If anything, Little Busters shows just how far a company can fall. Key were positioned as a cultural touchstone in VNs and anime, ready to cement their legacy as the greatest VN company of all time with Kanon, Air, Clannad, and Little Busters. They were at their very PEAK with Little Busters, and then like an over-inflated balloon... something burst inside Key. I don't know what it was, but something broke, and the end result was Rewrite. Like a spurt of shit that leaks in your pants, we ended up with a terrible, shameful mistake instead of continuing a legacy of greatness.

That's why I get sad every time I see Little Busters posted, because right when Maeda's style was maturing and he was learning to write fully fleshed out stories, something broke, and every game since has been pure trash. It's inexplicable, tragic, and plain sad, but that's the reality we live in. Maeda put his heart and soul into Little Busters, and he had nothing else left to give after that. Man, I'm tearing up just writing this. Why did it have to end with Little Busters? What went so wrong with the timeline after 2007?