I think Maya's misinterpreting what happened when he "reset." Just like she misinterpreted what was causing his blackouts.
She thinks the blackouts are caused by memories. They're not. They're caused by the angels. His blackouts happen whenever he gets touched by one of the angels (as we see in the scene leading up to Toys).
The angels are using the blackouts to make him behave as the new Nozomu (who literally seems to be in charge during the Sara rape scene, even saying that women are just fleshlights to him), but when Ami finds out about it -- well, we see how she is.
I think he resets when Ami catches him and kills him.
In addition to misinterpreting the cause of resetting Sensei, for a long while I also don't think Maya saying past Senseis being "the fake Senseis" is entirely true. What criteria did she use to make judgement like that to begin with if none of them survived long enough? (did something out of character? if anything this current
real one surprised Maya the most I feel like)
An ongoing in-game concept is that memory is one of the most defining traits of a person, so every previous Sensei
not being the real Sensei might as well be because they started as just tiny a fragment of the 100% Akira, and not because literal someone else was in the body. In a nutshell, every previous Sensei was the real Sensei; however, and they never retrieved enough themselves back and thus never
got the chance to be the real Sensei in Maya's eye before meeting their early doom.
yeah, that's fairly solid, but maya does say she straight up broke several iterations of him in the past. though i guess if we are going with the Maya being an angel theory as well then that would make some sort of sense.
i understand not giving us all the answers right away and whatnot, but the fact that in a lot of the blackout scenes theres no hint of angels around..
I do agree that Ami almost certainly has something to do with him being reset. or whoever exactly is in control of her there.
Trying to not focus on one particular theory is hard. I personally feel like we are still missing a good amount to really start solving things but..
In the Ask Sel section on discord someone asked "Is there still a major secret that you think we should have figured out by now?"
And Sel said "A bunch of them but most people refuse to move on from theories they've grown attached to"
As we slowly ruled out the cause of hard resets, the only remaining possibilities for resetting Sensei I can think of are:
- Key memory related to a very specific past that has not been covered yet
(Sensei can learn about Niki's love, his mom's name, and even Sekai's death spot with mind hiccups, but he lived through them. The only thing we still couldn't learn more about is Maya's past entanglement)
- In
World of Lines, it said "The past itself isn't dangerous. It's the way it makes you feel that is." I.e., it's about if Sensei regains enough of himself or not, or is mentally ready to face a certain somethingor not.
(in a way you can say "if the truth was revealed to a real or a fake Sensei")
- Ayane and Ami can sprinkle some extremely minor details about the past, and it's all fine; the Nakayamas can make some big reveals, and it's kinda fine. However, whatever Maya does will just break him because it's
from her in a supernatural sense (which aligns with the idea of this looping world being her unbeknownst punishment).
That's why I think "Maya breaking several iterations" and "blackout/reset caused by Angels" might not be entirely orthogonal. All Senseis are constantly being hovered over by angels
s and
k, and causing blackouts when
the time is right. And when they see Maya "make a move" (either revealing too much to him, or straight up fucking him), angels mingle with his mind to "course-correct" SO HARD that previous Senseis who were unfortunately enough to experience it hyperventilated and died.
As for Ami's potential role in resetting Sensei, for now still isn't clear for me, but it won't be surprising if she is involved.
(though with the limited clues we have she being the actual cause is a little Deus ex machina for me; I am too much of a technicality person I admit)
Speculation of course! and there's no saying that there is only one way to reset him.