No, I really don't think it's that bad. To be fair, though, I am saying this as an anime-only watcher.

What I think happened is that a lot of people never really made the expectation adjustment that should have came with knowing that this is a JC Staff show rather than a KyoAni show.

Personally, I came into Little Busters! expecting a good show. Not a great show, just a good show. And I feel that it's largely delivered in that regard.

But is it Clannad? Or Kanon?

No, it's not. And that's probably because KyoAni has a skill with VN adaptations that most animation studios (including JC Staff) simply don't have.


Now, as for this episode, Mio adds much-welcomed diversity to the cast, as I had hoped. Personally, I don't have an issue with her voice. Yes, it almost completely lacks emotion, but then I get the impression that this is because it's supposed to convey a numb, withdrawn nature on Mio's part. In other words, she's a very lonely young girl, who has come to accept a largely solitary existence. But this probably isn't the life she wants, so she's gone into something of a stoic shell of subtle sadness. Riki's right - She needs the Little Busters! just as he once did.

Personally, I enjoyed this episode. I'll admit that Mio is almost too mellow, causing the episode itself to sometimes feel lethargic. Still, this latest Riki/heroine dynamic is interesting because in this case, Riki is the more colorful of the two (hair/eyes notwithstanding, lol).

Another thing I like is how the full cast continues to be used well. Nobody is forgotten, and there's lots of little interactions not involving Riki directly (such as the girls teasing each other, and the brief Haruka/Muscles bit) so it continues to feel like a true circle of friends rather than just one guy and the people that revolve around him.


8/10 for Episode 10

There are so many different perspectives out there but it is a bit difficult to ignore the large amount of the kyoani contingent that crucified this show before it even hit the screen. It's not a flawless show by any means, but people decided in their heads to rip this show to shreds before it even hit the screen. Not everybody, but a lot.

Personally I am a VN player, and I don't think the adaption itself is too bad. Komari's arc is bad, but it's also bad in the VN. The weaknesses of the VN are weaknesses in the anime. I like LB moreso than Clannad honestly, and I ended up not liking Clannad, so for me saying it's no clannad is correct. It's better :p.

The one thing this adaption will never match a studio like kyoani on is simply visual impact, and sure that is important, but if it takes extremely detailed sakuga for someone to like the content, the content is probably not that good to begin with.

Interesting. Mio isn't the sort of character I'd normally gravitate towards in a KEY story, but in this case, I have to conclude that she's exactly the kind of presence this show needed to balance such a... let's be diplomatic and call it a boke-heavy cast. If anything, it feels like it might have been a mistake to bring her in so late, though I don't know if there might be a good story reason why they had to hold off.


- Every scene Mio is in, I can't help but notice the music. I haven't been too impressed by the BGM so far, but each of her scenes had some good stuff in the background. I see someone's posted the music that played both in her first scene of episode 10, and also in her original introduction. That might be my favorite so far.

- I speculated a week or two ago that Mio's parasol indicated that she had some serious aversion to direct sunlight. It seems like that was correct (she sends Riki after it when it gets away from her) though I may have been wrong in thinking that she falls into the Ill Girl category, frail though she may be. This is Riki's first assumption, so it may be too obvious to be true. My guess: It may be something psychological rather than physical. She might have a crippling fear that her isolation has made her so immaterial that she might literally cast no shadow.

- Mio talks about how she selfishly tries to keep birds from flying away to where she can't follow by feeding them. After that, each time Riki comes by, she offers him leftovers. She's lonely.


I've been thinking this for a while, but Riki talking to Kyousuke about how he wants to reach out to people like the LBs did to him reminds me: I think Kyousuke is trying to pass the torch to Riki. The baseball team gives Kyousuke the opportunity to pull a "Dread Pirate Roberts" sort of retirement. He's leaving soon anyway, and all of the new members coming in are seeing Riki in much the way that Riki originally saw Kyousuke; as the central figure behind a group of friends that promise a new beginning for misfits and oddballs like them.

I think that's why he started a baseball team of all things, and why he makes Riki do the recruiting. The old members already have a set relationship with Riki. He needs new people to elevate him to the status of leader. I don't think Kyousuke particularly cares about baseball at all. It was just an excuse to cycle in new members.

