Little Busters! - Saya Tokido Route & Character Discussion

Key Discussion
#41

Some very interesting discussion here. But I’m absolutely in the camp that Aya met Riki in the past, and again in the future.

Basically, she meets Riki as a child, and after some events almost dies in the landslide that is very likely in a similar geographical location to where the bus crash would take place years in the future. She enters the world, Saya route happens, and then she leaves to return to her child body in the real world where she is saved by her father.

The evidence suggests there wasn’t any world-splitting here. Saya and Riki spent time together as children, and since Saya spent so much of her life travelling, they weren’t able to see each other again. Time passes, they grow up, and those memories recede into the back of their minds. But then, by some stroke of luck, Saya ends up eventually transferring into Riki’s school sometime after the events of the game and the field trip, and finds herself joining Riki and the Little Busters. The only real evidence for this is the final scenes at the end of the VN and Anime of Saya’s route, but I feel like it’s the most reasonable interpretation.

I kinda wish we saw more Little Busters! post-refrain, so we could see Saya together with the Little Busters. (still need to read Sasami route but I know she wasn’t there~)

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#42

I have put some serious thoughts into this the last hours and decided that I will keep those to myself until I have read the route myself after it gets a released translation. I’d love to discuss more about this, but I feel like to fully support my thoughts on this, I need to know every little detail.

#44

At the end of the LB! bookclub, we should have a race to the school revolution ending without guides. Get 2-4 people on Discord, and then they record themselves playing. Afterwards, we throw the footage into a video, and people can laugh at the suffering. Think a Key version of ProtonJon’s Battletoads Race

I had a day of nothing to do which I spent reading up to floor 5. I really noticed how often the narration points out how the plot is like from a manga which it is. It started getting on my nerves after a while. Secondly, Maeda really pushes that Saya is the most beautiful creature ever. It’d be interesting to know if that’s because she’s supposed to be or if it’s because she is a new heroine and needs the extra sales pitch.

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#45

I loved Saya’s story. I actually prefer Saya’s route over the other routes in Little Busters! (Heroine routes + Refrain). I don’t necessarily like the childhood friend trope in romances because of the favoritism (which is also why I dislike Kotori in Rewrite) (and I know it’s not necessarily “childhood friend” for Kotori, but Kotarou uses that term a lot) but I think it worked in favor is Saya. Mostly because they literally haven’t seen each other, since childhood. And plus, they don’t even mention it much.

I also love how they use the VN-medium as an advantage to tell Saya’s story, which is smart, and doesn’t reveal anything too suddenly.

Her route makes my head go wild, because of that ending that I’m still confused about.

So i have a question for whoever can answer.

Is there a reason why she chose a time machine? Couldn’t her wish have been something like staying with Riki forever in her own happily ever lifestyle? I know the time machine could do that, but couldn’t it be more literal?

Is there a reason why she shot herself? I mean, she made it to the end. Normally in games, you don’t kill yourself to get your prize. You actually get it while you’re alive.

What was the point of Kyousuke’s role in the story? Was he just doing that for fun?

Her route is my favorite in Little Busters!, but does her route necessarily even matter to the story?

If Saya was there, why couldn’t she have been a part of the Little Busters! crew with everyone else, instead of doing that underground maze (not that I’m complaining)?

I believe if Saya were alive, then she would have definitely been the main/true/end heroine for Riki.

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#46

As a person who knows the entirety of her route from the anime and manga adaptation and from the time I spent on her route without understanding almost anything thanks to my lack of Japanese, I can answer some of your questions I believe:
[WARNING: SPOILERS. THERE MIGHT BE SOME DETAILS THAT YOU MAY HAVE MISSED WHEN YOU WERE PLAYING SAYA’S ROUTE. READER DISCRETION ADVISED.]

First of all, let’s clarify some facts:
-Saya is actually a fictional character of a fictional manga called School Revolution.
-The girl we know as Saya, Aya, died when she was little and her soul wandered into Kyousuke’s artificial world. She personated as Saya when she entered into the world.
-School Revolution is both Kyousuke’s and Saya’s favorite manga.
-Riki met Aya when he was a child before the members of Little Busters.
-I’ll be using a lot of “As you might know” since I don’t know how much do you know about the real ending of Little Busters, or some details.

