[PaperBag Sniper]

Up to episode 27 now, Aki's death was pretty sudden when I think about it. She gets a huge boost to her powers by the real Shoichi and then dies not 3 episodes later. I find it tragically ironic that what prompted her spree was thinking that Ryo had died, only for her actual death to occur fueling his own feeling and creating a grudge between him and Agito.

I'm curious about how she really felt about Ryo though. She wanted to use him just like she wanted to use Shoichi but the attack on him seemed to trigger some genuine emotion out of her. I don't think it was love but maybe something close to kinship since she seemed to feel sympathy for his situation.

I love that Shoichi is constantly just rubbing salt into Hikawa's wounds every time they talk about the G3-X suit. Speaking of which, the V1/G3-X plotline was pretty underused IMHO. I was halfway expecting V1 to be the equivalent of Birth from OOO's and just show up to steal the spotlight but Hikawa's rampage killed that.

More development for Ozawa. She's being shown as the type of person who can excel far too high for a particular task but rather than tailoring her work for the user, she makes something that is too unwieldy. It's also interesting that her initial response to realizing this is to ask her old professor to continue work on his project rather than fixing her own.

And big reveal Shoichi got his memories back.