Of course that’s a question in itself – why is Komari materially different than the other peripheral Busters? But the larger issue is how the absence of first Kurugaya and now Kud (booooo!), Mio and Haruka can be dismissed with “They must be taking a day off (again?”).
![anime little busters rin anime little busters rin](http://static.minitokyo.net/downloads/44/34/629244.jpg)
One by one the non-essential Busters have disappeared, all but Komari (which is a bit of a shame for me, as I still wish I could hit a “delete” button every time I see her and make her vanish). One thing I’m still not quite clear on is Riki’s grasp on “reality”, however we define that term – and for that matter, that of everyone else in the cast not named Kyousuke. Just how literally that plays out in terms of the plot is an open question (I’d say current indicators are that it might be pretty literal), but the meaning behind the story seems clear enough to me. I’m more and more convinced that Little Busters! is thematically focused on the question of childhood’s end, and what that means for all of us. But certain things that can be inferred from what’s happening on-screen are obvious enough to be discussed safely, I think – among them the fact that symbolically, at least. We’re getting to the point now where it’s harder and harder to write these posts without acknowledging the elephant in the room – the Secret is largely the story at this point, and speculating too specifically about it is inviting trouble. But just as we knew Kyousuke was behind those missions, the real tension comes from wanting to know the reason – just as we knew watching this season was going to be a much more intense and difficult affair, but the suspense came from wanting to know why that would be.
![anime little busters rin anime little busters rin](https://static.zerochan.net/Natsume.Rin.full.1470783.jpg)
Poor writing? Of course not – we were fully expected to have deduced that point, and quite some time ago at that. I imagine if we were all in a room it would look like I just asked for volunteers to watch Blood-C. Raise your hand, anime-only viewers, if you hadn’t guessed by now that Kyousuke was the one sending the cat-tail messages to Riki and Rin.
![anime little busters rin anime little busters rin](https://images2.alphacoders.com/559/559614.png)
Sometimes the suspense is not in the “what”, but the “why”…