Little Busters! - Episode 7

Tempting though it is to goof around and get into dumb fights and quarrels, the Little Busters still have a job to do - that being, to recruit more members for their baseball team.

Considering his success thus far, it isn't exactly shocking to find that Naoe is the boy tasked with this continued recruitment drive, and it takes him no time at all to run into another oddball that seems ripe for the picking in that sense.  The girl in question is Haruka Saigusa, a seemingly dim but lonely girl who spends most of her time dreaming up practical jokes which she then denies any knowledge of via some horribly bad acting.

Needless to say, the constant pranks have made Saigusa some enemies in high places, not least in the form of the school's disciplinary committee, who seem to hound her everywhere that she goes.  This is particularly true of the committee's leader Kanata Futaki, who seems insistent upon ensuring that Haruka never catches a break.  When Naoe and his fellow Little Busters stand up for her in the the face of some fresh accusations about her conduct, it seems that they have themselves another new member to add to their motley assortment of misfits.

Despite its attempts to be another dose of colourful fun, this week's Little Busters didn't really do it for me - it was passable but nothing more, and it feels as if it's relying too heavily upon its larger than life characters and not enough upon any form of interesting character development or story-telling.  As the previous story arc proved, none of that is entirely necessary to ultimately tug the heart-strings, but it would at least make the wait for each arc to bed down and find its direction a little more worthwhile than it currently seems to be.