Let’s get to the answers then:
1-I don’t know why she chose a time machine to be exact. It could be because she wanted to restart from their childhood and experience everything together with Riki and his friends. Just maybe.
2-She shot herself in order to disappear from the artificial world and remove her existence from it I think. I don’t really know why she chose such a tragedic way to leave that world, but I guess this was the only thing she could do on her volition. Kyousuke was nice enough to keep her in this world to her heart’s content, but since the world was slowly going to be weaken because of her infinite resets, he had to force Saya somehow to make her leave the world. As Saya understood the situation, she chose to leave the world by herself, as you might know.
Also, since the ending of School Revolution, which Aya appears as its protagonist in the artificial world, Saya, was never known, they (Saya and Kyousuke) decided to end it in their own fashionable way.
In short, Saya’s route is fully based on both (S)Aya’s and Kyousuke’s favorite manga, School Revolution. But it was never finished, so the “reward” in the story and how the story was supposed to end was unknown, and they ended the story themselves. Saya shot herself in order to leave the world once and for all. I interpreted her route’s ending as: since her wish was strong enough, she transcended to an alternate timeline where she survived the natural disaster. In a way, she got her reward.
3-He’s, as you might or might not know, the main creator of the artificial world, and he plays a big role balancing the whole world. In the beginning, he thought Saya as a reflection of his imagination. Saya was his favorite manga’s, School Revolution’s protagonist. When Aya entered into the artificial world, she personated herself as Saya. School Revolution was her favorite manga as well. So yeah, he didn’t interfere her for a while, but when he figured out that the world’s balance was thrown off thanks to Saya luring Riki to herself, he had to do something. He had to both interfere Saya, and conceal his identity. So he decided to become Shun Tokikaze, the antagonist of the manga School Revolution.
4-Her story doesn’t effect the main story. But, it actually raises a possibility for an alternate timeline. A timeline which Riki met with a girl called (S)Aya, and lived their lives together and also met Little Busters. What may have happened to Riki’s parents is unknown though.
5-Saya was an outsider. She couldn’t be a part of Little Busters due to this reason. She belonged to the past. The only connection of her with the artificial world was Riki, since he was her friend before she died. As you might know, all of the people involved in the artificial world also existed in the real world and were a part of that timeline and that school. Since Saya wasn’t really a part of the real world, she had to play the “transfer student” role and (kinda) conceal herself. Also, all she wanted was Riki, no one else, although she wanted to be a part of the “warmness” she mentions in the last parts of the story.

I hope I was helpful. We can discuss the things you may not understood further, since my interpretation was kind of a mess to be honest :stuck_out_tongue: .

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#47

Saya’s story is easily the most confusing thing Maeda has written. It also doesn’t help when the different versions conflict with each other. At least that other time he made the heroine kill herself and then had a cryptic epilogue, it was simply a choice between the epilogue being real or not. If the Saya epilogue is a dream, Saya is dead, yet she is narrating the epilogue. If it’s not a dream, it’s just actual time travel with no precedence. In an interview, Maeda goes out of his way to shut down a statement about Saya being a ghost, but he only does that to establish that it isn’t set in stone; he wants to leave it to the reader. However, that just leaves us with these two sub-par options.

Regarding Aspi’s interpretation, the epilogue is set before the land slide. Aya and Riki hang out for a time before Riki’s parents die after which she returns to Egypt. It’s not clear when the land slide happened, but she says that she hasn’t been in Japan for about 10 years. If she woke up after the accident, she wouldn’t be a child like in the epilogue.

Another issue Maeda brings up in the EX perfect visual book interview, is how fans have questioned the CG of the buster boys and Saya. Apparently people had drawn the conclusion that Saya had stolen Rin’s place in the group which Maeda says in definitely not the case. Supposedly, there is a reason for the picture being like that, but he doesn’t reveal it and blames himself for the misunderstanding. The only hint he gives is that we should think of why Masato and Kengo are there instead of why Rin isn’t. If we look at the picture, we have not only the characters but also a bunch of sandwiches and stuffed animals. The animals are the prizes from the crane game, and the bread is from the punishment game Saya and Riki play over lunch a few times. The only conclusion I can draw about this image is that it’s a manifestation of Saya’s ideal adolescence. The reason why Kyousuke, Masato and Kengo are there is because she knows they’re Riki’s friends who also created the kind dream world. A big point here is that Saya never comes into contact with Rin. She crosses paths with Kengo and Masato when they save Riki from her traps, but she, at most, sees Rin through a scope while practicing her sniping. This is also where the differences between versions come in because Zen’s version does include Rin which fucks everything.

So what do I think happened? Good question, me. I previously thought that Kyousuke gave Saya her own little corner, and that’s where the epilogue happened, but that doesn’t work. I noticed that there’s a short animation of a light orb disappearing after the credits. We could assume that means (S)aya moved on, but then the epilogue wouldn’t have a narrator, so time travel somehow becomes the most logical solution to this. I really don’t like that. Especially because it goes against a big part of Aya’s character(which I’ll go into at some later point), and it doesn’t fit with the Rin-less CG. I have no idea how this fucking shit is supposed to fit together coherently.

