Little Busters ~Refrain~ - Episode 10 Discussion / Poll

[monir]

Welcome to the discussion thread for Little Busters ~Refrain~, Episode 10.

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[elior]

this was impressive episode and great way to reveal everything

[Narzia]

Well, nothing surprising in terms of revelations, but I really liked this episode. It was a nice showcase of the characters' growths throughout the story, and I'm very fond of this flashback presentation style.

Still three episodes to go. I can't really imagine there is that much more story to go through. Could it be we're getting an actually satisfying ending for once? One that's not shoved into the last 5 minutes of the final episode and takes its time to tie things up instead? I sure hope so.

[Zankoku12]

How exactly did they expect anime-only viewers to understand Komari's bad end scene...and why just Komari's,if they want to make their point they should animated other bad ends as well rather than just "Nooooooo,her brother is dead like my parents ;____;" out of nowhere...

[Tempester]

Worst episode in the second season. Actually, this was one of the worst episodes in the show period, S1 or S2.

Spoiler for VN comparison, no spoilers:

Kyousuke's "arc" in the VN covered maybe 7 minutes of material at the most. Yes, there was some recapping and flashbacks, but not to the ridiculous extent of what we saw here. It's awful to see this episode dragging out so much, even removing the OP for some reason, when I know how the last part of Rin's arc was rushed so much. Why skip through a vital part of the VN when you're just going to stretch a shorter part out?

And while I won't exactly call the VN subtle, the hints (can you even call them that anymore?) in this episode were as subtle as an elephant on drugs rampaging through a porcelain shop.

I don't appreciate all this spelling out of all the previous plot points either. This anime is treated the viewers like complete morons. Even an 8-year-old can analyze and fully summarize the whole plot up to now.

Next episode should be awesome, though.

[bigdeal000]

Originally Posted by Tempester

Worst episode in the second season. Actually, this was one of the worst episodes in the show period, S1 or S2.

Spoiler for VN comparison, no spoilers:

Kyousuke's "arc" in the VN covered maybe 7 minutes of material at the most. Yes, there was some recapping and flashbacks, but not to the ridiculous extent of what we saw here. It's awful to see this episode dragging out so much, even removing the OP for some reason, when I know how the last part of Rin's arc was rushed so much. Why skip through a vital part of the VN when you're just going to stretch a shorter part out?

And while I won't exactly call the VN subtle, the hints (can you even call them that anymore?) in this episode were as subtle as an elephant on drugs rampaging through a porcelain shop.

I don't appreciate all this spelling out of all the previous plot points either. This anime is treated the viewers like complete morons. Even an 8-year-old can analyze and fully summarize the whole plot up to now.

Next episode should be awesome, though.

You should go to MAL and read the post of that one guy who sais this episode answered nothing and it sucked because the story makes no sense.
Rin2 should have been longer, yes, but this was even more important, I'm happy it got the time it deserved. This episode was not giving hints, it was giving the answer. It's the big revelation, the secret of the world, nothing is hidden anymore, so they took the time to explain, instead of doing it like in the VN: "you see, we're all in this fake world. You&Rin need to get stronger, cuz a tragedy happened in reality" What, want more answers? Riki, you don't remeber what happened with komari & co anyway, so the player has to figure it out himself

[MCAL]

Now I bet anybody who were badmouthing Kyosuke and Masato and taking Kengo's side look pretty foolish. :P

@Tempester

Then we must have read the wrong VN. I remember Episode Kyousuke being like 80% flashback and most of the new material consisted of Kyousuke struggling to move anyway. If anything the anime added more context and that made it even better than the VN at times. Also I am confused about the 7 minutes thing. Are you saying Episode Kyousuke was seven minutes in the VN? Cause that simply wasn't true. I remember it being about 40 or so minutes long. There is a Youtube video of that is about an hour long.

Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8nhVWdnWSc

[Team Rocket Elite]

Originally Posted by Zankoku12

How exactly did they expect anime-only viewers to understand Komari's bad end scene...and why just Komari's,if they want to make their point they should animated other bad ends as well rather than just "Nooooooo,her brother is dead like my parents ;____;" out of nowhere...

