Witch on the Holy Night | Review and plot dump

Of course I got this game. For once in a long time I'm reviewing a game I read in English [flushed emoji] if I have the choice I will always go for my native language because I'm a lazy piece of shit. On that note I'll include how I felt about the translation in my review as well.

Mahoutsukai no Yoru | Witch on the Holy Night
literal tl: night of the magician(s)

Creator: TYPE-MOON

Released December 8, 2022
(Original game released in 2012 and this is an HD improved rerelease)

Aozaki Aoko lives a normal life as a perfect, hot, smart, and widely recognized high school student council president while also moonlighting as the teenage heir to her family's wizardry practice. After her homeroom teacher forces her to become the personal tour guide for a transfer student that has been living under a rock in the deep mountains his entire life, how is she going to juggle that alongside with doing all her wizard bullshit on the downlow?

This story is one of Nasu's earlier thought up stories and takes place as a sort of prequel to all the fate/tsukihime bullshit. Has nothing directly to do with any of those, but acts as a sort of window to more lore and magical nonsense that goes on in Nasu's Grand Plan.

Synopsis

Aozaki Aoko was raised a normal girl being the second child of a wizard family, but after the title of heir was stripped from her sexy older sister and forced onto her instead, her life was turned upside down. Determined to follow through with her duty, but also hesitant to give up her normal human lifestyle, Aoko is stuck between two worlds when fate has her meet the world's stupidest boy in the world. Can she fulfill her duties as a wizard while also babysitting a human puppy? What could possibly happen next? And when does her hot sexy older sister come into the picture. Find out next time, on Nasu's Wacky Wild Ride.

Trivia about this VN I'll put for no reason

As previously established, this is a predecessor of sorts to the fate series of works, Tsukihime, and even Kara no Kyoukai. If you don't know what any of those are, just know it's all part of Nasu's Grand Plan. Each work exists on its own branched alternate timeline, but I feel most can include Mahoyo on its early timeline. Maybe this is where the timeline branched... jk. I don't know.

Unlike Nasu's other works, the art in this VN is illustrated by Koyama Hirokazu, though I believe the original designs are still by Takeuchi. I find his art in this VN to be quite satisfactory, though while we're here I must let you all know that I am not the biggest fan of his illustrated servants in FGO. I'll refrain from saying more since some people would shoot me on sight for the opinions I have on some of those waifus.

Mahoyo was apparently Nasu's debut novel he first wrote as a young lad methinks, though after publishers didn't want it since it was balls or something, that's when he wrote Kara no Kyoukai instead. Something like that. I did not fact check, you can do that yourself.

Last note, but Aoko is like a major character in the lore and world of Nasu's Grand Plan, so we'll just have to keep waiting for her to be added to FGO for some nonsensical reason. I'm sure he can think of one.

Last last note, I enjoy using the word wizardry and wizards but the proper term I guess would be 'magecraft users' and 'magecraft' or whatever but that sounds lame. Idgaf!

Main Characters

Aozaki Aoko

world's most unlovable lovable woman

The main protagonist. While the story is not always told from her perspective, it still revolves around her. This is her story. She is a hot bitch with the world's most intolerable personality. She's quick to anger, opinionated, stubborn, prone to violence, unreasonable, picky, annoying, and capable of mass destruction. The ideal woman, to put it simply. She is full of seething teenage rage and is not afraid to unleash her wrath on anyone she deems fit, whether they deserve it or not. An extremely flawed human being, but she's hot and capable so most people forgive her transgressions. Anyways, she's heir to her family's wizardry and is currently training to master being a wizard.

Kuonji Alice

world's most magical goth girl probably

Daughter of a mega rich family and also heir to her family's wizard practice. She specializes in nursery rhyme themed crazy super magics and has a physical stamina of 0. A bit of a prissy opinionated rich girl, and is quiet and stubborn. Also prone to bloodlust, though can be more reasonable than Aoko on occasion. Very beautiful and attends a private prissy rich girls school. 

Shizuki Soujuro

world's most empty headed boy

A polite young lad who lived in the mountains his entire life. He has no concept of modern society or even basic social interactions for that matter, though he knows how to have manners for the most part so it works out regardless. How the hell he managed to live like this in the year of 198x who the fuck could possibly know. He doesn't even know what phones or glass windows are. Anyways, he's very kind hearted and altruistic to the point of not valuing his own personal wellbeing whatsoever.

Mysterious Hot Sexy Woman

world's most sexiest hot woman

Who could this possibly be? What a mystery.

There's some other characters too but they don't matter.

Review

I never looked at the original release, so I have no idea what was added or changed if anything. This review will be completely based on playing this as my first Mahoyo, coming from someone with some background in Nasu's Wacky World.

STORY: B| It was interesting. The overall main plot is actually extremely straight forward, and the story is 90% carried by the writing and character interactions. Most of the content feels like filler content, but I found it endearing and interesting for the most part so it worked out. However, I feel this story might be hard to keep your interest if you aren't already acquainted with Nasu's Vision and the workings of the wizard bullshit world. The story does suffer from Nasu's favorite exposition dumping and in game lecture time. There's some drag during the slice of life segments, and I did feel exhausted crawling through some chunks of the narrative, but let me tell you that the hype moments are truly hype. Nasu never falls short on the epic magic battles and crazy ass-pulls.

