As a side note, I totally forgot about the other people that supposedly inhabited Sensei's body. Could someone please remind me, were there ever clarifications about who inhabited his body in previous cycles, and how much different their personalities & actions were? I feel like ever since Maya realized that the original Sensei came back, this part of the mystery was rarely addressed again.
Apart from him just generally sleeping around, the only specific thing that I can remember are the "rapey detentions" for Yumi, but even then I don't really understand what this means and whether this was done by the original Sensei pre presets or by one of his impostors
Likely himself, as New Maya is just Maya as well. The "it's finally you again" from Maya is likely her saying that "it's finally the you that can remember who you are without imploding". Remember that if it was someone else in his body there'd be no reason for them breaking when hearing Maya saying she loved them, and that happened a whole lot. She's probably the top reason for most of them being factory reset.
It's very unlikely that it was other people inhabiting his body, but rather that without his memories or Pareidolia/Himawari conspiring to make him remember, he'd just be another person, because in the end our memories are a huge part of who we are. He can't be Akira without them.
Furthermore, I don't think this Akira is special persay, more that everything conspired to enable him remembering and thus become a more whole Akira. Or perhaps they interfered this time exactly because with this Akira it was possible, hard to say, but I'm leaning towards more of the former than the latter.
Edit: To keep up with the trend of me quoting the same obscure quotes all the time:
"Forget everything you know about love. Forget everything you know about her. Only then can you be saved." Well, that's what happens everytime Akira was factory reset, he forgot everything about being assaulted and groomed, he was freed from Sekai's influence to the utmost extent he could have been - obviously some stuff will remain, but for the most part, he was freed. And that was not enough, because how could it have been when the price for that is also losing who he is?
So, this time, they're trying to make him remember (something never done before as per xoanon/NAO's comment), in an effort to make him face his trauma and grow from it, either by rejecting it (likely Himawari's route) or fully embracing it (Pareidolia's route). It's possible Wires is also changing to that camp (given his actions in restoring his memories), though he's also sending mixed signals about it (as his plan is making a world where everything bends to Akira's will).
