Disclaimer: Unlike my first season review, as this is the second season, I will not hold on with spoilers, so if you haven’t watched it, go watch it first. Also, to a complete experience of my point of view about Little Busters anime adaptation, I suggest reading of my S1 review here.

Little Busters Refrain returns to what Little Busters actually wants to show the reader, with a difference of tone in comparison for girls routes, except Rin. In fact, because of how the direction decided to adapt it's content, the "Refrain" adaptation it's not just about "Refrain" itself, but Kurugaya's and Rin route too. Although Rin's Route is very obvious why it's in the season, I found it really interesting in how they adapt Kurugaya's route:

The whole point of her route is to be a melancholy wish that came true, the infinite 20th of May. But because LB adaptation chose to not show any romance, Kurugaya's ending actually demonstrated to us a very subtle but intelligent foreshadow — about how the "secret of the world" itself. Here, her 3 episodes is actually a tragic loop of time, between wanting those moments of love — a human feeling — to never go away, but at the price of time never moving up again. The moment it did so, everyone will forget everything and Riki will not be go down into "her route" (literally) ever again. Rather than ending with a tragedic love as the visual novel did so, she said what Riki really to do so their journey could finally take the most important step forward: protect Rin. Of course, in the original, she would have no reason whatsoever to say that, but the anime cleverly found a way to show us how Little Busters world — the world anything can happen — works, the tragedy of the unhuman Kurugaya and the step forward to Rin and Refrain's route.

What I'm trying to say this is that, unnaturaly, J.C Staff did a really good job here. Of course, adaptating faithfully her route would be interesting too, but as all other characters were instead of "A World That Anything Can Happen" to solely a step forward to Riki's development; Kurugaya, though, was actually well executed.

The most interesting thing is that I understood her character while writing her review: she is, like Komari and Haruka, a neurodivergent; more precisely, a gifted kid. She's best at everything you can imagine: sports, intelectual work, art, etc,. Which means she's just different from any other kids she met during her life, as she and everyone else would actually feel she's more of a robot than a human. She began to think that they're right, that she's not human at all; she doesn't feel happiness, sadness, angry, frustration or love. That's why, the moment Riki's showed her some bit of happiness, she didn't want to let it go, and the May 20th would repeat forever, only to it's memories to not be carried through.

That's why I feel, in some way or another, Kurugaya's route was done better here than it's original. The original it's still really sad and tragic, but it's animation gave us a reason for her entire route to really exist in the first place, in which it felt valid. They did a good reason as to why she had to be forgotten, so Riki could move once again.

Now, onto what I think it's the adaptation biggest problems: Rin's route, and it's not hard to understand why.

The animation failed to show us that Rin's route is that world of regretfulness. Indeed, as I seen other reviews about the matter, people did realize this is a coming of age story — a boy who has to grow up and be mature enough to think for itself and fight for the tragic events of life (as we've seen in Refrain); what the adaptation failed to show is that this route is the only way to "Refrain" to happen. The sole reasons why Refrain happened is because a "World That Anything Can Happen" turn out to a story of regret, only to be followed by Refrain's route, the "A World That Nothing Happened". The fact is that regret is a necessary step for any human to have and evolve as a mature someone. If you never had any regret, that means you don't think critically about the steps you have taken. To regret something is to realize you did something wrong. In fact, the original material highlight this one aspect so much, that "Regret" is one of it's soundtracks. Rin's route is not only Rin's development moment, but also Kyousuke's (and Riki of course). The anime did not gave much to the feeling of Rin's suffering in her new school, about how forced choices can lead to negative conclusions. A lot of readers has been thinking as melodrama; this is simply a scared and traumatized kid who is not strong enough to deal with strangers because she has been protected by her brother and friends all the time. The adaptation felt like it was a decision of out of nowhere, because of the sake of it. It did not the viewer that you cannot be protected forever (Rin 1) to take steps, even if those steps were not in the right direction.

What I'm trying to trying to say here is that the lack of "Rin 1" route and the instant migration to "Rin 2" is a problem, I mean, there IS a reasons why it exists in the first place.