CHARACTERS: A| I quite liked the main cast. Nasu works his magic once again... you can really see his taste in women shining through, as almost every girl in this VN is rather obnoxious and intolerable in some kind of way, however their beauty and grace(?) somehow lampshades all that. The men could use some work, but the best one of the bunch, Soujuro, is a common Nasu brand women-respecter so he's enjoyable enough in his own right. His male classmates I did not find nearly as endearing however.

ART: A| It's good. Just like with Tsukihime Remake, most of the game is just sprites positioned dynamically, but it works. There's less bizarre magic outfits too, so that's a huge plus in my book. The expressions were quite funny, and overall I enjoyed the aesthetic of the artwork. The few CGs sporadically sprinkled throughout had impact and were charming.

MUSIC: B| I remember liking it, but I forgot every single track at the current moment of writing this post. I can't recall anything. I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure it was good though. I think the hype moments had really hype music probably, but I couldn't say. Just believe me in saying that it was good.

SHIPS: B| This is a no romance kinetic novel, BUT... of course I will have to throw this in. I won't say who, but Nasu does sprinkle some growing sprouts of romance in this VN, and honestly I found at least one specific ship quite endearing. More so than anything else I've seen him write, so that was kind of funny in a weird way.

TRANSLATION: B| I think the TL was pretty solid. I was not a fan of how they romanized some of the names, like Shizuki->Sizuki for example. I'm just spelling shit however I damn please in this review. The translation is also littered with the occasional typo and some off wording at times, and some parts I couldn't be sure if they put he/she as a typo or not (it can be difficult to figure out who a particle is addressing in Japanese since it's not gendered like in English). However, the general intent of the original text comes across well enough and I didn't find the meaning of any lines misconstrued or anything, so that's a passing grade in my book. As you can see my standards aren't obscenely high. If I can get the point, that's good enough for me. Who knows, maybe there was a mistranslation in there somewhere, but if there was I didn't notice. Oops.

OVERALL: B+| It's good (coming from someone who is nasu-pilled). Like I said before, I don't think I could recommend it to anyone who isn't already acquainted with at least some Fate works or Tsukihime or whatever, but it can't hurt to give it a try anyways. It's a simple and straight forward yet solid VN, with a lot of weird nods to the setting of Nasu's works sprinkled throughout. It kind of works as world building for the bigger picture of Nasu's Vision, and also goes over concepts that aren't explored as thoroughly in those later works. Or something. Besides all the technical crazy nerd lore shit, the story itself is kind of slow going, but it's amusing with its fair share of both hype and funny moments.

So yeah, it's wordy and drags, but it's visually appealing and has interesting nerdy magic bullshit. If any of that's up your alley, go ahead and give it a try! I believe this game has a free demo available. 

WHERE TO BUY: It's on the Nintendo eshop. It's also on PS4 I think. This game, being officially released overseas, is extremely easy to come by. The game is like 40 US dollaroos so it's like regular game price I guess. I'd love to get it on discount, but you know Nintendo never discounts anything. Jk it does on rare occasion I think. It'd be nice if this game could get a steam release, but I don't see TM ever doing that personally.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

Animal death. Besides that, nothing much. I found the game extremely tame. There's some extreme violence, but it's usually off screen or only vaguely described, so that's basically nothing. The most shocking thing honestly was the opening sequence which describes animal death in gruesome detail. I didn't like that part very much.

★

★

★

This game prevents screenshotting and requests that people not share images past the first couple chapters online. Thus I will be reenacting scenes with mspaint doodles. I also forgot to take screencaps of most of the beginning where caps are allowed too and I'm too lazy to go back so yeah.

PLOT DUMP

Note: This dump will include lore dumping since like with most Nasu works, nothing makes sense without the whole text book nonsense lectures. I'm sorry. Also just know in advance I don't actually understand how any of it works. Don't take my word for any of it maybe I'm actually making it all up... who knows. Also, like with most of my plot dumps I skip a lot of details FYI.

When Aoko was a wee lass, her dad told her to go start up their family car. However, it was a snowy night and some cats had crawled into the engine. Of course, that means when she turned the car on... oof. She was straight up traumatized. She grabbed the surviving kitten and rushed to her wizard grandpa's secret wizard lair and begged him to fix the cat, but grandpa was not able to do much. She threw a fit about it, coming to face the sadness of death or whatever...

(Honestly I'm still not sure what this scene has to do with anything. I'm sorry literary analysists everywhere)

It's the present day. Aoko is a member of the Aozaki clan, and her grandfather is a super mega wizard that achieved 'true magic'. 

