I can absolutely see every example you brought up as Ami faking not knowing. Mind you, Ami would have shared Akira with Maya countless times by then. Even if it's fragmented memories, it falls into the explanation Maya herself gives: Ami is playing a game. And she only acts out in a violent manner if the game is disturbed to a certain degree. As for her not knowing, Ami straight says she has known all along so I mean... I don't see how that's up for debate, unless one assumes she only gained knowledge of it at a certain point through possession or recovery of her own memories.
As for her teasing Akira and Maya about it, she does it all the time. One other instance is her talking about how "someone" took their spare key and she had to change all the locks. She prods them to mark territory. As for the "breed your niece", that same event has her telling Akira that they both see things that no one else can see, so that would further reinforce them both knowing about resets (her more than him), rather than disprove it.
This is similar what I mentioned in my most original post, but what I failed to elaborate is that "I believe early Ami and recent Ami are knowledge-wise not the same person". Therefore, I do not need to force myself to see things as Ami faking it when past interactions were not situations where
Ami was clearly faking it. Meanwhile, your idea is that "early Ami knowledge-wise has always been the exact same person as recent Ami the whole time". In order for that to work, you have to see things as Ami always faking it (not just when she's with Maya; it has to be every single moment) because
you have to.
I.e., you're supporting your claim with a subjective lens, and you'll have to offer something that's
other than "because recent Ami knows so the early Ami must've known as well" and can do a clear demonstration on how much early Ami knew in order to prove your case. And I will go a step ahead and say that the spare key incident and the "they both see things that no one else can see" you mentioned will not be valid unless you can prove that what those are insinuating is exactly the same as what you claim. As in, you need to elaborate on how those connect to early Ami knew stuff and more importantly, how those connect ONLY to that and not some unused side plots or pretentious red herrings on Selly's end.
How my brain deals with this dilemma is exactly like you proposed, however: I assumed that Ami gained/regained knowledge at a certain point (or more violently, she got swapped either physically or mentally like Sensei iterations' situation) and facilitated the transformation of early jolly Ami to recent evil Ami. My headcanon is that I assume it happened when Ami got crucified, but in reality I am not 100% sure when/how/why. Getting triggered by reset talks or great disturbances in the game sounds appealingly plausible as well, but again the point is that: until that happens in the story, we don't need to see early Ami the same person as recent Ami, both knowledge-wise and sinister-wise (unless you manage to prove that it happened extremely early on that is).
I will die on this hill, I believe we are all ultimately victims of confirmation bias and will interpret past interactions to what fits our own views. To me it is not clear whatsoever that Ami has any form of prior knowledge of her own (by that I exclude any God and Sekai involvement). She really does act like a horny teenage girl that is really into her uncle and wants what's best for her friends. At least at the beginning of the game.
That's my hill move over!
I honestly quite like the idea of Ami being the ultimate antagonist this whole time, but these past interactions are far from qualified as any form of justification. If an argument is something similar to "Ami faked it" or "Ami planned it", then you create this argument not because
it's obvious from these scenes that Ami masterminded everything, but because
it's a subjective but necessary bias required for your hypothesis to work, and you can't use the goal you're trying to prove as the validation of your proof (if that makes sense).
In other words, one will need additional but very direct materials to prove the same concept from a different angle to cement the idea "early Ami already knew shit and/or planned shit just like recent Ami did". If the newest aggressive Ami came out and confessed about something the early jolly Ami did in Ch1 actually being an elaborate plot of hers, I'd yield. If the early jolly Ami every once in a while had those "silent evil heh" frames the newest aggressive Ami so commonly showed, I'd yield. These would help avoid pitfalls like neglecting the easier options on the table and going for the more arguable options not because they're more possible, but because they're required for the sake of the theory.
