So Mary Sue isn’t a bad thing in this case?
That’s subjective.
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Hey all, I’m here to revive the thread and take a look at things in a different perspective. I don’t know how much if any of this was addressed above (I didn’t read the whole thread, sorry) but after a lot of thought, I’ve come to a realization that Kurugaya is the main love interest of Little Busters. You have every right to call me crazy for this right now, but let me explain. [As a disclaimer, I feel it’s necessary to state my bias. Kurugaya is indeed my favorite heroine from LitBus for a number of reasons. The main reason is that [in my opinion] she acts the most like a real person out of all the Little Busters crew. I’ll try not to let my bias sway my explanation.]
Kurugaya is the only heroine who’s affection Riki actually seeks out. Seriously! With Komari the romance was a byproduct of Riki helping her come to terms with the death of her brother. I doubt there would have been any romance without the struggle they went through. The situation with Haruka, Mio and Kud wasn’t much different. Riki began spending time with each of them, and as a result, he became entangled in their personal problems, and the strife brought them together. Even with Rin, she asked him out on a whim after seeing the risk of another girl liking him.
And I know you could argue that after reading Refrain Rin is the girl for Riki, but I personally believe that Kyousuke’s plan is the exact reason why Riki and Rin’s love was not true. Kyousuke sort of forced the two of them to care for each other in order to survive in a world where everyone they cared about had died. I don’t blame him, that definitely makes sense. I feel, however, that their romance would not last without the circumstances more or less forcing them together. They’re both just too awkward in the same ways, and I can tell you from personal experience that that doesn’t work out.
This brings me to Riki’s romance with Kurugaya. As shown by the Loli-Loli Hunters portion of Kurugaya’s route, Riki falls for Kurugaya. This affection is not circumstantial like it is with Komari, Mio, Kud and Haruka, and is not forced by external manipulation like his romance with Rin. In Kurugaya’s route, he simply develops a crush on a girl he thinks is really cool. Never anywhere else in the novel does Riki so actively look for love. I feel like I’ve gone on long enough about that, now let me explain why I think Kurugaya ends up as Riki’s canonical girlfriend.
In the Refrain anime Kyousuke makes it clear that before the bus crash, the original five Little Busters (himself, Riki, Rin, Masato and Kengo) were not close friends with the other five (Komari, Haruka, Kud, Kurugaya and Mio). The fact that they are all close friends and reflect on their fun times together after getting out of the hospital shows that they remember the events and emotions they felt in the dream world. This is made even more clear (in the visual novel) when Riki sees that all the girls seem to have fulfilled their lives and gotten over their regrets, except for Kurugaya. You can’t view Kurugaya’s true end until after getting this scene. If I’m interpreting it correctly, that is because Kurugaya’s true end takes place in the real world, some time after the events of the bus crash. After the crash, Kurugaya confesses to Riki, helping bring closure to her past regrets and putting the two together in a relationship.
While I’ve had this theory for a few months now, I’ve recently thought of more. This is sort of a stretch so please bare with me. This favoring towards Kurugaya makes even more sense if you look at Jun Maeda’s recent song “Hikikomori no Uta”. Assuming the song is autobiographical (which is the way I take it), one can see the similarities between the young Jun Maeda’s dissatisfaction with his life at the time the song takes place and Kurugaya’s apathy towards everything. I’m really stretching here, but I feel like maybe Maeda favored Kurugaya a bit himself, as he wrote a bit of himself in her. After hearing the song, I like to think he puts a bit of himself into all his characters. (Just to make sure that I’m not being dumb, I know he isn’t write the character routes, but he did write all the characters basic personalities and the common route along with Rin and Refrain, correct?). Anyways, if this is the case, and he favored her a bit, maybe that’s why her true end takes place after Refrain. Again, I know that this is a pretty big stretch, and based heavily on assumptions.
Hopefully that all made sense, I just spent an hour trying to formulate all my thoughts into a cohesive thing, and I know the last paragraph isn’t very articulate so I apologize for that. Anyway, I’d love to get some opinions on my theory.
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I agree with you on this on soooo many levels;
Which is why I absolutely love that Kurugaya’s route does this! (BTW you don’t need spoiler tags for stuff that happens in her route)
Which is also why I haaaate what they did with the anime; They removed all traces of her wishing for their love to become a reality by the end, and that’s the single thing I loved from her route in the VN.
Uuuunfortunately, Maeda didn’t write Kurugaya’s route; it was written by Yuto Tonokawa
But yeah, it made sense to me, mainly because I’ve supported this ship from the get-go. While I wouldn’t consider her route very well-written, it definitely shows that she, more than anyone, goes the best with Riki 
(Unless the EX routes betray me on this)
Right??? Besides the REAL significance of the baseball stats, I feel like Kurugaya’s true end was one of the most unique part of the novel.
