It ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. …Followed by a bang.
What They Say:
Naoe Riki was a boy living on the brink of despair. The one to reach out to him was Natsume Kyousuke, a just boy who called himself the leader of the “Little Busters.” Every day from then on was like an endless carnival, and the pain in Riki’s heart slowly ebbed away. A few years later, the five of them are living in the same school dorm, still living every day like a carnival. But when Kyousuke starts to look for a job, Riki worries that the five friends will drift apart. “Let’s start a baseball team. We’ll call it… the Little Busters!”
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The last three episodes are a mixture of plot scenarios and character development across the cast, rather than a single focused storyline. Episode 24 seems to be the last part of Rin’s arc, but it doesn’t finish in a very satisfying way. 25 is mainly about Kengo, and 26 is divided between Riki and Kyousuke while also containing a mini-summary of the whole series. There’s a lot to say about the conclusion of Little Busters, but that can wait for the conclusion of this review.
Rin has been periodically been receiving little notes tied to her cats’ paws. The first cryptic message told her that she could learn the “secret to this world” by completing a series of tasks, and the rest have given her strange instructions without offering any explanation. The latest one simply orders her to “put on a puppet show.” The notes usually end up predicting the future, and this one is no exception. Immediately after reading it, Rin and Riki overhear a group of children arguing over the loss of a stuffed animal which was going to be used in a puppet show for a girl’s birthday. For some reason it’s impossible to hold the show without this one panda bear and apparently none of the children’s parents know how to sew.
Rin impulsively offers to put on the puppet show herself, and of course her friends are happy to help, especially since it has to happen tomorrow. They all get together to brainstorm its storyline, which quickly becomes ridiculous. Yui only gets two sentences into her story before Riki cuts her off for being too creepy. Masato’s is moronic and related to weightlifting (what else is new), Kyousuke’s sounds like a normal fairy tale until one character basically does a Kamehameha on an octopus monster, and Mio’s…I don’t even know what hers was, but it involved action figures and weird voices. Everyone gets kicked out before they can finish, but Komari visits Rin’s dorm later that night to help her finish the preparations.
The story they end up using is pretty basic. A clumsy penguin constantly gets teased by its friends, until it rides past them on a star, which makes them all suddenly like the penguin. Not the best moral, but at least it has cute animals. Komari stays up all night making the puppets, and Rin rushes off in the morning to set up the show. It goes well and all the kids love it. Rin and Komari have a cute scene on the school roof in which Rin thanks her for all the help and they end up holding hands for an inordinately long period of time while staring out at the sunset. Why couldn’t that plotline have gotten more attention?
After watching the show, Riki again notices the prophetic timing of the request—how could the note writer possibly have known that a puppet show would be needed, especially at the exact same time when Rin would read the letter? Riki also recalls Komari’s story of a boy helping eight dwarves solve their problems, with each of the dwarves disappearing one by one, and he starts to feel as though he’s forgetting something very important. Unfortunately, we never find out what it is, which bothered me a lot since it was one of the most interesting parts of the last 3 episodes.
Episode 25 introduces a new character whose sole purpose is to develop Kengo’s personality. Koshiki Miyuki is a prodigal archer who is forced to quit the sport after losing the sight in one of her eyes. Now she feels lost and worthless. Kengo tries to talk it out with her, since they’re apparently pretty close, but she eventually goes up to the school roof and threatens to jump off. It’s more of a cry for attention than a serious suicide attempt, but a sudden gust of wind pushes her over the edge. Kengo runs in out of nowhere, jumps down after her and catches her before she lands, defying Newton’s second law of motion.
He also breaks his arm in the fall, making him unable to participate in the upcoming kendo tournament on top of being banned from the kendo club for one semester. But this lets him practice what he preaches, by showing Koshiki that it’s not the end of the world to lose something that you’ve devoted yourself to. There will always be other sources of meaning in your life—for instance, you could join your friends’ baseball team. Kengo demonstrates to the group that he can hit home runs even with a broken arm and they happily welcome him on as the final member.
