Little Busters! - Episode 20

Everyone has a secret to unlocking their full potential, and in Rin's case it seems that seeing a cat being bullied is exactly what's required to turn her into a frighteningly powerful pitcher on the baseball field.

This is by the by however, as this week's episode instead involves itself with another mission giving to Rin (and by extension Naoe) via one of Rin's menagerie of cat visitors, requesting that she fix the lovesickness of another classes top student.  It turns out that the lad in question loves not just hip-hop, but also Rin's deadly rival Sasasasasa Sasami... sorry, Sasasegawa Sasami.  Hardly being an expert in matters of the heart, is Rin up to this particular task?

It quickly becomes clear that this mission isn't going to be an easy one - for starters, Sasami has her eye on Kengo, who really couldn't be more different than Rin's "client", Aikawa, which leads to an abortive number of attempts to impress Sasami whether it be via the power of hip-hop or getting the bookish Aikawa to defeat Kengo in battle.  For once though, maybe Rin's relatively blunt behaviour will actually have the desired effect in the long run, and she might just be able to make another new friend in the process.

Overall, this is probably one of the more entertaining episodes of Little Busters that we've seen of late, although truth be told even this is damning the series with faint praise - it was still lacking in any particularly notable comedy and got by more via being more direct than your average anime series when it comes to matters romantic.  Yet again, it's hard not to compare the show unfavourably to other Key visual novel adaptations, all of which have had a stronger vein of comedy running through them, while this animated version just doesn't seem to have found any ways of sprucing things up, leaving it feeling like the whole thing has been phoned in somewhat.