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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. 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.Īnd never did I think the secret of the world would destroy me on such a personal level. In fact I hated most of the routes at first and only two heroines wouldn’t constantly grate on my nerves. 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. 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. 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. 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.īut then comes in Little Busters (and also AIR, but that’s also a story for another 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.Īt 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). 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. 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.