My issue is that the story has such a roundabout way of expressing that core message, diving through so many strange hoops.
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Yeah, I understood the core of the narrative too (the ending took me some time and effort though), but what struck me was this weird round-robin way it was demonstrated. What kept Maeda from smearing the backstory evenly throughout the route instead of not just putting it in a single infodump (which is mostly a bad thing in literature), but putting it in a weirdly-placed infodump?
I guess we’ll never know 
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The answer: Maeda is a hack
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It’s no secret that Maeda’s ideal girl is Saya (AKA Yuri from Angel Beats), after all
But I’ll turn the tables a bit on your argument; I don’t disagree with you completely (ergo your arguments do have merit with regards to the romance), but you did mention:
I think the point in which Riki genuinely fell in love with her was somewhere later on in the route. I was planning on posting this sometime later on, but I might as well get a headstart on it.
Riki didn’t just fall in love with Saya because of her beauty (and her nice-smelling her). He fell in love with her because, well, she’s an idiot. It’s not the cool spy image that Riki wanted to get close to; It’s her self-deprecating maniacal self that loves chasing after anything that is fun and cool is what Riki genuinely fell in love with. There are many words that I can use to describe why Riki gets infatuated with Saya almost from the get-go but I think that, really, the most succinct way I can describe it is: Riki is in love with Saya for the same reasons that he is in love with Kyousuke
I’m not saying that she is a Kyousuke clone; that would be far from the truth. But I believe that the similarities that she does share with Kyousuke are exactly the similarities that get Riki hooked. It’s the whole get-go attitude to get up and achieve something while remaining a lovable idiot that Riki constantly mentions being attracted to in Kyousuke which causes him to fall for Saya. And that’s something that only she has, I feel.
But eh, I won’t deny the amount of mary sue-ifying that Maeda does for her character. Probably as much as I cannot deny the amount of gary stu-ifying that he does for Kyousuke. They just have that kind of special appeal to Maeda 
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It was 4 days after Riki first met Saya (well, five, if you count the 15th of May, but they almost didn’t communicate then). I doubt Riki fell in love with Kyousuke just as unreasonably quickly. Even then, the similarities to Kyousuke aren’t as much as pointed out through Riki’s narration, while Saya’s supposed beauty (while Kurugaya is still the best girl in LB in my eyes) and nice smell are shoved right in my face, which leads me as a reader to think that it’s all about Saya herself, and as such I can’t see what did Riki fall in love with: while I as a reader was only shown enough of Saya’s “other” side to make me a bit interested in her, Riki was already skirting insanity. And there’s still the fact that Saya remained static as a character when Riki was already all over her.
I myself, though, agree, that she’s similar to Kyousuke in the aspects you mentioned, but come on, there’s still little to no build, due to which we still have to build theories to explain Riki’s infatuation with Saya while it has to come around naturally, without me as a reader having to think just why did everything happen so quickly.
Our conversation made the thread extend to more than 100 messages, due to which I earned a “Reader” badge. Thanks
Though I ultimately agree with the two of you about how there should have been more substance between Riki and Saya, I feel as though there are some points you’re being a bit unreasonable on.
First and foremost, Saya and Kyousuke are only "Mary Sue"s from Riki’s perspective. Riki has a bad habit of aggrandising those around him, especially those who made strong first impressions. Just as we see the weakness of characters like Kyousuke and Kengo in Refrain, you have to look at Replay and Aya’s backstory to get a more even-handed and human view of her.
Second, the Suspension Bridge Effect. There’s no way the situation going on would have no effect on Riki’s mental state. He was scared and under stress, especially for those first few days. During that time, Saya was his only companion - the only person he could trust - which in of itself fulfils the conditions for the Suspension Bridge Effect. Not to mention, from his perspective, she would likely have seemed like a saviour. Not only would it seem like she was “saving” him in a physical sense, but she also rescued him from the “situation”, brightening his mood and relieving him of his stress. We don’t really see much of this in Riki’s POV, though it’s still likely it happened subconsciously. If I were to make a guess, I would say that his initial feelings for her were only due to the SBE, but by the time he got over it, he had developed real feelings for her.
