After finishing the Legend route and learning just who caused all this 天罰 (remember this vocab from last time? Tenbatsu, aka divine punishment, it’ll be on the test!), I jumped pretty quickly on the next story to see how everything would play out now that Kanata (or more so us the player) knows what’s going on.

One thing you might notice is the huge increase in image quality! I got an adapter for VGA to SCART from CastleMania, which bumps me from S-Video and 240p/480i up to a higher base of 480p via VGA. Now DiceLord can send much cleaner shots to make these posts with~ Enough of that, onto the story!

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING! If you want to play this in English in the future, stop reading here! We will very quickly be hitting spoiler material in this route. There’s currently an in-progress translation you can find here! If you don’t plan on playing the game or already have, then you can continue on.

Alright, now we can talk spoilers with that out of the way! At the end of the Legend route, we learned that Kikka and Hakuou (Sumino and Kanata respectively) fell in love, had a child, and were smited by heaven in the span of a week.

Housen (Meiko) asks the Elder Dragon Sister to make her immortal until she can meet the reincarnation of her brother who will break the endless cycle of snow and 天罰. Housen decides to live with the people quietly in the village, whereas the Elder Dragon Sister will live in the woods as punishment for her failure.

It was confirmed at the end of the Legend route that the Elder Dragon God is the girl in the mountains, though that wasn’t exactly much of a surprise considering there was one giant opening in the cast and they shared a text color, but the game hid her name in the Legend route on the off chance you didn’t immediately realize the obvious. You can see her listed as Shigure in both the manual and the opening movie.

Anyway, enough of that, let’s get on with Shigure’s route! First step involves tracking her down enough times that her route activates. Oddly enough, I couldn’t figure it out and kept hitting the common bad ending despite running into her several times. I finally tracked down a guide in Japanese, which I backed up just in case their site goes down, and was able to figure it out.

Short aside, that guide also had a section at the bottom for something called Dark Snow (暗黒SNOW), so I had to figure out what the hell that was. Turns out it’s on the fandisc made by Studio Mebius, and it’s a short alternative story made in a similar vein to their other works. Unlike Snow, most of their entire catalog is, uh, let’s just say extremely adult and fucked up. The only review I found for Dark Snow was a 1 star, saying it was a complete pile of trash where not even the 18+ scenes were remotely enjoyable. Out of morbid curiosity, my Discord helped me track it down and I streamed the first hour with 75% of the window blacked out. It fucking scarred us. We don’t talk about Dark Snow Thursday… I’ll review it in the future, but holy shit it’s bad.

AAANYWAY #2, I kept missing the route since there’s a part where Sumino calls you from a payphone, saying she’s waiting for you at the waterfall despite there being a blizzard. If you answer the phone, you immediately rush out to help her get home safely. If you don’t answer, you just laze around all day and run into a different girl, probably Asahi. However, there’s a 3rd option I kept missing, where you reject the phone call, but then your cousin Tsugumi tells you she’s worried, so you decide to find Sumino.

However, since time had past, you just find a note from Sumino:

At this point, there’s nothing left for Kanata to do other than head home himself. But the blizzard gets so bad, he can’t find his way home and starts to freeze. Thankfully you run into the mysterious girl in the woods and try to follow her. Eventually, you find yourself at the base of the mountain near Sumino’s shop. You go yell at Sumino for calling you out then leaving, though it’s your fault really for not answering the phone. With that, Asahi later vanishes from the plot saying we no longer hold her dear, the time travel child disappears without a trace (we really don’t worry about the alone child who tried eating a sparrow to have food, huh), but now Shigure’s route starts proper!

Kanata asks Tsugumi if she’s heard of anything appearing in the woods, to which she gets really excited and starts telling you about mysterious sightings and rumors. You wonder if that could be the mysterious girl you keep seeing, but Tsugumi reveals a much more dreadful possibility:

Okay, maybe not. But Kanata facepalms a bit and dismisses the rest of the conversation. However, she does mention there are also rumors of a snow woman, which is a Japanese yokai in the form of a beautiful woman who lives alone in the snow. Hmm~

Kanata lays awake at night, pondering an important decision:

The next morning, you run into Meiko. At this point, we as readers know she’s supposedly Housen and has lived in the village for 1,000 years and personally knows Shigure, but Kanata doesn’t know this. He asks her if she knows any rumors about things in the woods, to which she also answers Big Foot. Also chupacabra. Also Toraemon, though that one could have been some kind of mountain cat. Also sky fish. Turns out she’s a fan of the occult and UMAs (Unidentified Mysterious Animals). You have a nice long chat about various topics before getting back to your water carrying job.

