[Mahou]

Time for my bickering of the route impressions. Mind you, I'm not done with the game yet, but just finished Aoi's route.

Spoiler for Sara, Charles, Ricca, Himeno, Aoi:

Sara: Her route wasn't too bad overall. It was kinda cute how Kiyotaka was all giddy during Christmas break when Sara went home and the café scene pre-confession was once it had started to be expected. The confession CG and scene was nice (I have a weakspot for this stuff afterall ) and most of their couple time was lovely. So my only "WTH?!"-moment was when Sara told about the radio fortune telling and all of it promptly happened for 1.5 days leaving in return *unnecessary* drama with no real purpose.
Fast forward to her family drama: Honestly, except maybe her dad, her family was a big jerk. Expectiations or not, the poor girl tried her hardest and all she got was another kick and the stomache. Good to see that Kiyotaka manned up and proved his worth.

Charles: I loved her route and it might be probably my most favorite one. Pre-confession, their deredere moments were sugary-sweet adorable and the sweetness continued afterwards. I also enjoyed Tomoe and Ricca's support function during it, like when they showed the "spy cam" recording of the student council room moment And Kiyotaka's confession insecurity was shown well enough, as well. Her drama itself was touching for me, but could have been a tiny bit quicker; e. g. that Kiyotaka didn't realize faster the name connection between Et. The farewell between Onee-chan and Otouto was good. And the Santa Claus magic family was a funny idea by Circus.

Ricca: Disappointing romance-wise and I felt her personal story didn't move that quickly forward. The white Christmas confession was nice, though. Anyway, the little tidbid of Kiyotaka's last name being originally Yoshino was fine, but disappeared as quickly as it appeared. As with Charles, the final meeting between Ricca and her best friend was quite touching for me. But, overall I liked her non-magic school personality morer D:

Himeno: To put it harshly and bluntly - Circus you fail in family relationship scenarios. Kiyotaka was too insensitve and donkan during most of the route. Yes, I see the point of it due to the long time they have spent has siblings, but nontheless it was crap; only D.CII might have been worse with Yume-chan. I mean, you had even a moment where he realized that he might love Himeno and the all-famous phrase of "Maybe since the time we met for the first time (...)". And what happened? All of this "Aha"-moment was never mentioned again the next day >_<. *takes a deep breath* So where was the good part? The last quarter when he got swallowed in his perfect dream world and Himeno saved his sorry behind, just to be saved afterwards .

And~ Aoi: To start off, I didn't like how the route was structured because they cut most non-Aoi moments out. Kiyotaka acted quite different somehow towards the others (like the café-scene where the student council trio encountered him; it felt like he acted harsher or something like that, even though I know that it's just so he can escort Aoi home) and the two bombing missions were disconnected from the former 4 routes. Sure, Aoi explained that each time the world will be reseted the fog thickens, but even then there had been the same outcomes in the other routes. Likewise, his few dream scenes about the uneasy feeling of the magic fog were never mentioned again, unless they soley served for reader knowledge.
But, I liked the radio nightshow parts. They were done quite good. And even though it started quite slow the post-confession progression was much, much better than the stuff before. The whole time loop part was meh. Her drama conclusion was a big "You must be kidding me?!" moment, but seeing how now the final route started that's okay-ish at best.

Outside of spoilers: I loved Shiki and how she stomped her "master" verbally at every possible moment . And Chibi-Sakura is very adorable and cute. Too bad she hardly had any moments during the 5 "normal" routes.

Edit: And I finished the VN a few hours ago. Da capo route was fine for me and connected imho smoothly back to the prologue end before Weather Vane started.

Spoiler for da capo route:

Honestly, I expected a bit more farewell tearjearker between Kiyotaka and Sakura, but haven't really a complaint on how it turned out . The "who ends with Kiyotaka" open end felt a bit worse than in other VNs, mainly due to the whole time loop. I think it has been made clear that Kiyotaka is Sakura's grandfather based on the promise that he would teach his future grandchild to play chess, her comment on how it would change their current relationship if she told him why she knew him already, and the family feeling when Ricca, Sakura and he walked down the student residence floor.
My only remaining question: Why/how did only Ricca has the "past life" memories? Not the most important questions, but I still wondered about it.

Now I want a 18+ fandisc where you can actually date the present time crew . The everlasting tree is already there so the foundation for some wish-fulfilling drama would be given *lol*.