Bustafellows – Limbo Scott Fitzgerald ~ Plot & Character Analysis

Okay. Look.

I did not like this route.

Otome Writers, can we please stop castrating our driven, leadership-type heroes so they fit into contrived, poorly plotted and structured storylines in their own routes?

And maybe I feel this strongly about these types of heroes, because I recently finished Yoji Kobase’s route from Sympathy Kiss and I feel that poor Limbo suffered the same fate.

I’m so sorry, Limbo. You deserved better.

Character and plot analysis and light spoilers after the cut! Per the game developer’s request, I will keep this article focused on my thoughts of this route.

The production value of the game and my love of Teuta and all the main characters totally holds over into Limbo’s route! Please read the first half of Shu’s article if you are interested in my thoughts about these elements of the game!

Never have I felt so confined about an article.

I mean, I have gripes about EVERY aspect of this route, but in order to respect the request of the developers, I can’t really dig in to all the problems.

So, honestly, this will be a cursory overview of my thoughts.

Here we go.

Let me begin with a question:

If a former friend came to you and said they were going to seek revenge against you by killing someone you care about, what would you do?

Think about it for a moment.

Okay.

Think some more.

A little more.

Got it?

What’s your answer?

I’m guessing you would do something to protect the one you care about. And most people would.

But not Limbo Scott Fitzgerald.

Nope.

The antagonist of the route decides to seek out revenge against Limbo (VA: KENN) for something that happened in their past. Now due to the nature of Limbo’s seeming betrayal, the antagonist decides to go after someone Limbo cares about rather than Limbo himself.

Is this fair?

Obviously not.

But does Limbo do anything to proactively protect the endangered person?

No.

We spend the entire route watching the poor endangered person walking around not having a clue that someone is after them.

We spend the entire route watching Limbo sulk, unable to make a decision about what to do about the person threatening the life of his friend.

And what makes this inaction so obvious is that Limbo DOES act when the antagonist goes after Limbo’s professional reputation. So, Limbo is willing to take action and protect his legal career in court.

But be proactive in protecting the person he cares about?

Absolutely not.

What a hero…

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I love Limbo in every other route! He is the leader. He is the proactive planner of the group. He is positive, encouraging, and self-assured. He doesn’t take “no” for an answer. He is one of the smartest people in the room in terms of reading people and seeing through façades.

So, what is frustrating is that the writers threw all this under the bus for Limbo in his route.  

Limbo had to act out of character for the convoluted, horribly structured plot to work.

Also, I would add, that all the main characters had to become mind-numbingly naïve for this plot to work.

The finale of Side A (involving nanomachines of all things) only happened because Limbo, Helvetica, Mozu, and Shu completely underestimated the antagonist and made some really stupid questionable decisions.

THESE ARE THE SMARTEST MEN IN THE BUSTAFELLOWS UNIVERSE!

Nothing gets by them, yet they chose to have good-faith towards an antagonist that, by this point in the route, has threatened the life of a close friend, framed Limbo for a murder he did not commit, and has blown up a car outside of Limbo’s law office?

What the heck is this writing?

It can make sense to have compassion for the antagonist.

But believe a word the antagonist says?

Absolutely not.

Another component of the route that struggled was the writers use of tension. And considering one of the main conflicts was the antagonist threatening the life of an important character, the tension throughout the route should have been gripping.

However, because of poor plot sequencing and the general apathy of Limbo, any time the writers created a sense of tension with our antagonist they immediately squandered it in the next scene.

I mean, it’s difficult to feel any tension when our hero doesn’t seem to feel any urgency to confront the conflict of the story. Limbo’s seeming indifference and indecision really had a negative impact on the flow and tone of the route. It’s hard to feel tension when the hero doesn’t take any proactive steps to engage with the conflict and he basically ignores it for 75% of the story.

The reader has to ask: does this conflict even matter?

And then there was the poor plot sequencing.

Our antagonist makes their first calculated move and gets Limbo right where they want him. This person threatens Limbo’s friend and swears to take revenge on Limbo by killing said friend. The antagonist sickeningly wants to watch Limbo suffer at the death of his friend. All this is pre-meditated by the antagonist. We, the reader, know this person is not to be trusted or messed with.

We have gripping tension.

The scene ends…

…and now it’s Thanksgiving.

I guess the antagonist believes Federal Holidays are no time for revenge?

All accumulated tension from the main conflict is immediately gone.

Then we have this totally nonsensical extremely minor conflict for Teuta with a child in the hospital. I mean, sure it was sad, but what was the point of it? It made absolutely no sense in terms of story and it didn’t serve the main conflict of the route in any way. There was absolutely no build-up to this relationship for Teuta and honestly it seemed just to exist for the sake of being sad.

So, by this point, we have two long “scenes” that do nothing to serve the tension of the route.  

I mean, did the antagonist decide to give up on this journey of revenge?

Instead, the antagonist decides to go after Limbo in a couple of ways that doesn’t hurt the friend at all. Okay, so the antagonist is changing tactics. Which is technically fine, but it doesn’t serve the established tension of killing the friend and wanting to see Limbo suffer at the death of the friend.

Does this threat of death to Limbo’s friend matter or not? Seeing Limbo suffer through the death of his friend seemed like a pretty non-negotiable desire from the antagonist. However, at this point in the route, the antagonist is simply going after Limbo. Did the antagonist have a mid-route shift in priorities that we, the readers, weren’t privy to?

Lots of other fairly meaningless plot happens.

And then finally, and I mean finally, the antagonist makes the move that the reader had been waiting for. The antagonist goes after the friend and puts Limbo in a really tough spot. The problem is, by this point, any tension created by the threat, earlier in the route, had been totally forgotten. The tension had not been maintained by the writers.

And the only reason we are at this point in the story is because of stupid questionable decision making from our main characters! Like Limbo and the friend shouldn’t even be in this situation!

We waited the entire route for this?

If any of the main characters had acted like their established-in-the-common-route (and at this point for me) four-character-routes-in selves, this ending never would have happened to begin with.

Sigh.

Between the terrible use of conflict and tension and the characters not utilizing their normal, well-established, levels of intelligence, this route felt terribly contrived.

There is more I could say.

But to respect the request of the developers I will end my cursory analysis here.

I am so sorry, Limbo, Shu, Mozu, Helvetica, Scarecrow, and Teuta.

You all deserved better.

-Final Thoughts-

Limbo is a good hero for me! I loved him in the common route and the other character routes. I just felt he was done dirty by the writers in his own route. I had saved Limbo’s route for the last of the character routes because I assumed I would love him as a character. And I totally do!

However, his route was totally lackluster.

This route was annoying to get through. I honestly couldn’t wait for it to end. Nothing about it worked for me and I found that very disappointing. Such an unsatisfactory way to finish the character routes in this game.

Now, I’m off to the two “completer” routes. I don’t know how these will go. I, also, don’t know if there will be enough content to write an article about, since I won’t be able to go into much detail due to the request from the developer.

We shall see.