Little Busters! Summary (SPOILERS)

First of all, I would like to give my deep thanks to team behind the translation of a(nother) great work by Jun Maeda, known as Little Busters!

Beware spoilers.

Jun Maeda is known as a writer that makes us cry like little babies, and he did it yet again. It doesn’t matter how many times he tries it (Kanon, Clannad, Little Busters!, Angel Beats!) he always manages to do just that.


Little Busters! Is a work by Visual Art’s Key division, it is a different kind of game to what the normal westerner is used to. Consider it a kind of “movie” where instead of watching it develop, you watch it develop, and make choices along the game, which in turn shape storyline of the game. They are called visual novels, or VN for short ( Or galge, eroge in Japan )

Little Busters! puts you in the shoes of Naoe Riki, a normal kid ( kind of a trope of VNs… ) who lost his parents at age 10. Riki ( In Japan, the name and surname are inverted ) was depressed to the point no 10 year old should, by not even going outside or doing anything. He just sat there, mourning.


Enter Natsume Kyousuke, the leader of a group named the Little Busters! A bunch of kids who go around righting wrongs. Without even asking, he grabbed Riki by the hand, telling him they needed help to fight a big enemy (A beehive). Ever since then Riki got better, and grew attatched to the group. He always comes up with the weirdest ideas of things to do to pass time, and always has a deep meaning behind each. 


Natsume Rin, Kyousuke’s sister, is the main heroine of the group. A shy girl, with a very… cat-like personality so to say, which doesn’t make her any less memorable. I consider her to be kind of a tomboy, considering that she grew in a group of 4 guys. She isn’t really good with other people outside of the group. You’ll see her dish out a few kicks to Masato… actually make that a lot of kicks.

Inohara Masato. Bodybuilder extreme, despite being in school. He’s your typical lovable idiot, and you’ll grow to love his antics. He serves as comic relief to the series, and never fails to do so. Obsessed with muscles, he serves as the workhorse of the group.

Miyazawa Kengo. He’s the most reserved character out of the group. Having an interesting personality, and a pretty composed figure. His will is ironed out due to having been training at kendo, hard through his entire life. He is strong (not to Masato’s level, mind you) and could be considered cynical.

This sets up the stage for one of the greatest visual novels ever made.

The game starts with Riki in 2nd year of high school (out of 3) in a boarding school, hearing that Kyousuke got back from his trip, and that the next day would be interesting. Sure enough, when Riki gets to the cafeteria, there’s already a brawl starting between Masato and Kengo, who tend to do this quite a lot, and people cheering them on. Riki, being no match to either of them, looks for Kyousuke to stop the fight. He instead turns it into a contest, urging people to throw random stuff at them to be used as weapons. Hilarity ensues. Not long after that, Rin enters the fray, given that Masato was using a cat as his weapon, and Rin loves cats. Masato gets his buttocks handed to him when Rin gets a staff as a weapon, while Masato got a piece of pie.

This brings Riki back to the time when he first met Kyousuke, where they’d go around fighting random stuff like beehives. Kyousuke then proposes they play baseball, and the team’s name would be “Little Busters!” in honor to their old childhood crew.

*Queue opening theme*

Kyousuke is determined to play baseball, and to make Riki an awesome batter, who is baffled as Masato and Kengo are obviously more prepared for the role. Rin is also thrown into the fire, as she’s expected to be the pitcher, despite not having any experience. Kyousuke also booked a match with the captains of every sports club of the school.

He didn’t even bother looking for other players. That task fell upon the others.

Riki then has to go around school looking for potential candidates to fill up the team. Rin tries as well, but her being awkward with basically anyone outside the group ends up in her not getting anyone.

Riki being the only sane man of the group, eventually finds other people to fill up the ranks. He finds other girls, namely Komari: A birdbrain girl who’s totally carefree. Kud: A quarter japanese girl, basically a lolita character for those who are into it. She’s kinda cute, I’ll give you that. Yui: A girl that’s grown up in all areas, if you get my meaning. She’s also the more level headed and mature of the group, looking like an older sister or even a mother. Haruka: troublemaker, that’s all I can say about her. Basically a carefree character whose existance is to cause problems around school. Mio: Your fragile girl, kind of a stereotype which I don’t like. Add a parasol and books and it’s a perfect stereotype.

Each of these girls has her own storyline which you can choose to do, but I found the most enjoyable to be the main storyline, so I’ll simply delve into that one. Of course, it’s Rin’s storyline, and the Little Busters’ as a whole.

