Little Busters! - Yuiko Kurugaya Route & Character Discussion

[Pepe]

Just about finished my second playthrough of this route and, damn, this route benefits huuuugely after reading it the second time. I mean, I’ve said before that this route grew on me (and I never enjoyed it the first time I read it) but I never actually tried reading it again. Well, this second one just hit me like a truck.

Firstly, I’ll get this off the table: I am not a fan of Kurugaya, as a character. It may be for the same reasons that Kanon dislikes her (considering I am also not a fan of Tomoyo from CLANNAD). But one thing is for sure: she is extremely relatable to me, on a personal level. This isn’t the right place to go into the details, I feel, but one thing is for sure (and I am glad a lot of people picked it up): this girl absolutely does lack emotions, and I’ve been there before. This describes her perfectly:

Virtually everything she does is based around how she thinks she is supposed to act/what other people might find likable.

I must admit though, the narrative would have been greatly improved if they expounded on this point further. It’s a bit unfair for me considering I can only really get this considering I’ve been in such a situation before. If Tonokawa were able to make it in such a way that even more people could find that emotionless side of her more believable, I think much more people would appreciate this route But overall, I think of that as a big plus point of the route, but not the main crux of it all.

But that aside, let’s do what I do best: look at the message of the route. I think what it’s trying to say, at its simplest form, is quite endearing. It is better to have felt and lost then to have not felt anything at all. I guess more people would know this quote with the word “love” but I like to think of it in a more generic way. After all, Kurugaya is extremely thankful of being able to have experienced her love for Riki (or, if you want to go anime terms, her joy at being part of the Little Busters). And no matter how sad it makes her that she must accept the inevitable loss of this emotion, she is thankful that she was able to feel it, and hopeful that it will return to her one day.

However, I think it is trying to imply something deeper here… and this is where we get a bit into the meta universe. Of course, this makes more sense in the context of Refrain, but I’ll try to make my thoughts as spoiler-less as possible. Wish me luck.

To start this train of thought, I’d like to point out that Kanon hits the nail on the head when he says:

At least after the boys hijack the route, Kurugaya does get some nice scenes, she learns to feel emotions thanks to Riki no Diki and it that would have been a perfectly fine ending.

And you know what? He is absolutely right! This would have been a great ending! Heck, most VNs actually do end on this note, and they end pretty damn well. But, haven’t you ever thought, what actually does happen after that? What happens after the characters step off the stage and everything is said and done? For most players, they’d just be forgotten. The players would go off to woo another girl, see what happens from there, and keep the previous route as just another of their memories of just another VN route. And you know what? That is extremely painful for the characters. For their love just to be forgotten just because they live in a dream world.

And, in a very subtle way, I think this is what Kurugaya’s route is trying to show. The route actually should have ended right then and there. But iIt’s trying to show what the characters would feel after the play is done and the performers must leave the stage and all their emotions behind. This train of thought has actually been pointed out in a number of VNs before, though they are few and far between.

“But pepeeee why should we care about their feelings, they’re just fictional characters?” Well that is where you are wrong. Sure, we don’t need to care in the sense that we should try to make them feel better. That would be dumb. But the least we can do, after connecting and understanding these characters, is to learn from these stories and learn from these emotions. To keep these lessons we’ve learned from Kurugaya’s emotions into heart and put them into our daily life. That way, no matter how sad and forgotten her emotions become once this route and done, I believe that this is the best way that we can respect these emotions, no matter how fictional they may be.

Now, let’s get into them juicy refrain spoilers: Putting all this into context, this whole turn of events shows just how cruel Kyousuke’s plan is (as if Rin 2 wasn’t enough proof lol). Sure, it is admirable that he is trying to seek out the best for Riki and Rin, but creating an environment where Kurugaya’s (and other characters) emotions are just left and forgotten once their “wish” has been granted is just way too inconsiderate. Cheap tricks! Kyousukeeeeee!

[machelmore]

I can see where your coming from, but I think it could also be seen from the opposite perspective. The main message of the route “Live facing forward”, while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it suggests one should leave everything in the past where it is, just in the past, but it makes me interpret the end of the stories as “the characters only have one direction to go from here - forwards”, and that while I agree it’s important to carry their emotions with you, both you and they should keep moving forwards.

Actually, it just occurred to me, her lack of emotion might exactly be the reason she does such outrageous stuff all the time. She’s trying to get a reaction out of people, maybe for the sake of observation or some such matter. I think it’s at least fair to say that she has a motive beyond “because it’s fun.”

