Little busters! is about the 5 stages of grief

[Isaac]

Hello I'm new to the forums, also I'm not from a native english speaking country so please excuse me for any spelling and grammar mistake.

There will be big spoilers to the game.

 

So I played Little busters couple of months ago, and lately when I thought about the game I realized every route corresponds to the  famous 5 stages of grief:

 

Denial: I don't even need to say who it is, Cute Komari-chan is stuck in denial about her brother's death, she needs to accept that bad things happen.

 

Anger: Haruka definitely applies, being the most emotional of the girls in her route, her relationship with her sister, she need to learn to forgive her family and move on.

 

Bargaining and Depression: A bit tricky here I originally thought Mio fit the depressed bill, but after thinking about it Kud is far more likely candidate. Kud has a very bad image of herself, thinking herself to be useless, a failure and a coward for not visiting her mother (If someone played Kud's after story, can he tell if her mother is alive?) after the missile catastrophe, she needs to take two steps, first overcome her fears and leave the safety of the dorms and second believe in herself and her friends to overcome her "jail".

Mio fits the bargaining, but not in the usual sense, she bargains her life for exchange to her "altenate?" personality, she gets out of it when she realizes how she hurt her friends with this compromise and that she is forgiven.

you might be able to switch them around, especially since Mio has a lot of suicidal undertones to her story (going into the sea) that also fit depression.

 

Now to the interesting bit, acceptance, Kurugaya accepts where she is, and that her goal cannot be reached, you can perhaps say she's stuck accepting what she can't do and she can't move on. Fittingly her route ends only after the main story ends, and everyone comes to terms with the bus crash.

 

Again I apologize for any mistake I might make and thank you for reading this, What are your thoughts, do you think maybe other characters fit other places?

[Nosebleed]

As much as i deliberated about Little Busters i never came to such a vast conclusion, indeed the game is about recovery and becoming stronger though i only made that connection with the true route which was when Kyosuke did all those "bad" things in order for Riki and Rin to become stronger emotionally so they can overcome the bus crash, accepting that he and all the friends would have died once they returned to the real world.

However he did not consider that Rin and Riki could actually save everyone and that just accepting this bad end is not the only way out.

But now that you point it out it does make sense that each route is a stage to overcome the depression and becoming stronger, hence why Refrain is only unlocked after you complete each route.

This is a much better explanation for the Little Busters novel and i agree with your argument.

[shirayuki75]

This is a really neat post that I can imagine appearing in a visual novel literary journal if there was one! haha. I agree with your ideas, but the placement of Kud's and Mio's routes is interesting to discuss. Kud wonders about what she could have done better in the past, and strikes a deal with another power to free herself from those chains (bargaining). But then again, while she is in chains, she worries about her friends that she is leaving behind (depression). Mio, on the other hand, makes preparations to say goodbye to Midori as a physical existence (depression). You can argue that Mio's disappearance and all is kind of a deal with a higher being (bargaining). I don't have a clear answer, but I love the new perspective that your analysis brings to LB!