In the Nasu universe, 'true magic' is like... the mega ultra super duper absolute mega magic, which is on par of like meeting Jesus yourself and having him gift you a free pass to invoke his power at will. In this world, there's only a handful of wizards who ever reached the 'root' (met Jesus) and gained access to 'true magic', and each one's true magic is unique and special. For example, you Fate fans would know the 3rd True Magic, Heaven's Feel, which is the physical materialization of the soul whatever the hell that means. Basically, this real magic bullshit is some kinda super duper thing that regular 'magecraft' can't do.

Magecraft is just doing shit like doodling a rune and summoning fire or some shit. You can't perform actual mega miracles, just create like... magic bullshit that still somehow follows the physics of reality. Most wizards are satisfied with this I guess, though there's the few who want to reach the root. Whatever. Another thing to note is magecraft uses up this invisible element called 'mystery' in the world. As long as there's mystery in the world you can use your little wizard party tricks. Before science was popular, magecraft was a lot more popular and usable. However in this age of science, mages have shut themselves indoors and become little cliques, hoarding their skills in fear their power will run out forever. Something like that. On another note, literally anyone could learn and practice magecraft, but if everyone knew how to do it there'd be less 'mystery' in the world, and thus the existing wizard families just keep it to themselves. On another fun note, like I said since you need to inscribe runes or use tools to cast magics, most wizard families have 'crests' which they pass down, which are basically permanent runes full of the family secret super techniques that they just implant onto their kids. They just charge the crest with some magic energy and turn it on to cast. Easy enough.

i've made a chart for your convenience

Anyways in wizard practice, those who gain true magic still can't live forever, so they pass it down their bloodline to carry on. Aoko had an older sister named Touko who was meant to inherit the Aozaki magic, but on Aoko's 16th birthday, peepaw was like "fuck you I change my mind!" and gave her the boot, demanding Aoko be his heir instead. Touko threw a hissy fit (understandable) and ran away to Europe, while Aoko then had to give up her normal Japanese teenager life to start cramming wizardry.

Note: in wizard families its customary to just have one child (the most adept at magic one) inherit all the family's magic knowledges. The other kids would just either be sold off to another heirless family to adopt, or just let them live a normal human life. That's why Aoko lived a very normal life and now has to cram all this random wizard shit last minute.

In the present day, she's now 18 years old and has moved in with Kuonji Alice at her ginormous Kuonji Mansion which sits at the top of the hill in this countryside town. The mansion is so grand and western that most of the local populace believe it to be haunted. Alice is her same aged magic tutor and has been cramming Aoko on all this shit. Aoko is too stupid to do anything complicated, so her specialty is just creating magic guns and shooting things to death. 

Anyways, by day she's also the super gorgeous student council president at their city's local high school. However, seeing how violent and callous she is, the student body widely fears her. One boy who followed her home to confess (weirdo behavior) was met with a hospitalization by way of her fists. Like yeah what did he expect to happen, but still, the student body has feared her ever since.

The story begins with Aoko receiving a phone call from her homeroom teacher who she hates. The teacher is the hip young guy type who tries to be cool with the kids. This causes Aoko to loathe him with a passion, since she's just a hateful person by nature. The school has recently enrolled a new student named Soujuro who has lived his entire life as a hunter gatherer deep in the mountains. He has no knowledge of modern society, so the teacher requests that Aoko take care of it. Aoko may be extremely toxic and unlikable, but her sense of responsibility is second to none. She knows nobody but her would be best for this task, so she begrudgingly accepts, even while showing raw hostility towards both the teacher and the boy in question upon meeting up in person.

The boy, Soujuro Shizuki, is very patient and polite. His head is either empty or full of rocks, and Aoko soon learns that he is working 2093520 part time jobs to afford a place in the city while juggling school as well. He only recently learned the concept of money, and is amazed that in the big city, this 'money' can be exchanged for almost anything he can think of. Thus he has become a fan of capitalism and is eager to make more of this 'money', even at the cost of overworking himself, since he's only ever known the sigma grindset lifestyle while hunter gathering. Aoko decides to hate him on sight. Soujuro also tries to leave the building by jumping out the 3rd floor window, so Aoko stops him from doing that.

boy meets girl moment

Aoko actually sympathizes with Soujuro and finds many points of his character rather respectable, but Aoko is the type who will hate people she likes, so there you go. She hates him to the point of seething in rage when he does literally anything. I suppose this is what some would call 'tsundere'. 

Anyways, recently some unknown wizard had been attacking Misaki town's magic barrier points or something, so Aoko and Alice have been busy trying to smoke them out.

More lectures time. Wizards enjoy having their own territory to do magic research on, since the only thing wizards basically do with their time is study and further strengthen their own wizardry. Having a workshop on land that has more magical energy or whatever is helpful to this cause, so freelancer wizards at times may hound and harass those with property in order to get it for themselves. Kind of like squatting except you don't have to wait for the property owners to be out in order to legally acquire the land. You just have to beat the shit out of them. For towns like Misaki that have a 'barrier', once the barriers magical points which have it set up (kind of like the pegs keeping a tent locked to the ground) get blown up, the territory instantly becomes 'free', removing the land owner's landowner benefits. Most squatters will thus go this method, though the most straight forward method would indeed be to just kill the fuck out of the landowners. The wizards association keeps an eye on who owns which piece of land and apparently you have to like register through them, but they don't give a rats ass about keeping peace so if someone comes to steal your property you better start squaring up. However they do give some advantages to the landowner, like cooperating with them and stuff, though I got no clue what that really entails.