On our way, we take the animal path shortcut and run into the girl once again, who is asleep and muttering to herself.

Unable to watch her have a nightmare, you wake her up. She jumps away nervously and says the most she’s ever said to you so far:

She then runs away from you without clarifying anything, leaving you confused and wondering if you did something. The next few hours of the plot are essentially trying to get Shigure to talk to you and failing, while various silly things happen.

Speaking of silly things, the next day happens to be Valentine’s Day and no one noticed in the other routes at all! Meiko has a surprise for you~

That seems weird, but it’s just chocolate, righ–

Oh. Well, there’s a giant cockroach inside that’s 40cm long (15 3/4 inches!!).

At this point, she leaves you with this nightmare Schrödinger’s cockroach. You’re given a choice on how to get rid of it:

If you pick the first option, she rushes back and yells at you not to bury it. She stands there, saying she won’t leave until you try it. You weasel out of it by promising that you’ll absolutely try it, then she lets you leave as you stick it in your bag.

If you try to throw it, Meiko jogs up to you a short bit later with an over-foot-long cockroach in hand, telling you to be careful not to drop a present something painstakingly made for you! As before, it ends up in your bag as you do errands.

After collecting water, you head to Sumino’s shop to pick up produce, but you hand the bag over to her mom, forgetting about the cockroach.

You explain to Sumino that you left Meiko’s chocolate in there on accident. She’s really curious about what Meiko made, but you point to her mom as a warning that she really shouldn’t look.

And then Sumino died (just a little on the inside).

Back at the inn, you realize you only filled up one tank instead of two (earlier, a monkey stole your lunch and you bumped into the open water jug. You reasoned with the monkey, saying you’d be fine giving them a riceball, to which the monkey nodded and returned the lunch.) Not wanting to skip out on your job and hurt the business, you head back up the mountain. You find a deer in the woods, who at this point realizes you’re chill and nice to Shigure, so it leads you on a new path to a familiar place.

Well, not the title screen, but with 3 piles of rocks at the scene where Kikka and Hakuou died in the Legend route.

The mysterious girl comes by with plants, freezing in place when she sees you. This decorating strongly hints that the piles are a grave tended by her, so that would make the graves Kikka, Hakuou, and their unborn child. She asks if you remember, but you don’t know what she’s talking about. She drops the flowers on the ground and runs away, once again not answering any questions. You take the flowers and arrange them in front of the stones neatly, shrug at the deer you’ve become best buds with, then head home for the day.

Back at the inn, you relax in the hotspring while wondering what she meant by “did you remember?” when you suddenly hear Tsugumi scream. You hear the sliding door open and look over just in time to see a 40cm giant cockroach fly through the air into the night sky.

The next morning, Tsugumi surmises you’re having girl problems after you look depressed and won’t say what’s wrong. She gives you a box of manjū to help apologize for any grievances you’ve caused. Kanata’s surprised and thanks Tsugumi for her kindness. Buuuuut…

…she makes you buy it with your daily salary of 200 yen. So that’s 2.5 days of labor for some apology snacks. You sigh and accept it, figuring you don’t have any better ideas.

However, you don’t run into the mysterious girl that day. Nor the day after as well. You mention the snow woman again to Meiko by chance, who gives you the cryptic advice of “follow the cries of an animal to find her again.”

That evening, you decide to head back to the graves on the hill and wait for her to come by. Some time passes when you start hearing the distressed sounds of a young deer. Despite the sun starting to set, you press through the treacherous and steep parts of the mountain to get closer. You faintly hear the deer’s bleats from below.

