Originally released in 2007 by Key.
English Edition released in 2017.
I've written so much about Little Busters already that it feels almost pointless to write more about it. But, seeing as it stands today as one of my favorite visual novels, it'd be wrong not to include something so dear to my heart on another new blog I happened to shift onto. My story with this game dates back over ten years ago when I played the fan-translated version for the first time. Little Busters was the first 'real' visual novel I ever played, that being a big budget Japanese one. Something in my teenage heart drew me towards anime media with cute girl characters in them. Lucky Star, Azumanga Daioh, K-on, you get the idea. So why not spend some one on one time with them?
This is how women interact with me in real life.
Calling Little Busters a 'dating sim' is misleading. Indeed, this visual novel has literal dating in it, but romance isn't necessarily the focus of every route. But let's be real, you're playing this because you wanna talk with the cute girls. Dating be damned, you'll be spending hours with each of these characters. This can add up to a beefy 80+ hour playtime if you really want to sink your teeth into it. However, that playtime estimate is deceiving. It’s not that any of these routes are particularly long, but Little Busters, specifically this 2017 officially translated English edition, has a whole bunch of them.
Factoring in everyone, you have 9 different characters with their own routes. And not only that, but some characters (Rin, mainly) require you to play through the game more than once to get the full story. Additionally, the time spent playing this game is inflated as heck. Little Busters is crammed with little minigames that soak up a lot of playtime without adding anything significant to the story. Most of the minigames are ‘whatever’ and waste your time more than anything, but the baseball practice ends up being a standout with its simple bat swinging mechanics and goofy easter egg interactions.
This IS a Jun Maeda game, after all, so it figures that baseball is a pivotal focus of the story. Our main character, Riki, joins up with his childhood friends to form a baseball team. Riki is then tasked with finding more members to make up a whole team, leading to his interactions with future Little Busters members, who are all female, of course. That’s not to say this game doesn’t have important MALE characters in it, though. Out of the original childhood friend group, Rin is the only female, with the rest of them, Kendo, Masato, and Rin’s brother Kyousuke, being dudes.
If only I could read these kanji!
Before I get into the actual story of Little Busters, we have to learn about the three different versions, first! You have the original release from 2007, Little Busters. No surprises here, but if you remember how I mentioned the game has 9 characters with different routes, the original game has 6. That’s because three more character routes were added in the 2008 release of this game, titled Little Busters Ecstasy. And guess what else was added into this expansion? That’s right, SEX SCENES, wooooo!
Don’t get too excited though, because the sex scenes in Little Busters Ecstasy are awful! But honestly, why wouldn’t they be? Who the hell was asking for sex scenes for Little Busters in the first place? Riki isn’t exactly the striking image of a hentai protagonist here. Clearly these extra 18+ scenes were incorporated as a marketing tactic, since you’re going to need more than a few extra routes to justify getting Japanese players to buy an ￥8800 visual novel a second time only one year after its original release.
The logistics start to get complicated once you factor in the third version of the game, titled Little Busters Perfect Edition (also made into a console game titled Converted Edition), released another year later in 2009. This is the version of the game that was translated for the official English edition that you can find on Steam. It includes all of the extra Ecstasy routes, except the extra nudity and sex scenes have been REMOVED!
My fellow gamers, there’s no easy way to put this… the English edition, the only translated version of Little Busters Ecstasy content, has been (gasp) CENSORED. And there are NO patches to restore the forbidden h-scenes or nudity.
But don’t worry everyone, because there’s a separate spin-off game called ‘Kud Wafter’ that lets you have sex with Kud! Let’s just play that game instead, right?
Except Kud Wafter has NEVER been translated into english and likely NEVER will.
I think it goes without saying that us ‘awkward sex scene’ enjoyers have been completely OPPRESSED in this situation. And because of this, the Little Busters experience will NEVER be the same again. In remembrance, let us all listen to the greatest h-scene music of all time while we think about what could have been.
PRESS THE GIVE UP BUTTON NOW
Ironically, all this ‘sex’ talk is mostly superficial considering the original 2007 release of Little Busters didn’t have any of this lewd content in the first place. In that regard, you’re getting a mostly faithful playthrough of the original game, but it’s the extra ‘Ecstasy’ version NSFW content that we’re missing out on (as well as a couple panty shots from the original game, god forbid). Ultimately, it’s not a big deal, especially in the grand scope of Little Buster’s endless content, but I figured it was worth mentioning.