I know Maeda didn’t write her route, but I was under the impression that he wrote the common route, which established the basic character for each of the heroines, which were built upon in their respective routes, written by various writers. Or did the other scenario writers come up with the characters, who were then worked into the common route?
Riki effectively became the heroine. Yuiko was already dealing with her regret by taking her own steps.
Yup. Yuiko won’t talk about her time in the fake world at all. She dodges the topic whenever Riki asks her. She refused to speak about it, presumably until Riki remembers her.
Their promise was roughly that she would confess if Riki remembered. After some time, Riki remembers what happened in the fake world, so he goes to see her.
There’s a more consistent evidence you could have used. For example: Refrain ends during Summer. Bokura no Asa ends at the end of Summer. Yuiko’s true end takes place at the start of Autumn/Fall. They fit together with no contradictions.
It’s a shame. IIRC YuTono was helping the anime staff with the storyline too, yet they still dropped the details. We didn’t even get Yuiko’s bittersweet smile T_T
I did like that, during the sleep-over episode (mid-way through Litbus season 1) Riki and Yuiko have a cute moment.
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Except the one that Riki and Rin are a couple at the end of Refrain’s second playthrough.
I guess Riki can end up with Rin, Kud or Kurugaya, the three are canon. If Riki doesn’t remember of Kurugaya’s route, he ends up with Rin, because of what I mentioned above. If Riki does remember, he ends up with Kurugaya. How he ends up with Kud, I have no idea, but it is a possibility because of Kud Wafter.
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Points at Kyousuke
Also isn’t Kud Wafter (possible Kud Wafter possible Refrain spoilers)set in a ‘timeline’ where the the events of Little Busters didn’t happen? Or have I gotten confused over something else.
It’s not. Kudwaf is set after the EX\ME version of Kud’s route, that if I’m not mistaken, is set after Refrain.
Oh, and I forgot about Sasami and Kanata. Those are also canonically love interests, because of EX/ME. Saya is not included, because her route is set entirely before Refrain.
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I don’t know what playthrough that is, but it’s not the one preceding Bokura no Asa.
That’s debated.There’s a scene at the end in the VN and anime that suggests otherwise, although it’s pretty vague. I like to include her in the canonical post-refrain love interests.
Iiya. Saya is absolutely a candidate. It’s strongly implied that she transfers into the Little Busters’ school some time after the events of the field trip.
Basically, for all the branches in the fake world, we can explain it away as being part of the loop. But then after the bus crash there’s many more splits in the continuity, legitimately alternate outcomes. Don’t forget the outcome where Riki dies from the bus explosion~
So in summary, it’s up to you to decide what’s canon. The beauty of traditional branching visual novel plots.
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Just watched Kurugaya’s route from the anime again. Her route is too good 
I loved the theme of her route though, the theme of “emotions” that she couldn’t express. Kurugaya is by far, one of the greatest Key characters ever. The things she would do for her friends, and the things she would sacrifice for Riki’s happiness (in the anime) is unbelievably beautiful.
I always loved Kurugaya’s Wisdom/Quotes too. It seems that she understands things more than the LB group.
My all time favorite quote from Kurugaya would have to be during the end of her route when she says
“The fireworks I saw with you will fade away like the snow” ~ Kurugaya Yuiko
It’s beautiful. But it might just be my obsession with poetic quotes.
I also loved her words that she was thinking about when she and Riki were running out of the school.
“I wouldn’t mind taking the fall. But… I’ll gladly accept a friends thoughtfulness” ~ Kurugaya Yuiko
That quote right there is LIFE 
Can’t wait to play her route when the Official English LB VN comes out ! I’ll be spamming this section with her quotes
Edit - How come every LB girl has a Rate-System except Kurugaya ?
When it comes to her and Riki, Riki was more of a heroine than Yuiko was. Pretty funny how different it was to a standard VN romance.
Oooh, you’ll love it! They are very different experiences.
Looks like whoever added them was very lazy about it. Rin doesn’t have one either. They also messed up all of the links in the General Discussion post, and left a bunch of dead threads around instead of merging everything to the right threads. For shame.
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Ehhhh… I can’t remember who I appointed to the Little Busters topics, but what dead topics are you referring to? I’d like to have this sorted asap. PM me please, @Takafumi
Ah it’s that time of year again where it’s my favorite Little Buster character birthday Yuiko Kurugaya. HAPPY BIRTHDAY YUI CHAN!!!
