Little Busters!

As a child, Riki Naoe shut himself from the world, thanks to a diagnosis of narcolepsy following the tragic deaths of his parents. However, Riki is saved when, one fateful day, a boy named Kyousuke recruits him into a team who call themselves the Little Busters. Accompanied by Masato, Kengo, and Rin, these misfits spend their childhood fighting evil and enjoying their youth.

Years pass, and even in high school, the well-knit teammates remain together. Kyousuke decides to re-ignite the Little Busters by forming a baseball team as it will be his last school year with them. They have a problem though: there aren't enough members! The tables have turned, for it is now Riki's turn to reach out and recruit new friends into the Little Busters, just like Kyousuke had once done for him.
Then, an omen surfaces—Rin finds a strange letter attached to her cat, assigning them the duty of uncovering the "secret of this world" by completing specific tasks. Just what is this secret, and why is it being hidden? It's up to the Little Busters to find out!

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Natsume, Kyousuke Main

Midorikawa, Hikaru Japanese

Noumi, Kudryavka Main

Wakabayashi, Naomi Japanese

Kurugaya, Yuiko Main

Tanaka, Ryouko Japanese

Natsume, Rin Main

Tamiyasu, Tomoe Japanese

Kamikita, Komari Main

Yanase, Natsumi Japanese

Naoe, Riki Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Saigusa, Haruka Main

Suzuki, Keiko Japanese

Inohara, Masato Main

Canna, Nobutoshi Japanese

Nishizono, Mio Main

Tatsumi, Yuiko Japanese

Miyazawa, Kengo Main

Oda, Yuusei Japanese

Kawase, Kouhei Producer

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Dohi, Noriko Producer

Oohashi, Masao Producer

Reviews

Feb 20, 2025

AngeVNs

Recommended

With how much love the Clannad anime by Kyoto Animation gets, I’m surprised the Little Busters! adaptation by J.C. Staff doesn’t receive similar appreciation, despite doing almost the exact same thing Clannad did. Both took on the Herculean task of adapting visual novels with over 50 hours of content, both developed by Key and written by Jun Maeda. In some ways, Little Busters! is even more impressive because it actually manages to adapt all the routes instead of just most of them, even if J.C. Staff had to use OVA specials for the Ecstasy routes.

Structurally, Little Busters! Season 1 follows Clannad’s approach almost exactly—mixing common ... route content with main heroine drama in between. Does it always work cleanly? Not really. But for the most part, it balances the tone well enough so you're not stuck in endless friendship-focused slice-of-life scenes, waiting forever for the actual drama to kick in.

Comparing it to Clannad, I’d even argue that Little Busters! Season 1 is better than Clannad's first season. I’ve always liked the concept of Little Busters! just a bit more, even though both are great. It puts a stronger emphasis on group friendship. The Clannad anime tried to create a strong friend group dynamic, but in the original visual novel, many characters rarely interacted with each other. Little Busters! fixes this by making sure the main cast of ten characters is consistently interacting from the start. Many visual novels and anime struggle to make ensemble casts feel both memorable and dynamic, but Little Busters! nails it.

While Clannad is all about family and growing up, Little Busters! goes all in on the power of friendship—but not in a cheesy, over-the-top shounen way. The series does an amazing job of slowly growing its core group from five childhood friends to a much larger circle. Watching these characters genuinely enjoy spending time together, while still having their own interests, feels relatable in a way that many anime, manga, and visual novels struggle to capture. The series does this extremely well, with the characters doing goofy things together like cafeteria competitions, hanging out in dorms, and most importantly, playing baseball.

Sure, some of these scenes get a little repetitive with the same gags, but that’s outweighed by how genuine and sincere the friendships feel. It’s the kind of show where you actually want to be part of the friend group because of how fun, goofy, and wholesome they are.

The cast itself is a huge part of what makes the series work. The five childhood friends have a solid dynamic on their own, but when they bring in five more girls, it livens up the group even more. Not only do we get a lot of fun, sincere slice-of-life moments, but we also get to explore the new characters’ personalities and deep insecurities.

That said, as much as I love the character interactions and group dynamic, Little Busters! has one unfortunate issue—the main heroine drama stories themselves... aren’t that great.

Since Little Busters! is a Key and Jun Maeda work, it's expected to me at least the non-true heroine stories tend to be hit-or-miss. But even when they aren’t as strong, they usually at least have an emotional core that feels grounded and can pull at the heartstrings. The problem here is that, aside from maybe Haruka’s arc, the heroine stories lean too much into supernatural elements, which feels out of place in an otherwise down-to-earth setting. They get a little too over-the-top, and while it's nice to take a break from the slice-of-life segments to explore the characters’ pasts, the execution doesn’t always work. If they had toned down the supernatural aspects and avoided introducing random plot twists out of nowhere, the melodrama would have felt more sincere, instead of clearly trying too hard to get an emotional reaction from the audience.

