Little Busters! Refrain

Following the Little Busters after they lost their first baseball game, the team decides to have a pancake party. It has been almost one semester since the return of Kyousuke Natsume. As usual, Riki Naoe continues to help the Little Busters' members—both old and new—with confronting their inner struggles. However, strange happenings begin to occur, leading Rin Natsume and Riki closer to unraveling the truth behind the "secret of this world."

Little do Rin and Rikki know, their discovery will end up changing the peaceful everyday lives created by the Little Busters once and for all. Little Busters!: Refrain brings a conclusion to the colorful stories of its ensemble cast—forged with the weight of emotions and strengthened with the bond of friendship—as they come to terms with their regrets and weaknesses.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Natsume, Kyousuke Main

Midorikawa, Hikaru Japanese

Natsume, Rin Main

Tamiyasu, Tomoe Japanese

Naoe, Riki Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Inohara, Masato Main

Canna, Nobutoshi Japanese

Miyazawa, Kengo Main

Oda, Yuusei Japanese

Noumi, Kudryavka Supporting

Wakabayashi, Naomi Japanese

Kurugaya, Yuiko Supporting

Tanaka, Ryouko Japanese

Kamikita, Komari Supporting

Yanase, Natsumi Japanese

Saigusa, Haruka Supporting

Suzuki, Keiko Japanese

Nishizono, Mio Supporting

Kawaragi, Shiho Japanese

Kawase, Kouhei Producer

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Fukuda, Jun Producer

Yamazaki, Fumiki Producer

Reviews

May 11, 2022

Aikawa_Yuji

Recommended

This will be the first time I will be writing a review about an anime I had finished watching so I will do my best to deliver my honest thoughts about this story. I've been watching anime for more than 2 years now, I've explored many genres to try and find what kind of anime I will really like and what kind of anime where I can really relate myself into. For such a long time now, there has been no anime which can make me cry so much other than Little Busters! and wished so much that I can also have true friendship which ... Naoe Riki has. Since I'm an only child, for as long as I know I've always been alone dealing with all my problems in life with only myself not relying to anyone because since my childhood, people I've known had never taken me seriously whenever I tried to open up myself, that's why I had chosen to be alone instead and showed a fake mask that I'm always happy. Which is why this anime hit me so much I couldn't stop crying in each episode of this anime. Ahh how I've been longing to find where I belong and to have true friends that can support you but I guess it's already late...

This anime is Key's visual novel adaptation that has 8 routes(happy ends) including the true ending or main route. The VN has additional 3 routes if I'm right, which is titled Little Busters! Ecstasy. The anime adapted all the routes but did not go to the romantic endings of each heroines except for Natsume Rin which is the main heroine, that is why the anime follows only the true ending of the VN if some of you are wondering.At first, I thought that this VN adaptation will be another bad adaptation but I guess I'm wrong. I'm really really grateful that studio JC staff did their best to include all the important parts of the story and even followed each lines of the VN which further surprised me. This kind of adaptation really is the best to deliver the best experience and to make the story/anime have more impact to the target audiences... maybe I'm exaggerating this too much but from my perspective, this is what I call a really good adaptation especially for a VN. I will now rate the story based on my own criteria. Note that I strictly will not include any spoiler and will just give my thoughts in each criteria.

Story - 10 and Characters - 10
Rated by Arcs Rin,Masato,Kengo,Kyosuke,Riki
Rin 10 - in the VN it never showed how rin became so shy around strangers that is why I'm glad that there is a reason in anime which further make the development better.
Masato 10 - an idiot that is playing an idiot? take it literally you will understand what I meant by this once you watch the anime, this will be the very definition of "don't judge a book by it's cover"
Kengo 10 - have you ever thought that for your whole life living you still don't know what it feels to have fun and find what you really want? In this arc it will make you realize that no matter how much you hated wasting time doing something stupid, as long as you have fun make friends that is the best feeling.
Kyosuke 10 - the one I like the most, he is the one that will do everything just for his friends, I kind of see myself but the only difference is I don't have much friends
Riki 10 - here will teach you that no matter how hard or sad you may face in the future, you have to be strong so that you can move forward. "Living means to lose"
- the whole story teaches us many things and force us to face whatever the reality will throw to us and just keep living
- the story also showed what is the meaning true friendship

Ending 10 - It really surprised me how Riki and Rin overcame their fear and weaknesses and became strong which even surpassed my expectations which brought to the best ending I had ever thought. Since this is Jun Maeda we're talking about, I thought I'll really be crushed to pieces but...uh nevermind I've been crushed by all my realization watching this anime.

Arts & Sounds 9 - I don't have much I can say as I love both the arts and music, my favorite song is the ending that is played in ep3 "Song of Friends" and also the ending of ep 13 of course "Little Busters! -Little Jumpers Ver.-".