During the course of the game, Rin is shown as having her herd of cats at school, taking care of them, and having fun. At the start of the game, Kyousuke gives her a cat, who he names Lennon. One day, Lennon comes with a message on his tail, telling Rin (and Riki, who was with her) to discover the secret of the world. The next day telling them to solve a caterpillar problem on the school… etc. It gets weird when the messages tell them to solve the cafeteria problem… which had no problem, until the next day, when the entirety of the crew of the cafeteria went missing.

After the big game, Rin boldly asks Riki to start going out, and they do just that, sharing some fun times. It all seems to fall into place for Riki, and their friends and even Kyousuke who supports the relationship. However one day, Rin is completely baffled at what Lenon’s tail had brought… It read “Save the sister school”.

At the beginning of the game, we are told that a terrible accident had befallen the sister school, where a bus fell off a cliff, and everyone died. Riki had the idea to follow Lenon to see who had been sending him the messages, and it had been Kyousuke all along. Riki realizes that Kyousuke is trying to make Rin grow up assigning her missions. Kyousuke then asks Riki if he has realized the secret of the world, but then laughs off at what Riki has to say.

And sure enough, the next day, the news come that Rin had been picked to move to the sister school, in an exchange program. Kyousuke figured that it was a way to try and get the kids from the other school, who had been terribly scarred after the accident, at least a bit better.

However, Rin had been chosen. Rin, possibly the least outgoing of the bunch, and of the school. Kyousuke wanted her to go, as it would be a great way for her to improve her socializing skills, and after a while, Riki was coerced into letting her go. It’s understandably a harsh decision, as they only just got together. In the end, when Rin is let go, they can’t even look at each other, as Rin is scared out of her guts, and Riki doesn’t like this one bit.

Not even a day goes by, that Rin starts texting Riki telling her that it’s awful, that she can’t talk to anyone, and that she feels horrible. Riki tries to comfort her, but by the middle of the week, Rin texts that she’s crying from the other side.

She had never been alone, and now she was all alone, without the support of her older brother, or the bunch of friends. And now she was thrown into a terrible reality.

Riki asks around, and the rest of the girls (Kud, Komari, etc) couldn’t text Rin, as it said that the numbers were blocked. Riki decides that it was enough and tries to find out where Rin went in order to get her out of there.

That is when Kyousuke intervenes, trying to get him off Rin. He tells Riki that she should be able to stand this, that he won’t be around all the time for her to be so dependent on the group… but seeing Riki’s determination, he arranges that Rin come back this week for a break.

Rin came back a mess, unable to speak to anyone, only Riki. Things had gotten out of hand, and Riki knew that another week at the sister school would be something horrible.

Kengo, who also disagreed with Kyousuke’s methods of “grooming” Rin to a more social person, sided with Riki, and they together went to talk to Kyousuke, to pull her out of this exchange program. Kyousuke of course didn’t want to do that, so he decided to settle it on a baseball match, picking Masato to be on his side.

The situation was terrible, four childhood friends staring down at each other, defiant, and to top it off, it started raining.

Kyousuke and Masato win, and Kengo snaps and lunges at Kyousuke, only managing to break part of his shirt before Masato and Riki stop him. The group was totally lost.

Riki considers eloping with Rin, to protect her. Kengo has his doubts, and tells him that if he lets go of her hand for even a second, he’ll lose her forever. However he still decides to elope, figuring that the money his parents had left him would get them by for a while, until he found a job and could get his bearings straight.

They elope, without the knowledge of even Kengo. And they head to the Natsume siblings’ uncle’s home, who Kyousuke had had a falling out with. Upon arriving they find the house empty, and make themselves at home, figuring that the uncle was working as always.

Eventually Riki and Rin start to try and live out in the world, which is understandably hard, as Riki had to go out and find a job (hampered by his illness, narcolepsy. Basically fainting every now and then). Made easier by the fact that they were in a rural area, so he found an old lady and helped her pick up crops, earning a fair share for Rin and himself.

Using the money his parents had left to buy wood, it all seemed falling into place again, as Rin had found a dozen wild cats and was getting along with them, making the house a lively place. Figuring he’d need to feed the cats as well, he goes to withdraw money, but it’s denied… So he called his “guardian”, to explain. He simply said that since he had eloped, he wasn’t going to give him money. He also offered that he’d forget everything if he went back to school, and offered to talk about it. Furious, Riki hang up. Things had just gotten a lot harder.

Still, he wasn’t that bad if he could find work. The next day he was picking up crops, but his illness made him faint in the middle of the field, worrying the old lady out of her soul. Apologizing he left the place and the reality of it all struck him. He was in a REALLY bad position.

