Discussion thread for Saya’s arc in Little Busters. Feel free to discuss anything from Saya’s arc or vanilla LB without spoiler tagging, but please tag references to events from Sasami or Kanata’s arcs with [spoiler]. Her birthday is the 21st of October.
What would you rate this route?
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I really don’t fully understand Saya’s ending.
It just seems to go completely against what the magic has developed so far -
so suddenly there’s a time machine or something?
The anime’s adaptation of this doesn’t really help any theories I had before, originally I had a thought (that was still pretty strange to suddenly throw in): okay maybe the world that is created somehow transcends time and can be entered at any point in history?
But then the anime came along and made it seem like after child-aya wakes up it generates a new timeline where she continues to be friends with Riki even through high-school, where they then fall in love.
It kinda frustrates me that it seems like there’s suddenly more “key magic” thrown in at the last minute to get a happy ending.
I may have missed a couple things since I did play her route using a text hooker and a variety of machine translations (which was actually pretty good most of the time).
I’d like to see some other people’s thoughts on what actually happens at the end, since my thoughts are pretty jumbled and I can’t make sense of the ending without it seeming a bit odd.
Okay, I’ll let you in on my thoughts.
The artificial world of Little Busters, like you said, transcends time in a sense. This was demonstrated in Episode: Kyousuke of the Visual Novel, where time kept repeating in the real world as it repeated in the artificial world. (I think that’s how it went?) Anyway, the point is that the artificial world doesn’t follow the same ‘time’ as the real world.
Saya, or Aya as she’s really called ‘died’ as a child. But when I say die, I mean she didn’t REALLY die, but experienced something like a near-death experience. Her spirit left her body and entered the artificial world. Why? Two theories. 1: The location was nearby to the site of the bus crash in the future. Just looking at the BG used in the VN and the scenery used in the Anime, this seems to strongly suggest this. 2. Her bond with Riki. An emotional closeness that drew her to the world Riki existed in. As for why it happened even though the bus crash happened in the future? Key magic, the world transcends time, all of that. Follow me so far?
So Aya ends up in the looping world, donning the appearance of Kyousuke’s favourite manga heroine, and entering into his game. The only way out is to kill herself, so she shoots herself, and leaves the world. The time machine is a metaphor created by Kyousuke to explain that Saya got her wish granted. Remember, Aya never died, she was merely in an out of body experience. When she leaves the world, she wakes up from the dream, and appears in bed, rescued by her father. This isn’t a parallel universe or anything, it’s the same world. What we’re seeing is Aya’s consciousness went from point A in time to point B, the artificial world the future Little Busters existed in, and back to point A again. So it’s SORT OF time travel, but more accurate to say world travel, because she didn’t actually enter the future real world, just an artificial world that was created by the future little busters. It’s hard to explain in words, but I hope you understand what I’m getting at here.
She wakes up, and Riki is there. My interpretation is that this is all things that really happened. For some reason, most likely the death of Riki’s parents, he loses contact with Aya and forgets all about her (Typical Key Protagonist Amnesia). As for the CG of Aya with the Little Busters boys in the VN, or the scene in the Anime where Riki meets her in the grass? You could interpret that as Riki finding Aya at some point AFTER the accident, and they become friends again (or lovers) and Riki introduces her to the other Little Busters. It’s purely speculation, but this is my take on it.
Does that make sense?
EDIT: Okay this theory ONLY MAKES SENSE WITH THE ANIME. Thanks VN…
That’s an excellent explanation, thanks a lot.
I didn’t catch on to the location was probably near the site of the crash, that’s a cool thought.
The scene of them meeting again makes a lot more sense now, Riki probably remembered her after going back to the real world and contacted her.
I can’t find a video of it, but isn’t there a bonus scene with Saya if you beat every route including the EX ones? Edit: Found it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLtKdb_UoSc - I’m gonna see if I can get to that bit and see what she says. The guides for this are all in Japanese so it’s hard ;_; anyone who knows what she says at that bit please say 
I haven’t finished the other EX routes yet, so I’m gonna wait before checking that!