Now to get on with the complaints about the backstory as a single infodump and the general writing of the route. I myself was a bit disillusioned with the route during my second read-through, which is when I started looking at it critically as opposed to the first read-through where I just wanted to enjoy it. That said, I also feel a certain charm from it. It really feels to me like Jun Maeda just wrote exactly what he wanted to write and how he wanted to write it, without worrying about structure or people looking over his shoulder. Kind of like Song of Saya was for Gen Urobuchi. Insert “Saya” conspiracy theory. Though once again, ‘that said’, I don’t know anything about what was actually going on behind the scenes at the time, that’s just what it felt like to me.
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You’re totally right about the SBE, that’s also what I was pointing out in my first post. I just can’t buy into the romance that’s built from initially misdirected feelings. I totally understand what kind of person did Riki fall in love with later on (still static, though), but the botched start still taints everything. A funny thing is, in Clannad you can also experience the SBE with some girls and guys, but the girls you get to can’t be romanced thereafter (common route minor spoiler), a nice little touch, but I liked that a lot.
Alright, so uh… I just read this route. and uh, where to begin?
This route left me feeling… really conflicted. I mean, on one hand I do like Aya - she’s a fun character, and all of the moments of her struggling to maintain the Saya persona as her real self slips through are legitimately great. And yet… at the same time, I feel like she’s also kind of intrinsically poorly conceived and handled? Like… Aya’s great, and a lot of her greatness wouldn’t really be there without the Saya persona, and the whole deal with her being an irregularity and the dungeon is neat and fun and makes a good story, and yet… I can’t help but feel like for all that this gimmick is what makes her unique, it’s also the biggest thing that breaks her and keeps her from really being great. I love the way we see her fraying over the course of the replay section, and yet nonetheless I feel like it ultimately wasn’t worth her never getting a chance to find solid footing in more traditional everyday scenarios. It’s like we have a character who could have fit into Little Busters and a story role that would be amazing in a Science Adventure novel, and unfortunately the two just kind of chain each other down.
Saya basically just eats common route and wears its skin. “No, of course this isn’t a character route, look at the baseball practices! Look at the date!” It’s like… Either go all the way with having common route, or just admit that you’re going right into a character route, you know? We get setup after setup for her to interact with the common route one way or another, only for each to get knocked down in turn. She gets a unique cut-in where she deflects an attack for Riki in the battle rankings? Better shut those down before you get a chance to really do anything there! She hides in the batting practice and makes an occasional comment? Yeah, her hitting the ball does nothing apart from build a combo, and those stats you gain are 100% irrelevant to this playthrough since you’re locked onto her route by now and it goes all in before the baseball game would have happened. (And seriously, I still have no idea why they did all that work for someone who will never even exist outside of a route that outright cannibalizes common!) Riki going all manic over his relief whenever he has a moment with these peaceful days? Him wishing Saya could experience them together with the Little Busters? Her regret explicitly being that she never got to experience a normal adolescence? Hell, the idea from the goddamn opening cinematic that this story is about adolescence? Literally no payoff at all (unless it’s in idiot riki or school revolution, I guess, but somehow I doubt that), and following Saya to the point where she gets involved in things is literally mutually exclusive with any trace of the normal life remaining. (Well, I mean, I guess I don’t actually know what happens if you don’t spend time with Saya on sunday. I can’t imagine any way that you could get any ending but Riki falling asleep in his room after being locked out of pretty much every route-starting choice, though…)
I feel like the pretense of having a common route raises expectations it never meets, detracting both from the experience of that common playthrough and from the character route itself. (Although admittedly, I may just be salty over the fact that the post-Refrain content is apparently all completely split up instead of one cohesive flip-side common route where we could see more interactions and events with a post-refrain perspective while building up all of the EX girls together before you start their routes… ;>_>) Also, I really feel like it’s just kind of a waste that we had this big, flagship bonus route and instead of taking advantage of happening at a stage where it could be certain no characters were locked to bring them together for events on a level that the original story just couldn’t deliver, it doubled down on the “nobody else exists in a character route” issue even harder.
