Final­ly, the ani­me I’ve been wait­ing for, well, for­ev­er! I’ve been a bit sketchy about it not being done by KyoAni, who are pret­ty much the only com­pa­ny that has ever done VN adap­ta­tions right. But I’ve decid­ed to give J.C. Staff the ben­e­fit of an open mind, and so I’m going into this first episode with absolute­ly no bias.

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Well, you can keep your lack of bias because J.C. Staff gives me con­vul­sions. I don’t even know how they tricked me into trust­ing them and get­ting excit­ed for this adap­ta­tion. If they screw it up I’m going to lose it.

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My own excite­ment will kill me here, I swear. And it’s not like I can even pre­tend to not have a bias towards the visu­al nov­el. Look at my damn name. Either way, I have put down the torch and pitch­forks and encour­age every­one to do the same for now. We’ll mass the swarm lat­er.

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By the way, was I the only one that thought Kyousuke com­ing out of the dark woods felt a bit omi­nous?

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He looked a bit too much like “God” to me. I have a bad feel­ing that shit is going to go down when I get back to the visu­al nov­el.

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To who­ev­er thought there was­n’t any hint at dark­ness in the series, it’s right there. I’ll just leave it at that, since every­thing I say would be a spoil­er.

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Holy shou­ta, Bat­man… Hoc­chan, you’re going to make Riki say “uguu”, right? Right? Nev­er heard her voice a male before, but it sounds alright.

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Well at least it was accu­rate. Painfully…accurate. Ugh…
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Rather fun­ny how dif­fer­ent he is in com­par­i­son towards the oth­er Key male pro­tags. Espe­cial­ly in com­par­i­son towards the two man­ly arche­types he hangs around with. To be fair, he was actu­al­ly even more fem­i­nine in the VN in my eyes. I’ve got­ten used to it by now.

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Yeah, the oth­er Key pro­tag­o­nists are pret­ty alpha.

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You haven’t seen alpha until you see Riki clock 20 cats in a row while play­ing base­ball. Or was that just when I did the base­ball minigame?

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Speak­ing of Riki being sur­round­ed by alpha males, HERE’S MASATO AND KENGO FIGHTING OVER STUPID SHIT. 😛

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IT WAS NOT STUPID. KENGO TRICKED MASATO, YOU HEARD THE MAN.

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This scene was almost entire­ly faith­ful. Almost. In the VN the trans­la­tion was ‘Bur­dock fell from my eyes’ that Masato mis­heard. In the ani­me, it’s ‘Snails that fell from my eyes.’ I’m pret­ty sure the peo­ple who subbed the ani­me tried to local­ize the joke. It did­n’t real­ly both­er me while I watched it, just kind of a thing to point out.

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You know the whole argu­ment where sub­ti­tles are more faith­ful to the source than dub­bing is? Yeah, me nei­ther.
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Leave it to Kyousuke to make it a fair fight. BATORU SUTAATO!

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Water pis­tol vs. cat!

Enter cat-lover Rin!

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It makes me hap­py to see how faith­ful it’s being at least. Almost word for word exact­ly the same thing with only a few extra com­ments and one extra high-kick to the dome was miss­ing! I was a bit wor­ried at how the fight­ing would look com­plete­ly ani­mat­ed. I’m not entire­ly sold on it yet, so we’ll see.

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Nun­chaku vs. eel pie? Gee, I won­der what will win here.

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Are nunchuks that big? Pret­ty sure that’s a three-sec­tion-staff.
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Uhh, watch the scene again.

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I’ll look into that when I take the screen­shot. (Note-to-self, nev­er blog from mem­o­ry…)

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The Lit­tle Busters! Defend­ers of jus­tice! Fuck bees and their hon­ey! And fuck Masato too, appar­ent­ly!

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I am fair­ly cer­tain the poor bas­tard did not under­stand the mag­ni­tude of the task he signed up for.

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Bees! and FIRE! One hell of morn­ing-after that must have been.

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We’ll call our team… Lit­tle Busters!

I’m pret­ty sure they were in the school when they said this in the VN. Did­n’t take away any­thing though. One of my favorite scenes from the begin­ning of Lit­tle Busters. It might be because my favorite open­ing song plays after this. Who knows.

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They were actu­al­ly out­side in the VN too. Regard­less, it was still in a dif­fer­ent place. The way Kyousuke declares they will form a base­ball team called Lit­tle Busters is pret­ty awe­some either way.

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That over­hang is prac­ti­cal­ly inside the school, it’s a far shot from sit­ting 200 feet from cam­pus in front of a tree for sure.

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I thought the remix of the VN’s open­ing theme was pret­ty awe­some. The way J.C. did the open­ing sequence was­n’t too shab­by either.

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The fact they kept the sound­track intact through­out the ani­me just made me hap­py in gen­er­al. That bat­tle loss music when Rin got wrecked  was hilar­i­ous.

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I don’t know what to say because of how heavy my bias is to the song and how amaz­ing the OP was. I think I could lis­ten to this OP on any­thing and I’d still like it, so.

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AWESOME.

Kyousuke’s def­i­nite­ly going to get a per­fect mark on his home­work.

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They missed a cou­ple quotes here but they got the best ones. I hate time-con­straints on stuff like this because it makes the com­e­dy not as fun­ny as it could be. Not real­ly a gripe on J.C’s part, more of adap­ta­tions in gen­er­al. I would have liked it if they kept Ken­go’s quote of; “You were eat­en by the eel pie instead.” though. That would have been stel­lar.

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SASAGAMI SASHIMI-SAMA.

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SALAMI STAYSINGEAR.

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You’re both idiots. It’s clear­ly Sas­esaga Sasala­mi.