Edit:

We could assume that means (S)aya moved on, but then the epilogue wouldn’t have a narrator

I don’t know why I said this. Being dead doesn’t necessarily make her unable to narrate. That epilogue could be a representation of Heaven which works with what I said about Saya’s ideal adolescence.

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#48

In the normal edition of Little Busters, I was surprised to see when Rin loses in front of an unknow lifeform the 3th day, you can meet the Darkness Executives, who come to eliminate the problem.

I wonder if they already had in mind the Saya’s route when Key made the original game or if they have chosen to use the scene only after. Setting the tone for the new route.

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#49

Having read your opinion also just finished this route, what if say she move out of their dream world since we see the light orb disappear and she created her own dream world? There’s pretty much allot of possibilities but i mainly think this because it became Saya’s wish to be able to play with Riki after all.

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#50

If she’s the only person in a dream, it would -for all intents and purposes- just be Heaven, so might as well call it Heaven

#51

In replay (when you’re playing from Saya’s perspective), Tokikaze’s spiel at the start of every game mentions that you (Saya) can end the game by pointing the gun at your (Saya’s) head and pull the trigger. Otherwise, the game never ends. By the end, she was satisfied with her time in this world since she got to experience the adolescence she never had and the love that she always wanted. And so, she ended the game.

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#52

Just finished the route after 6 years of wanting to play it. What a fun ride it was. Saya may be one of my favorite Key heroines. They altered the last crane CG though :naze:

Now for her route:

The CG for her accident makes it look like she’s still a kid, but the previous narration clearly states that it has been about 10 years since she last came to Japan. Entrance exams are also mentioned, meaning she was at the age of entering high school, either 14 or 15 years old. She probably just had a youthful appearance (like Kud) and her Saya counterpart was a reflection of the manga character and not her true appearance.
She entered the dream world due to reasons that were already mentioned, most likely because of the proximity of the location to the bus crash.

Incidentally, is there any evidence that the two accidents didn’t take place at the same time in the same general vicinity? If Aya was 2 years younger than Riki and Riki’s class was on their field trip at the time, isn’t it possible? It’s either that, or her soul transcended time to enter the Dream World that was created in the future.

Either way, we see her light leave the screen at the end, meaning she left the Dream World, but what happened after that? She wakes up as a child in the real world. If she were rescued from the landslide, I would expect to see her to be in a hospital with her father asking if she was alright rather than a casual “how did you sleep?” conversation.

I’m aware that Maeda intentionally left Saya’s route open to interpretation, but I believe that Saya did die in the landslide, and when she shot herself and left the Dream World, her memories were transferred to her younger self. Kyousuke himself mentioned that there was no point in Riki sending himself back in time, since he still exists in Saya’s past.

In Refrain, Riki was able to search through his past memories in the Dream World. Saya takes it one step further by sending her memories back in time to the point she desired most. Even she doesn’t know how it happened (but Kyousuke might).

From there, she lived a fulfilling childhood, avoided the landslide, entered high school, and made friends with the Little Busters in a (potentially) alternate timeline. An ending fueled by Key magic, but I feel more than satisfied with it.

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#53

Have to admit I worked my way through this very quickly, although I thought I would like Saya this turned out to be my least favourite route so far and Saya one of my least favourite girls. Not helped by the fact that although I do play RPGs I really hate dungeon crawls! Yes I know that’s not really the point of the route, and to be fair the puzzles were interesting enough although being shunted back to the same scenes time and again on death got on my nerves.

I did like that we had quite long scenes from Saya’s POV which made a good change and we learned her past in stages, not entirely sure about the interpretation but I get a bit of a “Fuuko feel” from the way that her character seems to be inserted into the world with a task to do ( was Saya in a coma and then astral projected through space/time into the Dream World?) before she can be “free”? I also guess there is an alternate LB future with Saya compared to the one without.

Anyway, this feels more like a bonus route so I’m not disappointed really.

I assume the offshoot routes ‘Idiot Riki’ and ‘School Revolution’ can only be entered after completing Sasami and Kanata’s routes? I didn’t see the relevant choices appear.

EX Spoiler

Well I went back and managed to get the School Revolution route, kill the boss and see Saya alive and well with LB at the end, I guess this is a bonus “good” end, but presumably not a “proper” end.

