Little Busters! - 18

"The Answer is Within Your Heart"

It sounds horrible, but getting disciplined by belts is a very real thing in some cultures. Hence, Haruka, you're a little too quick to judge that "there's no such thing as evil in this world."

Sometimes, I wonder if the question asked when a Key game is in development isn't something along the lines of, "how much should we torture heroine X?" It's almost like watching Evangelion without all the robots and Angels, really, and sometimes all the drama starts to blend from one Key work to another. Still, criticizing a Key work for its use of drama is foolish unless I criticize all of Key's works as a collective entity, and I've no intention of doing that. Even so, this was actually a fairly great episode of Little Busters! and I enjoyed it just fine. The drama is completely in line with Key, and thus I never expected subtlety or anything less than abuse in Haruka and Kanata's arc. In fact, the only thing I really did have a problem with was Haruka's admission about there not being evil in the world. Coming from her, when both she and her sister suffered at the cruelty of their demented uncles for so long, that sounds like a really shallow statement. I can understand that her father and her sister are no longer symbols for her hatred, but to say that evil doesn't exist anywhere is a bit of a stretch. I think a better line to end the arc with would have been Riki's: "There's no one in our world but us." In other words, you can't expect a god or other miracle to come and save you; you have to save yourself, though it's fine to have some help doing it.

Therein, I think, lies the message of the arc. Haruka is a bit unrealistic in forgiving everyone, including those that deserved no absolution, but she was right to leave her past behind her and stop looking for someone to hate and blame for her pain. Hatred only ever breeds more hatred and resentment, and that's the unfortunate cycle that Kanata and Haruka were trapped within. In pushing the blame onto each other, they only succeeded in pushing themselves apart and allowing themselves to fall prey to the family. Even if the Saigusa/Futaki family was cruel and destroyed the lives of the twins, the best thing for Kanata and Haruka to do was to literally walk away and get over it all. It didn't matter if the family hated them or considered them unworthy because all they had to do was learn to love themselves and each other; they saved themselves by realizing how much they cared about each other and what they really wanted to do about it all.

In a sense, that's what their parents tried to do as well, though they lost their daughters to the family in their attempt. Whether or not Shou is really one of the girls' father or just an unlucky second husband with no blood ties is up to interpretation, but I think it doesn't matter. What he did for them and for his wife and brother-husband was all a father ever could do for his daughters, blood relatives or not. That's why I think it was the correct decision for Haruka not to want to know her paternity after all. Her father is present in both her fathers spiritually if not biologically, and that way she doesn't have to interrupt her feelings toward them by labeling one of them as a stranger.

I did find it curious that Kud got so much attention this time, perhaps because she's slated for the next arc. Equally curious was the fact that Mio was strangely absent all episode, though not last week. I wonder if this will have anything to do with the introduction of the new arc or if it's only setting up for the breather episode(s).