(Refrain spoilers)

I have to object to what you said about it being inconsiderate. They were under the impression that after the dream world came to an end, they would die, that Riki and Rin would be the only survivors. I think what Kyousuke’s doing, giving them one last chance for closure - to sort out their regrets and have fun - and be in love, is a very admirable (although admittedly, a side-effect) part of his plan.

[Zosonte]

So, before I delve into the route itself, I just want to gush about how much I love Kurugaya as a character. She is, without a doubt, my favorite Key heroine. Kurugaya is confident, witty, and simply doesn’t care about how anyone sees her. She is a woman with a smooth and sultry voice, not a loli with a cheese grater for vocal cords. I was immediately attracted to her character because she was so unlike any character I’ve ever seen before in a Key novel. Her long, raven hair graced with a yellow ribbon and those lavender eyes which told of the unsung eons precious gems lay in the earth, waiting to be found by the small and foolish beings called humanity, captivated me. The jigsaw puzzle fit snug in my heart when I first saw her call Riki ‘young man.’ She reminds me a lot of Akane from Rewrite, but less catty and lazy. She takes the unassuming and timid Riki, and begins drawing him with charcoal on a canvas and tutoring him in math, on a tea table at the backyard of the school. “…Drifting with the tide, I just live as I am," she states, seemingly unbound by the chains of what we call life. That is something I admired.

Beneath her outer shell(s), Riki sees a void in her, however. It follows the classic trope of intelligence equaling isolation, though in this case Kurugaya seems to barely be able to grasp emotion, as if she’s scared of them. She doesn’t want to allow herself to be happy, because she opens up the possibility of being sad as well. She is afraid of knowledge she can’t control; a new horizon that logic cannot form nor dictate. This is reaffirmed as she runs from Riki when he confesses to her. Kurugaya seems to be ashamed of this, too. This is something I can personally relate to. There was a time when I rejected human emotions, knowing they ebb and flow like the tide as the moon turns. I did not want joy, because misery would creep unto me and ruin just as the beautiful sun sets and stars slowly dot the ugly night sky. I scowled and kept no expectations, knowing I would only be pleasantly surprised if by chance the hair of mirth were to brush on my cheek. Like Kurugaya who found a connection with Riki through the bullying incident, I changed after finding my place among those around me - I realized I could never escape from what makes me human, and flowing with the tide alongside those I loved made me stronger than lying still within it, alone.

Riki thoroughly impressed me in this route. While in the others he let the heroines lead him around like a lost lamb, here he at least resolves to come to terms with his boiling feelings for Kurugaya, and I found respect for him just as the conquistadors found gold in the New World. This was easily my favorite part of the route; the slowly developing relationship and romance we are presented with tastes awfully sweet to me, appealing to my love for, well, love. Riki and Kurugaya are my favorite relationship of the novel so far. Their little date in the rain, where Kurugaya wishes she could splash through the puddles in long boots was a highlight. The entire route felt like a Nicholas Sparks novel, which I unabashedly love.

Onto the meat of this animal, we have the snow in June, which is so alien and foreign to a desert-dweller like myself that the time-loop(?) concept is merely another needle on a cactus. People are forgetting things, and a heavy dose of Key magic is injected. It specifically reminds me a lot of Misaki’s route from One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e, which I absolutely loved. I won’t lie; this route was far too vague for me toward the end. Perhaps that cloud will disperse after reading Refrain, but until then all I see is a murky and tragic sea from atop a rusty gangplank. What I do see, though, what I can grasp with my cold fingers, is a woman discovering the value of human emotion through, once again, the mighty sword and shield of love and friendship. Even if emotions can be terrifying, it is precisely because they are irrational and powerful that they must be experienced. It is only through them that we can find ourselves; once we find ourselves, we can help others. It was in this route that I realized how comfortable and safe I felt, as though I were a freshly hatched bird in a nest being guarded by my mother. I suppose it is because I am here, in this bookclub on Kazamatsuri, that I can feel such a way.

Finally, Kurugaya’s story is obviously far from over, so I won’t act like I’m done here. I don’t know what Refrain is or why Little Busters is structured like this, but regardless all I want to do is keep reading. Something tells me the lessons Riki is taught through the heroines’ routes stack, as he travels through these winding paths up Mount Purgatory, with the Busters as his Virgil and Beatrice.

[grooven]

I too only picked up on her non emotions with the bullying. But they don’t really pull through with this focused promise of lack of emotions. I was looking for this to be a huge revelation of why it happened.