So TL;DR somebody been attacking their land and Aoko and Alice obviously assume it's a freelancer who wants their property. At night time they think of new plans on how to catch the rat bastard(s) and smoke them out, but things have not been progressing all that smoothly.

One night, they square up against a walking magical mannequin, which they assume to be a magic tool or minion of their mysterious enemy. However, as Aoko barbecues the thing into oblivion, Soujuro happened to be passing by and witnesses the entire incident. Thinking he'd witnessed a murder, he skedaddles outta there, but Aoko and Alice are left afraid that their human witness (who they recognized as wearing Aoko's school uniform) is going to rat them out.

random alice to fill space

More lectures time (I'M SORRY!!!), in wizard society, keeping wizard shit a secret is the #1 rule. Even if Aoko and Alice don't give a damn individually, if the association finds out they could be dropped into some deep shit. In order to keep out of trouble so that they don't have to square up against wizards bigger and better than them, they have no choice but to follow the rules. The rule being that if a human witnesses anything they shouldn't, they should be ELIMINATED!!! While memory erasure could be an option, neither Aoko nor Alice know how to do that so they opt for the simpler plan. Murder.

As stuco prez, Aoko coerced her VP Tobimaru to help her compile a blackmail list of the schedules, backgrounds, number of jobs, whatever the fucks, of every single student in the whole school. Aoko is determined to figure out who the hell would be out and about at ass o clock on a weekday, and Tobimaru does not question why she's doing any of this whatsoever. He's just like 'weird but okay' about it. THIS IS NOT OKAY??? THIS IS BEYOND WEIRD... but I guess Aoko can simply abuse her power and do whatever she wants.

It becomes obvious enough that the witness was Soujuro, but seeing as how he's a complete stupid idiot, he of course just assumed the fire ball magical explosion murder was simply just another normal thing about living in the city. What... okay... sure. Also, since Tobimaru is also an idiot, he becomes convinced that Soujuro is in love with Aoko. He immediately breaks the bro code and tells Aoko this for some reason, and Aoko of course is like "ummm and I give a fuck why? I don't! He doesn't have a chance with me!" or whatever. On another note, while working at one of his part time jobs at a pachinko parler, Soujuro witnesses an extremely hot sexy woman playing at one of the machines, and immediately believes her to be the killer at the fireball explosion murder. His flight or fight kicks in so he absconds from the scene (of course telling his boss he's leaving first)... But we know the 'killer' was Aoko, so wonder why he thought it was this woman...?

Meanwhile, Aoko does not realize that Soujuro is stupid and won't leak her secrets, so she anonymously gives him a letter telling him to meet her in the abandoned amusement park suspicious mirror house on a weekday at midnight. Clearly no red flags there. Soujuro simply obeys, and heads there without questioning a single thing. Aoko of course then tries to murder him in cold blood, but he literally does not even realize... he's just like oh Aozaki you invited me here? Why is that? Wonder what this could possible be about. Where am I. Basically. He soon realizes Aoko is trying to kill him, so he stops questioning it and starts running. She even asks him if he wants to know why she's trying to kill him, but he's just like "it's okay, I don't need to know." REALLY??? YOU JUST ACCEPTING IT?? Okay.

Anyways, right before Aoko can finish him off, another mannequin appears to cause problems. It shoots Aoko in the back with a super shotgun blast, and it screws up her magic energies or something so that she can't cast as good anymore. Being a nice guy, Soujuro then assists Aoko in escaping the mannequin, essentially saving her life. She's just like "why the fuck would you save someone who wants you dead" and he's just like "Idk". Regardless, Aoko makes a pact with him, promising that she'll let him live if he assists her in taking down the mannequin.

A silly little stand off ensues where Soujuro uselessly runs around while Aoko does all the heavy work. It becomes apparent that the mannequin is rather high quality, which means the freelance wizard must have a lot of money to buy something like this? But also, it's made to look almost identical to Aoko??? Which is like... beyond weird. Is the freelancer her stalker or something... Either way it must mean that it's someone who knows her well... What's going on here? 

ngl the hair color and hair vents made the mannequin remind me of estelle trails sorry

Anyways, through some very hard work, they manage to blow up the entire mirror house, crushing the mannequin with it. The two form some sort of strange comaraderie from surviving the event, and all is well...NOT!!!!