Down below, we see Shigure attempting to help the deer, but got herself caught on the ledge. (I figure someone with 1,000 years of living in these mountains would be a bit smarter about this kind of situation, buuuut no.) Kanata, our intelligent protagonist, answers in the most solid of fashions:

Dumb remarks aside, he finds some rope or similar nearby, ties it to a sturdy tree, then lowers it to her. Once she’s grabbed it, he slowly drags her and the baby deer to safety.

Upon reaching solid ground, she collapses and Kanata realizes she’s injured.

She’s got a serious laceration on her leg, but apart from that it doesn’t seem too bad apart from exhaustion. Maybe she was down there for a few hours? It does make me wonder the limits of immortality and if she can die by injury or not. Also where is she going to buy new socks?? I’m sure they’ll magically heal too~

Kanata volunteers to carry her to the hospital in town, but she refuses and hops off into the woods, giving him the cold shoulder once again.

We don’t even know her name yet, this part is taking a while…

The next day, we ask Meiko how she knew that following the animal noises would lead to the girl.

Kanata is surprised and asks her more questions, but:

Obviously as a bit of dramatic irony, we know she’s not lying and knows her from 1,000 years ago, but Kanata has no way of knowing that.

Later on at Sumino’s house, we learn that the Dragon God Remembrance Festival is on the 23rd and for some reason never existed at that time on the other routes. Nope. Just like how the inn only goes out of business if you’re dating a specific girl, the festival is an illusive plot event~!

And since the game gave us a specific date, we know that’s when shit will hit the fan, like with Sumino’s route. Ugh it’s a week away…

In the village, people get randomly selected to help run the event. Meiko mentions she already knows who will be picked, but after Kanata presses, she reveals it’s just a hunch. Kanata pushes and presses a bet on her, saying she won’t get it right. Kanata says that if she wins, he’ll give her a kiss on the cheek. Sumino jumps in via the jealousy train.

Meiko on the other hand, gets uncharacteristically shy and blushes.

Everyone stares in confusion, wondering about the health of their poor friend. With that option ruled out, Kanata has a different idea:

Meiko strikes back:

Sumino is happy gaining from either side, but Kanata is confident and doesn’t back down, even against someone with clairvoyance! Whoops.

Meanwhile, we head back to the mountains at night for some reason which eludes me. Something about finally give the girl that manjū or just trying to see her again by waiting in the cold till it’s really late. At the waterfall, we see a strange sight:

Without thinking, Kanata dives into the water after whoever is in there.

Kanata thankfully manages to drag the mysterious girl out of the water. By this point I’m really wondering how she survived 1,000 years in the woods.

Ignore my previous remark, it makes sense now.

In a bit of shocked surprise, she mutters out an old name:

At about this point, hypothermia kicks in and you fall on your face.

Kanata has a strange delusion of a giant fuzzy creature carrying him, but Tsugumi tells Kanata that he appeared by the front door unconscious with animal tracks nearby. Sounds like deer bro carried you home along with a girl’s footprints nearby.

We just can’t let go of the Big Foot joke, can we~

The next day, we go to the graves again and thankfully run into the girl again. We’ve run into her enough times at this point that she doesn’t run away like a spooked deer!

Wooo!! MISSION SUCCESS, WE HAVE NAME! I can stop writing Mysterious Girl~ She tells you that she was scared when you came. Seeing you again gave her a grave shock. She never interacts with people while living in these mountains (except for her tailor of course~), so seeing you was a surprise. But you helped her and the animals enough that you seem like a safe person. She knows your name, supposedly from the rumors after the rockslide at the beginning of the game.

For now, you give her your extremely tacky umbrella with the brazen logo of the hotsprings on it, then part for the evening.

The next morning, Tsugumi can tell just how much your life is brightened by learning their name. She makes you a double lunch to enjoy with whoever it is you’re seeing and sends you on your way.

Shigure hasn’t seen a meal like this in hundreds of years, considering she eats what she can scavenge from the forest and what animals bring her.

You practically have to wave the food directly in her face to get her to agree, though I was expecting her to run away in a panic. You mention that it’s okay since your cousin is the proprietor of the hotsprings and she likes making people feel welcome, so cooking extra for her is no problem. After you mention the name of the inn, a light brights up in her eyes.