The writer lays the ground work for it to build up to some big reveal. With routes they usually have something going on that keeps you guessing, they foreshadow it early on and then it becomes a big revelation (which is the repeating world in this case, which is really cool) but the the the emotion thing just falls to the side. I was expecting a definite reason to why she lacked emotions, which is why I had guessed the android thing earlier on. I was looking for that big reveal.

[MagusVerborum]

I’m currently working on a proper long post about this, but I don’t think it needed a big reveal, hell, I think it would have detracted to have a big cheesy flashback sequence where we ‘uncover her backstory’! She tellls is that she was being differently, that something about her brain just isn’t the same as everyone else. To me this is very realistic, as someone who was ‘born differently’, and the conclusion that Riki reaches about how everyone’s special anyway, so Kurugaya is just as much an oddball as the rest of the Busters, really hit home for me.

I’ve said before that Kurugaya is a very self-aware character, to the point that she’s aware of the structure of the novel, she’s very much intelligent, and yet lacks the capacity to feel ‘emotion’. I don’t know if this is entirely accurate but this is certainly how Kurugaya perceives herself and as such almost all of her interactions with the Busters are her ‘calculating’ a response. She acts based off of what she thinks others want to hear, and how she thinks her own ‘character’ should act. We see so much of this back in the common route, Kurugaya acting extremely quirky and seemingly random, acting on a whim, but always pushing and trying to persuade Riki of how abnormal she is.

I could be reading entirely too much knot this, but there’s a reason why I pulled out a book on Asperger’s Syndrome when I began her route proper, and that’s because I was born with this ‘mental illness’. I went through a long period of my life not knowing hat made me different, and when I discovered that was the root cause in my mind, I clung to that idea and forged it as part of my identity. My ‘difference’ became all that I was during my last year of highschool. I also began to become more aware of how I was acting, becoming more self-critical trying to figure out why I was acting the way I was, it certainly played a large role in making me who I am today.

“But this doesn’t line up with Kurugaya seemingly not having emotions” I hear you asking. Well, that’s because it wasn’t until this point that I had the realisation that a huge amount of my behaviour I was just ‘acting’ I didn’t really feel as excited as I seemed, I didn’t feel sad I just thought I was supposed to be sad, I wasn’t having in I just was acting that way so I could keep my few friendships going and not, you know, be the one lonely kid who sits just outside the corner of the library and ignores the rest of the world for that time.

Out of all the characters we’ve ‘understood’ so far, Kurugaya by far hits the closest home for me. I ranted and I raged, I cried out against an unfair force, I couldn’t understand why it was that I couldn’t just ‘be me’. I couldn’t understand why ‘being yourself’ was so difficult, and why I couldn’t just be happy. I eventually settled on an understanding that, honestly, it was okay to be that way. As long as my acting brought joy to the people around me it didn’t matter that I was just acting a part, what mattered was that I could forge relationships and have a positive influencer on those around me (little bit of Komari there).

To bring it back to Kurugaya, I would have felt incredibly cheated if we’d been given s big explanation for the way she is, because it’s a generic thing, it’s something she’s born with, something that can’t be stopped or prevented, something that by the nature of this world cannot be undone. I felt like Kurugaya’s quiet crying out at the end of the chapter just as much applied to her circumstance with Riki and how she couldn’t stay with him to continuing expressing her love (something she’s never truly done up until this point) as to how she can’t change the way that she is. Maybe I’m trying to make the story too damn tragic for myself but I feel her pain in my heart and I sometimes wonder myself if the story I’m telling all of you, that I am okay with the way that I am and that I am happy with my half-acting personality, is truth or fiction. It’s a struggle that I very much deal with on a constant basis and though I don’t claim to know Kurugaya completely I… well, I eternally empathise with her.

realizes once again I’ve written way more than I meant to

Aw hell. Well, yeah, I don’t want to find out she’s a robot, or the subject of a government experiment, or that she was dropped on her head as s child or some other cliched nonsense. I want to believe that Kurugaya behaves and thinks and feels the way that she does because that is just how she is, how she was born. And I personally take a lot of encouragement in Riki’s statement, I think that it’s a powerful message to anyone who was born differently, especially in a way that no one can really see, but that we can attempt to understand. I would have loved to have spent more time with you Kurugaya, I’m sorry that our relationship crumbled before it could truly bear fruit. But we’ll, i’ve got more wishes to grant, and lessons to learn, for all of our sakes. Expect me to make some sort of theory post within the week hereish.