Because I've seen people clamoring for this VN to be animated for at least 4 years prior to its announcement. Add another X months to that until airing, and you get a lot of build-up. I've also seen people claim this to be one of, if not the, greatest VN ever. The level of hype was unimaginable. And the level of automatic hate once JC Staff was announced as the studio was insane.

You're right. Which is why it's amazing how inactive these episode threads have become.

I think that's two-fold.

1) Anime only viewers stopped coming either because of spoilers (which get removed, but sometimes not in time to prevent spoiling) from VN readers, or because they were tired of all the "This anime sucks compared to the VN" talk that went on for about 7 episodes.

2) The VN players seem to have either jumped ship or gone to the appropriate thread now (like Randrak alluded to), so they aren't on them anymore.

3) I know I said two-fold, but here's another wrinkle: the episodes themselves don't give much to talk about. They're mostly episodic, and there isn't much to discuss as far as future events go yet.

I am indeed one of the those that believe the VN to be one of the best I've ever played (better than Clannad even...OMG blasphemous I know!) but I for one never really hyped it in my head (and I know a few people that didn't either). Yes, I was overjoyed to hear there would be an anime and I couldn't give a rat's ass which studio was making it to be honest, I was never really into or knowledgeable about animation studios and whatnot.

This actually reminds me of a post I made back when I found out the anime was green lit which basically said that I didn't really give damn about if the anime looked bad, I would still watch it anyway. And usually...I still watch manga or VN adaptations even if the animation and sound are lacking, provided I really love the original source. The problem here wasn't that it looked bad but what they are doing with the plot and characters (I know...I'm repeating myself), lacking in animation or sound department is one thing but not sticking to the original source well enough is, in my opinion, a grave sin in adaptations. Hell, those that have played Majikoi know how bad this can get (the anime was pretty much changed the plot completely).

Well it may be just me, I know some people don't mind the changes, I know that some don't mind or even like it when an anime changes the plot completely from the original source...but I personally can't stand it. IMHO and anime should be faithful to the original source as much as possible.

Again, I fully understand why anime only watchers enjoy it, considering they are not aware of how it was originally, and I also understand that some don't mind the changes. I just wanted to explain that NO...it's not all about hyping it up, it's about the grievous changes that should not have been made. Well...for me at least.

Now I'll take my leave since this topic has been discussed to death and this isn't the best of places to talk about it anyway.

I think that I can be happy that I don't know the VN. I think I will give this show a chance.

And I can only agree with what Randrak42 said about adaptions. Personaly, I hate the adaption from Valkyria Chronicles because of what they did with the characters and the plot. So I can really understand how he feels. Never understood why some studios fell the need to change so much, when there is nothing wrong with the original and the fans like it exactly how it is.

This is what I really like about LB in general. It's not often that you see an anime centered around school in which the "group of friends" actually come off as an actual group of friends. As it has already been shown, Haruka tends to interact with Masato, Komari tends to interact with Kud and Rin. It's little things like that which helps build a believable cast of friends and creates it's own magic to the characters and overall story.

Ep.7 had poor quality? That episode along with ep.8 were my favorite episodes so far in this series. I've watched both of those episodes at least 3 times each and I don't notice anything poor about it (aside from Kud's face in ep.7, and big butts on the girls in ep.8).

Ep.9 was a stretched out little event from the VN filled with techniques to waste time on purpose... So it there was no surprise on the quality drop since the focus was just to get it out of the way.

Ep.11 (next episode) is one of my most anticipated episodes I've been waiting for from the common route, the "Test of Courage." I will be seriously pissed if it's not done throughout the whole episode like how ep.9 was... There is so much anime original they can do here that it gets me excited. :p

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@Randrak42: I know you said you temporally dropped this show, but I'll ask just in case. Were you not pleased to see Anego in a bathing suit this episode? I'm not even her fan that and little 5 second scene really got me excited, she looked amazing. :heh:

I voted 6/10. Nothing really memorable, and that's what the "AVERAGE" is there for imo.

Give credit when it's due.

Arty

I think the vn players are hyping it up in their heads because of the interactive gameplay the vn provided, almost no other vn provided that level of complexness, i personalty found the baseball minigame in the vn the only thing that was keeping the game alive, sure some of the girls arcs where decent, but waaay too much time was spent padding out the plot and most of the airheaded jokes just fell flat, one thing the vn had is that there was zero foreshadowing, i just remembered the anime had some but it has been so long that i almost forgot, at least JC is doing a good job in that regard and the plot execution if nothing else.