Alice appears, asking what Aoko plans to do with Soujuro, especially now that he's witnessed a lot more than he initially did. Determined to protect Soujuro because her pride won't allow otherwise, Aoko then initiates a dual to the death with Alice. Soujuro is lost because he thought the two were supposed to be friends, but Aoko clarifies that duals to the death between mage friends is extremely common place. Oh okay, that makes sense!

alice fights by sitting far far away and letting her minions do the work

Alice's specialty is using 'ploy kickshaws' which is kind of like familiars that her family invented. They're each based on a nursery rhyme, and they take the form of some kind of small item. Upon use, it will summon a familiar of sorts which basically embodies that nursery rhyme, usually having its own extremely specific skillset and weaknesses, also based on the rhyme. Alice uses a couple of them, the first which traps them inside a rather bloodthirsty version of the amusement park, turning all the mascots and buildings into murderous beasts. Like a five nights at freddys park. This is all thanks to the power if one of her strongest ploys inherited from her dead mom, called 'flat snark'. 

Alice actually only intended to bully them somewhat, but flat snark has a rather bad attitude and is out to kill. Aoko and Soujuro brain storm, finally realizing that flat snark's true form is the moon hanging above their heads. She then bullshits a blessing she barely knows how to do to remove Soujuro's sense of fear and to grant him bigger balls, and they then come up with a ludicrous plan where he climbs onto one of the roller coasters in order to toss some of her hair high up into the sky. This would work as like some kinda catalyst to let her use her specialty: big gun. It's like her regular guns but more big. She charges up super gun attack and starts blasting shots at the moon, which of course pisses flat snark off. From on top of the roller coaster, Soujuro spots the mannequin  crawling itself over towards Aoko, and realizes that she's defenseless since she's so focused on shooting the moon. He jumps off the roller coaster like a crazy maniac, and grabs ahold of a bigass flying egg (long story) in order to get to ground level and tackle Aoko out of the mannequin's way. Once again, Aoko is rather moved by Soujuro's life saving acts.

aoko magic guns moment (rare real screencaps moment)

Anyways, Aoko blows the fuck out of flat snark, and the dual is over. The flat snark ploy is basically dead forever since it's core was completely exploded the fuck out of, and Alice is NOT happy about it. However, her pride doesn't allow for her to make a fuss out of it so she accepts her loss with grace. Aoko then has a heart to heart with Soujuro, where she decides to gently turn him down since she thinks he's in love with her. He of course responds with confusion, stating that he never had such feelings for her, and Aoko is so embarrassed by the situation that she BEATS HIM UNCONSCIOUS??? Man just JUMPED OFF A BUILDING to save your life and you KNOCK HIS LIGHTS OUT.... girl what the fuck. What the hell did he do to deserve any of this.

So Soujuro wakes up the next day at the Kuonji manner, where Alice had been staring at him while he slept. She soon realizes he is an empty headed yet honest and good natured fool, and decides not to finish him off. Aoko, not trusting Alice to not kill him, then busts in and separates the two. Honestly Aoko I'm more worried about you accidentally killing him than Alice but whatever. 

TL;DR the two had a talk and decided to keep Soujuro like a pet in their house until they could find a rune that can erase memories. He'd be kept under watch basically until his whole brain could be wiped and they could then release him back into society. Soujuro immediately realizes that he has no choice in the matter, and accepts his fate as a helpless dog underneath the control of these two unreasonable violent women. In order to get the point across, Alice even traps him in a bottle for a moment, where she interrogates him further and he once again pleases her with his straight forward nature. Just making it clear here that Alice is extremely intrigued by the honest kind stupid silly himbo type. Wonder where this is going. Regardless, she hides her interest and Aoko is none the wiser.

Thus begins the slice of life arc. Days upon days pass where we very intimately get to know the lifestyle of the Kuonji manor residents. The two women of the house are basically r/malelivingspace but female, being disorganized and living on nothing but stale bread and take out panda express every day? What the hell. They don't even eat on time. Nobody does any chores. Anything that can be swept under a rug by magic, they do exactly that The yard is a haunted house hellscape because nobody has tended to it in probably 50 years. If you enter any wrong door you're at risk of getting killed by some magic relics left around or some shit probably. Also, the room they give Soujuro to live in is literally the attic space. It's a completely empty dusty wooden room with a ceiling window, so he can lie on his cheap mattress while looking at the stars. He enjoys it, so sure power to him.

actual scene from the game

Soujuro ends his apartment rental and officially moves his things into the Kuonji manner to save on rent, which of course inspires Aoko to start taking rent FROM HIM??? First you keep him as a POW and slave, and now you're even sucking money out of him. He literally has it worse than indentured servitude. They basically immediately assume he'll do all the house work, and whenever he reveals a new hand like his ability to cook, they just assume he'll do it for them too? They assume he'll just buy all the groceries too? With what money? You're taking it all from him. Aoko and Alice are literally those comically evil landlords you see on social media horror stories. 

They also feed Soujuro POISON every day, and if he doesn't take the second dose on time he will DIE. This prevents him from running away. Being an honest lad, he doesn't even realize it's poison for like a full ass week... he just took the medicine and after learning it was poison he's just like "Ah... Okay." AND KEEPS TAKING IT?? Eventually Aoko has the clever idea of replacing the poison with a magic DOG COLLAR which she can make choke him at will. However, after he gracefully accepts it and puts it on without complaint, she's the one who gets embarrassed and PUNISHES HIM BY CHOKING HIM??? FOR WHAT? WHAT'D HE DO TO YOU. So he just goes around wearing a dog collar all the time.

girls_sitting.jpeg that is seen 1429015 times throughout the VN

There's also a scene where the two see Soujuro shirtless because the bathroom was full of someone's dirty undergarments and he felt it was too ungentlemanly to change amidst all that, and of course the two are rather impressed by his physique. He's slim but sturdy if you know what I mean. He's also covered in scars... like mawled by a bear scars or something. It's very obvious to anyone with eyes that Alice has the hots for him, but nobody comments on that because they're all stupid.