[Zosonte]

I agree with you here. I had no desire to learn why Kurugaya was the way she was, because I too believe she was simply born that way. I say this because I was born that way too, and like her, I grew from my experiences with those I love and learned not only emotions but the value of them. To feel so alienated and inhuman - there is no greater curse. How can you explain something you can’t even understand yourself?Then, when you begin acting like something that is a part of you is true, it slowly morphs from the aether into reality. When forwards and backwards turn on a whim, all we can is follow our heart.

[grooven]

I still disagree with them not giving an explanation, since I feel the narrative was pushing towards it. Even if you are born without emotions there’s a reason there. It just feels a bit glossed over , like oh she can’t feel emotions. To me they could’ve reached more. But I can see how others wouldn’t want an explanation and give them freedom to feel what want to interpret from the situation. I respect your opinions.

Having said all this, I really did enjoy this route however and think it is in the top running for me. I have to say it is mostly because of the repeating world mixed with her desire to be with Riki. The snow scenes remind of when it did snow in May a few years ago. The anime make it look really beautiful too.

[machelmore]

I have to say, the bullying incident (other than the scene where Kurugaya and Riki are talking after it’s all over), didn’t really say to me that she has no emotions. Feeling bad just because you’re getting bullied doesn’t really make sense to me. Since she managed to avoid it without getting affected by it, that would be the same as just feeling bad because people have ill intentions towards you, which I don’t understand. To me, it just says that she’s thick-skinned.
The reason I started guessing at her lack of emotion was the sense of disconnect some of her statements give, even the very first time you meet her.

Even if people would agree with such a statement, you wouldn’t find many who would assert it so clearly.
She seems to possess common sense, yet is unbound by it.

I notice at this point, she’s not actually laughing, or even chuckling. Obviously the fact that she said that doesn’t mean that she needs to be laughing here, but it kind of draws attention to the way you hear her laugh a lot, but it’s a very deliberate laugh every time. It’s always “Ha ha ha” rather than “hahaha”, she never really laughs, she just makes the noise. Of course, even if you look, you don’t really find the other characters laughing that much either, but you do hear about it. This is just an example, but if you look for them you can find a lot of lines like this:

It just seems to me that they’re making a point of how Kurugaya never genuinely laughs like the other characters.

[Zosonte]

There are many ways to interpret Kurugaya’s behavior, and one very plausible way is to argue that she takes to the logical extreme of “becoming the mask.” Kurugaya is and always has been isolated, so perhaps she acts tough because that’s what society has forced on her, or angry because that’s what she’s supposed to feel when confronting Riki’s bullies. When she begins discovering these emotions herself through the Little Busters, I believe she acts around Riki and the others the way she feels like she should, but ever so slowly that punch in the gut that yes, these feelings are real, approaches.

[Tidulimar]

To bring it back to Kurugaya, I would have felt incredibly cheated if we’d been given s big explanation for the way she is, because it’s a generic thing, it’s something she’s born with, something that can’t be stopped or prevented, something that by the nature of this world cannot be undone.

I personally am not curious for an “explanation” why she is the way she is. However, obviously, in the past she approached her situation differently, as seen in the little moment of a flashback that we do get. She also has some stuff about having lived outside of Japan and having an other name.
It’s not about why she is the way she is. It’s about wanting to know about the bits of her history that are there, as the story teases us with there being more backstory without showing us that.

[Takafumi]

I still disagree with them not giving an explanation, since I feel the narrative was pushing towards it.

I dunno why you think that; that part of the story was done with before the VN even began. Yuiko even says during this route that it wasn’t until she met the Little Busters that she realized how unemotional she was in the past. Now that she has friends, she knows not to take it for granted, but isn’t entirely comfortable as part of the group.
To me, the narrative never pushed towards giving an explanation. It revealed as much of her uneventful past as they needed to establish her character as a treasurer of friendship and love, and that unemotive past was nothing more than a reflective disconnect born from a contrast between Yuiko’s present and her past, which worked towards forming her personality.

I have to say, the bullying incident (other than the scene where Kurugaya and Riki are talking after it’s all over), didn’t really say to me that she has no emotions.

It wasn’t supposed to, in fact it existed for the exact opposite reason. That entire arc of the route was about how Yuiko is fine in accepting and not caring about any personal conflict, but will be driven to make change if her friends get involved. This is a blatant “she cares about these people” moment because the Little Busters are important to her.