Hi here comes an Anime only-fag, looks like the VN wasn’t much clearer, damn.
Aspi’s fanwank seems legit, although I find it questionable that he’d forget her over DEAD PARENTS, that’s a time more than any other that he’d want to be with her.
Perhaps some make her dad’s job make her have to move again.
on that note what the fuck who brings a four year old to a warzone.
Oh what. I never knew about this. The video description says it’s what happens if you defeat Shun, the leader of the Yami no Shikkoubu- erm, Darkness Executives or whatever.
I’ll uhh, go through this ending when I get there myself. Maybe throw some guides at me so I can follow them?
Honestly, I’m not sure about that one. I felt like the anime was what made it all emotional and close. Admittedly it was her first friend, and the “feminine boy” she mentions is, while obviously Riki, seemed sort of lacking in too much excitement, but I could be wrong.
coughShe was also coincidentally also Saya’s, or in this case, Aya’s favorite manga heroine as well.
She actually mentions this in both the VN and the Anime. She’s like, what would you like the secret treasure to be? And her personal choice is, woohoo, the time machine.
This uhh, SORTA happens with Rin, doesn’t it? It’s like “we’ll make our own world” ring and suddenly they’re back in time with the 2nd chance to save everyone. So I sorta figured it was along the same lines as that.Time machine was just like, “wish” aspect of the world, which I sorta also assumed.
Might want to spoiler tag your post about the bonus - It’s only available once you beat all the routes so it’s a spoiler. I think I found a guide but it is confusing. I can link it once I get home to my computer.
I’m going to wait for the patch before I go for it.
I wrote a walkthrough for that ending over at MAL out of boredom if you interested.
Good luck ~
Oh that is a very clear guide thanks!
I actually don’t know how to do that. D:
Also, I thought this place was allowed to be spoiler tag free?
And… oh, it’s a joke ending. Daaang it. Don’t care QUITE as much now, especially with how long it seems…
I would count it as spoilers as you need to have completed every route to access it. Spoiler tags are just [spoiler]rin likes cats[/spoiler] rin likes cats
This is why I think I should just make a save file for that ending instead of a walkthrough…
Well there is still stupid Riki route to see if you want to see Riki being,well,stupid.
I decided to look through Saya’s route a bit for a thing but in doing so I found this line. Basically Aya had lots of people teaching her lot of different languages but there was one word she couldn’t understand and that that word was “friend”. Aya’s backstory being tragic isn’t really new, but in a story so focused on friendship this really stands out to me. I think was a very well delivered line, it kinda sneaks up on you. The segment is very slow and melancholy so you get settled into reading slower(having to translate also helps). While going slow, they build up to what the word is for about two full pages and then it hits. The implications to what the line meant took some time to sink in as I realized what it means for her to not know that. A very small moment but it really left an impact on me.
If I find what I’m looking for I may have more to say about the ending and things.
Most of Saya’s route is only possible in the dream world. I’m pretty sure (S)aya is just dead, and she wandered into the dream world at some point. That’s what is described in Saya’s Song at least.
Yeah I meant more that her as a canonical love interest is debated. The scene at the end of the anime and a couple cgs in the vn kiiiiinda imply it, her being alive at the end helps it too.
She isn’t dead though? The scene at the end has her back as a kid alive. The magic of the world definitely is consistent with only people very near to death can enter as like a cry for help kinda thing.
I don’t think the scene at the end is real. If it is set after the accident and she didn’t die, then it would be set years before the buss accident and the dream world came to be. To me it makes more sense that Aya is a couple of years younger then the rest, and she dies at roughly the same time as the buss accident happens.
She’s playing with Riki in the flashbacks and the scenes at the end though.
In some of the discussion above we’ve just said that the dream world transcends time, it makes some of the weirder Refrain stuff make more sense too(but still not entirely).
There’s also a definite possibility of the area that the landslide occurred in being the same place as the bus crash. It would make a lot of sense in how she found the dream world.