There's quite a lot of shenanigans, like Soujuro's new idiot friends at school, his work life, the antics between the girls and with him or whatever. Soujuro immediately starts improving their life situation by organizing and designating chores and meals and stuff. It becomes one of those situations where they probably can't live without him anymore. Now what the hell are they supposed to do once someone learns memory wiping runes huh? They just gonna go back to eating stale bread? No fucking way. 

Maybe more happens but yeah there's so much slice of life that you should just read it yourself if you want the details. Regardless, the girls become distressed that whoever has been attacking their territory may be stronger than they anticipated. However, their research does not come up with any clear answers. The two start getting at odds with each other again, so Soujuro forces them to go on a galpal date to the aquarium with some tickets he got.

The two engage in female friendship and look at aquatic creatures, while Soujuro meanwhile housesits. However, a surprising guest arrives... an extremely hot and sexy bespectacled woman. Before Soujuro can turn her away, she forces herself into the house and makes him receive her as a guest, since what else is he supposed to do. She claims to be Aoko's sister, Touko, and proceeds to interrogate him about everything that has transpired thus far. She then makes it clear to Soujuro that she intends to kill Aoko and take her position, and even asks that Soujuro quit being Aoko's dog to come be hers instead.... Touko, you do know that Soujuro is too young for you right... jk! Anyways, Touko possesses some magic eyes that do [something or other honestly I don't remember], and she wears magic glasses to hide her... personality? I don't really get it, but basically when she is wearing her glasses she's extremely polite and friendly, but when they're off, she becomes a haughty and sexy bitch. Amazing. She then leaves the Kuonji house, but not before 'borrowing' Aoko's favorite teacup. Bye cup...

touko smug moment

When the girls return home, Soujuro reveals rather nonchalantly that Touko had stopped by. Aoko and Alice do a comical triple spit take before once again punishing him for no reason. The two begin plotting their battle plan on how to take down Touko, and Soujuro is just left out of the loop. That night or later (I honestly don't remember), the two girls head to the last two barrier points in Misaki, where they assume Touko will go to one in order to take it down. 

Touko first heads to the spot Alice is guarding, and they have a super intense neck to neck wizard battle. After Touko begins to lose the advantage, she then brings out her mega god golden werewolf that instantly murderizes the absolute shit out of Alice. So mythical creatures like werewolves are basically made of 'mystery', and thus mages are weak to them. Almost nothing can stand up against a mega god golden werewolf. Where the hell Touko got one of these, well... she wasn't just playing games these past two years of touring Europe. Touko tells Alice that she'll let her live since she respected her mother, and then plants poison inside her through some mouth to mouth direct medicine swallowing action. Nice.

certified yaoi moment

She then points out how a bunch of hungry wolf friends of the werewolf are now here for dinner and abandons Alice to die before heading to where Aoko is. The poison Alice ingested basically makes it so that if her body tries channeling any magical energies, she'll explode, so she's now powerless. She crawls to a phonebooth and locks herself inside while the wolves start body slamming the booth from the outside. She tries to call home, but of course only Soujuro picks up. Not wanting to put him in danger, she tells him nothings wrong before hanging up...

Funnily enough, Touko calls the house next, telling Soujuro that Alice is about to die. She tells him that if he goes to save her, Touko will then truly see him as an enemy. However, Soujuro is a nice guy so he rushes to save Alice anyways. The dogs run away upon seeing him, and he easily carries Alice home, where she can use some kinda magic bullshit to fix her wounds. The two then rush to the local church, since Alice sorts out that Aoko has already been heavily murderized by Touko. The church is a nuetral party cooperating with the associating, so they will tend to Aoko's wounds as long as she's the local magical landowner. 

soujuro carries alice home jpeg

Note: As any Nasu enjoyers would know, for whatever reason in this universe, the Christian church has its hands heavily tied with the wizards association. The church and wizards don't get along at all, but the church does its own magic bullshits, usually focusing on preaching the gospel and hunting evildoers like vampires or whatever the fuck. They also act as referees for wizard trouble in order to help keep the peace in modern society. I guess.

Anyways, they do indeed find Aoko's living remnants being fixed up at the church. Her wounds are so grotesque Soujuro throws up all his dinner and passes out on the spot after seeing her. The next day, even though the girls got absolutely wiped out, they decide to have a final showdown against Touko once more. Their livelihoods are at risk after all. Even though Aoko doesn't even value her position as the Aozaki heir all that much, her pride refuses to allow her to step down and just let Touko have her way. Alice is similar in that this is a fight for her wizard pride.

