Rin and Kurugaya route LB Refrain

(ep6)
Well, I'll note that there were a lot of setup for the plot points of this episode from the VN that were cut out. Without Rin, the baseball practices still continued, and guess who was the pitcher? Yep, Kyousuke. HE was the one who would pitch and Riki would bat/practice with. There were baseball practices between Kyousuke/Riki each day while Rin was gone. He would practice all day and receive depressing text messages from Rin at night, and there was heavy tension building up. Riki talked with Kengo about running away, to which Kengo replies "Nothing but despair will await you if you take that path." prior to the baseball game. I mean, Kyousuke was practically in your face having you practice each day, and that challenge match was set up perfectly and naturally.
And of course, the runaway was hinted before, and there was about an hour and a half of content as part of the runaway that was just cut out entirely. The baseball game still does the same thing, which is breaking up the Little Busters, but the reason why it happens, as a challenge motivated by Kengo.
Also, in the VN, Miyuki was not fucking shown the first time around, so we had no clue about Kyousuke's manipulation. The fact that he made Miyuki appear is the 2nd biggest reveal in the VN, and isn't supposed to be shown until Refrain in Kengo's arc. (episode 9)

They should've made it a bright light or a glare in Kengo's eye that we got to see in episode 6, and shown Miyuki later, and I'm really upset that they fucked up that part. They also changed the soundtrack from "Parting of the Boys" to some new subtle and generic newly OST for the CHEAP TRICKS scene, which disappointed me. Maeda selected that sound himself when he wrote the scene, and he uses it in Kengo and Kyousuke's flashbacks as well, and JC Staff just disregarded that idea and put a new song to it, so that was pretty frustrating.
But yeah, there are some things like the romance quickly developing, Rin getting quickly brought into the sister school situation, and her getting insanely worn out and depressed over it are all quickly done compared to the VN, so now the effects of Rin going there are melodramatic by comparison.
Lastly, the scene at the end with Riki and Rin getting caught by the police is supposed to be important, and actually drives the entire plot of Refrain from Riki and Kyousuke's part. I feel like Kyousuke's character can essentially be ruined because of how glossed over the police barging in on Riki and Rin was taken.
It didn't get 24 episodes or whatever because Warner Bros. decided from a long time ago not to do it. Instead, they have this ridiculous Little Busters! EX adaptation that they're selling with the anime, and there are 8 extra episodes that I would've much preferred to have been Rin and Refrain content added to the main anime. 2/3 extra episodes for Rin and 5/6 extra ones for Refrain could've made for perfect pacing and scriptwriting.

The thing is that Refrain gets more complicated, and the events continue to have this deeper, double meaning, and that is shown well through the eerie mood of Refrain, the tone shifts, the OST usage, etc. They've been disregarding using some of the OST that Rin's
route was supposed to use since episode 5, where they changed up the Kyousuke Lennon reveal OST.
Some of the things they've done in this anime just make little sense at all. They cut out romance with each heroine and get rid of plot points that were barely even romantic, but
would've provided some back-forth intimacy and reliance between the character and Riki, and strengthened emotional attachment, rather than having the heroine be looked upon and gawked at by every member of the Little Busters as the drama happens. (Haruka, Kud routes)
They cut out the phone calls and house visits with Haruka, studying with Kud (and Masato), cut out Kud's monologue, made her chain scene 4 minutes long, and made the ending driven by friendship, and it looked awkward as hell. Mio's route was mostly true to the original, but again, it cut out the parts that took it past the school setting when they went to the library and Mio's dorm. Komari's lacked the hug scene at the end and the foreshadowing that topped off the route.
And all of the original substance is foresaken for nothing, because they went ahead and rushed the most intimate part of Rin's route that had the most realism and character attachment for Riki and Rin. Seeing Riki work each day and struggle to provide for Rin added a lot of attachment for me.

(Runaway) I wasn't even initially frustrated that they cut it out, because we'll get Refrain faster, but in terms of character attachment for the average anime watcher, it's going to be crap compared to the VN, on top of them having to rush each bro's arc in Refrain. Masato's, Kengo's, and Kyousuke's hover around 1-1.5hours each, and they'll get a measly episode to try to build up the same ideas. The thing is that Refrain doesn't have as much "nonsense" dialogue as the other routes. It's much more intricately
written than the side routes. It was also extremely interesting to see the main 5 Little Busters all interacting realistically and seeing their own opinions on the Secret of the World and its effect on their friendship throughout Refrain. They can't possibly make it more than decent and build up more than the basic plot for a lot of Refrain.The only episode I look forward to is episode 11, which is the climax of Refrain. I was really looking forward to the adaptation and hoping JC Staff could do more with a better budget, but the fact that CHEAP TRICKS, a baseball game scene, wasn't even as READING A BASEBALL GAME IN A VISUAL NOVEL just says a lot about JC Staff and how they've handled
this series. It's like they didn't realize that Refrain was important or something, and they figure that the story isn't moe enough, or the bros aren't good enough to be worth pumping budget into.


(Kurugaya route) Even with Kurugaya's route (my favorite girl), the fact that they left out parts with her diary and failed to buildup the last episode well was really frustrating. The final scene where she disappeared was beautiful, but there was little character buildup for her. The extent of her character was "The girl who obtained emotions, wished time would go on forever, played around with Riki, and watched fireworks with him." They didn't DO anything with the time loops, other than create weirdness and intrigue at what the Secret of the World was. Riki's just running around like a headless chicken and getting depressed as time is looping, and there's no struggle for Kurugaya and Riki to retain their memories as the world around them slowly starts to crumble. They took away the very essence that made the route so tense. Even with 3 episodes, they could've written it to be better and more emotional, but they're just glossing over plot points, trying to pull off a good ending, and disregarding having to build up and develop much for anime viewers.

The scenes in the Little Busters anime can all still be sad if you REALLY get into the heads of each character and feel for their simple misfortunes, but pretty much every route has a lot more tension built up and a lot more validity to feel sad.


(CHEAP Tricks)
I was extremely hyped for CHEAP TRICKS, expecting Kyousuke to look like he did in episode 3 in the rain, or at least something similar to the CG, but it was "fine", and gave me little emotional impact or nostalgia at all due to the sloppy execution and changes. Seeing Miyuki in the episode, Kengo getting up, his awkward face during parts of his shout, his slow walking that turns into running when he walks towards Kyousuke, the amount of time he's holding onto Kyousuke's shirt were all jarring to me. Kyousuke's reaction in the VN is a smirk, and it's a frown in the anime. It's like they didn't even look at the CGs at all for the scene and didn't give a fuck about trying to make it intense, emotional, or memorable for the end of it.