Really random point, but as Akira starts emulating his speech pattern from "Lavender's Green" with Io, he smells Spring:
So yeah, Pareidolia was probably involved in that too. Which isn't a surprise, but hey, I'm replaying it and seeing it first hand again. Which begs a different question in that, if Pareidolia was ever just something he could put the blame on, maybe this really was all Akira? (Lavender's Green, 1999 PC CLASSIC, and the Karin assault?).
I would assume what happened there was either the time with Io reminded Sensei of his groomed memories with Sekai (the core memory part) and thus he started automatically acting on them, or he became under the influence of one of the gods due to a similar downward spiraling monologue pattern being observed in
Lavender Green, but that god won't be Pareidolia.
The reasons for that are that:
- This was still in Ch3 when HOPE still reigned. The idea of the weakest god already doing shenanigans before Ch4 feels bizarre.
- Unlike the "USER2 has sent you 6M Molly affection points!" in
Lavender Green and the whole inner bickering with Pareidolia in
Paranoid, there is no substantial cue that could effectively lead to Pareidolia. Fonts and presentation style are not enough for me.
- Mostly importantly, at that time Sensei has nothing he blamed himself for to a serious degree, not even the incident with Molly which he couldn't remembered and was only afraid to find out the truth. The scapegoat excuse by Pareidolia thus is not applicable here. My understanding of scapegoat excuse is that Sensei would start hating Pareidolia instead of himself over, specifically, Maya Prime's death (i.e., not his general trend of nihilistic self-hatred which he has always been brazen about). That means, Pareidolia should not be the cause of any ruckus when the reason for needing a scapegoat has yet to arrive.
