Wasn’t this the first time that Riki’s narcolepsy was brought up since its introduction in episode 3? Yup, nothing but a plot-device.Are Rin and Riki just playing along with the notes for the fun of it, or do they genuinely believe that the mystery writer knows the secret of the world? It’s ambiguous, although it’s probably the latter given that this is Little Busters!.Oh gee, those Croquette lovers sure are annoying.The cats just like to swarm Rin out of nowhere, eh?.Staff, at first the visuals were only bad in comparison to KyoAni adaptions, but now they’re just bad in general. Twice within the first five minutes there was a character falling to the ground, and both times the animation had no inbetweens just one picture of the character standing and another of them on the ground.But if the writers want us to have any sort of emotional response to Rin’s problems, they have to give us something. Showing nothing but physical responses, without explaining the emotional response behind it, is not enough. There’s even people who respond to the situation like Rin does. Social anxiety is a complicated issue (like any mental illness,) and people deal with it in different ways. If anything, all we know is that she thinks cats make better companions than humans. We’ve had two episodes centered around her now, and we still have no idea what she actually thinks about herself. In order to have an emotional connection with a character, you of course need to know how they feel about things.Īfter Rin runs away from her fellow teammates once again in this week’s episode, do we get a scene which explains how Rin is feeling about herself and the situation? No, we get a scene of her playing with cats and acting like a little kid. Her actions makes total sense if we were to assume that she has SAD, but when these actions alone are the only thing we are given, it makes it difficult to relate to Rin on any sort of level. The problem with Rin is not in the things she does, but how her shyness in general is portrayed. Rin’s stubborn eschewal from socializing with others, her inability to even say one word to most people, and going so far as to run away from someone instead of talking to them these actions could easily be compared to the childish behaviors of the other characters–which often provoke the use of ableist slurs–but in the case of Rin it’s important to note that this is exactly the kind of behavior that a sufferer of SAD deals with, especially in more severe cases.
The show portrays her as simply being shy, but her actions strongly suggest that she has a case of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD.) This week’s episode focused on Rin and her shyness, and how having the Little Busters save the cafeteria helps to make her more comfortable around others. Komari’s story arc was such a blatantly bad example of There Are No Therapists that it was rage inducing The writers of Little Busters! don’t seem to have any understanding of what constitutes a mental illness, or even realize that many aspects of the character’s problems are what would constitute a disorder.
Something that really bugs me about this show is its portrayal of mental illnesses.