Throwing in a new character at the last minute seemed kind of silly, especially since they expected me to care a lot about her immediately. But since she turned out to be complementary to Kengo, who I do care about, the addition of Koshiki still contributed to the episode by way of her interactions with him. It was also nice to see some potential romance blossoming there.
Episode 26 is sort of like a sequel to episode 1. Kyousuke started the group, and now he’s going to be the first to graduate and leave them behind. He decides to name Riki his successor as the leader of the Little Busters. He’s already signed them up for their first real baseball game, and their opponents are the captains from every athletic club in the school, so Riki has a lot of work to do.
Most of the episode revolves around Riki doubting his ability to lead the team and the rest of the Little Busters reassuring him. Everyone else accepts him immediately (and Mio calls him a “moe” leader, which she considers a compliment) but Riki doesn’t seem to realize how much he’s already done for the others. He thinks he’s only capable of following Kyousuke’s example.
Naturally, everyone jumps in to remind him of everything he’s done. Kyousuke tells him that Riki deserves full credit for his own accomplishments—“Weren’t you the one who really assembled the Little Busters?” Haruka plays a small prank on him, Mio researches the all-star team’s weaknesses and devises some strategies to counter them, and Komari cordially invites him to “snack time” with Noumi and Yui before showing him her finished version of the picture book he made for her earlier. It’s very sweet of all of them and it does a good job of summarizing the rest of the season.
On the day of the big game, Riki walks out toward the group in the same way as Kyousuke did in the first episode. He lays out his game plan confidently, just as Kyousuke did before. This is pretty cool, but it also kind of undermines the idea that he’s not supposed to be following in Kyousuke’s footsteps. Riki is still worried about their future and what will happen when they all grow up and graduate, but right now all that matters is that they stick together. It’s a bit frustrating that everyone is so cynical about the future, but I also remember how it feels to graduate from high school and suddenly have to separate from all your friends.
The scenes of the team playing baseball are all pretty great. Lots of goofy things happen, such as a first baseman getting distracted by Noumi’s cuteness and Kengo catching the ball with his bare hand. It’s unclear at first who wins the game, but only because the Little Busters are enjoying themselves so much that none of them seem to care about the score.
At first I thought this ending to the series was disappointing. It was predictable that the last episode would revisit some of the main events occurring around the characters, and the process is a little drawn-out. What really bugged me, though, was the amount of unsolved mysteries still hanging in the air. We still don’t know the meaning behind Rin’s cat-delivered messages, people have been having strange flashbacks throughout the series (especially during Kud’s arc), and then there’s Kyousuke’s sinister warning of “I’m not the person you think I am.” That’s just off the top of my head.
Then, at the very last minute of the episode, Little Busters redeems itself. Sort of. The show’s final moments are an advertisement for season 2, entitled Little Busters: Refrain after the last chapter of the visual novel. Apparently this is the part of the game which completely ties up all the loose ends. No wonder this episode felt so unsatisfying: it’s not really the ending! Refrain’s trailer shows off several perplexing scenes, each of which appears to inject lots of drama into the plot and could easily have its own full episode. In short, season 2 looks to be a lot more intense than most of season 1.
The Refrain trailer is exciting, but I can’t very well award points to episode 26 for teasing me with scenes from season 2. This episode by itself still suffers from a dearth of content, given that it’s the final chance for plot exposition and there’s still so much left to be said. It has its moments, but overall episode 26 is a pretty safe and generic anime season finale.
In Summary:
Rin’s last kitty mission is to put on a puppet show. Kengo saves a girl’s life and breaks his arm in the process, disqualifying him from the kendo championship but leading him to finally join the Little Busters before their first baseball game. Kyousuke is graduating and names Riki the new leader of the group. At first Riki doesn’t think he can do it, but he gains confidence when everyone else shows him how much he’s helped them already. The somewhat anticlimactic end to the series is followed by an intense teaser trailer for season 2, Little Busters: Refrain, which looks like it will dramatically tie up all the remaining loose ends. Hopefully they’ll also give the other characters more screen time. I’m still waiting on Yuiko Kurugaya’s arc.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Insignia 1080p TV, PS3 with Crunchyroll App; Occasionally 17” Toshiba Satellite Laptop, 2.13 GHz Core i3, 4GB RAM, Windows 7
