Talk:Shintaro Kisaragi/@comment-27757337-20161013131751/@comment-5178018-20161015025431

His snake allows him to remember the events of previous routes. Of course, it seems most of the snakes have their own quirks to them outside of just the mainly used ability. But it's a bit difficult to neatly sum up what his ability does other than "to memorize events from past lives".

If it's a universal standard getting in the way then just view the Retaining Snake's (Shintaro's ability's) timeline separate from the timeline that is continuously resetting. Thus, even though it's a time loop, from the Retaining Snake's POV it's all one straight timeline that's repeating similar events.

The memories it collects from its own perspective is then continuously fed to each new Shintaro of each new loop, should he fully awaken. If he doesn't fully awaken he'll probably just get the occasional dé ja vu and have a seemingly good memory.