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I see you like the sala­mi too.

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Oh ho ho!

Kyousuke read­ing man­ga. Wow. Damn. Isn’t that so dreamy?

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I’ll say what Dan was think­ing. You sir, are a flam­ing homo­sex­u­al.

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I said noth­ing of the sort.

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It hurts when peo­ple take me seri­ous­ly.

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Looks like we’re doing Komar­i’s route first.
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WHERE THE HELL IS HARUKA, WE’RE OUT OF SEQUENCE ALREADY?! IT’S THE FIRST EPISODE, SHIT.

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Chill your shit, Haru­ka came in and stole a freak­ing book. Komari is the first new Lit­tle Buster. It makes sense in adap­ta­tions-sense. Haru­ka will prob­a­bly get her scene when she gets intro­duced. I’m not sure if Komar­i’s route will be first or if she’s being intro­duced first due to sequence. Who knows?

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That book scene could have hap­pened and then we don’t hear from her until we’re sup­posed to again. I mean, they intro­duced Kyou pret­ty ear­ly in the Clan­nad ani­me, and she did­n’t even get an arc!

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Well, thing is, I’m not sure if It’d fit the time con­straints is all. I think there try­ing to give the girls good screen­time before every­one joins the Lit­tle Busters. I’m not sure how it’d go for peo­ple not sure who Haru­ka is, to just catch a glimpse and then she’s off.

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It’d be worth for the text­book scene which I will now refrain from spoil­ing. I’d make myself puke think­ing about it too much any­way.

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The end­ing song they chose is pret­ty nice to lis­ten to.  Like all the oth­er Lit­tle Busters! songs, it’s sung by Rita.

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I think I might just be a Rita fan­boy. Damn it. I hate my own fan­boy­ism some­times.

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Sor­ry, I still have the Angel Beats! end­ing song stuck in my head. I am in no state of mind to make a judge­ment for at least anoth­er week. Let’s talk about some­thing else, please.

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First Impres­sions

The first episode was bet­ter than I expect­ed it to be, because usu­al­ly ani­me adap­ta­tion of visu­al nov­els aren’t this word-by-word or as faith­ful unless it was KyoAni. I don’t know why peo­ple are com­plain­ing about the ani­me right now. Either they’re fan­boys of KyoAni, very purist about the visu­al nov­el and would have hat­ed it regard­less, or they are VERY mis­guid­ed on what the sto­ry will actu­al­ly be like just from expo­si­tion.

The blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty and just ani­me com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al has my jim­mies all rus­tled for this. It is almost a repeat of exact­ly what hap­pened when Clan­nad came out. The crit­ics came out in the fuck­ing swarm and tried to rip it to pieces because of the incred­i­ble amount of con­tent it missed. And then came the KyoAni fan-base to smite all that judged the com­pa­ny that could do no wrong. This time, we have the same sce­nario, except a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny, and the same KyoAni fan-base is now blam­ing J.C for every­thing. We switched from love to hate and com­pa­ny name. Con­grat­u­la­tions every­one, we’re grow­ing.

You know, I don’t mind peo­ple not lik­ing what I don’t like, but the amount of cloud-grasp­ing for rea­sons to hate it sim­ply because it’s J.C is astound­ing. If you didn’t like it, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t like the visu­al nov­el either. Some of the jokes and com­e­dy got lost, but not every­thing makes it over in an adap­ta­tion.  As one of the peo­ple who read the VN and has a con­scious bias towards it, I hon­est­ly think it was very true to the VN and I actu­al­ly am sur­prised to say I am look­ing for­ward to the next episode.

Don’t get me wrong. I am ter­ri­fied. I hope, pray and beg that J.C does not screw this up. Lit­tle Busters! is prob­a­bly my favorite school-life VN and my favorite Key prod­uct. (Do note that “favorite” does not mean “best.”) I was ready to start bring­ing out the pitch­forks with every­one else to start torch­ing J.C., yet this sur­prised me. It was good. It is the begin­ning of the marathon.

I remem­ber all the com­ments about how moe and dumb Clan­nad looked, and then it turned into this. Now every­one is say­ing hilar­i­ous things like “Unlike moe Lit­tle Busters!, you could total­ly see the under­ly­ing dark­ness in Clan­nad. Like Nag­isa being depressed.”

Here I was think­ing that Kyosuke’s scene ear­li­er was a huge dark hint. I was think­ing that Nag­isa’s depres­sion was more sto­ry­telling then some sort of dark under­tone to the incom­ing tragedy. Well, shit. I must go con­sult with the ora­cle. He’ll know what to do.

Look. Stop being stu­pid. This was a good first episode. Is it time to start throw­ing up the fire­works? No, of course not. None of the Key ani­me before it start­ed out as instant suc­cess­es and mon­sters, and nei­ther will this. Time will tell. It’s not time for cel­e­bra­tion, but it’s def­i­nite­ly not time for any freak­ing pitch­forks either. If you don’t like it and you haven’t read the the VN, that’s fine! If you don’t like it, have read the VN and hate that they missed stuff and/or don’t like how its ani­mat­ed, that’s fine too! But holy hell, let the KyoAni com­par­isons fuck­ing die.

At the very least, let’s com­pare it to the visu­al nov­el like good lit­tle fan­boys, alright?

I can’t even be assed to refute or, God for­bid, READ that mon­stros­i­ty. I think I should spend that ener­gy on read­ing the visu­al nov­el before the ani­me goes by. I mean, it’s still the first episode, all I can say is that they haven’t screwed up yet. Screw­ing up in the first episode would have been quite the spec­ta­cle.

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In mem­o­ry of Epic Win Blog. Rest in peace.