KyoAni's seal of approval. Basically people expected this to be the next Clannad, i currently find the adaption moving along quite smoothly for now, but with how long the vn panned out will they be able to adapt every little thing? Especially if they spent an entire episode on a minigame.

They've already said that they'll animate everything, though they didn't specify how much on TV and how much through BD specials/OVAs.

It would be a huge exaggeration to say that the Little Busters anime is a drastic deviation from the original. Ignoring condensation of material, it's a faithful adaptation in most ways, and the screenwriter clearly aimed to do the material justice.

Nevertheless, changes have been made to convert a multi-route game scenario into a continuous one - or rather, I should say that they're structural changes with the potential to impact a viewer's notion of some underlying character development. As the saying goes, it's the difference that 1% can make, and these changes annoy die-hard fans who feel that the original structure and balance are especially meaningful/ingenious.

Edit: This isn't the best comparison, but you can try thinking of a story that's told in non-chronological order. Provided that there is a specific meaning behind the original arrangement, part of the author's intention may be incorrectly conveyed (and perhaps contradicted) if the story is adapted chronologically, even if most parts are faithfully retold.

On some forums, I find that anime-only viewers are plain bored. They think that the show moves too slowly, and they don't understand the appeal of the characters and everyday events.

It's easy to understand why the anime staff covered Komari's arc so early. They had to prove to viewers (who may drop a show if they aren't engaged within the first few weeks) that there's more to Little Busters than friends hanging around, getting into fights, practicing baseball, doing dumb things, etc. It doesn't seem to have been particularly successful (and the associated changes annoyed VN fans), but they tried.

Partly because Komari slid in quite neatly with the Common Route, so Komari's problems were seen as an extension of all of that, rather than a momentarial change in paradigm.

I think, the other problem is that the Common Route, as it is adapted has not attempted to play up curiosity in the back stories of the characters. There isn't much of a hint that these characters have any particularly interesting story behind them. Of course, anyone who has ever played a VN or watched a VN Anime adaptation would know that every girl in the running would have some kind of back-story written about them, which the writers presumably sought to make those interesting. But still, with the exception of Mio, the anime hasn't actively tried to get us interested about Rin, Kud or Kurugaya, or Haruka's backstories in the Common Route.

And there's 4) Anime only viewers and players alike dropped it.

IMO that and 3) are the main reasons activity has decreased. Even the threads for VN players don't have that much posts. If all the people from the anticipation thread stuck around, this subforum would be much more animated.

The question is whether (now don't flame me for this) the actual series Little Busters! is as good as hyped up to be. Certainly it's no Clannad or Kanon, let's get that out of the way, and it's a pretty good VN. But was the VN itself already SO good that it warranted an absolutely astounding anime? I don't think so. I like the anime, it's what I expected it to end up as, but I think the over-hype lies within the series media itself. Setting expectations too high are almost inevitable to cause some disappointment.
Now, is it bad? No. It's not.

I think many people thought the VN was better than Kannon and possibly Clannad. There is a reason it's one of the highest rated VN's on vndb. Personally I was of the opinion the common route was fun, but the individual girl routes pretty much sucked. The ending was pretty epic though. I think the anime reveals the mediocrity inherent in the first part.

In my opinion, Little Busters! is better than Kanon and Clannad, because Key actually tried to do something original for a change, with the emphasis on fun and friendship instead of just romancing the girls, but also with a more shocking representation of some of the dramatic events. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I know, it is the first Key game featuring blood (and spilled on a child, damn), and that's just the less subtle and only example I can mention for now. Little Busters! is for me the best Key game because it is Key doing something not Keyish.

Though, I don't dislike the adaptation. The animation is mediocre (and I don't usually pay much attention to that), but there is clearly a logic behind the way the story is adapted, and an effort to make things right. For example, people have complained about Komari arc and how Rin was illogically less shy than she is supposed to be, but I think it was a very clever way to make her befriend Komari during a dramatic part (a befriending we don't really see happen in the VN, while their relationship is supposed to be important).

Can we return to the discussion of episode 10?

We do have a Little Busters - General Anime Discussion [NO SPOILERS] thread for the non-episode specific discussions.