Saturday 30 November 2013

Little Busters! Refrain - Episode 9

Having won Masato over from whatever insanity had gripped him, Riki's next target in his reforming of the Little Busters is Kengo.

Just like Masato, Kengo immediately knows what's up when he's approached by Naoe and he wastes no time in warning him off trying to get him to join his merry band.  With no obvious way of persuading Kengo appearing before him Riki talks to Kyousuke, who lets slip one slither of information - that Kengo is lying about something.  A brief look at Kengo's behaviour soon makes it clear what that lie is - either his previous injury has now healed and Kengo is continuing to pretend it's a problem, or the injury was never real in the first place.


Either way, Riki now knows what he must do - that is, to challenge Kengo.  With the thought of playing kendo to decide whether he should join the Little Busters out of the question, it's inevitably to baseball that he turns as the source of his challenge.  Kengo can't say no to such a request, but his determination to win is strong, and perhaps more importantly for the viewer he lets far more slip about the state of the world and the secret being kept from Naoe - in short, events keep repeating, and it seems as if Kyousuke's failed grand plan was an attempt to break the cycle to whatever ends he was hoping for.  In a similar vein, Kengo sees victory over Riki as a chance to move forward, but perhaps fate is conspiring to ensure that this isn't the case...

Although I still feel like Little Busters! Refrain is keeping its cards a little too close to its chest, this week's episode managed to avoid being a rinse and repeat of last week's instalment by letting a few details slip out, thus allowing us to at least start building a picture of what's going on and why Riki and Rin are being kept in the dark.  It has the potential to be some intriguing stuff so hopefully the revelations will keep on coming, as they surely must to keep this series moving now that it's finally slowing glimpses of getting on track with just a few episodes to go.

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