Little Busters! - Episode 26 (Completed)

After his initial reluctance to join their merry baseball-playing band, it seems that Kengo has warmed to being a part of the Little Busters, to put it mildly.

Meanwhile however, Naoe is still trying to come to terms with the fact that Kyousuke has asked him to take over as the group's leader - after dismissing it as a joke and Kyousuke poking fun at him, it soon becomes clear that his decision to hand over the reins to our protagonist was an absolutely genuine one.  But is Naoe really cut out to be a leader?  He certainly doesn't think so, despite Kyousuke's assertions that he simply hasn't realised what he's achieved already, and that he can easily surpass his mentor.

As Naoe frets over tactics and strategies for the group's forthcoming baseball match, it's time for his friends to repay some of the debt of gratitude they owe him, by reminding him how in some sense or another he "effectively" saved them all from their various moments of darkness, and that all they can ever ask of him is to be himself and to lean on them whenever he needs them.  Thus, Naoe's worries are assuaged, and the baseball game proves to be a huge success.  That, of course, isn't the end of the story though....

So it goes that Little Busters ends without really ending at all, and merely setting us up for the Refrain sequel that covers the rest of the events in the source material.  The trouble is, do I even want to watch more Little Busters after this tepid outing?  The honest is no, not particularly - save for the end of Kud's arc, the series had none of the emotional or dramatic power of other Key adaptations, and even the promise of better material second time around makes this a hard sell.  While it would be easy to blame everything on JC Staff here, I can't help but feel that the material they were working with simply wasn't powerful enough to compare to other similar works, as its execution was solid if unspectacular and didn't seem to be at fault for the most part.  My decision to watch Refrain (or refrain from doing so - see what I did there?) is one to be held over for another day, but for now I can say most assuredly that Little Busters was one decidedly mediocre anime series.