OVERALL 9.6 or 10
All I can say here between Little Busters! and Little Busters! Refrain. You need to know and understand that Little Buster! Include only the routes of the other heroines and the main character (Riki) solving each of their "regrets" and is not the "true story" if you are familiar of visual novels, the route which is called "True ending / Main route" is real ending or the true story of the series. In my opinion each route is independent to the main route but is also connected to the main route because of the characters.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jan 29, 2024

cringeylazy

Mixed Feelings

This review has very minor spoilers, which I have carefully and somewhat ambiguously worded to spoil the least amount possible. This review is from the perspective of a fan of the visual novel that rewatched the anime a year later.

Positives:
-Kurugaya: Kurugaya's route isn't a very good adaptation, but it makes drastic changes that, in my opinion, improve upon some scenes from the visual novel. While yes, it is missing the great romance and the chemistry between Riki and Kurugaya it makes drastic changes to fit the anime story telling, which in my opinion works better as a whole for the story despite its very fast ... pacing compared to the VN.
-Beautiful new original opening for this season with an original song.
-Refrains story is all covered and unchanged.
-It uses (mostly) the same soundtrack.
-Komari and Rin's friendship building from season 1 into Refrain is a very nice touch that fans (including myself) appreciate.
-As said for season 1, Riki's voice actor/actress change to Yui Horie is an improvement; her voice suits the role better.
--There's a minor improvement in animation in general from the last season.

Negatives:
-Massive lack of CGs referenced. I can only think of 3 of the many many CGs in the VN that actually get used as references. They would have drastically fixed a lot of the poor production.
-Komari and Rin: My favourite scene in Little Busters as a whole is entirely and utterly obliterated by horrendously brushing over the scene. The most ridiculous part is that they spend 15 minutes building up to it really well, adapting the VN almost perfectly, but don't flesh out my favourite scene in the series. Making it feel soulless. Also, the direction/story boarding is awful, with really weird camera angles. Are we really so apposed to just using the CGs in the game? It looks so tacky.
-Rin 2 not adapted fully: Rin and Riki's scene in Kyousuke/Rin's grandparents house is supposed to go over the course of 3 days, not one evening. Ruining Riki and Rin's character building for the conclusion (making it less impactful).
-Kyousuke's backstory reveal: It looks like it's made in Windows Movie Maker because of the weird editing used for added content for flashbacks. It looks more like a fancam than a serious scene. 
The climax scene of the series: While it is a good adaptation of the story and follows the VN the production quality looks bad, not awful. But it's remarkable how the PNGs in the VN tell the story better than the full animated production. A lot of the camera work is poorly directed, as if it's some sort of fanfilm or a student project. It clearly has some passion behind it but it looks so messy. Mostly, the way characters fade on screen looks very tacky and unprofessional. It would have worked a lot better to moving the camera or changing the focus (like Angel Beats for example).
-Rin and Riki rescue scene: Changed soundtrack ruining the tone of the scene. (I won't complain about not seeing the bad end in the VN as that's difficult to replicate in anime format.)
-This is carried over from the first season, but the different art style lacks the charm of the VN.

Overall, the anime for Refrain, while I do think it is the best adapted content of the visual novel I think for an anime adaptation, it's mediocre at best; the production quality is a worse way to experience the story than just reading the visual novel, where it's a much better experience of essentially the same thing. Even though it's essentially PNGs over actual moving animated frames, VN has better visuals overall, over the anime adaptation.
While this is a mostly negative review, this adaptation is definitely serviceable compared to a lot of worse adaptations for things out there, but I still think it's a mess that could have easily been a lot better with a little more thought put into it. Before reading the visual novel, I originally had the anime at a 9 and even during reading it, I thought it was a good adaptation. The reason why is because story wise it was ,it's visually I'd forgotten how it'd looked.

My Anime vs VN Ratings:
Kurugaya route - anime: 8.5/10 VN: 7.5/10
Refrain - anime: 6/10 VN: 9.5/10
(If you would like to see my short review of the VN check out my backloggd or vndb)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 22, 2020

cameronrb24

Not Recommended

Quick Thoughts:
I strongly dislike the type of storytelling that's reliant on some plot twist or info-dump at the end for the story to make sense, and Little Busters!: Refrain was no exception.

Story:
The pacing was incredibly off this season. The first few episodes were fine; the typical 3 or so episodes were spent developing Kurugaya, which is about the same amount as the other characters. However, the next 3 episodes blaze through what I thought was a pretty important arc, with one notably climatic moment being condensed into just a four minute outro. Then there's the ending, which I felt gave many more questions than answers. ... It also makes a lot of what happened throughout the series seem pointless and unnecessary. The motives behind the key characters of this season were questionable at best. There's one bit of foreshadowing that I thought was pretty neat, but that doesn't make up for how unsatisfying this ending was.

Characters:
In the moment, I kind of liked seeing the main cast develop, and their motives become clearer as Riki slowly figures out the "secret of the world", but as mentioned before, I felt the ending invalidated a lot of this. Rin is probably the best example this, but it applies to most of the cast. Several main characters get much less screentime, and the reasoning for this seemed arbitrary at best.

Enjoyment:
I'll say it again and again, the ending really did suck a lot of enjoyment out not just this season, but the series as a whole. Some non-story related elements were enjoyable though; The art/animation maintained its quality, and soundtrack hard-carried the emotional tone of the season.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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