(And also, I mean… Well, I haven’t read it yet so maybe this’ll turn out to be an unfair judgement and it’s actually the most important possible thing, but… idiot riki route? Really? Is this what we needed instead of a cohesive postgame flipside-common route or just like… post-refrain content in general for people not named “Yui-chan” or “Kud”? [Because I refuse to acknowledge Komari’s picture book as post-refrain content. I mean, it’s cute and all, but like… where does this require that you know the secret of the world already? Where does it address or recontextualize anything about Refrain, Komari’s thoughts on it, or even just the theme that made “it’s not enough” possible? I know Komari’s the penguin and Riki’s the star, but that would make the Little Busters both the villagers who made Komari feel inadequate and the star country Riki takes her to-sorry, sorry, I digress.])
The dungeon was fun, although it definitely could drag on during replay, and Riki’s version of the shooting gallery is frigging impossible. @_@
Oh, and of course, Kyousuke acting as an antagonist will never not be a gem. I loved it in Rin2, and I love it here.
Honestly, my best guess for the whole mindscrewy stuff, with all the time travel talk, was that Saya died around the same time as the bus crash, possibly nearby, and between that and her childhood bond with Riki she got pulled into the world where nothing happens. Presumably this happened at some point during the game (since it’s post-“Let’s play baseball”, which I’m assuming to be the first playthrough since what other starting point really is there?) and just can’t be accessed before Refrain because reading it at that point would spoil the whole darn jig. So she shows up, fucks everything sideways because she’s an unaccounted for variable, Kyousuke does his whole shebang, and then the impression I got was that when she chose to vanish from the dream world her consciousness somehow pulled off some sorta slingshot maneuver with whatever Key Magic powered Kyousuke resetting and Riki and Rin getting their final try, waking up as a child back when she knew Riki with the events of her route as nothing more than a fading dream, and then going back out to live her life - basically a bittersweet ending where she exists in a neverending loop from the moment where she wakes up to her death and time in the dream world, allowing her to keep living those happy days with Riki even if she’ll never be able to wake up and meet him again in the future? Then again, we see her dream-ripple thingie after the credits so maybe she just creates her own dream world or something, I dunno. Nice as it would be for her to miraculously live and be able to have an adolescence with the Busters for real, she’s not exactly in the bus crash for the preexisting story-rewrite to save her, and I trust her experience enough to not just say she’s wrong when she calculates that her blood-loss is going to be lethal. The loop idea is just my best way of reconciling Kyousuke’s line about her time traveling as something thematic and not just a comforting lie.
(Also, is it just me who’s disappointed that Kengo and Masato never showed up in a more antagonistic role? I mean, they literally call themselves guardians of the peaceful daily life in Refrain; them trying to make the disruption who twisted the dream around herself like a gravitational singularity and tore these peaceful days apart disappear before Kyousuke had to step in could have made for some amazing boss fight-y moments and confrontations.)
So yeah. Saya route was fun, but at the same time… well… what in the world even is this mess. 
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The way I read your thoughts (and I totally agree with this) is that we just want an Aya after. Essentially we want a VN version of what we saw in the end credits scene 
Such is the irony of this route. It leads you on, and makes you want this reality so so much, but it never gives you that. It shoves in your face that it’ll never happen and can never happen. It’s pretty much a punch in the gut by Maeda, and I have no idea what he was thinking at the time
Hm, maybe? I mean, my thoughts are a bit more “Aya should have just been a more normal character route instead of doubling down on the gimmick”, since a) I’m in the camp that doesn’t think she’s getting saved and b) I’d still just rather see more of the base Little Busters, but yeah I do think Aya deserved a more “daily life” route and I can definitely see where an after game would do wonders for her.
Also, wow, I only just realized that I somehow completely bypassed the time machine conversation in my reaction. Like, holy crap, Saya’s line about wanting to visit her past is suuuuper relatable (even if it’s maybe a little counter to the story’s theme of enjoying these days but moving forward), and I have no idea how I didn’t mention it. (Honestly, that’s probably a big part of why my first thought when I saw the last scene was her consciousness looping, since it seemed like a decent enough bittersweet to grant her her past despite stealing her future.)
Can someone help me please? It seems like my game is lack of mixed bath scenes and I don’t know how to get there…I haven’t tried Riki idiot yet tho, so could be the condition is completing that route?