Kyousuke talks about Riki failing while showing the bad end. Kyousuke goes on to talk about how he resets the world if Riki fails. Then it shows Kyousuke giving Riki some advice leading to Riki achieving the good end. I felt like the anime made it pretty clear that they were showing a failed attempt from a previous world. As for why they only showed one bad end. I guess they felt like they only needed one example.

[Sound of Azure]

Originally Posted by Narzia

Well, nothing surprising in terms of revelations, but I really liked this episode. It was a nice showcase of the characters' growths throughout the story, and I'm very fond of this flashback presentation style.

I agree. I enjoyed this episode a lot more than the last two, which while not bad per se, I felt were unnecessarily opaque at the time.

Originally Posted by Narzia

Still three episodes to go. I can't really imagine there is that much more story to go through. Could it be we're getting an actually satisfying ending for once? One that's not shoved into the last 5 minutes of the final episode and takes its time to tie things up instead? I sure hope so.

That would be great, wouldn't it? I have confidence enough in the story as it has appeared so far.

Originally Posted by Zankoku12

How exactly did they expect anime-only viewers to understand Komari's bad end scene...and why just Komari's,if they want to make their point they should animated other bad ends as well rather than just "Nooooooo,her brother is dead like my parents ;____;" out of nowhere...

Anime-only viewer here. While there's been a few perplexing moments in the show (due to unrevealed truths), this wasn't one of them. I was easily able to figure out what was happening here. Perhaps they could have shown one of the other "bad ends", but felt the Komari one was illustrative enough.

Originally Posted by Team Rocket Elite

Kyousuke talks about Riki failing while showing the bad end. Kyousuke goes on to talk about how he resets the world if Riki fails. Then it shows Kyousuke giving Riki some advice leading to Riki achieving the good end. I felt like the anime made it pretty clear that they were showing a failed attempt from a previous world. As for why they only showed one bad end. I guess they felt like they only needed one example.

Yeah, I agree. Well put.

Originally Posted by MCAL

Now I bet anybody who were badmouthing Kyosuke and Masato and taking Kengo's side look pretty foolish. :P

Maybe, maybe. I am happy enough with the story, and I'm not sure what's yet to come. I'm likely to look foolish myself in the coming weeks. At this point though, I still feel that Kyousuke's underlying idea is wrong-headed.

I get the protective instinct, that he (and the others) want Riki and Rin to get stronger through their trials and growing strength from the repeated iterations of the "Little Busters-verse". From what we've seen, yes, Rin and Riki are not strong people at the beginning. But Kyousuke's plan comes from the idea that they will break upon knowing what has occurred- that their grief will overcome them and have no hope of recovery. If find that troubling.

Unless he has actually seen what will occur afterwards he can't know that for certain- he's not giving them a chance to grow stronger through that adversity. That lack of belief in them feels very presumptuous.

Like I said above, he may very well know all these things, but on the information we've been provided so far- I don't know that. I'm not hating on the show, if fact I'm still enjoying it a lot (this episode is an 8 for me)- just expressing some misgivings. I'm sure the show will resolve admirably based on its conceits. At the moment though, I can't say if I totally aree with those conceits. I hope I'm proven wrong!

[ChampDream]

this episode reveal the secret of the world and that a accident happen and the only one to survive seem to be Riki and Rin.
so how did Kyousuke get to make a fake world? it feel he was using what left of his willpower to make the world or is another thing?

[Zankoku12]

Originally Posted by Team Rocket Elite

Kyousuke talks about Riki failing while showing the bad end. Kyousuke goes on to talk about how he resets the world if Riki fails. Then it shows Kyousuke giving Riki some advice leading to Riki achieving the good end. I felt like the anime made it pretty clear that they were showing a failed attempt from a previous world. As for why they only showed one bad end. I guess they felt like they only needed one example.

And they completely failed to show the nature of Komari's bad end and how it happened because it doesn't matter just like the entire bad end flashback in this episode
If their reason here is to point out that Riki grew stronger after each failed attempt then like I said,it make more sense to include other girl's bad ends as well...unless what they're trying to say here is that Riki only experienced Komari's bad end.After that,he already strong enough to solve other girl's problems without triggering any of their bad end.

This scene would probably be better if they weren't so half-assed about it.