She gets all excited and bouncy for a second, remembering when during the Legend route Housen gave everyone the weird acrobat nicknames, then gets embarrassed and quiets down. After some more quiet conversation, with Shigure calling you a contradictory person who complains or says mean things while they’re being nice, Kanata asks her the reasonable question of “so why are you in the woods anyway?”

Kanata tries to press, wondering what sin this innocent-looking girl could possibly have done, but she channels her inner deer and bolts.

In the afternoon, there’s a random conversation where Kanata tries to convince Sumino that aliens are coming to take the anman:

That’s all for that scene, really.

Back to important matters! Tsugumi got selected for the festival committee, so the inn will be closed in the meantime.

Arguably more importantly, this means you lost the bet with Meiko and will have to wear an adorable skirt. Oh no~

The next breakfast with Shigure (it’s the 21st, we’re almost to the 23rd!), we ask her if she’ll go to the festival with us (aww~). She tries to get out of it by saying she can’t leave the mountain.

Yes Kanata, it’s called “running from the law,” and it’s more common than you’d think to hide out in a mountain alone. Ignoring that, we get her to agree and come down to the festival preparations and say hi (woo!).

Unfortunately for us, she gets extremely nervous near the base of the mountains and sprints back up while apologizing profusely (aww…) We head off to the shrine alone and run into Meiko and Sumino who didn’t forget about the bet:

Kanata’s down in the dumps enough over Shigure bailing that he hardly registers any emotion at the girl’s games. Meiko for some reason relents and spares him (aww…), but not without some harassment first.

It seems the artist didn’t want to try Kanata in a dress, though I suppose it makes sense since they’re allergic to even drawing his face, let alone whole body.

Meanwhile, Meiko’s “dad” the surgeon says hi, despite being in the middle of a surgery.

Walking malpractice lawsuit aside, you help build the structures for the festival, which include a tower lashed out of wood with a place to light a flame at the top. You ask Meiko about it, who tells you about the festival.

She explains that the ritual supposedly symbolizes the love between a boy on the Earth and a girl in Heaven, with the fire being his feelings going up to her.

Unfortunately at that time, Sumino interrupts you and you lose all chances at serious plot-relevant conversations for the day. We gotta keep the plot moving at a glacier’s pace!

The next day, you don’t see Shigure, so you give up after a couple hours in the cold, then head to the shrine to continue helping with preparations. You’re immediately strongarmed by Tsugumi into bad ideas:

It turns out she wants you to help with the fireworks, which is apparently dangerous enough that you have to sign up for liability insurance. After much persuading, you’re forced into the role. As thanks, she gives you a plastic bag full of fireworks to play with later (this is important!).

On the way home, you’re ambushed in the streets!

She says she got all the way to the torii gates outside of the shrine, but was too scared to walk up. But she wanted to see you so badly, so she waited at the base of the stairs instead for you to come by.

Kanata, in his infinite class, thinks about only the most pure things when she grabs him:

Classy~

She declares that she’s not going back to the mountain and wants to spend the night together with you! That way you can go to the festival tomorrow! Also conveniently, your cousin is staying overnight at the shrine as part of a committee celebration, so ALL NIGHT PILLOW FIGHTING IS A GO!!

This section is essentially “Shigure hasn’t set foot outside the mountain in 1,000 years and has no idea what anything is” and it’s adorable~. She asks what a telephone pole is when they pass one, to which Kanata explains that it carries electricity. She doesn’t get it, then as he tries to explain, she gets mad that he’s messing with her. Later, he says that she should enjoy the hotspring while she’s here:

We’re not going to sexually harass the poor, confused past girl, only classy Kanata for this playthrough when possible! She wants to take a bath, but would be too nervous if she can’t see you. She doesn’t want you to see her either, which leaves you in a pickle. You settle on crouching behind a rock, so she can see the top of your head. Close enough! To no one’s surprise, you find an excuse to run over to her in a panic and see her naked. Anyway~

You both sit in Kanata’s room after a relaxing evening of having no idea how canned green tea works, when suddenly she, uh, comes onto you hard.

For some reason, she gets the idea in her head that she can make it up to Hakuou in the past by sleeping with his reincarnation? Hmm…

Yeah no, you don’t touch the poor depressed girl, bad. The guide says you get a sex scene on the PC version, followed by an immediate and deserved bad ending.