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#54

Well just finished Saya route and with that, the whole game so I have to admit i feel kinda empty now. I more or less knew what’s going to happen in this route having watched anime version of it before, but since it was few years since then the story details were hazy. I remembered most of it as I went through the first part of the route though ,lol.

Her route isn’t really on top of my favorites, but what surprised me was that I somehow ended up liking Saya more than Rin and Haruka (obviously my top 2, untill now) Her self deprecating moments and the dialogues with Riki were just that great!
That was the only thing I didn’t really remember from the anime. Other than that, what can I say just the usual “wish” and magic stuff happening. From what my simple mind understood she was basically dying close to the place, and at the time, as Little Busters and slipped into their world somehow, as she too had one final wish. With the difference being that she actually did die after everything was said and done (Sasami) (kinda like Sasami’s cat)
So yeah, it did hit me in the feels a bit more than Refrain did. I dont know why, but I felt kind of sad after the ending, even with this final scene of her and her father that gives a hope that everything turned out well. Especially that last CG that seemed to show a wish of both Riki and Saya that could never come true made my heart ache a bit ;_;

All in all it was great ride and I’m not regretting spending 70 hours on a game I’ve already played. Was more than worth it for Saya! And Rewrite+ better comes out soon to fill the void in my heart, lol.

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#55

So today i decided to start with Little Busters and since i had already read the fan translation i went straight for the EX routes to check what’s new, i was particularly interested in Saya for obvious new character reasons so here’s my impressions so far.

So the trigger for this route is Masato being silly (or useful if viewed from a plot development point of view) and leaving one of Riki’s notebooks in their classroom, prompting him to go retrieve it, when he’s in the school however he’s jumped on and pinned to the ground, his assailant demands that he runs away to which he complies but not without returning a little after to search for clues on the identity of this mysterious attacker, he finds her notebook and decides to return it like the good boy he is.

The following morning when he goes to her classroom to return it he finds her at the center of a crowd and is captivated by her angelical beauty he, being the shy boy he is, asks one of her classmates to give her the notebook for him, to which the classmate replies assuring him that Saya is really approachable and calls her over, Saya is momentarily shocked to learn that she left a trail for him to follow and thoroughly analyzes him with a menacing stare, she then cheerfully accepts the notebook and thanks him with a voice to match her previously displayed angelical beauty (and contrast her though girl voice the previous night).

Now here’s where the things get WILD :lion:, she emails him thanking him for his golden kindness and cites him on the rooftop, on the way there he falls victim to a cleverly placed superglue trap (Tom & Jerry???) and is stripped of his shoes, shortly after she shows up and starts spewing nonsense about how “i have to kill you because you learned my true identity and now THEY will come after you” all the while tossing her hair back like she was posing for a picture.

Little Busters Next Top Model

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Then she’s ludicrously enraged to discover that in his silliness Riki hadn’t actually connected her to his mysterious assailant :uguu:, at this point i thought “yeah, no, this girl’s a joke”.

Great actress

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After that she insists that she has to kill him and corners him to the fence of the rooftop that conveniently comes loose letting poor Riki fall to his death, luckily he tosses his arm and manages to hold on to the fence for dear life, she then pulls out a pistol and points it at him, it seems like it’s all over for him but Muscleman Masato shows up to save the day with an absurd line like “awesome Riki! you climbed the wall all the way to the roof! lemme catch up to you!”, apparently his muscle senses had been tingling.

Scared out of his wits Riki assumes it’s all one of Kyousuke’s jokes and pleads him to stop, Kyousuke pretends? to know know what Riki’s talking about and Riki leaves reassured that its all good if papa Kyousuke knows. Then while he’s returning to the classroom he’s confronted by what can only be described as a shadow head popping from the ground, yeah i know saya1 the so called “Darkness Executive” threatens him that if he tells anyone what he’s seen they are gonna capture Rin, saya9

After baseball practice he’s caught by some weird “i’ll close the club room door so you panic and ram your body into it bursting out of the room and hanging yourself with the rope i skillfully placed” trap, this time it’s Kengo that elegantly saves him (or placed the trap, who knows). After having two near death encounters in one day he decides it’s time to face Saya head on and arms himself with a trusty baseball bat, he wanders around for a while until some power poles fall down and their electricity cables start mercilessly attacking him, he defends himself like a true hero and manages to defeat the evil cables, honestly

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Then Saya presents herself in his room asking for an alliance because escaping death three times is apparently enough for him to prove his might, he accepts and she proceeds to reveal that not only she’s the only one that can see these shady guys but also she’s a secret agent looking for some some hidden treasure in the school and there are at least 4 other rival agents looking for it too, to which Riki baffled comments
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Makes perfect sense to me :+1:

Honestly at this point this sounds more possible

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Welp i left it at the classroom, now i’m wondering, in what order should i do all the stuff this route has to do? like idiot Riki and school revolution.