The missing CG’s are in fact from baka Riki.
Oops, my bad I don’t have that one either
Someone will come around who knows what it is…
@Nguy_n_Minh_Long
That CG is from the bath room on (I believe) B4F. IIRC, You have to choose ‘investigate outside the room’ and find the sign saying ‘mixed bath’. Riki will then take a bath with Saya and you will get the CG.
This route is interesting, but way too ambitious. I appreciate the premise of another existence hacking into Kyousuke’s world, and I think it managed it well enough for most of the route, but the ending seemed to give up the ghost, as others have argued above. The character of Saya was fun and well-written, but the gameplay segments eventually began to drag, even with the comic dialogue breaking them up. Despite its length, it seemed underwritten given all the divergent elements that were introduced.
What makes this route interesting is that way it exposes the skeleton of the visual novel. Like the player, Saya is an interloper in the world of Little Busters! who is able to influence Riki’s choices. Little Busters! overall has this meta-visual novel quality—a world of infinite and concurrently occurring possibilities—but by introducing another ‘player’ like Saya, Maeda can really play with the game-like plasticity of Kyousuke’s world. Also like the player, Saya meets multiple bad ends on her way through the route. If LB can be interpreted as a meta-commentary on visual novels, then Saya’s route is almost like a meta-meta-commentary.
At the same time, many of these ideas were not necessarily new by the time the player arrives at Saya’s route, so it’s not something the route can hang its hat on. What you see in her route is more an interesting extension of the conceptual basis for Little Busters! than something totally different. For that reason, the route’s flaws end up coming to light. The romance was sweet but I can empathise with those who feel it was underwritten at times; I couldn’t connect strongly to the drama. The ending was confusing and gave little closure. The gameplay became a chore after some time; although it was lightened by the Ecstasy mode gimmick at the end.
Overall, a good but not great route. Saya is a lively enough character to bring it to life even in its slow moments. I prefer it to Sasami’s, but Kanata’s remains my favourite EX route.
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Thanks for your help a lot ^^ !
I still have yet to finish this route LOL. I had watched the anime few years back. I was waiting to have it fresh in mine for when the podcast rolled around, but I do know I have lots to say about this route. I do have to say so far, I’ve really enjoyed these two routes, over Kanata’s.
[Warning: If you haven’t finished Saya’s route, or watched the EX anime adaptation and Angel Beats!, this comment might give you wrong ideas or might feel spoiler-ish. Reader discretion is advised]
Ever since I finished Saya’s route, I couldn’t help but connect it with the setting of Angel Beats! in my mind. I’m having crossover-ish visions that expan both of the stories like crazy. Like, all of the Key universes are actually virtual worlds maintained in big mainframes, and are connected via a big terminal central called God Complex and everyone is a digital entity. I’m even trying to write those thoughts into a story lol.
Then, I’ve recently stumbled upon a song on Spotify and I associate it with Saya’s story and my thoughts in general so much, so I wanted to share it with you guys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHSbLy6XufI
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I’d Like to get right into discussing this route, all of its time-bending confusion, the sugary-sweet romance, the over-the top comedy and the mystery of its ending.
But there’s something even more important I have to get off my chest first.
taking a deep breath…
FUCK YOU, AYA’s DAD! FUCK YOU A THOUSAND TIMES OVER!!! YOU GODDAMN IRRESPONSIBLE MORON! It’s your duty to take care of your own child first and foremost!
Why drag your own flesh and blood into wars and suffering all over the world? If you really can’t stay put and do your most important job, at least leave her with friends or relatives back in Japan or something! Why pointlessly risk her life and rob her of her youth like that?! Pretty much anything would be better than the shit you’re putting her through!
She died having NOTHING worth remembering - except for that one boy who played with her for a while! Just cause you had to go pursue your grand, heroic goal! Doesn’t matter how many lives you save - if you mess up your child’s life for no good reason, you’re a failure as a grown up.
Fuck shitty parents.
Please excuse me for getting emotional for a bit…
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Why is there so much shitty parenting in Key games? flashbacks to CLANNAD Side Stories
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