Haruka’s arc is the one I kind of liked because it focuses on family drama without relying on supernatural elements. Even then, it wasn’t amazing compared to other Key and Maeda stories, but it was definitely an improvement over the others.

Thankfully, the first season ends with the baseball rivalry that had been slowly built up over the course of the season, and that climax is handled really well. I’m glad they mixed in the weaker heroine arcs alongside the more lighthearted baseball conflict, because that part was much stronger and made for a better ending.

Overall, Little Busters! Season 1 is a solid but not amazing show. I think it’s on par with, if not better than, Clannad's first season. The only reason people seem to skip it is because it wasn’t animated by Kyoto Animation. Sure, J.C. Staff doesn’t have the same polished animation or attention to detail as KyoAni, but to me, that’s not a good enough reason to ignore a story that’s just as good—if not better—than Clannad or even other Key works that KyoAni adapted.

Little Busters! Season 1 has a really fun cast with some decent (if flawed) melodrama, and it’s a shame that people overlook it just because they’re obsessed with specific animation studios.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Nov 28, 2024

MrSlamboni

Mixed Feelings

Just like with Clannad and Clannad: After Story, Little Busters is just the formality you have to go through in order to get to Little Busters Refrain. Refrain is the really the interesting part. However, Little Busters on its own is not too bad anyways. Especially near the end it gets much better than the start and middle. In general, it's passable.

The symmetry between "Clannad + After Story" and "Little Busters + Refrain" is not just in the fact that the sequel is more interesting. It's also that Little Busters is a pretty normal highschool melodrama while Refrain takes a more serious tone. Little Busters ... follows a group of 5 friends as they try to make a baseball team before the eldest one, Kyousuke, graduates. The formula is basically that Riki tries to recruit people, which eventually results in him helping to resolve their problems or tragedies. Consequently, there's a story arc for each girl Riki helps out until they have enough for a team.

The background story/premise is pretty interesting. I will not rehash it because it is in the synopsis, but I can relate to how Riki is feeling. He feels indebted to his friends who got him out of his shell and wishes he could remain with them for longer. However, he knows that it might all end when Kyousuke graduates, followed 1 year later by everyone else graduating. Forming the baseball team is a way he can enjoy his situation to the max before it all goes away.

The story arcs have this general structure where Riki meets character --> eventually discovers problem --> tries best to solve problem --> life lesson monologue at the character. In all honesty, it wasn't too bad the first few times. However, I found myself slowly running out of stamina due to this formula. It doesn't help that some arcs like Kudryavka were too out there to be believable. I won't get into spoilers, but that arc left the scope of a high school melodrama and in a bad way. Kudryavka in general was the least interesting addition to the cast, but I'll let that slide for now.

Out of the entire cast of characters, only a few characters have personalities that go beyond surface level. This is not to say that they are all bad. Most of their personalities do lead to a good show. However, it's just that their character traits are simple and they just operate based on their obvious traits. Here's a brief assessment of each one:

- Kyousuke: By far the most complex, interesting and enjoyable. Acts as sort of a guiding figure for Riki and the friend group in general.
- Riki: Simple character. Just a goody two shoes who wants to help everyone. His interactions with Kyousuke are the most interesting.
- Rin: Shy girl archetype.
- Masato: Simple comedic relief. Good natured guy who is physically really strong but also acts really stupid. He is interesting in Refrain.
- Kengo: Interesting in Refrain, but in Little Busters he is just the upright character archetype.
- Komari : Bubbly girl archetype.
- Mio (usually referred to as Nishizono): Rei from Evangelion archetype.
- Yuiko (Kurugaya): The archetype of the girl that is refined but teases a lot.
- Haruka (Saigusa): Energetic girl archetype, but at least her backstory was enjoyable
- Kudryavka: Cutesy girl archetype.

As for the rest, the music is good. The environment is normal. The animation is passable but not great.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Nov 28, 2024

Brittaman12

Not Recommended

The bad first. Little Busters is a story about making friends, loving eachother, being happy, etc. Its a Key anime adaptation, so I didn't really expect anything else. I'm not particularly against that type of theme but where Little Buster's really goes wrong is with its delivery. The melodrama, strange dialogue, awkward pacing, and boring characters really made me want to drop it early on, but my masochistic tendencies pushed me to continue watching (for research obviously). Its important to note that I haven't played the VN, which from what I understand is very good, so I don't have any source material to really compare ... this adaptation to, but I held out nonetheless. While the majority of the show was as described (boring, bad, stupid, etc.) it actually started to pick up in the last few episodes (the last 6 I believe) and actually started to interest me. Now I don't want to give any passes to lazy producers and bad writing, but I do grant that adapting a VN doesn't really work to well. It's nearly impossible to fully adapt the functions and intricacies of the VN. The multiple routes and character arcs have to all be stuffed into one linear timeline, and that doesn't lend itself to being exactly like the VN. So, in conclusion, overall, I didn't enjoy this anime very much, but the last few episodes made me want to watch the Refrain route, which I've heard is very good.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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