About the route itself, as we know, that moment where Rin and Riki ran away to evade more sadness were cut short to a 5-minute presentation about they choosing where to live, how they lived and how they were captured. Again, the whole point of Rin's route is to show that running away and trying to avoid regretful situations is the opposite of growing up — is in fact, acomodating yourself with your immature reality; also showing the core of Rin's shyness: her trauma with uknown people and specifically, her trauma with tall men. J.C Staff chose to show us all of this in 5 minutes; but that's the consequence of a 13 episode show. If Kyoto Animation could do whatever magic they did with Clannad: After Story, there is not reason for J.C to do not do the same, unless vision of direction, scene composion/sequence and talent. Well, if they chose the 13 format episode, than some important parts have to be cut off, but honestly, of all cut off content, this one was not THAT relevant to adapt all of it, so I don't condemn them.

Now, onto Refrain.

We, visual novel readers, can't lie that the Refrain route is probably one of the most beautiful things we have ever witnessed, and does the anime shows any respect?

In my humble opinion, it does. Again, we didn't have a Kyoto Animation's adaptation, but rather a J.C Staff. We can't expect the espetacular, yet, we at least received the really, really enjoyable.

I've seen people criticizing Masato's episode (read this both thinking about the "episode" anime and "episode" visual novel), but it was actually very faithful to it's original.

That are some things that I have to point it out. First, what really saddens me is that how the greatly emotional/tearjerker scenes in the original were not really emotional here, but rather just emotional. One easy exemple is Komari's scene. J.C Staff, with all the animation/soundtrack/voices failed to make something more emotionally powerful than a bunch of PNGs. However, and being honest here, I'm very glad they well adapted Kyousuke's farewell, as this is arguably the most powerful scene in Little Busters.

Also, not really a emotional thing but something the adaptation just cut off because they decided it was not worth it, that is Kyousuke's nightmares with the bus accident and him trying to stop the oil from getting to combustion. It does not completely changes ones view of what happens in the story overall, but made the impressions Kyousuke was actually just gloomy and depressed — and while he was, that was not the full reason. Anime-only watchers may think he became useless, but as is Kyousuke, he was trying to help even at his lowest, even if the Refrain world is the "A World Where Nothing Happened". This is to show Kyousuke desire to change the "Real World" even by these fake gaps only meant to Rin and Riki to grow up.

Other thing that I remember someone saying is that the girls getting "out of the world" in one of the episodes felt like the entire Little Busters S1 was invalidated — and I can't feel but say that this is quite right, and of the most problematic decisions (and perhaps even a flawed one) of J.C Staff writing adaptation is to show to that the girls were just part of a development, and not that they are a part of "World That Anything Can Happen". This makes those characters routes pointless as the Rin one is the only one that really matters. So I can't disagree the reasoning of one who thought S1 was pointless as well.

Just if you've been wondering, the "World That Anything Can Happen" is meant to be the girls' routes, the "A World Where Nothing Happened" is meant to be Refrain's world and the "Real World", is, well, the world where they had the accident.

Analysing from a artistic view, well, even for 2013 the animation itself was not that great, and in terms of direction, J.C didn't try to do anything spetacular with it's scenes — except by that Rin moment where she talks to the LB members, they did got over the original here. Soundtrack is the same as the visual novel again and gladly they hit well and the correct moments to insert them (mainly talking about the insert songs), as LB insert songs are beautiful as hell. Even if they decided to adapt Refrain to only 6 episodes, the route didn't felt rushed at all (they indeed cut content though), so it's a half plus, compensated but the utter mess they did in Rin's route. It's J.C we're talking about, so it's 2 misses for 1 hit.

As to conclude this unexpected somewhat long review, I decided to not go throughly every single aspect I can think of, because it's not that necessary here. Sure, I can talk lots about the flawness (in a good way!) of Kyousuke's character as a someone who really showed resistance to maturity; as to Rin's chronic shyness and how her development in the anime throught the anime and not only during her route is missing here; or even the main message of Little Busters, as to how core relationships, mainly friendships, it's not just a single piece of your life, neither just one of your steps but as one of your biggest direction makers your life will follow. Perhaps, someday, I can talk about all that, but first, I just wanted to focus more about how the animation's showed Little Busters to the anime world and it's changes, and what truly effect as a viewer watching J.C's view of Little Busters; and second, I don't know if I'm competent enough to try and make a character study like that.

In the end of the day, I'm glad we had this S2, as even with it's "unique" problems, it did not fail to show us Little Busters true message and some of the most interesting characters we will ever see (specifically, Kyousuke); a genuine story about growing up as person, trying to face up from regrets and understanding that the Real Life, can also be, a World Where That Anything Can Happen, if you really wish to do it, just like they did.