As you can see, wizards take their pride really fucking seriously. Like I honestly don't get why even Alice would join up with this losing battle but sure okay. The two come up with a contingency plan on how to face off against Touko's golden werewolf, seeing as it's completely broken and OP. They have a like 1% chance to win, but they go for it anyways. Also, Soujuro lets slip that he saw a suspicious blonde little boy by the abandoned old school campus in the mountains, and that recently at his many odd jobs, he'd gotten a variety of bizarre orders to deliver huge quantities of meat into the deep mountains.

Obviously this means that Touko is keeping her dog at that old school campus. With this in mind, the two girls head there after giving Soujuro the slip. As soon as he realizes they're gone he chases after, even though the local nun is just like "you're just a normal human you'll probably just explode or get in the way... what's the point of going." But he can't just do nothing. He never paid Aoko back for sparing his life the first night (long story). 

As expected, Alice and Aoko were once again getting their shit wiped by Touko. Touko reveals that she has a huge stash of wizard crests that she 'borrowed' from the many wizards that had come for her life in the past. In exchange for their crests, she keeps them like pets in her high riser back in Europe. (She can only use borrowed crests if the crest owners are still alive, so this is how she goes about that I suppose... crazy behavior) Anyways, Touko contemplates letting all her slaves go if this battle doesn't work out, seeing as how the funds to keep all those people probably vastly outweighs the usage she'd get out of all these crests, but whatever. She's quite the silly goose. 

Touko, also being an extremely proud person, doesn't want to sick her werewolf Beo on Aoko until Aoko finally activates the 5th magic that grandpa passed down to her. Thus they keep up this one on one just using their regular magic. Still, Aoko truly stands no chance. Touko grows tired of their charade, and Beo like claws her leg off. Oof. The two then act all disappointed in how weak and powerless Aoko is. Is she really capable of true magic? No way.

Soujuro finally appears, and of course everyone there does a triple spit take. Why the hell is he here... He then assesses the situation and starts talking shit to Beo. Like boy why that is a literal golden magic werewolf... Beo gets super super fucking mad since he has the mentality of a naive 10 year old child, so getting him mad is extraordinarily easy, and he lunges at Soujuro. Soujuro uses his bear disabling technique and sacrifices his limbs in order to knock Beo down. It's actually a reall hype scene where he uses some kinda ancient technique in order to do this, but because Beo is so fucking strong, it causes Soujuro's arms to literally explode in order to pull it off. All it does is cause Beo's heart to explode for a second, but seeing as how he's a super immortal magic ultra god weredog he basically takes no damage. However the MENTAL damage from being 'killed' basically destroys him forever. Since the mentality of being an undefeated super unkillable god creature is what was keeping up his immortal super powers?? And now that his mindset is humbled he is now physically weakened by it forever? Okay sure.

soujuro punches swole af werewolf????

Beo starts crying and whaling like a little boy, and Touko realizes he's become useless to her. Upset with the situation, she has no choice but to cleave Soujuro in half. It's extremely easy, seeing as how Soujuro is literally just Some Guy. Aoko is not happy with this turn of events, so she finally decides to activate the 5th magic. There's a whole segment of how she sees a red shadow coming to kill her (there's like a weird myth thing where since magic is antithetical to the rules of the world, the earth will literally try to kill you if you access true magic. The red shadow is like the embodiment of the world coming to murder you), but Aoko overcomes it all or something as she discovers the path to the root through her weird magic activation sequence. 

aoko wearing some very early 2000's clothing

As soon as she uses her magic, the whole field goes from snowy to a field of flowers. Aoko appears in new cool clothes and blazing red hair... we learn that this is adult Aoko from 10 years in the future. That's why she's wearing literal early 2000's cool kids fashion... aka borderline cringe. She then proceeds to beat the ever loving shit out of Touko as they argue about what the hell the 5th magic even does. Since during this segment, Touko also noticed that Soujuro was no longer cut in half.

Apparently, Aoko's magic involves time travel. But not just any kind of time travel, since Nasu enjoys making things as convoluted as possible. She had taken the 'time' of the moment in which Soujuro was sliced in half, and yeeted it into the far far future. So now this time essentially didn't exist in their time, and thus he was never sliced in half. Until the far future of course. What. Apparently doing reckless shit like this is putting the universe at risk of heat death due to time consistency problems, and Touko starts screaming about how Aoko's an idiot stupid bitch. And honestly... I get it. Touko is completely right. Everything Touko does in this VN is completely understandable and everything she has ever done is correct and right. Aoko argues back how she'll figure it out later (true procrastinating I feel her on that one), and beats Touko half to death.

When the battle ends, Aoko decides to finish her sister off, since that's just how these things go. However Soujuro of course jumps in the way, telling Aoko that murder is wrong. Especially between siblings that's like really not cool. Soujuro even goes as far as to say that he'll kill Touko to prevent Aoko's hands from getting dirty, so Aoko is forced to spare Touko in order to prevent Soujuro from being a stupid idiot. She then strips Touko naked and carves a rune into her skin that will turn her into a frog if she comes back to Misaki town. Amazing. Apparently the curse is also written like an extremely badly programmed program, so Touko not only suffers from the shame of the stupid curse, but also from the shame of the inefficiency of the rune as well.

aoko about to murderize her sister

After all that's over, Aoko reverts to being a teenager. Apparently Touko can't undo the curse for ten years, since the person who did it was from the future... and Aoko doesn't actually know how to make that curse yet... apparently she also became older due to borrowing time from Soujuro's past. 

