“Why…isn’t it moving?”
Summary
After visiting Kojirou and confirming that Komari’s brother is indeed dead, Riki meets Komari one night and decides to watch a meteor shower with her on the school roof, where she asks him out on a date to where she used to live. On their way back, as it begins to rain the two run through the streets, eventually coming across a dead kitten in a gutter, the sight of which makes Komari collapse to the ground and start sobbing.
Impression
Oh god ;_; Seeing Komari sad like last episode was bad enough – but now this. We’ve been treated with some foreboding references, such as the story of the match stick girl dying and going to heaven on a cold New Year’s Eve, but that scenic backdrop with half the sky full with blue clouds and the other with an impending storm was the first sign I picked up that shit was going to hit the fan. And helpfully, the 20% chance of rain that day just had to occur, complete with thunderstorms. Of course, the icing on the cake – or rather, the full force of everything hit us seeing a dead kitten in a gutter (which I actually thought was a box at first), which is pretty morbid for a show that has Komari talk about how she has bear panties on today, a flower yesterday but grown-up ones before that. Komari herself breaking down and crying out of nowhere definitely pulled at my heartstrings, but it was that cold, empty look in her eyes that really chilled me – that look of hopelessness that reminded me of how Katsura in School Days spent a good portion of the show looking like. My guess is that Komari probably forced herself to forget all about her brother through the trauma of losing him – seeing a kitten not move any more like her brother’s body, as well as all the events in today’s episode triggered her memories again, and it all hit her at once.
Of course, her brother’s dead – and Komari’s dreams of the white flapping things was quite cleverly deduced by Riki as being bedsheets drying on a hospital roof. From those short flashbacks, it seems that her onii-chan had some kind of terminal illness that eventually resulted in his death, and everything he promised to do with Komari never ended up happening. The whole boat ride, and even the shooting star scene (which was amazingly done, and made me feel all warm inside) were things that he promised Komari they would do together – instead Riki took Takuya’s place, and it all hit home with Komari asking him if Riki would be her onii-chan instead. Somehow I have a feeling that there’s still something hidden – how Kojirou asked Riki not to pry any more into the situation, as well as the one more shooting star disappearing that Komari commented on.
Wow, it feels so far away from the start of the episode, in which the Little Busters continued practising baseball, Rin was being shy and Masato was going on about muscles. Also, Komari’s decided that Yui-chan is a friendlier name instead of Kurugaya, which I’ve decided to use as well xD I’ve restarted the VN recently, and I’m beginning the Komari route – the baseball mini-games are pretty cool (though I wish Rin would throw more accurately sometimes) and fights are much more frequent, with loads of people actively participating. Riki has yet to beat Kengo and is still default No. 2 in the rankings as of yet, while I think Masato beat Rin, and rose to No. 3 xD I thought her cats would do damage more frequently than that. Speaking of the VN, the show producer Kawase recently revealed that he plans to animate the entirety of Little Busters! – and if that means all the routes, then here’s to hoping for a good Kurugaya, uh I mean Yui-chan one. As 26 episodes isn’t enough, apparently there’ll be some sort of announcement after the last episode, so we’ll know more about that when the time comes.
