Recap: Komari is sad, and a picture book helps reveal her worries. She believes she has a brother, but she can’t remember, and her mother won’t tell her anything. Kud also shows up this week, and acts cute while she fumbles about the English language.
The Little Busters take a trip with Komari to visit a retirement community where some antics ensue, and the drama develops a bit. We meet a noisy old man who may also be Komari’s brother? Just what secrets does Little Busters have in store for us?
Beware moe goddess eyes may devour your soul.
Lifesong’s Thoughts: It would be really nice if J.C. would actually animate this show. I feel like I am watching a slideshow with pretty pictures, but there is very little pretty animation to be found. Muscle-chan’s “Muscles Banzai!” thing in particular is really starting to grate on me. I feel like they keep replaying a badly animated gif, and it’s not funny. I was hoping that last weeks low budget was due to the introduction of an unpopular character but it seems that is not the case. I can’t help, but feel like J.C. is not taking this anime very serious, and are instead just working off a ‘good enough’ mentality. The fans will buy this even it’s awful so why expend effort right?
This may be a bit hasty to say at only four episodes in, but J.C. seems to incapable of representing Jun Maeda’s humor in the same fashion I’ve seen it in the past, and would like to see here. The drama is working better, but I can’t shake the feeling that has more to do with the strength of the source material than this adaptation. This week, and last were both a battle against my better senses which are telling me this anime is not very good. I will probably like the drama that is unfolding, and the characters are cute. All the trademark Key things are here so why does this feel wrong?
The extent of the sadness in those eyes must go beyond being unable to remember who wrote a picture book.
I am looking forward to seeing how this drama plays out next week. I assume Komari’s backstory will resolve, and maybe even call forth a few tears. I am interested to see what inspired her happiness spiral theory. I wonder if maybe she was an abuse victim of some sort? Also, I hear around the web that this last episode was a pretty liberal translation of the events in the visual novel. I wonder if those complaints are from a crowd who had their favorite scene cut, or if J.C. really are cutting vital bits out of the plot. If anyone has an opinion on that I would be curious to hear it. I keep telling myself I am going to start reading Little Busters myself, but I have not had time for it yet.
The Glorio Blog 
I’ll address this first: “Muscle-chan’s “Muscles Banzai!” thing in particular is really starting to grate on me. I feel like they keep replaying a badly animated gif, and it’s not funny.” This is just another one that was pretty much ripped directly from the game.His sprite just flipped over and over while his arms were up like that. I don’t find it all that funny either anymore. I don’t understand what issues you had with the animation in this episode, aside from that specific one. Everything else looked fine to me. As for the liberties taken in this episode, the biggest one was something unavoidable. Riki normally doesn’t go to the old folk’s home until after the baseball match, and only goes with Komari because it’s her route. I don’t know why they bothered bringing everyone else along, they were pretty irrelevant. The old man also didn’t reveal who he was for a whole other week in the VN but for plot reasons they couldn’t stretch it that long and still fit the anime into 26 episodes, so I overlooked that. Nothing was really “cut” aside from maybe some minor comedy scenes that I can’t remember. It seems to me that thanks to the anime structure, the impact of Komari’s issue will be dampened, and this will probably occur with all the girls aside perhaps for the main story. Maybe KyoAni was against doing the anime because they knew they wouldn’t be able to adapt it and keep all the power that was in the VN. I cant really explain why I feel this way without spoiling anything though. Overall, I’m still very happy with this adaptation. The main story points are still almost word for word, and they haven’t done anything that would ruin the plot, yet.
The Little Busters anime is actually fairly pretty, but the lack of movement really bugs me. Stuff like long static shots with nothing changing on the screen, but some lip flap, and an occasional blink. It’s not even that it’s necessarily bad, but it’s the most boring way it could possibly be done. Also, sometimes the anime is nothing more than camera pan, and zoom over entirely static images.
If you want an example there is one as early as when Riki caries the boxes for Kud. Normally a little of that wouldn’t bother me, and I might even be quick to jump out defending it, but then even when little busters does have stuff going on if my eyes stray from their intended target I quickly notice how static the backgrounds are. I will admit it is a very superficial complaint that won’t ruin the anime for me, but it’s disappointing none the less.
I would really like to see stuff like.. the clouds moving when the characters look up at the sky, or maybe show the trees in the background blowing when a gust of wind goes past instead of just the characters hair. A good director could make this work even without movement, but I kind of feel like we don’t really have a particularly good director here. Again it’s not like this really ruins Little Busters, but it does leave me wanting.