At first I thought she just might be another “cool” character but after going through her route it made me realize how much I actually really like this character. Whenever I play a VN I like to pick one character after the whole character introduction sequence and see if I will still like this character over all the other character after I’m done reading the VN. I wasn’t expecting Kurugaya route to be so good (maybe it’s also my favorite route because I had really low expectation when I started Kurugaya route). I found this route to be so unique because Kurugaya and Riki had swapped roles with each other where Kurugaya take care of Riki instead of Riki take care of Kurugaya. The ending of the route was so sweet and is my favorite ending in Little Busters!. After reading Refrain, you can finally complete her route because the Refrain huge plot twist is the conflict in the route. This make her route even more special since it might be the only route that cannot be completed without beating Refrain and actually have two endings (not really counting other character route bad ending, but I guess you can consider her original ending to be a bad ending).
Also this song is too good after completing Yui chan route <3
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Well well, it’s time to talk about this route, let’s see. It’s difficult to describe it, since it isn’t your normal or common route in the game, however that doesn’t make it necessarily good.
Starting with a problem with bullying, which has an easy resolution that also left one wondering will something happen to the math’s teacher. Then the operation love love hunters, it was funny; I didn’t see all te pairings but I guess that was not necessary, all the busters helping Riki to get Kurugaya’s attention, Does Rin actually have feelings towards Riki ? She has in Rin2 i guess but here that’s kinda confusing, even in Rin2 or Refrain is still confusing
Riki is rejected then have to decide if he will just stay as her friend or try again. An expected void bad end or the continuation of the route, which lead to the start of their relationship, kind of weird it feels like that just happen or have to happen, ok let’s accept for a moment that this happened. Their relationship starts, but something happens with the world, people are forgetting things with the exception of Riki, who has to solve this all alone. He couldn’t reach Kurugaya and everything in the world dissapear, with the ending of apparently Kurugaya waiting for somebody, this is understandable after refrain, but Is it really worthy ?, I mean it is too short.
This is all I guess, I’m not so sure about this route, it looks like it’s ok, but just that. Kurugaya is the kind of girl that is always teasing, so knowing her real feelings is not that easy, but yeah our main character always get all the girls, I mean the feelings are understandable on Riki’s side but in Kurugaya’s, well.
The route tried to give you some background about Kurugaya, but it wasn’t enough to get to know her, she and her route are mysterious, that’s ok ; but leaving holes or just possibilites is not, people just speculate too much about some points on this route, which doesn’t add value or content.
So going back with Kurugaya’s feelings, Riki and her spend a lot of time together but the relationship doesn’t feel “complete”, you just may be thinking but they will have a good relationship after refrain, yeah that might be, but that is not in the game and since many state that, the main point in the route is their relationship, this doesn’t help that much.
To conclude, this route had potential but that’s it, it was a normal route, there is not an actual problem nor resolution; maybe their relationship or Kurugaya trying to understand her emotions, but there is no way to be sure that those possible problems are solved. Also the route leaves confused anyone who hasn’t play refrain, a shocking factor doesn’t make anything good or perfect, fortunately everything make sense in the end or you have to understand it in your way, since nothing is explained. Kurugaya seems fine on her own, and this experience doesn’t make Riki stronger, so well it looks like there is no point in the route.
Thank you, very much
You bring up a lot of really great points against the route from a narrative perspective in that it makes absolutely no fucking sense 
But I think where this route shines is more on the emotional aspect of it all. I think that the most valuable part of this route was not trying to build a connection between Riki and Kurugaya, but trying to figure out how Kurugaya, who supposedly had a hard time feeling emotions, was able to gain a sprouting love towards Riki. In addition to that, it gains even more value after Refrain and becoming aware that this whole thing was temporary; that, in hindsight, it makes it all the more painful realizing how much she struggled to make this world repeat just so she didn’t have to give up that fleeting emotion that she sought out so much. This is because she knew exactly that once this world disappeared, so, too, would the emotional connection between her and Riki.
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Such a unique and interesting route! The role reversal with the protagonist falling and trying to woo the girl is one you see so rarely in VNs and it’s a damn shame! Unlike most of LB’s routes this one has little to do with “fixing the girl’s problems”, or at least doing so comes completely naturally to Riki and Kurugaya in this one. He’s not falling for her to fix her problem of lacking emotional responses to things, it just links up with that as a natural consequence. Which is great! LB could’ve stood to have more of that in the character routes.
Of course it still stands out as the route that goes totally off the rails at some point, but I’m always looking forward to the eventual Song For Friends ending~
This is a route that I only feel more appreciation towards every time I read it. I hope that trend will continue.
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That irked me a bit at first, but then I realized it must be deliberate.
Route seemed a bit ordinary for a long time, though of course with some fun moments, and classic quotable quotes by the truckload. I still hold Kurugaya as my favourite girl for now, which helps. It was interesting as others have said to see the role reversal for our protagonist and the way in which it slowly becomes clear that something is awry.
I’m intrigued now by what will be revealed after Refrain, I think maybe I should judge the route against the others afterwards.
