Unless it's normal for Japanese girls to grant passage through the back door, if you know what I mean, on their second encounter with someone. Or go all femdom on the first, with light bondage and all...

You go after Lilly, see her at the airport right before she leaves, but the effort gives you another heart attack. I was expecting it to end there, either living but without Lilly, or kicking the bucket due to the heart attack. In the next scene, you wake up at the hospital. Stuff happens, and suddenly, Lilly out of nowhere. Tears everywhere, and so on... And you'd expect it to end there. Well, it doesn't, there's another scene with both of them seeing Lilly's sister off before she goes to Scotland, this time travelling without Lilly.

What I find quite funny about Lilly's route though is that despite the fact I'm not going after Hanako, she seems to be a much happier person than during the course of her own route, with the exception being that HNNNNG ending.

Yeah, that bit about how Hanako behaves in Lilly's route was weird. I take it as meaning that she realized that since Lilly and Hisao had each other, her relationship with them may change, and she'd better do something about changing herself instead of relying on others. So she tries to make new friends and apparently succeeds.

Also, I swear I saw Hanako's body emiting flames during her bad end, such was the intensity of her anger. Hell hath no fury like a woman unnecessarily whiteknighted.

The one where she stays with Hisao and the one where she goes to study art to a Tokyo art school.

I can only think of a few things worse than having to listen to the girl you love as she ignores your attempts at fixing things and says "there is no us". I know she acts like it's not a big deal (par for the course for her, actually), but those are some harsh words, and she's quite blunt about the whole thing.

For the Emi image, all I had to do is aim for the bad end, then fix things by making the proper choice when Bubblegum asks me about what happened. Bubblegum is a bro in this route.

Also, the part where things are fixed after the screw-up at Emi's house and the bad end is averted, ultimately leading to the good end, is awesome. Perhaps even better than getting straight to the good end without having to fix anything.

As for the bonus image, it seems what I lacked was the neutral ending of Lilly's route, obtained if you lie to her. Instead of getting the awesomeness of the good end, the story ends at her leaving, with Hanako and Hisao saying goodbye to her at the school's gates.

I must admit Gelal you were pretty spot on with the "not ending when you expect it to" thing, I could have sworn I fucked up at least one choice and thought that gate scene was the last I would see of Lilly, but thankfully that wasn't the case.

What I didn't like about Shizune's is that, at one point, it stops being about her and Hisao, and instead focuses on her and Misha. Hello? Who's the lead character here and who's a secondary character? Also, her bad end is just lacking something... It's all about her being unreasonable and selfish, and that's it. She never even mentions Hisao banging Bubblegum, and in fact I don't think she ever finds out about it, so Hisao's affair with Bubblegum is unrelated to the reason they break up. IIRC, in all the other routes except maybe Lilly's, Hisao's mistakes are the direct cause of the bad ends, so this is pretty unique.

Other than that, her path shares one minor flaw with Lilly's: their feud and that of their families are never resolved. It doesn't really matter to me, but for how much they stress those points in both routes, I was expecting something related to it would eventually happen.
But it does have nice moments, as I said. How their relationship gradually progresses, establishing an interesting parallel with how Hisao keeps getting better at sign language, for example. It's interesting how becoming able to communicate without needing Misha brings them closer and makes them understand each other better. And at the same time becomes troublesome for Misha, which as previously stated eventually changes the focus of the story.

As for Rin... I don't think I'll ever understand that route. It's an emotional rollercoaster, and you'll probably find yourself wondering what the hell you should do many times. And often, your choices will not make a difference. And sometimes you'll just think that it doesn't matter if you get the bad end, because it's still better than going through so much shit because of Rin. And perhaps you'll want Rin to suffer, or wish her a gruesome death. I don't know, I think I need more time to digest that path. The only thing I'm sure of is this: you'll find out that Rin's real problems are completely unrelated to her lack of arms.

Oh, and Rin's good end has probably the best last words in any scene. The last sentence she speaks to Hisao is simply beautiful.

Another thing I noticed was that Aisha's breasts were frequently drawn in different sizes throughout the series, much of the time they appear rather smallish, but in episodes 18 and 23 they are noticeably larger. Maybe it was just me though.

Bubblegum and dictatorgirl finish the school, while all others remain ... well ... depends on the story line ... somewhere earlier. This is the confusing aspect. I loved to see the Hanako story continue, or the Emi one ... but no ...