Thank you for playing, and for the feedback! Manual mode is meant to give the player control over each party member individually, but in hindsight it makes a lot more sense to direct everyone at once. Or at the very least to have the option to do that.
You're the first person to mention getting a failure message at the same time as retreating, interesting! I knew there was a possibility that the end of battle events could overlap, I should have made time to properly test the different scenarios. Thank you for bringing it to my attention! :)