Once you’re into the Little Busters environment, it’s easy to get comfortable with. Even though this weird modern version of the game cocks up the original aesthetics of the UI somewhat, you’re still listening to a fantastic visual novel OST the entire time. Not to forget that the Little Busters theme is one of my favorite anime-related OPs of all time. Other vocal highlights include ‘Boys Be Smile’ (the OP for the anime’s second season) and ‘Alicemagic’ (the ED for the game).
Additionally, the entire game is voice acted, which, when paired with the ability to easily switch between english and japanese text, makes this a great learning tool for the japanese language! The sprites and CG style doesn’t take too long to get used to, either. This is a goofy 2000s visual novel style for sure, but the more time you spend with it, the more charming it feels.
And so, with all this factored in, let’s actually take this game seriously and talk about Jun Maeda’s shit writing.
This game has catgirls!
Nah, I’m just pulling your leg, only SOME of the writing in this visual novel is trash. Because it wouldn’t be a proper 00s era romance visual novel without some NONSENSE. We’re talking about parents who are unbelievably evil to their kids for no reason, we got amnesia, we got supernatural bullshit that I can’t explain without spoiling the whole story. These routes are every bit as endearing as they are hacky and annoying.
The quality varies from character to character, seeing as these routes are not all written by the same person. But if you want to see the ‘true ending’ of the game, you’ll be forced to complete all of these (excluding the three bonus routes mentioned earlier). So, if you're looking to get to the ending of Little Busters, you’re going to see the best and worst this game has to offer, whether you want to or not.
I don’t want to rip on Little Busters’ routes too hard yet, though. Because, despite my issues with it, I do still have great fondness for the game as a whole. The main route (i.e. the ‘common route’ you play before branching off onto a specific character) has all of the charm and lighthearted humor you’re looking for in this story. The characters are at their strongest when they have each other to bounce off of, with a majority of their group interactions happening in the first 70% of the game before you get to witness each girl isolated within their own personal stories.
Much of the story’s humor revolves around the cast’s daily school antics and club activities. You’re constantly trying to solve mysteries while attempting to recruit new members for the baseball team. These include scenarios like traversing the haunted school halls and getting spooked by Kurugaya’s pranks, staying over at the girls’ sleepover, and fighting within the friend group’s battle ranking system where you all attack each other with useless weapons.
It’s all easygoing fluff that doesn’t try to ramp up until you get into the individual character routes. But if you’ve been patiently awaiting serious topics to be addressed, or deep romance to be formed, prepare to be disappointed. But rather than focusing on the disappointment of different routes, wouldn’t it be better to share what makes each of these characters stand out in this playful cast?
I accidentally made this review way longer than the original one so I had to grab a random screenshot from the anime…
Riki is our inoffensive protagonist, mainly here for self-inserting purposes. He has the typical visual novel protagonist ‘I have one random thing wrong with my body’ trait, which in this case is narcolepsy. From what I remember, it doesn’t play too hard into the story.
Riki’s male friends, Masato, Kengo, and Kyousuke, all have their own quirks that make them memorable, even within this jampacked cast. Masato is a muscle-focused airhead who’s here mainly to have fun. Kengo is his foil, a guy who takes his passion for kendo seriously, and doesn’t like wasting his time on goofball activities. Kyousuke is one of the focal characters for the Little Busters story, as he’s the one who starts this baseball club in the first place. He’s the ambitious one that pushes the important parts of the story into different directions. Jun Maeda’s male characters have always been particularly strong, and Little Busters is no exception.
Kyousuke’s younger sister, Rin, is the only female member of the original Little Busters childhood friend group. This places her into this story with the obligatory ‘childhood friend’ position. In true hack fashion, this automatically makes her the most important female character of this story. The male members of the group have a protective role over her, trying to make sure she stays happy and makes new friends. Not like she needs the protection, though! She’s frequently seen kicking Masato due to her hotheaded personality. I don’t mind a little bit of ‘childhood friend’ baiting, however, since Rin makes for an entertaining addition to this group of friends.
Komari is the softie of the group, and one of the first new characters you run into while searching for new baseball members. I don’t like her much, honestly. She’s inoffensive, but why do we need a character this squishy in a game that already feels this lighthearted? She doesn’t bounce off of anyone in particular, and her innocent cuteness is outdone by the other characters, such as Kud.
