“Little Busters!” is my eternally favourite game.

On the first of November 2017, one of my favourite works (from all types of media anywhere in the world) was released for a Western audience. Having played it with a fan-patch in early 2012 following its at-the-time recent anime adaptation, I’d found myself enjoying the game far more than my expectations and it ended up carrying me through a fair amount of severe depressive episodes I’d had at the time, and still does to this very day.

That work is Key’s sixth visual novel, Little Busters!, and today I want to reflect on the impressions I had of the work when I first discovered it, versus my impressions of it five years later.

At the time I had vague experience with the visual novel company Key from having watched and played CLANNAD, though I wasn’t too fond of the work itself (which I may elaborate on in a later article). The story-telling was incredible and the plots very touching, but the overall running theme of the story was something that I had a very hard time relating or even agreeing with, and so I was left with a moderate impression of CLANNAD, my enjoyment boiling down to only a couple of routes including After Story.

But then comes in Little Busters (and also AIR, but that’s also a story for another day).

I’d originally been recommended the anime by a friend who’d noted my uncanny resemblance to the main heroine, Natsume Rin, in more ways than just one, and at the time I was basically willing to watch anything to quell my boredom so I, amused, decided to give it a shot until I found out a couple episodes in that it was actually a visual novel. Steins;Gate and the likes having taught me that there’s no better first experience than the original experience (save for very specific exceptions), I’d decided to cave in and play the novel instead since I was very well versed with the medium anyway.

Oh boy, what an adventure that would be.

I’d love to be part of the masses that would say that damn, everything in this novel was nailed so perfectly it felt like it descended from heaven. Unfortunately, no. In fact I hated most of the routes at first and only two heroines wouldn’t constantly grate on my nerves. Why did I keep playing despite that? Well, the Little Busters’ male cast was pretty chill and fun, and overall the routes hinting at a much deeper plot (especially with the end narration after completing specific routes) had me really intrigued and at the time I scarcely had better to do with my time anyway.

And never did I think the secret of the world would destroy me on such a personal level.

Originally, I felt like a lot of the routes (both in terms of characters and their stories) were very typical prepackaged tropes that would come with basically any other VN, Saigusa Haruka’s route being the sole exception to this rule and the only route I still enjoy as if I played it for the first time so many years after. And don’t get me started on how upset I was about the whole “nonsensical” aspect of Noumi Kudryavka’s route.

But looking back in these mere three weeks since the game’s release, I can see that I was very well mistaken. Bear no misunderstanding; I still agree that some of the routes weren’t always as great or as well-executed as they could’ve been, sometimes with the fault laying on the characters and others on the story-writing. Nonetheless, the messages they passed on were nearly all messages that, with time, I’ve learnt to heavily understand and relate to.

The true route, Refrain, is mere proof of Key’s talent at making plots that the characters carry, rather than characters getting forcibly carried along by the plot. Its downright terrifying contrast to the happy-go-lucky atmosphere of the common route and parts of the heroine routes is mere testament to the terrifying notion of growing to adulthood where the fun is primarily left behind in favour of “what must be done”. Yet its end message will always be that you will never really find happiness by blindly following along what you’re “supposed” to do and never fighting back for the sake of your own individuality. And Refrain is also surprisingly to-the-point in order to make sure you understand that: at no one part did it feel “slow” or “useless”, especially in retrospect, and the character episodes were mere excellence for all of them. I’ve had trouble keeping tears in when I first played it, and I still do to this very day.

In that regard, Little Busters has helped me a lot through my life, and helped me cope with many harsh events I struggled to get through without in the past. It led me to somewhere I feel much more content than I’d ever previously been in life, and though I’m not sure if it’ll lead me anywhere on the longer run, I can’t deny that currently, it’s been one of my inspirations in terms of both what I should seek from my “friends” and what I should expect and aim for my “life”.

As a result, what I see in Little Busters! isn’t some Key drama sprinkled with KeyAIDS and Key Magic.

What I see in it, much more stronger than in any other of their works, is the importance of retaining your individuality (no matter how “childish” it is) even through life, though without ever rejecting and denying the harsh truths of reality. You don’t need to be an upstanding “adult” by society’s standard of dedicating your life to your work and family obligations, you just mustn’t be an immature child throwing tantrums about not wanting responsibilities your entire life. If you don’t have a family (whether in the literal sense or the more psychological sense), then you don’t need to cling onto them to find a place to belong; a mere group of friends who will be there for you no matter what and will be willing to break your trust in them if it’s for your true well-being isn’t as unrealistic an expectation as what most adults in society will have you believe. That, no matter what that “family” is, you should never take it for granted as it could brutally disappear in mere moments if you don’t fight for it. And most important of all is just how inherently okay it is to have regrets at any point in your life regardless of their source and how important it is to take the time and care to rid yourself of them.

Personally, I think it’s beautiful to convey that life isn’t something you live in childhood and adolescence and endure in adulthood, but that there ARE more things to look forward to once you pull yourself away from society norms and expectations (regardless of where they are, considering they’re especially strict in Japan).

So. Do I give Little Busters the rating of “GO READ IT. RIGHT NOW. GO. WHY’RE YOU STILL HERE? GET OUT.” out of 10?

Hahaha. No.

It has many flaws as a work and it’s not a work for everyone. It can be very slow pacing-wise, and first time runs will probably make the heroines out to be insufferable half the time. And there’s probably a good chunk of people who’ll never realise the deeper meanings of the story by losing themselves in the sheer amount of content it has and time it consumes.

Do I think that one day, you should experience it nonetheless?

If you can? Indeed.

My praise towards Maeda Jun isn’t only due to how much I enjoy some of his works or how captivating he can make them, but often how spot on they nail people’s thoughts on those kind of situations, which is something very difficult to do without personal experience in the matter (AIR’s true route especially standing out in that regard).

And because of that high talent of his to nail people in his writing rather than mere character tropes, you’ll be certain to find friends in this visual novel, even as fictional characters. Ones that will go a long way to teach you what rewarding and fruitful friendship is.