- Kyousuke is so totally maou. The hints are laid so thick that it would be more of a twist if he were actually a different person
- Speaking of maou, he gives a 100% light yagami vibe and I love it
- Gonzou is pretty [radio edit]ed up, telling his stepson to [radio edit] his flesh and blood daughter just so he can use her to make more money
- Usami is amazing. She was pretty unapproachable at first, but very quickly leapt into "best girl" status
- Tsubaki is so innocent ;_; I feel so bad for her that she's going to let herself be used by light kyousuke
- Kanon is cute, but that's about all I can say about her
- Shiratori seems like she could be interesting. I like that she's so defensive around kyousuke; it seems like a natural reaction to learning his true nature. Being the daughter of the president(?) of sannou means she'll definitely have some important plot relevance, too
- Eichii is such an asshole. Why did he have to be the token friend?
- Another thing I love is how all the songs are based on classical pieces. It's pretty cool

I love how Eichii is such an asshole despite being the token friend, as it's quite different than other stories I've seen.
I love Gonzou's character too, you don't even know yet.
lol, Kanon
lol, Shiratori
lol, Tsubaki
Hero best girl.

- Maou being kyousuke's brother was pretty interesting. Before chapter 5, they were trying to heavily imply that "maou" was simply another personality of kyousuke's that surfaced every time he had a headache. ...I'm still not wholly satisfied by the explanation for the headaches, but it did throw me off the right track, whereupon it immediately made perfect sense at the reveal. After all, what better way to lay low than feign your own death?
- This story revolves heavily around hostage situations. The only chapters that didn't have a hostage situation to deal with were chapter 1 (or as it should've been called: prologue) and chapter 3 (kanon's chapter), and in the case of the latter, we were still dealing with death threats and blackmail.
- Speaking of which, damn, the pace picked hella up with chapter 4 onward. I started chapter 4 early yesterday morning (as in, what most people consider "night") and read straight through without sleeping. I was planning on stopping once it hit a dull point (like the previous chapters had done), but the action's crescendo never stopped. And then chapter 5 got to the level of insanity, literally. Everything before that was a "game" to maou, but this was the real deal.
- Everyone in this VN was clearly very sharp - kyousuke, haru, yuki, gonzou, and probably more I'm forgetting, but the sheer thoroughness of maou's plans clearly places him a step above. Even the fact that after everything he did, when maou finally "won" but was denied the spoils of his victory, he still reconciled it by taking his enemy with him, at the cost of his own life, which no longer held any worth to him.
- Speaking of which, aaargh that scene was painful. If haru had been able to get a grasp of her emotions at all, maou's final plan would've backfired, and they could've called the cops. Except... the real kicker... the gun she was using had no bullets. She wouldn't have become a murderer even if she had tried, and the police probably would not have been called out without the sound of gunshot as an impetus.
- Not really sure why kyousuke tried to take on the role of the rotten yakuza brat. A better story (that would've probably gotten him a lighter sentence) would be to approach it from the direction of "because maou was my brother is why I had to do it, since he would just keep evading police." Meanwhile, say that haru had held the gun briefly while in the blockade to explain her fingerprints (their stories already diverge on whether or not she was holding a gun when kyousuke killed maou, after all, and due to the chaos of the blockade, picking up an enemy's weapon for self-defense wouldn't have set off any alarms). Sets up kyousuke as guilty? Check. Still absolves haru of anything criminal? Check. Tugs on the heartstrings of the jury because they all know what maou had done in central boulevard? Check. The lie he used fulfills the first two, but not the third, instead making it look like it was a petty revenge play. Although thinking about it, 8 years actually seems like a fairly light sentence for premeditated murder.
- The ending was really quite bittersweet. While it's true that they were finally reunited, those are 7-8 years kyousuke will never get back, time he could've spent with his daughter. Hell, if maou hadn't successfully killed gonzou just prior, kyousuke might've legitimately been able to get away with murder. He fulfilled the job gonzou had entrusted to him, so I would imagine gonzou would have pulled some strings to make something happen.
- "Doubt" and "The Devil" will probably forever be the two most memorable tracks from the soundtrack for me. Doubt was based off of chopin's revolutionary etude, which has always been one of my favorite pieces of classical music, which made it stand out a lot for me. The devil was based off of schubert's erlking, which I had not actually heard before looking it up while reading this VN, but I have to admit it's incredibly fitting for maou.
- And... that's about it. I'd probably have a lot more to say about chapters 3 and 4 if I had been logging my thoughts as I went.
- Oh, and I guess I was caught offguard by not ever getting a chance to branch off onto mizuha's route in chapter 4. I assume that you need to select "call the police" during the first hostage situation to do so, since that would expose the farce a lot sooner, and yuki wouldn't be able to take mizuha hostage afterward with the police already intervening.
- ...and I almost forget how annoying the sex scenes were. They were horrendously out of place, and could've been deleted entirely without impacting the story at all. In fact, it would've been better if they were deleted, since you wouldn't be stuck with the ridiculous mood whiplash surrounding them. And the requisite sex scene for kyousuke and haru that results in haru getting pregnant could've easily been the third one, which was offscreen to begin with.
- Okay, that's it for real. ...I think.

edit: Thought of something else. At the very end, it doesn't actually say what his daughter's name is, it merely says that it's "like the harbinger of an early spring." I think this line was trying to imply that the kanji used for the name may have actually meant "an early spring." This would make some sense, since "haru" means "spring," and it's not unheard of for parents to give their children names derived from their own. There's also quite a bit of meaning behind that, with the leitmotif of "we live our lives not as a cycle of repeating seasons, but as one year-long winter," and the numerous mentions to spring coming at last.

The one where the MC sees the gero froggy on the blonde woman's bag and is trying to remember where he's seen it before. Green = he remembers his sister's gero froggy, red = he remembers the blonde woman herself and he goes on guard around her since she's the "stalker," no delusion = he can't remember anything. Doesn't change anything, of course, but I found it one of the coolest uses of the delusion trigger system.

And it's important to be familiar with the system for when they subvert it later