Monday, 24 December 2012

Little Busters! - Episode 12

Although their current set of members all seem to have settled down nicely, Naoe is still considering Nishizono and her current situation - a fleeting thought given greater impact by his sighting of a girl who likes like, yet clearly wasn't (to his mind), Nishizono in town one Sunday while the rest of his comrades were goofing around.

When Naoe next stops Nishizono to invite her once again to join the Little Busters (this time as the team's manager), he's rather surprised to receive an affirmative response, only to find that she has in fact gotten completely the wrong idea about what he's asked her to manage.  Still, even when he does explain that he actually wants her to act as manager of their baseball team, her agreeable demeanour remains, and thus she becomes the final member of the Little Busters even though her constitution means that she can't serve as a player, leaving them one man (well, girl) short.


Once surrounding by her fellow members, it seems as if Nishizono fits in with the rest of the group rather easily as they teach her how to use a mobile phone, and follow some ideas to further integrate her into the group via the creation of poetry thanks to an idea by Kyousuke.  However, for Naoe the feeling persists that there's something a little "off" about Nishizono's behaviour and emotional state, and her subsequent discussion with him about his books as a way to effectively "cheat" her mortality amidst a desire to read every book ever created confirms this.  What's more, something still doesn't sit right with our protagonist about the girl resembling Nishizono that he previously saw in town, which leads us neatly into the crux of this latest story arc...

If nothing else, this arc feels like it has a little more meat to it, which might make for some more substantial fare than we've seen of late from this series - a prospect which can only be a good thing.  Beyond that, and some reasonable yet verbose building of that story arc, the series continues to totter along at its own place without any sufficiently strong characters to make you sit up and take notice or particularly invest your self in them.  Perhaps the deeper feeling that emanates from Nishizono will change this, but given what's come before in this series I'm not entirely sure that will be the case.

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