One little touch I really appreciate about Kurugaya’s character is her laugh. Her ‘a ha ha’ sounds so unnatural because it IS. She’s not used to laughing, so she has to force herself.
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There were a lot of subtle things about Yuiko that you wouldn’t really think about at the time, but is rather obvious when you look back at it. Granted I haven’t watched the first season since I watched Refrain, but once I get around to reviewing Little Busters!, that’s the big thing I’ll keep an eye on.
I thought she’d only said that she hated the name Elizabeth.
Umu, it’s similar to (Kanon spoilers) Sayuri] in a way~ They both force their laughter.
If I remember correctly, she doesn’t want anyone to call her by her given name (or any variation of it) apart from her husband (AKA. future Riki 
) though that might have been an excuse~
I honestly didn’t make that connection between Yuiko and Sayuri , but it makes total since now.
Ahaha, right? They are very similar characters, Yuiko being arguably the more violent of the two. I’m surprised there isn’t any crossover fanart of them together~
Both have similar backgrounds, personalities, taste in music, and picnicking habits.
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Kurugaya’s route is one thing that really grew on me. To be honest, when I first played it, I kind of, well, hated it. Storytelling was boring, route was confusing, and the only fun part was Loli-Loli Hunters. Of course, it made a lot more sense after I finished refrain (and got the additional ending) but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.
It’s only when the anime premiered that I remembered it and started falling for it. To be honest I was pretty pissed that they removed all feelings of love towards Riki and Kurugaya in Refrain anime, because I thought that their bittersweet encounters and the emotions they had were the cornerstone of her route. Removing it kind of removed the purpose of the route.
Anyways spoiler time
The crux of Kurugaya’s route was her inherent lack of emotion. I remember people saying how all the girls in Little Busters have some sort of mental disorder and I think Kurugaya’s would be some form of Asperger’s (extremely high intellect, lack of emotions, difficulty reading social cues even though that isn’t made apparent in the story).
What Riki did when he helped solve her regret was make her feel the strongest of all emotions: love. Which is why the anime adaptation pissed me off so much. Indeed, for somebody who has a difficulty feeling emotions, one of the biggest regret that you would have before passing away is not having been able to feel love, whether it be for a lover, friends or family.
Which is why I disagree that her regret hasn’t been solved, or that she wasn’t meant to be one of the characters helped. She came into the dream world, just like the rest of the girls, hoping and praying that her regrets would be sorted out before she dies from the accident…
They told me to come here on Skype, so calm down, Aspi.
Kurugaya is a boring Mary Sue with no actual redeeming points aside from being a giggle when messing around with the other Busters carrying her. The game tries ever so hard to make her seem supah supah kewl but each attempt is just as forced and lame as the last.
Riki’s crush on her is fake as shit and only there because ‘omg kurugaya so cool even riki wants to diki’. The route is bland and boring with the only standout being operation Loli Loli Hunters Love Love Hunters, which funnily enough, involves every Buster BUT her.
She is a massive flaw in an otherwise extremely solid cast.
See, if you were speaking solely from watching the anime I could understand what you are saying.
The Visual Novel route started off with Yuiko being what you call a “boring Mary Sue” (Which she isn’t. She’s like a clone of my older sister! I take offense!) and shows that Yuiko can actually stand up for herself… unlike your sacred Pink-Hair character.
After all the drama stuff Riki develops the crush, without Yuiko having relied on him. This here is key! (Pun intended.) With every other heroine, the (brief) romance developed as each respective heroine’s reliance on Riki increased. Riki naturally becomes infatuated because of that. Riki sho innocent~ =3=
In Yuiko’s route Riki is the one to take the initiative. He essentially becomes the heroine of the route! We all want heroine Riki, right? With a bit of help, and some perseverance, he is able to convince Yuiko that she would be able to feel emotions like love. THEN we get development (the part I assume you find boring.) We get time to see them move forward as a couple and see things work. Due to the nature of her wish, we are able to get the development that every other heroine abandoned. You can say Yuiko is selfish for doing that, but meh, that’s love~
I think it feels more natural than any other heroine being paired with Riki. Mio’s route comes kiiiinda close, but it’s a real extreme.
As for the “extremely solid cast” thing, I’d have to disagree. Aside from the original Little Busters, I didn’t find any of the main cast to be “solid.” They were all interesting at times, and they had a certain dynamic depending on which characters were around, but they weren’t amazing. You ever see that HIMYM episode where they explain how a group of pretty girls look uglier when you look at each girl individually? It’s like that~
Oh, and the next time you say
I will hope you are talking about Rin instead. Gets in the pls bunker
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I gotta say, I felt exactly the same way long after playing the VN Like I said, it grew on me somehow.
Yeah Rin crush is totes fakes. They have the least romantic tension out of all the routes.
Yeah see that shit.
“pls cry about her terrible backstory that totally exists because I said so”
It’s just awful.
There’s certainly hints, like her fake laughter and inability to understand the Little Busters sometimes, but it could definitely have been made a lot more clear than it was.
With all the other heroines, their “story” (I assume you mean background story) is something that caused the main conflict in the present. For Yuiko, her backstory was something that caused the introduction conflict - the way of starting her route, similar to Kud’s horrible English skills or Haruka’s issues with the Graffiti. I don’t think her backstory was really meant to be a big deal. If anything, I imagine it would have just been years of meh for Yuiko, so there isn’t much for her to talk about.
The thing I like most about the route is that it didn’t go from a typical complete-robot girl to a cheerful romance. It started with a post-robot girl who wanted to see all humanity had to offer. Yuiko got through that conflict by herself, solely by observing or occasionally dropping in to fun activities. Her past still has an impact on her personality, she is still getting used to being an emotive person (it’s pretty obvious there is SOMETHING a bit off about her social skills) but she grew through most of the trouble herself.
