I believe there is no "very magic" nor "very nomagic" option, because the "magic" option itself is assumed to be binary by legacy vi scripts, which Mr. Moolenaa

I believe there is no "very magic" nor "very nomagic" option, because the "magic" option itself is assumed to be binary by legacy vi scripts, which Mr. Moolenaar does not want to break. Also, either of those would wreck functionality on a lot of existing scripts, which make assumptions about the environment's level of magic. I had a period of time where I reflexively typed \V or \v before everything, but really, I think it's worth it to just get used to remembering which characters need to be escaped in magic mode.