He then decided to go fishing, figuring he wouldn’t exert himself too hard and find something to eat. But money ran out soon and wood would be harder to find. One day, coming back from the river, a policeman curious about a new person in the village asked him where he was living. Riki immediately realized it was bad, and ran for it. He got away, but in the village he overheard some people talking about the amount of cats in the old man’s house, who had died a while ago.

Riki’s situation gets even worse and worse, and when talking to Rin later, someone knocks at the door. Rin convinced it was her uncle was happy all their problems would stop, but Riki stopped her. Why would someone knock at his own door?

The knocking increased, and soon they were trying to force the door down. Riki shut the lights down and was trying to escape when Rin remembered her cats, and started shouting for them. Riki tried to stop her, but she let go of his hand, and at the same time the door was brought down, his illness struck again.

We are then treated to a horrible image of Riki back in his school uniform, completely alone.

The game restarts, however things are different. Despite it being the same date as the time when you started the game, it’s all changed. Everyone is still at school, but Rin apparently has a trauma that doesn’t even let her talk to someone outside of Riki.

Kengo and Masato duke it out, but Riki tries to stop them, like Kyousuke did last time, but fails. Kengo eventually got out with a broken arm.

Riki had taken personal care of Rin. Rin had always been like that, she had a terrible fear of the darkness, and of large people, hence Kengo and Masato are not even close to being able to talk to her, only Riki. Rin is found going to a kindergarden, seeing as its the only place where she’s at ease. She can’t even go to school.

Riki knows that it wasn’t always like this. Something had happened… they weren’t always so distant. Eventually he gets Rin to get a bit more social by playing “catch” with her, to which Kengo and Masato join at first. However when Riki gets the idea of playing baseball with Rin, Kengo and Masato, Kengo kindly refuses, telling him its the same that Kyousuke had done. Riki, desperate to know what happened at this point, wouldn’t get any clues. With that, Kengo departed. Kyousuke had also changed, he had locked himself up in his room, reading only manga in complete darkness.

Rin starts recalling how Kyousuke had formed the Little Busters! way back, and how him and Rin had taken down Masato, who was basically a bad kid, beating up others, and then he joined them.

Masato dropped baseball, when he heard of it, and told Riki to back off. When trying to figure out what happened, Masato told him that he would have to start to show who was number one around there.

The next day, Masato was running on a rampage, fighting others. He lost it apparently, and no one is able to do anything about it. Riki then tries to take him down with Rin, and does so using brains over Masato’s ridiculous strength.

Soon enough, he found himself in the same position Kyousuke found himself back when he defeated Masato. He now had Masato and Rin following him like they had followed Kyousuke. He started linking dots. And went to confront the still secluded Kyousuke, who resembled the Riki who was broken back when he was 10. He concluded that he had to follow in Kyousuke’s steps, and this is aided by the fact that Kyousuke told them that Kengo had told them a lie.

The next mission Riki thought of, was to watch Kengo closely… and sure enough, the “broken arm” was a fake. Why would he even do that? Riki develops a plan to get him to use his broken arm, and it was as he had thought. It was a fake. Kengo had been outwitted by Riki, who asks him why he’d done that. Asuming that Kengo was getting bored of Kendo, he said that he could have told them. Instead he answers “If I had told you, Would you have disbanded the Little Busters?” totally baffling Riki.

Riki insisted, asking what had happened. Kengo simply told him that what awaited him was darkness if he kept going down this path. But refused to tell him what happened. He instead told him to desist, and he’d protect him forever. But Riki had vowed to become stronger, so he refused. Instead they challened Kengo to a baseball match, who in turn Riki and Rin win. Kengo then collapses and cries his eyes out, realizing that Riki had indeed become stronger.

Riki finally having formed the Little Busters prior to his arrival, set his sights on Kyousuke, and went to the room where Kyousuke had bunkered himself. Offering him the hand that he had offered him when he was 10, Kyousuke took it.

We are then treated to Kyousuke’s POV of things. And things get confusing. From the start. Kyousuke knows the players who’ll form the baseball team, and Kengo knows as well. We then see a lot of scenes from Kyousuke’s POV, including the scene with the baseball match v Riki and Kengo, in which he apparently manipulated the world to make Kengo lose, showing that he was losing sanity. And then we start seeing a dark world where Kyousuke is dragging himself to something, and it restarts every time he falls asleep. Then we start to see everything again, but starting from where everything had already fallen apart, and Rin had been scarred. He’s genuinely tired from dragging himself in the “other world”, and we see how Kengo antagonizes him by telling him that he’s not going to play the normal “Kengo”, and saying he’ll stop Riki, and blaming Kyousuke for everything that happened. Then we see how Riki comes to “save” Kyousuke like he had done before, and when he grabs Riki’s hand… it all starts again.

