Rin-sama is moe. Rin-sama is moeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Moe moe moeeeee!!!!

I played through the demo once myself and subsequently auto-played it for my sister to watch and got her really excited about Little Busters! In fact, she whacked my head with a volume of manga when I told her that there isn’t any Little Busters! anime, and that if she wanted to see anymore of Little Busters! it would be in Japanese.

Summary of demo:

Kyousuke has just returned from some place (which wasn’t mentioned in great detail in the demo) and riled up Masato and Kengo who immediately proceed to the school cafeteria to fight over Kyousuke’s return. The onlooking crowd throws multiple weapons for Masato and Kengo to choose from. Kengo equips himself with a pellet pistol while Masato winds up with a cat. Halfway through their fight, Rin-sama, the protector of all cats everywhere, intervenes and relieves Masato of his cat. Kengo withdraws from the fight (I think he is scared of Rin-sama). Masato is pissed and challenges Rin-sama to a fight. Rin-sama equips herself with a 3 section staff while Masato winds up with an… eel pie. Rin-sama proceeds to defeat Masato in two swift blows and is heartily congratulated by the crowd.

The demo then flashes back to Riki’s (the protagonist) past and recounts how he came to join the group of 3 boys (Kyousuke, Kengo, Masato) and a girl (Rin) who named themselves the Little Busters. Riki had just lost his parents when he joined the Little Busters and has never looked back since then, as his pain seemed to slowly go away as he lived every fun filled day to its fullest.

His first “mission” was to destroy a bee-hive, which they accomplished when Masato volunteered to coat himself with a thick layer of honey to divert the attention of the bees away from the hive. They suceeded in destroying the bees by burning Masato’s body as the bees attacked him, and this earned them the front page appearance of their town’s newspaper the next day. The demo then fades into the game’s OP and ends subsequently.

Impressions:

Well, what can I say indeed. The introductory portion of Little Busters! is very well directed with a sufficient amount of humour (lol unagi pie) and moe over easy, followed by a warm and fuzzy flashback to the childhoods of the main characters. I can already sense how Little Busters! is set to make you cry until you have no more tears, similar to Kanon, Planetarian and to a certain extent Clannad. Its interesting that they chose to use another protagonist with a shaky past which probably was drawn from the success of Clannad’s Okazaki Tomoya.

From the demo, we can see that Masato is clearly the “loser” slapstick comedy character who gets beaten up by the moe-bishoujos, similar to Sunohara from Clannad. I already like him a lot, much more than Sunohara in fact. This is an achievement for a slapstick character, as I usually don’t really care about them and concentrate my energy and attention on the moe-bishoujos.

Not much to write about the demo since it was pathethically short… but the OP that followed can be summed up in 2 words: simply beautiful. Flood of screencaps to follow.

The over-arching theme of Little Busters! is the theme of adolescence, which is a refreshing departure from Clannad’s over-arching theme of family. After having viewed this demo, I sincerely declare that Haruhi 2 and Full Metal Panic! 3 can wait. Wishing from the bottom of my heart that Little Busters! is the next KeyAni adaption that follows Clannad ~After Story~ :)

Oh and yup, you can download the demo over here.