Speaking of, Kud is the loli character of Little Busters. She’s the cute one, the one who gets her own spinoff game, Kud Wafter. Unsurprisingly, the cutest character in a visual novel that has a big focus on cuteness happens to be the most popular one. But I’m not going to pretend to be some kind of Kud hater or anything. Back when I first played this game, she was my favorite Little Busters character right away, and I still like her today. In the context of visual novel tropes, Kud is the ‘halfu’ foreign character who comes from Russia. She fits in with the rest of the friend group just fine, and she connects with Riki better than most of the other girls. But truthfully, her appeal doesn’t go much further than ‘she’s cute!’
I’m just gonna keep using anime screenshots.
I’m sure there was some period of time where I considered Haruka to be my favorite character in Little Busters. She’s the genki girl who causes mischief on the regular with her dumb pranks, so it’s not hard to see how such a character would fit into a game centered around goofy antics. Her sister, Kanata (side note, Haruka and Kanata are twin sisters and their names are a bit of a Japanese word pun) is a hardass who takes her views on public morals far too seriously for her own good.
Kurugaya is also another arguable favorite from the main cast of Little Busters. She’s possibly the only female character in this setting that isn’t a complete airhead. Instead, she’s a sharp-tongued, cool-headed combat expert who isn’t afraid to spar with the guys. And, on a funny note, she’s the only character who doesn’t get her route featured in the Little Busters anime. Understandably so however, seeing as its timeline strays from the main story entirely.
Then again, if you can fit god dang Mio’s route into the anime, there’s no excuses to ignore anyone else’s. Mio is the perfect example of a character who works wonderfully in a group environment, playing the straightman role to the nonsense jokes coming from the rest of the cast. But when things focus strictly on her, the story ends up melting down into philosophy soup. Her route feels like the biggest waste of time compared to anything in this visual novel.
Sasami is my REAL favorite character in Little Busters, and her route doubles as my favorite in the game, also. I always consider the Sasami route to be the perfect summary of everything I cherish about Little Busters as a whole. It has funny character interactions, cute CGs, and a goofy plot. And better yet, this is the shortest route in the game. Short and sweet, just how I like it! Funny enough, Sasami’s route wasn’t even in the original game, so regardless of what you think about the English version’s visual censoring, it’s the only way I would have been able to experience this part of the story! Sasami as a character is nothing shocking either, she fills in the ojou-sama role, hearty laugh and all. But she fits into this story so perfectly, I can’t help but admire her.
And then FINALLY we get to the last character, an entirely original one made for the Little Busters Ecstasy expansion, Saya. She appears nowhere in the game’s main story, instead getting her own winding route filled with slapstick comedy, action, drama, basically everything Jun Maeda could possibly cram into it. Yet, this overstuffed story works perfectly fine as its own adventure, because unlike other Jun Maeda cramfests (Charlotte, for example), Saya’s route manages to hold itself together. This is because the use of characters in Saya’s route is minimal, only including ones that are necessary to the progression of the story. This is definitely something Maeda should have kept in mind for his future projects!
Here’s what Saya looks like in the anime, in case you were wondering!!!!
So then… how about that story???
Like I said before, the dramatic parts of the Little Busters story are hit or miss, but they usually stick when it matters the most. That being the game’s main route, the Refrain route, the one that leads you to the ‘true’ ending of the game. However, when you’re tackling each of these characters’ routes, you’ll often start hitting points where the writers put themselves into a hole, and they have to resort to supernatural bullshit to bail them out. And even when they’re not resorting to cheap deus ex writing tactics, they make heavy use of unrealistic traumatic events to try and add depth to various characters’ backstories.
The story is at its best when it’s not taking itself too seriously, which you’re only going to find in a handful of routes. It doesn’t always fail at its dramatic passages, however. Saya’s route is a perfect example of how this visual novel tackles tear-jerking content without losing its footing. And of course, the Refrain route works as a satisfying ending to this monolith of a visual novel. Though, by the time you get to the True Real Actual Ending, you’ve been subjected to so much nonsense, that it’s difficult to fully take in its impact.
But it’s good! I love the characters, I love the setting, I love the scenario, I love the music. It's an anime visual novel experience unlike any other. It’s one of Jun Maeda’s best efforts, and it’s worth playing, even today.
Just don’t expect the Little Busters anime adaptation to give you a comparable experience. We can talk about that some other time.
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