[MagusVerborum]

I dunno, I’ve gotten the comment from a couple people that this feels like an unfinished story. We may get some more details about Kurugaya later on (I’m looking at you Refrain) but honestly I had a great time just getting to know her as a person.

one very plausible way is to argue that she takes to the logical extreme of “becoming the mask.” Kurugaya is and always has been isolated, so perhaps she acts tough because that’s what society has forced on her, or angry because that’s what she’s supposed to feel when confronting Riki’s bullies.

I agree with this, I don’t think that Kurugaya is emotionless (she goes out of her way to deal with bullies coming after Riki, why would she even bother if she didn’t care about someone other than herself?) but I do think she hams it up, taking her outward appearance and turning it into whatever she thinks will have the best result for what she wants. She’s very intelligent, so I don’t think she would just ‘blow her lid’ that extremely on a whim. But it is clear from the way she cleans up the incident by involving Masato that this was improvised. She puts on a mask and projects an appropriate emotion that way for effect, rather than simply letting her true emotions show on her face. I personally feel that in this moment she is afraid of letting her true emotions, her care for Riki, show too much so she purposefully explodes to misdirect from that aspect of her personality. Her identity to me seems to be constructed so that she can feel unique, and above it all. That’s how she copes with her difference, by separating herself and constructing a wall. By exuding a presence that says “I am different, you cannot understand me and I am wiser than all of you beyond my years.” She can protect herself from others who would take advantage of her difference e.g. to bully her.

[machelmore]

I agree, but that’s not necessarily what I was getting at. I was responding to:

I too only picked up on her non emotions with the bullying.

which gave me the impression that people were thinking that her initial lack of an emotional reaction to getting bullied was a tell of her lack of emotion, which I was disputing.
I don’t think anyone would dispute that the arc, by the end, clearly demonstrates that she does have emotion, especially (though it could be interpreted as “only”) towards her friends. What I was trying to say was that the earlier parts of the arc, before the resolution, weren’t meant to highlight her lack of emotion, that it had already been made clear.
Although when you bring everything I just said full-circle, I agree with what you said either way.

[Naoki_Saten]

Kurugaya’s route is my least favorite one in LB. And I’m not even sure why. A couple of reasons come to mind, for example, that I don’t like sad endings or that I have neither liked Kurugaya as a heroine (though I liked her as a character) nor could I relate to her emotionally. But I’ll try to dig a bit deeper.

But first, the things I did like.
I liked how the route was not following the standard procedure of a girl being troubled and Riki becoming her knight in shining armor. Same goes for the fact that it was Riki who displayed and voiced his love first and kept fighting for the establishment of a romantic relationship. There’s also Love-Love hunters and all this stuff with the original Little Busters. Rin not trying and not being helpful, the boys trying but not being helpful, either. And I can relate to @Kanon in that the scenes with the old gang felt more entertaining than those with just Kurugaya.

I also find the idea of rebelling against the inevitable and fighting for a lost cause, the way it was presented in this route, quite charming. “Facing forward”. I like the ideal of fighting for your love despite knowing you cannot succeed. Normally, the reason would be society, or something tragic like a deadly sickness. But in this route, the enemy was the world itself. And I personally think this was to the route’s detriment. My impression after first reading this route was that it’s about a girl who was not allowed to live out her love. It felt like the author had deliberately… forbidden her from getting a happy ending. Like he wanted the lovers to struggle against some kind of unfairness without bothering to show its source. The ending was sad, but the route itself didn’t provide a reason for why it had to happen, thus my dissatisfaction.

This time, in my second readthrough, I knew all about the “why” and the route wasn’t nearly as confusing. But I still couldn’t relate emotionally. Maybe it was something about the way Kurugaya had “faced” the problem? She didn’t tell Riki anything about the looping and by the time he found out, she was already hurting him by forgetting things that mattered to him and the impossibility of her desire was already becoming clear. Also, what was her reaction when Riki did find out? She told him, and not for the first time, to forget about her who was supposedly unable to reciprocate his feelings. Quietly, and with a portion of self-loathing. Maybe I just wanted her to burst out in tears loudly and cling to him. Being more vocal about her emotions. But to be fair, that wouldn’t be like her.

I generally feel like in this route, both Riki and Kurugaya tend to not communicate problems to each-other. Riki, too, refused to tell Kurugaya about the bullying. While they do fight for their feelings, they do so… quietly, for a lack of a more fitting word. I’m more used to the way Key normally does things, by breaking open one’s chest like a wrecking ball and seizing one’s heart.

