe I just didn’t want to see them in that situation again. Probably my only recompense while reading this route was seeing Rin actually do something (the laundry) for once, and even then it is meant as a cute little thing about her being embarrassed about her underwear…

Either way, fact of the matter is that this route made me feel very uncomfortable. And I loved every second of it. I just love it when writing is able to transpire the mental faculties of the reader and actually make them feel something; feel something that one of their characters is feeling, or feel something that the author wants them to feel. Sasuga Maeda. Sa-su-ga. :maeda:

Sidenote, to continue discussion:

You hit the nail right on the head there, eh. Maybe if they learned to help each other out; you know, the kind of mature love that a married couple should have; instead of her being completely dependent on Riki, they could have actually made something out of it. But Riki says it again and again, Rin is, at heart, still a kid. She has yet to understand what love is all about. And, I think even by the time they “elope”, Rin is incapable of figuring out this kind of selfless love needed to succeed.

And this is also why I never ship Rin with Riki. She doesn’t get love, and I don’t think she will until a few more years.

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