How does any of this make sense. I don't fucking know. I'm sure someone on reddit could give a 6 paragraph essay on how everything actually does make sense but it'd be full of so many throw away magic nonsense terminology it might as well be handwaved as plot device bullshit. Who cares.

Anyways, everyone is alive and happy. Aoko then receives word that her peepaw wants to meet Soujuro, so she asks him to wipe his memories while he's at it since that's what they were supposed to do from the beginning. Upon hearing that Aoko is taking Soujuro to see peepaw, Alice immediately guesses what's up and is evidently not happy with it, but she says nothing.

During the walk to Aoko's house, she finally gets Soujuro to talk about his life in the mountains. We learn that he was born and raised in an extremely methodical and robotic society where they got up, did peculiar chores, and trained day in and day out. They trained thoroughly and learned everything anyone could need to know to beat up bears and stuff. They were thoroughly taught to never question anything and just live like this forever. It was also like a weird survival setting, so kids would just 'drop off' after a while. Huh??? WHAT?? Basically it sounds completely insane. Even Aoko's just like... this is not some typical mountain tribe. This is some actual weird shit probably engineered by crazy people for some kind of specific cause, in order to 'create' a person exactly like Soujuro. BUT WHY??? This is never addressed.

Apparently Soujuro realizes that he was exiled from his community because he questioned the lifestyle one day. If he had never thought to question it, he would probably still be there today... but he doesn't regret it... One of the running themes in the story is how Soujuro feels like an outsider in the city and that he'll never feel like he belongs, but ya at this conclusion he is glad he got out since he could see a whole new world. Okay. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WEIRD MOUNTAIN CULT... SOEM KINDA SCIENCE EXPERIMENT BS... WAT THE FUCK IS ALL THAT... not explained! We will simply never know.

Anyways, Soujuro finally meets peepaw and they have a talk. Soujuro asks peepaw why he lets his grandaughters murderize each other and why he's fostering this kind of family mindset where it's okay for siblings to literally kill each other just for his magic and approval. And peepaw is of course like "ummm they chose to be like that. What do I have to do with it? I am simply retired and old! If they want to kill each other ummm I don't see how I have anything to do with that. Aoko and Touko have chose their own paths!" I'd beat the shit out of peepaw myself... seriously. Wizards are actually insane people. Anyways, peepaw tells Soujuro that he doesn't want to erase his memories since he doesn't like the idea of Aoko forcing work on him. He feels satisfied in just using Soujuro as someone to vent to about his problems, and then lets him go. Great.

Soujuro runs back into Aoko outside and they have a rather anticlimactic moment when they realize nothing is going to change after all. They won't have to forget each other. They then go back home and buy Alice souvenirs on the way.

The End.

Also since I don't remember where it goes, I'll put the dump about Touko's problems right here. So Touko had trained super hard her whole life as the Aozaki heir in order to please peepaw and meet his expectations. However she was too ambitious for his tastes and had dreams herself of reaching the root and further researching their family magic. Peepaw was not happy with this, so he just abruptly cut her off and told her to get the fuck out. Everything was handed to Aoko, and Touko was basically just given the middle finger... lol. Peepaw of course felt completely justified in his actions, since Touko had 'gone too far' and had a 'bad mindset' when it comes to magic or whatever, while Touko of course was just like wow that old geezer is a MOTHER FUCKING BITCH!!! She then ran all around the world training and studying and researching and becoming stronger... cutting off all her hair to use as payment to adopt Beo (human body parts work as powerful catalysts in magic, and this includes hair so long hair is valuable in the magic world). She became the sexy hot bitch we all know today in such a short amount of time... she worked so hard. Only to get stripped naked by her own sister... Hmm... anyways. She has it rough! 

Touko best girl. I said my piece.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Pretty satisfying I think. I feel the best I got out of this was getting to know Touko more. I find Touko very funny, especially seeing as how she's in so many of the other franchises as well. Can she appear in Tsukihime too? I would like that. I would like to see her in everything. I just find her neat.

Anyways, the post game unlocks a couple more extras which I found hit or miss. Honestly, some of the extras were very... extra. Dragged a lot and just talked about whatever. IDGAF!!! The last extra though was quite funny. I won't give it away... too bad. Read it yourself. (If you don't feel like you'd enjoy reading this VN you probably wouldn't enjoy it anyways since it's a lot more of the same old) 

I didn't talk about them at all, but the side characters are endearing enough in the story. It's satisfying. I wouldn't say it's mind blowing or great, but I read it. Overall I think this VN is just okay I guess? There's not that much more to say about it I think. It was fun to read, and now it's over. Bye!