Lifesong’s Final Impressions: Friendship is at the heart of this story. Little Busters ends off with a passing of the reins. Kyouske names Riki their new leader and the rest of the cast remind Riki of all the wonderful things he has done for them

Honestly, I am just glad to see it go. Little Busters wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever watched, but I have to say it was branding that kept me going and not the power of this friendship story.

Mio is the only girl who didn’t get shafted by bad directing.

I am suffering from bad adaptation blues I think. I like many of the stories presented here and I really wanted to like this anime. I can see all the right indigents for something great, but it’s like a cake without eggs, the parts don’t stick together well. I think the anime tried too hard to turn the girls romances into innocent friendships and lost something, but even beyond that the pacing just didn’t work.

There is something to be said for each individual episode of an anime. A good cliffhanger leaves you excited for the week to come, a bad one lets any emotion the scenes before it built up to drain away slowly during the week between episodes. Little Busters was the later of those two extremes. The episodes rarely end at a good point. Bits that could have been emotionally powerful are wasted as cliffhangers. Komari, and Haruka suffer from this the most. Kud manages to avoid awkward cliffhangers, only to turn around and ruin any emotion by giving us the story from her perspective. Mio’s is the only route I felt wasn’t cursed by awful pacing. Maybe JC are just better at mystical stories than they are practical ones.

Remember when Riki became really good at drawing overnight?

Little Busters is not without it’s share of good moments, but most of those are in found in the common route. It’s a bit ironic that the best characters in a dating sim adaptation are the guys. Masato and Kengo make up many of the best moments in this anime, and Kyouske fills in whenever Riki’s inner monologue needs a push. I suppose this is just further evidence of what happens when you remove the romance from a story that should be full of it.

My strongest emotion now that this is over is one of relief. A second season has been announced and I honestly can’t say that I really care. I will probably watch it, but at this point I plan to read the visual novel first. I am convinced there is a good story buried somewhere here and I don’t want to become anymore jaded about Little Busters than I already am.