Instead, we tell her off, saying we’ll never touch her if she doesn’t respect herself first.

AND THEN THE PLOT GETS WEIRD

(in a good way!)

Alright, so this is my favorite part of the route here:

Suddenly, you’re warped to the Legend route again! But it’s the stupid Legend route! Essentially, what if Hakuou was replaced by an absolute moron and the game just parodies itself. It’s pretty fun, let’s go~

This is the one route so far that mostly breaks the structure of setup, slow happy section, incredibly depressing section, happy resolve. We’re trading the depressing section for comedy!

You wake up to see Housen, who calls you brother and asks if you had a bad dream.

Kanata is convinced he’s either in a dream or people are playing an elaborate prank on him, so he doesn’t take things seriously at all. Housen is clearly upset that her brother has gone completely insane.

Kanata wants to comfort Housen/Meiko, so you have the option of patting her on the head or the back.

The back:

The head:

Classy Kanata strikes again in the least believable mess ups in history~

After being punched in the face, they head to town and Kanata further embarrasses himself by checking if people 1,000 years ago wore underwear or not. Like I said, this is very much the stupid Legend route. Meiko tells everyone you had a weird dream and aren’t right in the head, but that you’ll be fine tomorrow, hopefully!

Kanata asks if there will be a large feast, but everyone looks at him in shock, reminding him that they don’t have much food and can’t gather more since there could be bandits in the woods. Kanata dismisses them, telling them to go anyway.

Kanata brings up a surprisingly good point, which throws the villagers into a joyous frenzy. They all run out into the woods to get food, while Housen just smiles and shakes her head.

Just before you leave town, the artist behind Asahi’s painting comes by with a request for Hakuou to exorcise the spirit from the scroll that’s coming out and terrorizing the town. Kanata just replies very simply with “I have no spirit sense, can’t help you.”

With that, he leaves and Housen hits you over the head. Bye Asahi! But no, he comes back later and you take the scroll. Boo.

Back at the shrine, Housen reminds her brother that they have to memorize their part for the dragon goddess summoning ritual, but he takes one look at the book written in ancient Japanese with its calligraphy-like script and gives up instantly.

Suddenly you black out, and appear at the lake. Housen is dressed in her ritual clothes. It appears that when you lost consciousness, the real Hakuou took back over.

Seeing as you weren’t even around the last few days, you don’t know any of the words. She hands you the book and dances, leaving you to read what you can. You read a few characters, but she’s constantly correcting you since you’re reading modern Japanese pronunciations, making it completely wrong. After you finish, the lake is quiet and nothing happens.

Housen starts panicking since nothing’s happening, but then suddenly the gods just shrug and let the goddesses descend.

Kanata instantly recognizes Shigure, then runs up and hugs her. She freezes in disbelief, whereas Kikka asks how on Earth he knows her name. “Do you remember me then?” she asks, with big bubbly eyes.

> “Sumino!”
“No clue”

Answering Sumino has her frown, saying she’s Kikka. Kanata doesn’t listen, insisting that she’s Sumino.

Kikka is clearly confused at this rude guy calling her some other name, but then they look over at Shigure, who looks very pale.

You carry Shigure back to the shrine to rest. You have the absolutely foolproof way of verifying that this is indeed Shigure:

Tanaka-kun would be proud…

Everyone decides at that point to just go to bed after whatever the hell just happened. In the morning, one of the villagers comes to ask for help about the monster terrorizing the village:

Kanata is 5000% uninterested in the Asahi plotline, and I’m all for it~ Sadly Housen yells at you again, so you take extra precautions and prepare to seek out the monster.

And by that, I mean absolutely no caution whatsoever.

Kanata, in his infinite stupid trying to one-up himself, doesn’t even recognize Asahi at all for some reason. Once she ejected herself from the plot, Kanata just deleted all recognition of her from his brain. Good on you nanoda~.

Since Asahi is still in bunny form, she still talks with “supi supi” at the end of her lines instead of “nanoda.” She’s still not in her final form!

Kikka has to walk up and facepalm, telling Kanata that the bunny is the monster. Kanata doesn’t know that Kikka isn’t supposed to be seen by others, so he’s unfazed by her arrival. Shortly after, Asahi loses her grip on being human and reverts back to a fuzzball.

