Huff… They changed it with Loli loli hunters, didn’t they?
As Love Love Hunters, my favorite is Kengo’s part (w/ anyone). It’s too funny! But I especially like it when I got him with Mio. The result is just priceless!!! Mio is a boss! Kyousuke’s reaction is also funny there lol.
(fyi: someone actually made a fanart out of this)
Most definitely Mio for Masato. Mio is so overwhelmingly badass there. Well, she’s badass no matter what bro you choose for her, but this particular mental smackdown is especially one-sided. It’s so one-sided it’s funny.
It’s actually ok. Masato likes her even less, as shown in her route.
Incidentally, this is more of a Haruka discussion thing, but did you try to take a closer look at what happens when you try to pair Kengo and Haruka? It never occurs to Haruka that Kengo might be referring to her when he wants to talk about love. Isn’t that a wonderfully disguised example of Haruka’s… hidden side?
Yeah, I really do love it. I’m just afraid I’d get scorned for finding the common route type stuff the best part of the route and… I dunno, I can’t explain it very well, I just feel like someone would be expected to prefer the part where he’s actually spending his time with the heroine or something since it’s a heroine route and not the same kind of stuff we already got in the common route… I dunno. Just being self-conscious.
As for my favorite Love Love Hunters choices:
Mio for Masato
Haruka for Kengo
Kud for Kyousuke (best choice out of all of them IMO, it was just so hilarious)
Me in a nutshell. All you need to know is what responses suit which type of people. To guys you are smart. To tomgirls you are bubbly. To girls you are close. To tomboys, cute but reliable. To the shy you are confident. To the social you are carefree. To the lonely you are understanding. To the popular you are prideful. To the bullied you are reassuring. To the bullies you are an accomplice. Sporty people you are active. Emotional people you are artistic. The smart you are overwhelming. The dumb you are playful. To the lazy you are a way of passing the time. To the passionate you are resolute.
Put enough generalizations together and you can figure it out.
You can act in ways without understanding them - Yuiko’s case is one that almost everyone follows. Talking profanely is standard. There are 8 year olds who speak the same words.
Yuiko spends most of her time alone, so I guess she doesn’t have to do it too much.
The Love Love Hunters stuff was a waste of time btw. They accomplished nothing from it 
Operation Ban-Ban Taka.
Mission Starto da!
Ban-Ban Taka!
Accomplishing nothing was the point of the entire operation. Unfortunately, Riki was more stubborn than expected.
That’s an interesting way to look at it. I should try to pay attention the next time I play if she really cannot pick on social cues. I guess, for other people, they may be insulted by the things she does, but for the Little Busters members, who are pretty carefree, it might be okay with them so…
Well, the teachers and some classmates seem to hate her. If you pay attention to the bullies, you can see them react to the slightest thing~
Considering I didn’t talk about Kurugaya and her route last year when I read the visual novel, I may as well talk about both now since I finished watching her arc in the anime yesterday.
So Kurugaya; um I personally like her. She’s a funny, smart and mischievous girl but also very calm and collective when she needs to be. Plus I think Haruka calling her “Anego/Big Sister” is quite accurate because she really is the big sister in the group. One of the criticisms I hear about Kurugaya’s character is that she’s a Mary Sue but personally I didn’t really see that in her. Plus she does have her character flaw, which is that she’s unable to produce emotions or make friends due to her vast interest in studying and excelling. Because of that, she was shunned by a lot of her classmates for being a “robot” or a “monster”. Hence why she joined the Little Busters because she wanted to experience emotions and become a more human character. And honestly, I can relate and sympathize with her dilemma as there was a time when I the had same problem of experiencing human emotions due to being isolated from society. So overall, I do like Kurugaya as a character. She’s not my favorite in the LB heroine cast; that honor goes to Komari and I’ll talk about her when I finish the Refrain anime but I do like Kurugaya.
