"Little Busters Season One, Part Two" is an animated series about a group of childhood friends dubbed "The Little Busters" going through high school and trying to find enough members for their baseball team called "The Little Busters" (For more info read my review of the first volume "here" or watch the first volume as either way is fine). In this volume we have Riki Naoe getting very worried as Mio Nishizono has gone missing and an impostor that looks just like her named "Midori" has shown up.  Riki searches all over for Mio and does that only to find out a dark secret about Midori.  Haruka Saigusa is also having problems as she is called up to the student council only to get into a fight with her twin sister. The next day Riki finds that her sister plays a malicious trick and reveals a very dark secret about Haruka's past upon the public. Lastly we have the foreign exchange studant named Kudryavka Noumi who hears the news that her mother is going on a ship to outer space but something happens last minute and Kudryavka has to run back to her old home town. All this (and more) in the final bunch of episodes of the first season of Little Busters. (Click "Read More" to read the full review).




I'm not going to lie, this volume opens up with a bunch of stinky episodes. The reason why is because the first episode is a continuation of the storyline that takes place at the end of the volume and if you remember the review of the prior volume you'd remember how that storyline made me dread the direction that this show was going. That episode had a very uninteresting tale and it also introduced supernatural elements into the show without warning and not in a good way. When something interesting did pop up in that episode it was cut short with a very sugar sweet moment that feels like a huge slap in the face as it was cheaply done.

Once that terrible storyline was over we were greeted with a cheap filler episode that also doubles up as a harem special. It ended up being an improvement over the prior episode but it still ended up being a very useless filler episode. Once those two episodes ended then the show gets on the right track as we are greeted with some solid storytelling that was interesting. Most of the time the drama is handled well and it'll draw you deeper into the show but there will be moments where the drama is way overdone to the point where it becomes annoyingly melodramatic and forced. The drama in this volume also has a dramatically darker tone to where we have themes like war, murder, and suicide and it did feel very weird at first as the first volume was more of a happy "slice of life" show but you'll get use to it as it was handled well but far from being perfect.

One thing I hated about the show was when they have scenes involving magic powers (I kid you not) as it was very out of place and the way they handled it was very lazy as it was used in a way to where something big is coming up that makes you wonder how they are going through it but then BAM! Magic powers activate and everything turns out fine like the ending of a Disney movie. While it doesn't happen much you'll find yourselves smashing your head against a wall.

There is some comedy in this show too and it mainly relied on "pun humor" and it wasn't bad but there were some dumb jokes plus the comedy doesn't feel out of place which is good as comedy and dark drama can lead to a mess (unless it's a Black Comedy that is). Characters in this show weren't bad at all as they had nice charming personalities that worked well for this show. They do have moments where they can be annoying but I've explained why in the paragraph above.

The artwork in this volume wasn't bad and while it has fixed up some problems that the first volume has you'll still notice that it still has some art mistakes like how in some shots the characters look like that they have stubs for fingers that will make you go "ouch". The characters in this show have a very beautiful doll like look to them although while beautiful the characters look quite generic and unoriginal. The backgrounds in this show were very nice to look at with some nice detailing and lighting effects. The animation in this show was passable but there were some spots that were oddly animated although there were also some shots that were animated really well but that doesn't happen much in this series.

The English dub in this one wasn't bad as it worked well with the characters but it isn't perfect as it sounded a little rushed. I also don't like how they added Japanese terms and sayings in the English dub like how they add "-san" and "-chan" to the names as they don't make sense in the English dub and ends up making the show sounding like that it was translated very lazily. The music in this show has a very generic sound that can be found during text-screens in video games but it was a nice generic sound that worked well with the show.

The special features section has a nice amount of bonuses to be found including: Japanese promotional videos, Japanese television ads for the television show and more Japanese television ads promoting the DVD and Blu-Ray home releases. All of the promotional videos and television ads were interesting to watch but you won't be watching them more than once. You do also get text-less opening and closing credit sequences and they were decent with nice music and visuals. Lastly you get a set of stickers of some of the characters that appeared in this show but this is only for the first edition of this release.

Overall this show does have it's problems with drama and some lazy writing but it actually ended up being a decent show that was worth a watch... Could've been done without the magic powers though.  Decent viewing. 

Title: Little Busters! Season One, Part Two