Somehow Kanata remembers the bunny form from 10 years ago, but not the annoying girl who was just chatting with him last week. His Nanoda Eraser is strong…

Back at the shrine, Shigure scolds Kikka for running out of the house when they’re supposed to stay hidden until the festival.

Shigure didn’t seem this adamant in the previous route; it’s like she’s trying to use the opportunity to force Kikka back to safety by any means necessary. Kanata paves things over by taking the blame for bringing Kikka, leaving Shigure with little option but to forgive them. Later that night, Shigure approaches you and confides something:

Shigure constantly sees this dream of the tragic visit to Earth, but is powerless to stop it. So now that we’re here from the future, it’s our job to stop the tragedy! Which means we have to avoid playing Twister with Sumi– er, Kikka! Time to be an asshole!

We got our first asshole opportunity quickly! This was a nice throwback to the common route, where Sumino rolls at you in a similar fashion 3 different times. Even after 1,000 years, some things never change~

Later when Shigure collapses in the bath like before, we make sure she’s okay by looking all over her body for injuries. Housen comes running when she hears the commotion and catches you in the worst of moments. Kanata however, must defend himself!

Kanata, you’re killing the Twister game chance perfectly~

Though for some reason, they’re kind of okay with it and accept you being a sleaze. You even pretend to chase Kikka saying that you’ll touch her too, and she laughs while running away. It’s kind of odd.

Shigure finds you the next day and asks how you’d prevent this tragedy from happening. If you were a human in love with a god, and you knew that being together would bring 天罰, would you still be with her? Kanata smuggly says that he’d defy fate and make it work. When pressed for how,

…Kanata gives not the most practical answer. If the problem is that one’s a dragon god and one’s a human, then they just both need to be a same! The god could become a human instead!

Kanata gets cool and confidence points, but 0/10 for not actually saying anything useful. Shigure leaves to think about Kanata’s vapid enthusiasm.

The next morning, they’re paid a visit by Asahi:

The bunny gets super excited to see you and starts supi supi-ing all over the place.

Kikka, who for some reason can speak annoying, translates. Shigure walks in, but jumps in surprise as to why there’s a rabbit in the house.

(Asahi’s character makes sense now! Finally! No ordinary bunny could handle all those nanodas!) Meanwhile, Shigure just looks at you with the face of “what the fuck are you talking about??”

Kikka explains to Kanata that the scroll is Asahi’s life and home. Without that scroll, Asahi will die. Then, Kanata does the most amazing move I didn’t expect:

With that, Kanata literally yeets Asahi out of the plot once again, all plot strings resolved. His absolute disdain for Asahi is savage, and I support it.

Kikka cries out in frustration at your insensitivity. The game of Twister is off for sure now! Though we should probably do some damage control at least.

Shigure just sighs in the corner at how stupid her sister is and how she’s in love with an absolute moron.

Though it seems your efforts, whether on purpose or not, paid off!

So now we just got to get through the ritual, then launch these girls back into the stratosphere, then we’ll have solved winter, right?

Oh by the way, there was a plastic bag from the future our hero forgot about until now:

Uh oh, we’ve lit explosives in our protagonist’s heart. I told you the bag would be important earlier!

Now we jump to the festival itself, where the girls are moping since it’s their last day together. Kanata gets frustrated having to look like a stoic monk and starts dancing to everyone’s shock.

He drags everyone onto the dance floor, where everyone smiles and has fun until the bandits attack!

Everyone panics and scrambles for weapons. Children hide, while anyone who can fight rushes to help. Kanata yawns. Rather than giving any shits like in the Legend route, our hero interrupts the bandits speech by just chucking fireworks at them!

With the bandits caught off guard and unsure what’s going on, Kanata directs Housen to grab a lighter and have a blast!

That went way better than expected. You got a bit too close to the explosions and passed out from exhaustion as well. Seems to happen a lot.

You wake up in Shigure’s lap, who tells you to stay put while she puts ointment on your burns. Kanata remarks that he’s rather lucky that he passed out.

Alright, one last sleazy line and I’m cutting you off Kanata~

Once you’re ready, you escort them back to the lake to see them off.