On another note I am glad to hear the plot is still intact. The comments I’ve seen on episode 4 seem to be all up and down the spectrum from this is the best thing ever made to J.C. has already botched this show beyond recognition. I wonder if you are on to something with why KyoAni let this anime pass them by. Hrmm I should just read the visual novel, and put these worries to bed.
Thank you for detailing what you meant. I’m not much for detail’s in these type of shows so I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the backgrounds. I did notice the hair movements though, and the fact that I noticed it really does show that they’re probably the only things moving from the wind. lol. Now that you’ve added your details, I can pretty much agree 100% with what you are saying in terms of animation. It just doesn’t bother me that much due to the lack of action that’s in this show. I hope the crank it up for the baseball match and some later events in “Refrain” because there is more action in those areas that could end up disastrous if they do those as slide-shows like Kurugaya’s fight.
I definitely wouldn’t call this the best thing ever made, but they’re doing an overall “good” job in my opinion. The VN is still better (always is, even the KyoAni anime don’t compare to their VN counterparts), but anyone that says it’s botched either hasn’t played the VN, or played it so long ago they’re remembering things differently. You have valid complaints about the animation. A lot of complaints I’ve read are people who don’t seem to like this genre in general. I’ve seen countless people complain about the show having “nothing happen” but that’s just the formula of Nakige. Happy days, sad things, happy days, sad things, ect.Obviously, I still have fears about whether or not they can fit enough detail to keep the power of the VN intact, but nothing can subside those fears until it actually happens.
I really hope everyone does end up being happy with this anime and enjoy it, because the story really touched me and I know not everyone has access to, or time for the VN ,leaving the anime as the only option some people will ever have.
@kou the first thing they didnt show in this episode which make the fans complain is the time skip which was in the vn few times in diffrent routs and the second thing that make them complain is they jumped into the komari arc before showed all the famle characters this are the only main points which was make the fans complain on this episode hope i helped you.
talking about the girls rouths we begin those girls rouths right now and haruka routh will be in this season as well and like you seen the first routh is komari i wonder in what order they will do the girls rouths what do you think?
@lifesongsoa what do you think about those 2 main complains is this is this true this is bad they was go into the girls routh before show all the female character and not do the timeskip before enter into komari routh or this is fine?
I haven’t read the visual not yet so I didn’t know that a time skip is coming up. If they are doing a route before a time skip where there originally wouldn’t be one I am okay with that. I can’t speak to the continuity as I haven’t read Little Busters yet, but J.C. has not been doing a very good job with this VN’s humor so it seems a wise choice to switch things up, and give us Komari’s drama out of order if that is in fact what they are doing.
My biggest worry at a few episodes in was that half of this anime would be character introductions, and botched attempts at adapting Key’s humor so drama is appreciated.
I have to agree. There’s no way they could possibly do this in the same order as the visual novel. The entirety of the story takes place in two weeks time in the visual novel, aside from the girls routes. The baseball game is at the end of the two weeks and all the routes start AFTER the baseball game. The only way to do every single route is to put them out of order, and change some things. Obviously in Komari’s route in the visual novel, Riki is dating her. And this is true with all the girls in their respective routes. He can’t date them all so they removed that too of course and I hope NO ONE complains about that because that would be silly. The humor itself they’ve been doing is nearly 1-1 to the VNs jokes, but they don’t come off as strong without some of the lengthy build-ups the VN had and the one-liners from Riki that seem absent 90% of the time in the anime, which I’m guessing is for time purposes. They also of course had to not include a lot of other jokes because of time.
yes they give us komari routh which has alot of drama even if it out of order from now on it going to be only the girls rouths
@kou actully the date with komari should be in the next episode if they wont skip it including the shooting stars moment
Yeah, but it’s still not the same as actually her being his girlfriend. They won’t do that because they have to go with the canon story ending. I wouldn’t even be surprised if other people are with them on the “date” and/or the shooting star thing. The main thing though, is that they had no choice but to put this out of order to fit everything in properly, so I don’t get why people would complain about that. I’m guessing some people are just mad Mio hasn’t even shown up yet, and that Kud barely got any screen time.
@kou since there is 2 more episodes to komari routh do you think they will show komari breakdown in the next episode with the shooting stars and the date or episode after this?