“Mission, start!”

Summary

Rin receives the next mysterious note sent via Lennon, this time telling her to save the cafeteria, though neither her nor Riki are exactly sure of what that means. When all the cafeteria ladies go missing and are unable to serve dinner, the Little Busters step up to the task!

Impression

After the last few episodes we’ve had, which had a strong slice-of-life focus, the impending gloom and mystery of the series is starting to make itself apparent once more – when you have Riki talking about how he wishes “these fun days to last forever” or that these were the “happiest days” he passed, you automatically put yourself on guard for something big about to happen. It turns out that we’re heading back to the mysterious letter offering Rin and Riki the “secret in this world” in return for completing a few tasks – with its equally mysterious sender, who is now very likely another student or at least someone directly affiliated with the school. It may also be someone close to the Little Busters – if not, then how would they know that Rin, who was given the tasks completed them at all?

A new letter was sent – on the leg of Lennon once more, and this time asking Rin to “save the cafeteria”. I’m up to this bit in the VN, so the whole section was new to me, though I was thinking more along the lines of saving the cafeteria itself as a building rather than the running of its system. Here’s where it gets slightly odd – Riki pretty much echoed my mind at this point. How did the letter predict the problem? If it’s something that was unplanned, and happened in the future, how could they possibly have known in advance that the cafeteria would need taking over by a group of students? From what I know about the eventual storyline…I think I can join the dots, though the least I can give away without trespassing on spoiler ground would be the concept of time and its importance in the series. Even Riki’s narcolepsy foreshadows this somewhat – he had no idea when he’ll fall asleep or how long he’ll be out for, and it’s just like he’s been disconnected from a timestream and placed somewhere further ahead. If that wasn’t creepy enough, the strange outcome that every single cafeteria lady had to leave for whatever reasons they had, at the same time is rather unusual, if not irresponsible.

Putting aside the speculation, it was great seeing your natural Little Busters! antics and watch everyone mess about while they band together and save the cafeteria. I felt that Rin in particular is really stepping closer towards making friends with the other girls – she’s still shy, but for the sake of a crisis she’s willing to go out of her comfort zone and ask everyone from Komari to Haruka to help her out. Good on her! It’s a pity that Sasasasasa Sasasegawa Sasami has to turn up sporadically to annoy Rin though – that ojou-sama laugh pisses me off somewhat. It must be because I keep losing to her in the game. If not her underlings, I usually lose to her due to Rin’s cats never providing steady damage. Anywayyyy, more Mio next week!