As for her route, Kurugaya’s route/story arc is one of those arcs which I liked and appreciated more after reading Refrain and especially after watching the anime. When I read it the first time, I wasn’t a fan of her route. I didn’t think it was terrible mind you but the abstract and confusing nature of it just didn’t do it for me and by the end, I was left with a lot of questions like " Were the events leading to the baseball match just a dream? " " Is this entire world just a dream? " .By the time I read Refrain and went back to reread her route for the good ending, the route started to make more sense in the context but I was still a bit underwhelmed because I was used to the backstory- resolve - dilemma formula of the other heroine story arcs so having a straight up romance route was disappointing. However after watching the Refrain anime, I started to not only appreciate but really like Kurugaya’s story arc and I think it was a good thing on the anime’s part to adapt Kurugaya’s arc second last because it does a good job in foreshadowing the events of Refrain without giving too much away. I felt that the relationship between Riki and Kurugaya was done really well and I like the fact that unlike the other routes, it is Riki who falls in love with the heroine and not the other way around. Plus Kurugaya does what she does best in providing some really quirky moments and teasing jokes that still made me laugh when watching the anime. Plus the Fireworks scene was amazing. <3
As for the themes, Kurugaya’s story route deals with theme of “all good things must come to an end” and that nothing can last forever. Kurugaya wants to stay with Riki and the Little Busters forever because she still wants to experience more emotions and cherish them. However, she realizes that she needs to leave the secret world because it’s going haywire due to her desire to stay. Additionally, she knew that the world needs to continue existing until Riki and Rin become stronger to cope with the fact that their friends (including Kurugaya herself) are dying due to the bus accident that occurred. I really like that bittersweet aspect of her route because it’s quite true that nothing can last forever and that you have to move on in life. To me, I felt that the route illustrated those themes well. Now you could argue that the latter moral was thrown off the window with Refrain’s ending but my counterargument to that is put yourself in Kurugaya’s shoes. Could you have predicted that Riki and Rin would become strong enough to save everybody? No. The situation was bleak and as far Kurugaya or the rest of the Little Busters were concerned, they were dying and they had to whatever they can so that Riki and Rin won’t fall into desperation even if the journey to that goal (i.e becoming stronger) is bittersweet. So overall, I liked Kurugaya’s arc.
Last note: Song of Friends is amazing yet heartbreaking.
I don’t even know what that means.
Come to think of it, you’re right. Riki spends a lot of time in the route taking Kurugaya’s feelings and reputation into consideration, and gets his friends to help him confess to her. With the other routes, it’s usually the girl that falls in love with Riki first and confess to him in the middle of the route (although I will say that Mio is an exception because she technically turns him down before she disappears).
I really thought Tonokawa would screw up this route because Kurugaya doesn’t seem to show any character flaws in the common route. This is actually pretty clever on his part, because a good chunk of readers have some anti-social disorder that hampers their emotions and ruins their ability to socialize with others. Considering that I am an individual struggling with Asperger’s Syndrome, I can empathize with Kurugaya. She spent a good deal of her life sealing away her emotions and avoiding people because she wanted to be cool and intelligent (which sounds a lot like my middle school days now that I think about it). During the events of Little Busters!, she realizes that she has been neglecting one of the most important necessities of life: connections. She can’t talk to people comfortably without intimidating them, and she’s occasionally prone to anti-social behavior (like seriously, who deliberately carries a sword to school knowing the legal ramifications?). So, what Tonokawa did to her was respectable. However, it doesn’t excuse the fact that the second half of her route is a bit messy.
But I digress.
Come to think of it, that’s another one of Tonokawa’s writing tropes. (Rewrite Spoilers) Shizuru’s route has the exact same message.
I kind of prefer the instrumental version, but yeah.
It is?
Disagree. If that was the message of that route, then the ending was totally against it.
I loved Kurugaya’s route. Like people have mentioned, it was a deliberate inversion of how it usually goes with Key and most VN makers. Riki was the one who confessed to Kurugaya. With a protagonist like Riki, it would have been a waste of an opportunity to not have at least one heroine be comfortable enough to take the lead in any relationship between them.
Wow I feel exactly the same way… Except I hated the fact that they removed one crucially important line out of the end of Kurugaya’s route in the anime, one about her wanting to stay with Riki and promising to meet him if he remembers. Sure, I guess in the linearity of anime, they can’t pull that off without going down the OTP path, but it still made me salty xP
Sorry for the late reply but Mary Sue is a term used to describe a flawless, cool character that the writers created.
People who think that about Kurugaya are stupid. Mary Sues are created with the intention of wish fulfillment by self insertion (specially of young female teenagers full of hormones). Kurugaya DEFINITELY wasn’t created with that purpose. (Well, it can be wish fulfillment for the boys who like onee-sans, not me, but it’s definitely not self insertion). She’s just good at a lot of stuff. But her lack of emotions is a flaw (okay, she could beat up this flaw, but that was later, and Mary Sues are perfect from the beginning)
Incorrect. That’s just one use of the Mary Sue design.
Yuiko wasn’t a Mary Sue though. She was unpopular, and she was bullied both in the past and during the route. That instantly shoots down the typical idea of a Mary Sue.
What are the other uses, then?
Mary Sues are characters that are perfect. Not all of them are intended as wish fulfilment characters or self-insert characters. For example, you get Mary Sue antagonists, who are perfect in-universe, but as a viewer, they are a character made to hate.
So Mary Sue isn’t a bad thing in this case?
That’s subjective.
