I don’t like Little Busters anymore. I don’t care about its characters, plot or artistic merit. After having a kind of fun season one, and a “just good enough to watch” season 2, I was done with the franchise. Sadly, there are still these 8 OVA episodes to round off the series, so let’s go through them before we can lay this baseball team of friendship to rest.
Note: This review assumes knowledge of the first two seasons. If you haven’t already read them, here’s my review of Season One and Refrain.
Release Date: 2017
Format: Blu-ray, DVD
Studio: J.C Staff
Publisher: MVM
Certificate:
Language: English, Japanese
Subtitles: English
Episodes: 1-8
Discs: 2 DVD
Run Time: 200 minutes
3 stories are included in this release, the first being the longest. Set before the events of Refrain, Riki goes into the school after dark to go grab a McGuffin from the school. He hears gunfire in the building and a pretty girl named Saya Tokido forces him to leave. He then re-enters the building (Why did he go in after gun shots, is he crazy?) and finds the girl’s handbook, which causes them to meet in the daytime. It turns out she’s a hit man and they go on a treasure hunt inside the school.
The problem with this story, is that it makes Riki out to be insane. Saya tries to kill him three times. Three. Times. I understand Riki wanting to help the girl, because he is a ladies man, and wants to try and go out with every single girl he meets, but in the entirety of the rest of the show, he hasn’t been shown doing something as stupid as running head first into a murderer’s plot.
The other two stories are only two episodes apiece, one focusing on Rin’s rival, Sasasegawa, turning into a cat and only Riki being able to understand her. The other, once again, focuses on Fukutani, the student council president, and her crippling social disorders brought on by abuse by her family. Considering how matter-of-fact I made that last sentence, you can clearly see that I don’t care about the second of these stories; we already know the characters had a happy ending at the end of season 2, so there’s no tension.
The only redeeming quality about this OVA collection is the supporting cast. We see some bromance between Riki and Muscle Dude. We have another Kud spin, and see an interesting facet of Mio. Heck, the final OVA has all the Little Busters members dressed in funny costumes.
This release contains textless opening and ending songs, and trailers for other Sentai shows.
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