Despite my life’s best efforts to sabotage progress, the project has reached 25% translation! In celebration, here is a short history of Kud’s homeland and it’s real-life inspirations. Most of this is extracted from and based upon the encyclopedia entry Riki reads on the fourth day of the game.

I don’t consider anything in this spoilers because knowing about Kud’s homeland will not spoil any of the games in any way. The name Tebwa was not in Little Busters (2007) because the back story of the island had not been developed yet. It was first named in EX but not given any significant background until Kud Wafter.

In-Game

Республика N.T.M.T

Commonly called The Republic of Tebwa or simply Tebwa.

In this alternative history, the USSR wanted control over the ocean but when the League of Nations divided the Southern islands, they were split with America and the USSR ended up only with this small equatorial nation in the middle of the pacific.

Tebwa was abandoned by the USSR when the economy crumbled. After that it became an independent island republic. The domain comprises of volcanic islands, coral islands, atolls, and surrounding reefs. The Tebwa islands include thirteen archipelagos covering approximately 800 square kilometers of land. The largest archipelago is the size of Tokyo’s 23 wards (622 square kilometers).

After the 19th century it became unstable from colonization and a regional support plan is moving towards political stabilization. This group, the Pacific Rim Economic Organization found success with a large scale bank project. Presently, the primary industries of Tebwa are space exploration, tourism, fishing and agriculture. However in recent years, valuable underwater metal deposits have been found and mining has commenced.

  • The capital of Tebwa is Город Звезды (Gorod Zvezda) Officially translated as Zvezeda City but more loosely as Star City.
  • The official languages are Russian, English and a local dialect of Gilbertese.
  • The population is half Caucasians from Russia, Europe and America with the remainder split between the natives and other Asians.
  • One of the islands was used to test hydrogen bombs during the cold war.
  • To travel between Tebwa and Japan requires both air and sea travel for a total of one week.

Real Life

Map of KiribatiThe Republic of Tebwa is based on the Republic of Kiribati. Tebwa Island corresponds to the Tarawa atoll where the majority of the Kiribati population lives. Tarawa was controlled by the Japanese during World War II until US Marines seized the island.

The Makin Islands are in the same region of Kiribati as Tawara. One of the Makin islands, Tebua Tarawa disappeared underwater in 1999. It is from this island that the name of the fictional nation is derived.

The Republic of Kiribati also controls Kiritimati/Christmas Island. Kiritimati was the site of British and US hydrogen bomb tests during the cold war and Japan once planned to build a spaceport on the island for the failed HOPE-X project.

Though the Russian name is different, there is also a real Star City in Russia. It is the  home of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. There is also a statue of Kud’s namesake, Laika, in the city.