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#56

I went for just trying to finish the route regularly and then I went back to do baka Riki and School Revolution after finishing the other two ex routes. I would suggest doing that.

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#57

But even then, we still don’t know if Saya’s actually alive in the real world or not. I mean, in the anime for the end of her route (episode 4 of Little Busters! Ecstasy), we see Saya as a little kid, where she survived the mud slide? After she recovered from her injuries, she goes outside to play with Riki? Yeah, Saya’s ending to her route is very ambiguous and vague.

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#58

To summarize from my previous post: The Dream World is not constrained by time. When Saya left, her memories were transferred to her younger self, at the time when she and Riki were children. She literally got a second chance to redo her life and eventually befriend the Busters.

At least, that’s what I believe.

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#59

Yeah, it’s completely dependent on how we interpret her ending and fate, right? I mean, there are a lot of interpretations, which makes it interesting to see what those interpretations are.

#60

I recently started playing Saya’s route. I have no idea about how much is left, and I think I’m still at an early stage, but I wanted to reorganise my thoughts.
Here’s what I think as of the end of the 20th of May:

Everyone basically says Saya is a great character, and I pretty much agree with them so far. She’s portrayed from the very beginning as a resolute and well-trained spy, but with a side of girliness and awkwardness. I think they did a really good job not to swing too much to one side or another, so she doesn’t feel too much of an insensitive spy or too much of an airhead.

She tried to kill Riki. And almost succeeded. Three times. It’s quite a huge deal, but I guess it’s easy to forgive a cute girl who smells nice.

And right after Saya notices Riki is smarter (or luckier) than she thought, she takes him as a trusty partner. It’s a bit of a sudden development if we count what happened earlier, but it still flows naturally. Saya seems a good girl, and the mixed bath and date scenes were really cute. I still wonder if she’s really getting close to Riki or she’s just acting as a spy, but for now my heart tells me it’s the first.

I’m going to put under Details a side of Saya that touched me very personally, even though it’s not much of a big deal. It probably doesn’t add much to my line of thoughts, so you can skip it just fine.

Her ability to encourage people

I’m very clumsy at everything where I have to use my body. Whenever I try some sporty thing, due to my lack of practice and training it doesn’t fare well. I usually try not to mind too much.
When I’m with my peers, who more often than not have more experience and dexterity than I do, I’m always behind, basically trying to have fun at my pace. They try to encourage me (“heyy good shot”, “that’s how you do it!”, “do it just a bit more like this and you’re perfect”), and I know they have good intentions but I end up looking too much into it and feel like they’re talking to me out of pity, like when you say “Wow, you’re so good!” to a clumsy child, and I end up not wanting to try anymore.

All this premise was to introduce that, even though it might be just my imagination, I don’t feel anything of the sort when Saya encourages Riki after he’s made a mistake. She makes me (Riki) feel like that mistake really was nothing and that I can really do better next time.

That’s a part of Saya I like a lot.

Moving on to the actual route…
I have no idea what the Darkness’s Executive Club is, and I don’t really think I have enough pieces to understand what it is for now. The last conversation with Kyousuke was suspicious, and it’s hard not to think he’s implied in some way.
Maybe it’s like Lennon’s letters: you know Kyousuke did it, it’s so obvious you end up thinking it can’t be possibly that obvious and it wasn’t really Kyousuke. But at the end it’s still Kyousuke.

I feel uneasy thinking about the possible aftermath of the route. It’s clearly said that Saya will have to go away because of her job as a spy. I wonder how they’ll address it.

Assuming this still takes part within the rules of the game, this all takes place within the dream world. I wonder, what’s Saya’s regret/purpose? Why did she never get mentioned in other routes (aside from the “she was added as an expansion”)? Why is she in the dream world in the first place, and what happened to her in other routes after the dream ended?
I guess I’ll find out as I play.

I apologise in advance as I won’t be reading any of this topic’s posts until I get to the end!

EDIT: I forgot to mention I liked a lot the little changes in the common route parts when you’re Saya’s partner, it was a nice addition.

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#61

I understand your opinion of Saya and agree with it for the most part, however the situation is far more complex than that, i can’t comment anything more that that though you will have to continue through the route to discover it. Still i can say if you have enjoyed the route and felt it/gotten “the feels” from it you have a lot more feels coming.

PD

I’m working on a review of it, its taking a little while cause it ain’t short and i’m not posting it until i’m 100% happy/satisfied with it

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