However Riki is leading the pack, and Riki proposes playing baseball, to which everyone agrees. Kyousuke tells both that only one ball, so when Masato catches the ball he talks to Riki, telling him that he’ll miss him, and that he was the best room-mate he could have had. Riki has no idea what’s going on, and Masato dissapears. Kyousuke tells Rin to pitch, and Riki hits the ball to Kengo, who in turn lets out his final words and dissapears. Kyousuke then decides to talk to Riki.

Apparently, they, the little busters, had a terrible accident falling off a cliff, and only Riki and Rin were going to survive, as Kengo and Masato had shielded them from the worst. They have been looping the time before the accident in an attempt to make Rin and Riki strong enough to survive in the world alone, as they were too weak. Although it is heartbreaking, Kyousuke tells Riki not to cry any more from now on and take Rin and leave this world, as it starts to tremble, having only Kyousuke sustaining it. He tells them to leave and face reality, that they are way past what they could do for them, and that it was up to them alone. Kyousuke tells him to wake up and run with Rin.

Riki and Rin leave the school, and everything goes blank.

They instead wake up inside a bus. A crash scene, with Masato and Kengo both having shielded Riki and Rin respectively from their deaths. They walk out and see the devastated scene, and remembering their sacrifices, Riki and Rin run. Just as they got a bit away, Riki’s narcolepsy hits him, and he remembers Kyousuke’s words of wisdom. Had he tried to save anyone, he would have died as well.

He wakes up in a hospital ward, bandaged, and Rin to his side, who tells him that the doctors won’t tell her what happened to the rest of the students. Riki knows what happened to them, and instead proposes to Rin, telling her he’ll keep her safe, she accepts.

Everything blacks out, and apparently Kyousuke asks Riki if he’s happy, something he obviously isn’t. Kyousuke then tells him that it’s enough, because of his condition of narcolepsy. Riki says it isn’t enough, and Rin also somehow got into the conversation. They both tell him that they’ll get stronger, and recreate the world in which they had been stuck before.

In that world, Rin starts to try and get stronger, and she remembers everything the other girl members of the team taught her, and eventually finds the girl who she got along best, Komari. Komari had stayed behind, because she had a hard time leaving the world, and it shows that she was also having problems dealing with this, but still smiles, trying to show Rin that she has to smile despite all the bad things that would happen to her. However, Rin wishes to see everyone, because it would just not be the same, and she uses Komari’s hair accessory, a shooting star which had a wish to grant, and wishes to see everyone again.

On the other hand, Riki explores where his narcolepsy came from, and keeps going back into his memories, to when his parents died, where he realized that life meant losing. He goes as far as to not being born, but then he sees Rin’s outline in his dreams… making him wish that he were born, to meet this girl, realizing that life despite making you lose things, those losses are way less than all the memories you create with these persons.

Riki and Rin find themselves back at the crash site, and this time they decide to help everyone out. Rin starts by calling 911, and despite being a bit awkward, she’s clearly stronger. Riki on the other hand starts by using his brains and creating a stretcher to carry everyone, having smelled gasoline. and they proceed to start carrying the students one by one. Riki thought about stopping the gas leak, and saw some drag marks on the ground to the back of the bus. He found Kyousuke, unconscious, covering the gas leak with his back. Kyousuke, being a 3rd year, had sneaked into the bus to go with his friends of 2nd year, as everyone had predicted, but he had been hiding. Postponing his rescue, they take everyone outside of the bus and a good distance away. While Rin looked into the bags for anything that might be useful, Riki went to Kyousuke, and saves him just in time as the thing catches on fire. Rin and Riki carry Kyousuke out just as the bus explodes.

The game fast forwards till after almost everyone recovers, people calling it a miracle that no one died, but Kyousuke had been injured the worst. In the time he was in the hospital, Riki had been leading the Little Busters, but it still felt empty, until he makes his triumphant return, with a driver’s license, and takes the whole crew out for a trip.

*THE END*

This is the story of the Little Busters, and quite frankly, its been trimmed really short. Consider it an extensive summary of what goes on in the story. The game is way more deep than this, and it’s one of the best stories that I’ve ever read. Add to that the fact that there’s 5 other heroines to see (not all as deep as Rin’s story) and the fact that there’s music, games and other things that make this game a memorable one that really changes your life.

Storyline: 10
Music: 9.5
Replay Value: 8


Overall: 9.5 Highly recommended visual novel for any fan of Key works, and any fan of great works overall.

I hope you liked the review.
Lemune (Niker, EventHorizon)