I feel like the characters got loli/shota-ified since the last time I read this. But glad this one got picked up again, the light novel translations for this series got screwy and there's like a whole volume and a half that's damn near unreadable and the translator that picked it up just left those as is rather than just starting from the beginning for a consistent translation.
They were. This change was logical, however: you can see it in the events and lore the author pens.
The first girl on Masaru's mind was Angela, but he ends up disavowing his feelings for her the moment Elizabeth shows up next to her and challenges him over them. This was in chapter 12: during the previous battle, in chapter 8, Masaru had the option to leave--since the target was a dangerous dragon. The only problem was that the dragon was headed to Shiory--and, indeed, Angela and the kids at the church came to his mind. A bit after, Elizabeth asked him why he stayed, and he explicitly said that the face of the person he wanted to protect came to mind. Once Elizabeth put two and two together upon later meeting Angela, Masaru backed down completely from it like a wuss, saying it was meant in a broad sense.
After that, there's the fact that in Masaru's harem,
every single member that joined after Angela is loliconbait. This was before the chibification of the entire group. In addition, there's a designated evil race in the setting--dark elves--whose women are all said to have large breasts (contrasted with the elves, who are said to be more "modest" in that regard). Given that the author established all of these in his story (and the LN has worse facts, BTW), it's no wonder that you'd see all the girls start (at least) to look more like lolis; Angela is the most egregious example, as she used to have a massive rack that couldn't be hidden in robes--now, she's frequently depicted as looking hardly different from Elizabeth, along with the same lolicon proportions the other girls have (compare the full-body shot of Angela on page two of chapter 2 with the Angela you see in the latest chapters).