Little Busters! - Episode 19

Despite having travelled extensively despite her tender age, English is clearly not Kud's strong point - in fact, academic studies in general seem to be something of a disaster area for our dimiutive part-foreign starlet.

When entries are invited to the school's pupils for a proficiency test, this seems like Kud's worst nightmare, yet regardless she joins her friends in signing up to take the test, in turn prompting them to do everything that they can to help her study.  On top of Kud's own nervousness about her issues when it comes to taking tests, the expectations of failure from her classmates only serve to make things worse, as they find her struggle with language and school work to be "cute" rather than something they're willing to help her overcome.

In spite of the Little Busters' efforts to help their comrade out, it seems as if nothing will help her overcome her troubles - an odd state of affairs, as when it comes to other matters such as quantum mechanics and the like she's clearly some kind of genius.  Lo and behold, once the day of the proficiency test comes around, Kud makes a basic error which ruins all of her previous hard work, much to her abject disappointment - but hey, that's what friends are for...

For all of Kud's sweetness as a character, there was once again nothing much for us to get our teeth into with this week's Little Busters - its characters and their scenarios simply aren't interesting enough to glean any particular level of emotional investment, and although the comedic elements of the show occasionally pay off they aren't enough to power things on their own.  In other words, it's back to normality after a relatively strong story arc over the past few weeks, although it feels like we should be building towards some kind of "end game" for the series sooner rather than later, which might just give it the boost it needs.