She is a heroine who saved herself, charmed the protagonist, and got to have a post-conflict romance… for the most part. Secret World stuff kinda screws it all over. If this was a route in a standard VN, and the secret didn’t take part in the story, it’d have been a slice of life romance route (a genre I adore) about a girl who is learning how to make life fun. The only conflict in her route is a result of the underlying Little Busters story, and I think that’s one of the main themes in the story. They are in a world where they could live fun days over and over, but there MUST be conflict along the way, or the whole point of creating the world will be meaningless.
Compared to other things, the romance could definitely be considered shallow (the idea of a girl still learning social skills gives it a bit of a pass for a lot people,) but compared to the rest of Little Busters… Well, Yuiko’s route (and Kud’s route) are the only ones I can consider giving the label of “romance” to throughout the whole VN. Romance isn’t a key aspect for Litbus though, so it’s fine for a lot of people. As a big romance fan, Litbus drops a lot of marks because of this, but I know lots of people like the other routes.
I don’t know. Yuiko herself and the actual route are incredibly relatable to me, and it fits with all my favorite tropes and genres. All of the other character routes felt very lacking and very dull for a Visual Novel. All of that together makes Yuiko’s route my favorite.
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Well, I won’t deny this part. Kurugaya’s personal problems of robotic personality and so on have already been solved by Kurugaya herself. So this time, Riki was not the knight in shining armor who just popped out and saved her. Basically, I agree with Takafumi here:
It’s too bad we didn’t get all that much Kurugaya in Kurugaya’s route.
But that doesn’t mean that this route wasn’t meaningfull in itself, as in, a meaningfull experience for Riki in regards to what awaits him. The romance in this route started out as a puppy love. Unlike what happened in the Anime, Kurugaya wasn’t the one to confess first in the VN. She made sure to not reveal her emotions. Instead, Riki got overwhelmed by her beauty, strength and overall awesomeness (Practically swinging her boobs into his face was the finishing blow) which put him into an extremely weak position. The way he was at that point, he couldn’t ever oppose Kurugaya.
And yet he managed to turn this blind admiration into actual love and display strength. He learned to face all problems head-on. He didn’t get beaten down when rejected. Instead, he came back stronger and made her admit her feelings that she kept hidden. He actually managed, for a short while, to take the lead in his relationship with the overpowering Kurugaya!
Basically, in this route, unlike how it was in the others, Riki suffered and learned more than the girl did. (Except Rin2. Rin really made him go through hell there.)
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I just finished Kurugaya’s route! (normal end)
Her route in the anime left me 100% confused and bitter and since I already know the secret of the world I was able to pick things up a little bit better when playing her route in the VN.
I had a pretty good idea of what was happening but thank you for those who discussed it earlier cuz now I fully understand what has taking place in her route and why things were playing out they way they were. ^^
That being said, I don’t know how it could be said that Riki’s crush on Kurugaya was fake. I thought they had a lot of fantastic romantic chemistry between them .^^.
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Haruka does use Yui-nee sometimes in the VN, but never when Kurugaya is within earshot probably because she doesn’t want to make her mad.
I honestly find it weird seeing her be called “Yuiko” Yeah, it’s her name, but I can only think of her as Kurugaya (and I think she prefers it that way…)
… And then I realized the posts accusing the anime of screwing up were made months ago. Oh well.
“Love Love Hunters” (or Loli Loli Hunters) was awesome. The fun brotimes and comedy are the reason this route is one of my favorites… which, in hindsight, isn’t really a good thing, is it? Still, I just really enjoy the common route type shenanigans.
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Kurugaya x Yuiko is my favorite vanilla in LB!
This is my thoughts on the route before reading Refrain. My opinion is subject to change.
Tonokawa seems to really like classic Key games for some reason. I mean, the initial ending really reminded me of the concepts introduced in both Kanon and CLANNAD, with a focus on dreams, wishes, and memories. The feels half of this story is so bizarre and full of these tropes, it isn’t even funny. Still, the execution of this is good, and I did enjoy much of this route, despite my qualms about it.
Kurugaya herself is a decent character, but what I did not understand is why she talks so profanely and yet has no clue what it means to love. You’d think that she’d have at least had one romantic relationship before meeting Riki, but I suppose that’s something that threw me for a surprise with this story. I expected Kurugaya to be such an expert about love out of experience, but her ‘knowledge’ is from books instead, and she’s never had the chance to experience love for herself. She reminds me a lot of myself in this respect, so I can sympathize with her in some way.
Up until the second half of her route, I consider this route to be the most ‘Little Busters!’-esque out of them all so far. This wasn’t just about Riki and Kurugaya, it was about the whole team working together to bring these two individuals closer. I enjoyed this part of the route immensely, and it really stood out to me over the other routes, but the problem here is the outcome. The ending is a hopeful one, but it isn’t necessarily happy, unlike the other good endings.
So, in the end, Kurugaya stands as one of the weaker routes of Little Busters! to me, but with Refrain soon on the horizon, time will tell if my opinion will change…
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I thought it was very similar to ONE and Kanon… which are a couple of my favorite VNs, so that’s probably why I liked the route more than the others.
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Not a good thing? It’s a great thing! Love love hunters is wonderful and I was frustrated they didn’t put it in the anime.
Here’s an interesting, Kurugaya route related discussion: Which Love Love Hunters choice is your favorite? I personally really like choosing Komari for Kengo, because it ends up with Haruka and, as some may or may not have noticed, Kengo doesn’t really like Haruka very much XD
I agree with this. There’s a huge gap with her personality and the problem she is shown to have. For a person who can’t seem to pick up on social cues very well, she interacts perfectly with everybody ^_^;
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