[Klashikari]

To be frank, I really wonder if they really had to execute this episode in such fashion.
The way how the flashbacks were inserted in the visuals was quite clumsy in my books, and really, the whole thing was dragged way too much.

[MCAL]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

The way how the flashbacks were inserted in the visuals was quite clumsy in my books, and really, the whole thing was dragged way too much.

How so? I thought they did it pretty well, If they excute flashbacks in the usual recap fashion it would have looked boring. Also, I don't think it dragged at all. This just happened to be the shortest amount of adapted material.

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by MCAL

How so? I thought they did it pretty well, If they excute flashbacks in the usual recap fashion it would have looked boring. Also, I don't think it dragged at all. This just happened to be the shortest amount of adapted material.

I don't expected flashbacks for 20 minutes to begin with.
The whole point was to reveal Kyousuke's actual circumstances, not to run Kyousuke's monologue for that long.

And to me, it was dragged the moment you actually realize that Kyousuke was running an artificial world for Riki and Rin. Considering how obvious it was for several episodes, you don't need a complete monologue of 20 minutes for such revelations.
If someone didn't figure what was Kyousuke doing, the moment they learn that, they would connect the dots with his behaviour (when he sent Rin to a different school or during his confrontation against Riki and Kengo).

You don't need to have a flashback/recap-like episode to spell it for you. That's just bad in term of narrative for an animated medium.
Even the VN didn't used interlude of that magnitude for that.

What would be more interesting imho, would be the episode starting normally with the bus expedition, and having the audience realizing it is the real world where the accident occured. That would lead to a certain impact and give more insight to what happened to characters aside of Kyousuke.

[Yye1]

This is a good episode, especially for those who did not read the VN, but cant wait for the world to end in the next episode

[Dark Faith]

I rarely pay attention to episode titles, so I was actually expecting the "End of the World" to be in this episode... and not a 20+ minute Kyousuke monologue.

[MCAL]

Okay. I don't understand.

Spoiler for VN Spoiler:

Wasn't most of Episode Kyousuke in the VN mostly the events of all the VN from his perspective just with his thoughts revealing his and the other guys motivations. This is exactly what the anime did.

I just don't understand what's wrong here.

[Crashmaking Zoomatic]

Originally Posted by MCAL

Okay. I don't understand.

Spoiler:

Wasn't most of Episode Kyousuke in the VN mostly the events of all the VN from his perspective just with his thoughts revealing his and the other guys motivations. This is exactly what the anime did.

Yeah, that's exactly how it went, so in that regards, this episode was very true to the source. I don't see why VN-players would have issues. It's either too fast, or too slow, or too -something-.

That aside, I thought it was a great, touching episode, that definitely brought out more feels than this part in the VN. It really helps to get all the cards laid out on the table, and this episode helped me clear up a few confusing points from the VN, so. Like. I really have nothing to complain about. Actually, there is -one- complaint. There was one of those cut-outs that was -really- distracting and awkward. It was during the flashback to Kyousuke and Riki arguing during Rin's route, I believe. Yeah...

[DaBackpack]

I liked how they showed Kyousuke dragging himself through the dirt in this episode, looking for the gasoline leak. It was a little heart breaking

And honestly, I'm not too bothered by the monologue, because I'm not entirely sure how they could have done it otherwise.

[~Yami~]

Originally Posted by ChampDream

this episode reveal the secret of the world and that a accident happen and the only one to survive seem to be Riki and Rin.
so how did Kyousuke get to make a fake world? it feel he was using what left of his willpower to make the world or is another thing?

well.... it always happened in Key's stuff but they never really explain how they did it so just let it pass

this episode is heartbreaking
I think flashback-monologue is the best way to explain things that happened
as anime-only watcher, I just can't blink my eyes... seeing Kyousuke with blood, several bad end (so that's narcolepsy really a reset in this world)

when members leaves, I feel very sad... they are like... "okay.. we're not belong in this world actually..."
Komari gained lots of respect as well
the question is why Kurugaya should depart sooner? why she can't wait more longer?
actually I really want to see the scene when Kyousuke explained things about this world to other members

Brosuke... it's not like I hate your plan... little careless... but you're still awesome bro for me

oh man... can't imagine Riki and Rin's expression in next episode... now I'm dying to watch it