Little Busters! Episode 14: Take My Hand

“Goodbye, Naoe-san. Please be the one to close my coffin.”

Summary

Riki is struggling to remember Mio, and Midori demonstrates that will eventually confuse memories if left for long enough. Revealed to have originated as Mio’s imaginary friend, Midori eventually agrees to let Riki see Mio, where she tells him of her conviction to disappear, and play the part of the seagull drifting between the sea and sky.

Impression

“I started to forget”. 

All this time, Riki has been slowly forgetting about Mio despite fervently not wanting to – I was impressed with how all those scenes were portrayed and laid out in front of us. Exactly how much of Riki’s thoughts surrounding Mio are real, and how much are just illusions created by his brain? By that point, all Riki truly knew was that he had to remember Mio – but he had forgotten who Mio exactly was, to the point where Midori can ask whether she wears glasses or not and she has Riki wrapped around her finger completely. To be honest, even I couldn’t remember if she had ever worn glasses before, though it certainly seems like she did. Riki concentrates, and promises to not forget, but eventually, he has trouble remembering who he’s supposed to not forget. It’s inevitable, with the passing of time – and even with a person’s existence, with enough time memories start to become hazy, and it gets hard to determine what’s real and what’s not. Riki confides to Kyousuke that he thinks the world is becoming more transient, and in a sense I agree with him – nothing is eternal, and everything will have to end eventually, be it happy or sad. Kyousuke disagrees with him, which is just a little something to keep in mind for future episodes.

“The girl named Midori does not exist.”

To me, Nishizono Midori didn’t turn out to be as antagonistic as I initially thought her to be, and my feelings are even more mixed than before with the revelation over her existence. In past episodes, I had decided on the theory that she was a long-lost twin sister of some kind, but that didn’t explain why Midori so easily “replaced” Mio’s existence as a person. Midori is…essentially Mio’s imaginary sister, born one day out of a mirror Mio stared into when she contemplated her loneliness – in that sense, Midori completed Mio, and made her “whole”, as the shadow she never had. I do believe Midori started out as an imaginary friend, and it’s hard to say when the line between Mio’s dreams and her reality mixed, and became one and the same – because in some way or another, Midori couldn’t have possibly been a well-designed figment of her imagination, and she did exist, even if those doctors and her mother thought otherwise.

Midori described Mio’s favourite poem – a white seagull drifting as an existence in between the sea and the sky, not being able to fully reach either one. And Midori disappeared as Mio slowly forgot about her, while she thinks it should have been the other way around – and so Mio decided to disappear, taking Midori’s former place in between the sea and sky, occupying that world beyond the mirror that Midori once resided in. That explains why Midori didn’t have a shadow either – while she was in dominance, she was also missing her other half that was Mio.

While it’s a solid point to say that Little Busters! does have a supernatural undertone, I have to wonder just how much of that last scene was metaphorical. I don’t know how it was played out during Mio’s route in the VN, but I’m entertaining the thought that Mio might have tried to commit suicide, and thus Riki ran in after her to offer a helping hand in Mio’s time of need, just like what Kyousuke and the rest of the Little Busters did when Riki was suffering in loneliness. Whatever it was, I’m glad Riki managed to change Mio’s mind, and bring her back to where everyone is waiting for her – with the best possible conclusion, where Midori will be with Mio forever. There’s no need for her to shield herself from the world with her parasol, and those happy, joyful days that Riki wants to continue forever can begin again. And with that, the cast of the Little Busters has finally been assembled!