[Zosonte]

I generally feel like in this route, both Riki and Kurugaya tend to not communicate problems to each-other. Riki, too, refused to tell Kurugaya about the bullying. While they do fight for their feelings, they do so… quietly, for a lack of a more fitting word.

The entire bullying arc in the beginning is structured in an odd way. You get a bad end if you tell Kurugaya about it and let her deal with it, but in the end she comes in and saves the day anyway. I understand the point of this arc is to showcase both the wonderful relationship between the original Busters and the development of Riki as he breaks from his shell and takes the reins of his life for once, but having her save Riki at the end seems rather forced and unnecessary. I would have much preferred it if this part was a little longer, with Riki and Kurugaya’s romantic relationship developing somewhere in it. Riki should have stolen a tape recorder from the broadcast room and been the one to catch the bullies red-handed. That would have done a lot more for both the cohesion of the route and the development of his character, the latter point being integral to this route.

[HeliosAlpha]

But like Taka said, the point of the arc is to show that Kurugaya can and will get emotional under the right circumstances. Because Riki makes the dumb decision, he indirectly escalates the issue and forces Kurugaya out of her comfort zone.

[machelmore]

Yeah, it seemed like it was necessary for Riki to not seek her help himself, because it gave an opportunity to show how much he valued her place in the Little Busters. The bad end ends before anything happens, but it’s possible that after she takes care of it herself, she just leaves the group because she doesn’t want to get them involved in her problems, like Riki was worried about.

[Takafumi]

I understand the point of this arc is to showcase both the wonderful relationship between the original Busters and the development of Riki as he breaks from his shell and takes the reins of his life for once

Riki should have stolen a tape recorder from the broadcast room and been the one to catch the bullies red-handed. That would have done a lot more for both the cohesion of the route and the development of his character, the latter point being integral to this route.

I entirely disagree that Riki’s development is integral to the route. This isn’t Riki’s route, and Riki himself has less of a role in this than most of the routes. He is but a catalyst for Yuiko’s monumental decisions.
Like the others have said, Riki’s dumb “hero play” is what kickstarts the route, but there’s more to it than that. For most of the route, Riki is a witness. A witness that has gotten involved in something no one else notices, but a witness nonetheless. Riki is more of an audience surrogate than in any other route.
Riki’s moment as a character comes from the confession scene and the build up towards it. This is the part where Riki “takes the reins” but that is the only moment he could control - One that was intrinsic to his self. The rest, the happenings in school, the happenings in the world, are just things for Riki (and us) to witness.
Yuiko causes her own problems, solves her own problems, and shows us many things about herself and the world. We just watch in a sort of feverish daze where dream and reality lose distinction.

[Zosonte]

Because Riki makes the dumb decision, he indirectly escalates the issue and forces Kurugaya out of her comfort zone.

Umu, I forgot about that. I agree, that is an important moment for showing Kurugaya’s depth. My problem is precisely because no matter what you choose, Riki makes a “dumb decision.” Kurugaya solves the problem no matter what, so I argue that the choice of even telling her about the situation doesn’t even need to exist.

Like the others have said, Riki’s dumb “hero play” is what kickstarts the route, but there’s more to it than that. For most of the route, Riki is a witness. A witness that has gotten involved in something no one else notices, but a witness nonetheless. Riki is more of an audience surrogate than in any other route.

You make a good point. I suppose anybody could have taken Riki’s place, but because it is Riki, who becomes a very different character here than in the other routes, I am less compelled to agree that he is an audience surrogate. It’s hard for me to digest the last third of the route, but while it is certainly out of his or Kurugaya’s control, is it impossible to argue that his confession to Kurugaya spiked her feelings as well, leading to the never-ending June 20th?

[Takafumi]

is it impossible to argue that his confession to Kurugaya spiked her feelings as well, leading to the never-ending June 20th?

Got ya covered.

He is but a catalyst for Yuiko’s monumental decisions.

Riki’s moment as a character comes from the confession scene and the build up towards it.

The thing I notice most about Riki, and about the world of this route, is that it is all a part of Yuiko. This becomes more noticeable on a second read-through, but the story really begins to change perspective part-way through this route. As you said, Riki is a different character in this route, and this is a part of a greater whole. The various dreams, the ways that the other students interact with Riki, the little things that Riki becomes aware of… It all circles around Yuiko in a very strange (almost artificial) way; that artificial appearance is inherent to Yuiko as a character. The route, despite not covering much of Yuiko’s past or even her present, is focused on being incredibly reflective of her character.