I like Little Busters. I like its emphasis on friendship, I think the humor is generally funny enough, and I think it balances comedy and dark drama fairly well. You know what I don't like about Little Busters? The fact that it continues the Jun Maeda and KEY trend of having a deus ex machina ending—but also how its supposed friendship theme is kind of a half-lie.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Despite that angry first paragraph, I’d still say I overall like Little Busters: Refrain. The core of the series is still there—a friendship-focused story with some surprisingly dark melodrama at times.

However, gone is basically all the lighthearted slice-of-life comedy from Season 1. This 13-episode season is all about reaching the conclusion and finally revealing the very heavily foreshadowed “secret of the world,” which has been teased since the first few episodes of Season 1.

Because of this, Season 2 focuses much more on the childhood friend group, especially main character Riki and main heroine Rin. Due to how the secret of the world works, these two need to go through some pretty notable character development—some of which they already got in Season 1, but there's still more to go through before they can reach the proper conclusion.

There is that small side story about Kurugaya that was kind of interesting and vaguely ties into the main ending, but ultimately it just felt like a forgettable side quest, similar to most of the main heroine drama from Season 1.

Thankfully, I’d say the emotional drama is a huge upgrade over Season 1. As I mentioned earlier, Season 2 is much more focused on the original five childhood friends, and their bond is extremely important to the secret of the world. A lot of character development and backstory for these five are put front and center. This season really tests how close they are and what they’re willing to go through to get to the "true ending."

Some of these moments are more emotional than others, but I think the major points for each of the main five are generally well done, well-developed, and fitting for their characters—which is more than I can say for the weird drama that happens in the other heroines' stories from Season 1.

Sadly, one of my biggest pet peeves with Little Busters: Refrain is how the other heroines who joined the friend group in Season 1 basically stop mattering by the second half of this season. I thought this was supposed to be a story about the power of friendship, but when the non-childhood friends get completely sidelined and don’t directly contribute to the journey to the best ending, it just feels like a slap in the face to fans of those characters. It also makes you wonder why they were introduced in the first place if they were just going to be irrelevant to the friendship theme. It’s like Maeda suddenly decided that only childhood friends were allowed to be important to the plot.

But that pet peeve has nothing on my biggest complaint of this season—what is arguably my least favorite deus ex machina plot twist in any Key work. A common trope Key and Jun Maeda love to use is vaguely hinting at some supernatural subplot while focusing mostly on resolving the heroines’ personal drama. The supernatural stuff is only mildly hinted at early on, just enough for the writers to claim there was proper buildup before the big reveal in the main ending.

Sadly, Maeda and Key repeat this exact same trick in almost all their long titles, with only a few exceptions (Rewrite and Angel Beats). The supernatural elements are never explained well enough, especially early on, to justify their existence in an otherwise down-to-earth setting. It doesn’t help that the supernatural is usually there just to create intense drama—only for that same supernatural element to then magically ensure that everyone gets a happy ending.

Look, I’m all for happy endings after tough journeys, and to be fair, the characters do put in effort to reach at least a decent conclusion. The problem is that the supernatural elements always end up negating any real sacrifices. And in Little Busters: Refrain, it’s easily the least justified "everyone gets a happy ending" twist, especially considering the way the supernatural setup ties into the start of the series.

I just can't stand how Key fans keep falling for these deus ex machina tricks over and over again. I thought the point of magic tricks was that they lose their impact after a few times, but I guess for Key fans, as long as MUH THEMES hit hard enough, they'll accept anything as long as it leads to a happy ending they find "worthy"—even if it’s not properly explained.

I still like the characters in Little Busters. I still like some of the personal drama. Heck, I think a lot of the struggles the characters go through are pretty relatable, and I wish stories like this were more common in anime and visual novels. I’m just really sick of Key and Jun Maeda falling into the exact same tropes—resolving drama in the most convenient, unexplained way possible while fans continue to eat it up.

When Little Busters Refrain is good, it's really good. It just fumbles at incredibly important moments, souring my overall opinion of this second season.