Kikka is sad and inconsolable, not wanting to leave your side. It’s not even your route Kikka! Thankfully we know how to pacify her:

Kanata gives everyone a bag of sparklers to hold onto, saying that when they’re reunited, they can light them all together. He waves one last goodbye as they vanish into the air.

Really? We went into a dream, acted like a complete idiot, and now endless winter is solved? Huh. That was surprisingly easy, why didn’t we do this earlier?

Hakuou asks Kanata for one last favor; do something about the darkness Shigure is trapped in. I guess we’re in a weird void.

Despite the new happy ending, Shigure knows this isn’t how it truly went down. We’re treated to a sepia tone cliff note rendition of the Legend route:

Alright, there’s my spark notes of the cliff notes.

Kanata: “You did nothing wrong! It was all fate! Everything’s fine now…”
Shigure: “But I… killed Kikka, Hakuou-sama, and even their child…”
Kanata: “You didn’t kill them! You didn’t kill anyone! Kikka died due to 天罰 and Haukou… Either way, I won’t die! I’m here to stay! I love you, but I won’t die! I was reincarnated so I could live together with you!”
Shigure: “You… forgive me…?”

Aww, that was a good route! Nice and happy, no real sad part~

… … …

… …

…

JUST KIDDING YOU THOUGHT WE WERE DONE OF COURSE THERE’S A SAD PART. UGH.

So, you wake up from the dream back into your room. That’s all good, right? Though Tsugumi is looking weirdly shocked at you.

flips table

Fuck you Snow, come on with this! Ugh…

So you’ve been in a coma for the past two weeks or so. You were in the hospital until a week ago, where you were transferred to the inn to rest. You seemed to recover from your injuries, but you wouldn’t wake up for some reason. You ask her about Shigure, but she has no idea who that is. You argue that you have memories from the past few weeks, including the water collecting job she had you do. She’s shocked that you know that, but reasons that you must have heard her mention it when she told your parents as they visited.

Meiko and Sumino come to visit you, throwing you into more confusion.

Oddly enough, Meiko isn’t wearing her scarf anymore. But she doesn’t react in the slightest to Housen’s name. Kanata asks Meiko to tell him about the village’s past. She tells him the story of a boy who loved a dragon god, but since their love was forbidden, they went their separate ways. It seems that reality has changed to make what you dreamed earlier reality.

Kanata freaks out, confusing the line between dream and reality, so Tsugumi tells the girls to come back another time so Kanata can rest.

Once you’re rehabilitated enough to walk, your parents decide to bring you back home to be examined by a larger psych hospital. You have one last day to walk around, so you sneak off and head up the mountain. It turns out this village has normal weather seasons, so the eternal winter was solved, but at what cost?

As you await the final bus out of town (why are we leaving at night!?), you reach into your pocket and realize there’s a sparkler in there. In one last act of desperation, you look for Shigure once again.

Kanata begins lighting one sparkler at a times, watching them slowly burn out in the cold winter night. One after another.

In the end, the final flame goes out, leaving him alone in the biting cold.

… … …

…. …

…

Suddenly you see a light behind you! She’s back! And has long hair, which implies she’s happy now or something! Also her horns are gone? Maybe, could be the camera angle.

And with that, we get credits! Phew, we had to have the sad scene of course, but thankfully that resolved normally. Overall, I liked how that route changed up the structure and had more of a feel-good, healing kind of vibe. I was disappointed we never got a moment with Mekio and Shigure talking. I was really looking forward to their 1,000 year later conversation… That and we didn’t get to see Shigure react seeing the reincarnation of her beloved, not the brightest sister. AND WHERE DOES SHE CLOTHES!? But overall, I’m happy with how that route went! And thanks for reading this far, this post got long
; _; haha

We’re getting close though! Next off is the time-travel daughter route, which according to this CG Mode screen should be the last route. Though the guides I’ve seen reference a Meiko route, so we might unlock that after? This screen shows Meiko labeled as “Other pictures,” so I’m not sure if this chart will re-align or something, or if this version doesn’t have her route.

We’ll just have to see after next time! (We’re almost done with Snow, oh my god it’s long… whew~)