Kud Wafter

Right so let me start off by saying I don't think this OVA is intended for me, Little busters is my all time favourite anime, love it to death along with so many other pieces Key have made, All their flaws included i just love the stuff they make. But little busters is my favourite anime and nothing more, I never read the visual novels, and never really wanted to, it seemed like too much work to try get the ending i already knew i wanted, the rest would just be extra icing on the cake. So my attachment to Kud as a character inlittle busters is that she had some cute and funny fanservice for the show to build up the universe a bit, and that was it, very little opinion on her, with that said lets actually review the film. (I'll be spoiling major parts of the story for the 'Little busters!' anime, of which i guess this act as a spinoff sequel to, so make sure that's all watched before thinking about watching this) The Kud Wafter movie appears to take place in the dreams of Kud after the Bus crash in Little busters refrain, where much like the other characters in the anime, Kud reflects on herself and her life thinking shes weak and shit with riki being the romantic interest to get her out of this mindstate and wake up from the dream, its pretty clear she's in the dream from early in the film, but thats here or there, if you've come from either the VN or anime its no biggie, what I wanted to see from this film was all that was good in little busters, Pretty art, quality characters voiced well, some bangin music, and a good warm hearted story about friendship, youth, loving yourself, all that shit; We have those things i guess, its a strange kind of movie though. To talk about the animation quick, its great, if you like the bright colours, linework and general design layout of the little busters anime, its the exact same thing, it would of been nice to see something new done considering this is meant to be a special kind of spin off and the first piece of little busters content we've seen in a while, but it's still good eye candy It would of been nice to see more characters that weren't Kud or Riki, especially considering riki's character is having no character, and its been so long since little busters came out i imagine a good few of you like me hardly even remember kuds story apart from her being naked a few times on a hill. We got to see a little bit of the classic main characters, that nowhere near enough time was spent on, it would of driven the plot of the story that she needed her friends better if we saw her friends for more than 5 minutes, and the rest of the watch time wasn't just swooning over riki. And the new characters they introduced, i must imagine they had to be a hell of a lot more interesting in the VA, because here they don't do anything, the younger one whos name I forgot is just there, makes a water bottle rocket and thats it, and the older one has her past told to us, says a few things about space and then also doesn't appear much, It just be nice to be shown characters a lot more so we feel Kud's connection to them instead of just being told about them. Music was a bit lacklustre compared to what we've seen before, nothing really memorable, and no real throw backs to anything from the anime, I've been told the Kud VA at least had an opening that was good, but its just stuff that's Un-insulting here And finally the story, which from my perspective felt like a fever dream more than a story, i feel like this is a story that easily could of been told by changing a few bits and slapping Rin on the cover instead. Probably annoying to hear for Kud stands, whoever you are, but it followed a lot of the structure Little busters refrain did, which i guess might just be what the structure of the VA was to get you to your ending, depending on which girl you considered best, so is this just fanservice for the Kud fans after 0 Little buster content in the past 7 years? Pretty much, but when i think of little busters, romance hardly comes to mind, Little busters is a story about enjoying friendship and coming together, loving what you have while you have it, and how the hardships of life can be beaten with your friends, THATS the story of little busters we want to here, and its just hidden within a strange romance esc story where everyone wants to bone you, or in the animes case riki. So making a 50 minute film for a slight adjustment of a story we've already seen in a sense seems kinda pointless. If you like Kud that much and wanted riki to end up with her, well go read the VN, or just close your eyes, and picture REALLY hard that Rin was Kud at the end of refrain. Because in 50 minutes you can't really tell the story of kud anyway, and thats excluding the fact that portions of this film are just a bit strange, like randomly panting on each other on a hill, the useless inclusion of Aziruzki Shinna, some strange and offputting sex scenes between a young loli and a character who might as well be a plank of wood, It just doesn't play out well in this format, they either needed to do a longer piece dedicating more time to setting things up and how they wanted to demonstrate things, scrap the OVA, and just make Kud wafter into a small spin off anime season like Little Busters EX, or just scrap the whole idea all together, and as much as I've just dogpilled on the story, if you liked little busters you will probably at least fine some light enjoyment out of this, getting to see what little chemistry between the characters as you do, and if you really liked Kud in the VA, then getting this little bit of fan service i guess is a nice little cherry on top to the Little Busters Anime. For 50 minutes, its not insulting, but considering how long this took to make, and how long its been since we got any animated little busters content, it just would of been nice to see something that was more than an extended Kud episode from another reality. Hope you enjoy it Kud stans... whoever you are

I don't think there's any right way to adapt a visual novel. It's a medium often overlooked by the western anime watching community, but the influences of those early gal games are strong across many genres of anime. Many of the character archetypes we find so common today can trace their origins back to visual novel tropes. The problem when adapting these things, and trying to do it faithfully, is the choose your own adventure nature of vn storytelling. How can you faithfully adapt every route, every choice? You can't, without making some fans angry. Best you can do is adapt the common route, throwin a few episodes with hints of some of the other girls' routes and adapt the good or true ending with the main heroine. Then make side content like this. I guess I should say that I never played any of the original visual novels. My knowledge of Little Busters is solely based in the anime adaptations supplemented by cursory wiki reading to fill in the gaps. Frankly visual novels are a huge time sink and I've got enough in my plan to watch to merit not wanting to spend more time on extra homework. My assumption is that this movie exists in a sort of alternate route from the main story, where Kud is the main heroine that Riki focuses on. That's just the best I can come up with from conjecture. I really liked Little Busters, and certainly this story won't make much sense if you aren't familiar with that story. This is like a fun little side adventure in that world they created together. It ends on a more poignant note with Kud being the girl to pull through. It actually isn't clear what the fate of the rest of them is in this version. I don't remember them saying anything about it anyway. So if you were a huge Kud fan and wanted Riki to choose her as his best girl here's the story for you. If you prefer the more generic ending you can just think of this as non-canon, or make up whatever ending you want, really. Like I said at the outset, there's no right way to adapt a visual novel. If you're a purest you can just dump the 80+ hours into playing the original game. Have fun with that. 8/10

To anyone who finds this OVA/movie whatever, please wait for the english translation of the VN. I myself have fully read the VN in Japanese, so I was curious to see what the OVA does different. As it turns out, it changes quite a lot of stuff. - One egregious example being the Little Busters being present. Only Kanata(who is a bit more cheerful than her previous appearance) and A-chan were present n the Kud Wafter VN, none of the other members are present aside from a couple mentions. The only thing you're getting in the VN is Kud/Riki banter with some introductions to someside characters, like best girl Himuro. - Omitting Shiina's older sister, Ui Arizuki. She pretty much serves as the parallel to Shiina(how they both have unfulfilled dreams) and I don't understand why they removed her. - The 2nd half itself. While I myself thought that this whole section was a waste of time, none of the events shown in this OVA make no narrarive sense. I will not spoil the VN, but just know that Hiromu has a lot more importance in the story than you think she does. While the added humor is nice, I just want to remind you that the original source is 90% fluff, 5% comedy and 5% dramatic stuff. If that isn't your forté, then you are good to skip the VN/OVA. Oh and if you're wondering, yes there is a TON of sexual content in the original 18+ version of the VN.