“The wind shines brightly.
By your side, as there you run.
Ah, to see you run.
Wearing those bright red bloomers.
I am a freaking giant.”
When I’m referring to Little Busters! I mean the combination of the first season and Refrain. I think I’ll start with a question: what kind of anime is Little Busters!?
- A sports anime in which a group of friends form a baseball club and recruit members.
- A mystery anime in which two friends try to unravel an important secret through a number of tasks.
- A comedy anime centered around a group of friends.
- A heartbreaking drama anime centered around a group of friends which definitely didn’t make me cry (it did).
- A nature documentary with a lot of really, really cute cats!
With exception of the last answer, you’re right. Little Busters! multitasks through several genres, switching at the drop of a hat. In the first season, you might experience a whiplash once an episode (consider yourself warned).
That having been said; Little Busters! is good, really good. I loved every character, although it sometimes took a while before I started to like specific characters. When these characters had fun, I was watching them fool around with a huge grin on my face. When I look at the show, these characters were its strongest point, which makes it hardly surprising that I don’t have a single piece of criticism regarding the Little Busters! and supporting cast (I would like to mention the dancing boys in episode 13, I feel that they go under-appreciated).
Thus, it’s hardly surprising that I would have preferred a version in which these precious characters had had fun through the entire run of the two seasons. Instead, the show heavily relied on drama. While mixing too little of all its other selling points (baseball, cats, the supernatural and extraordinary, etc.), there was too much drama (a perfect example of when it rains it pours). Since the show managed to make me cry (I’m not telling how many times), I assume that this is a ‘mission accomplished’ in a sense.
Still I’m not wholly satisfied with the drama, despite the fact that I can’t deny that given the circumstances it is credible. If I were to put it into words, I would probably say that the drama ate up the time that could be spend on the little sub plots which often remained underdeveloped (can someone explain to me what happened in the principle’s office during the ghost hunt? I’m just confused). In fact, as the plot progressed, the number of questions I had increased.
Too many things remained unexplained, leaving me with silly questions that probably don’t matter in the grander scheme of things, but are bugging me nevertheless. Questions like: should I ship Rikki with Rin or Kyousuke (Kyousuke, of course, even it was just out of principle)? Or other questions that bear a bit more relevance to the world of Little Busters!. It’s easy to go way overboard with worldbuilding, but I feel that by omitting some explanations, Little Busters! left too many gaps for me to fill in.
I usually like to talk about the ending, but I don’t want to spoil anything here. I’m just going to say that I narrowly avoided sinking into a depression (that’s a joke! I’m not that mentally unstable). Jokes notwithstanding, I think that the ending fitted the series perfectly.
Since its easier to dish out criticism than write an essay filled with compliments (I’m not that nice a person), it may seem like I’m not explaining why I gave this show a 9 when I’m only pointing out the points I didn’t like. But that isn’t what I’m doing; I’m trying to explain why, in the end, I didn’t give this show a 10, although it certainly does deserve a perfect score.