I am truly lost at whats going to take for people to start liking Ami again
It's quite simple really, she needs to stop being a cunt.
Ever since Chapter 4 she's been insisting she knows best for Sensei and ruining everything she touches in her quest to assert control over him, and the only time she showed any remorse for any of it was when she drew blood from Sensei. Last update she supposedly killed Maya, decapitated her and gifted the head to Sensei. Even in this update, Ayane comes to her outright asking about the time loops despite her never having a reason to know Ayane knew about them, but she still thinks she knows best and threatens to kill Ayane if she reveals it too.
If she had asked "What do you think he would do if I told him the truth?" and then didn't try to play for control again my opinion of her would have skyrocketed, nowhere near best characters of course but right now she's firmly in the Villain I hate to watch camp. Until she stops trying to control Akira she's always going to be on the back foot, and right now she's just casually murdering her supposed friends she's just nothing to care about right now and I play every update hoping for her downfall.
You know who else in chapter 4 was like this? Nu Maya. And until 0.45 - 0.46 when she finally understood Akira's story was real, and then listened to Yasu enough to chill tf out and finally apologising to Akira for being overbearing and finally pouring some of her out out to him, I bounced right back into liking her again. She spent the last cycle in a abusive relationship with Ami and there's probably some commentary to be had there, but her non action was being constantly overshadowed by bow much of a cunt Ami was.
I honestly think a vast majority of the player base would be surprised if Maya just ceased to exist, but wouldn't care if she did. It's obvious Sel wants us to care about Maya. He even stated he was surprised, after she got decapitated in the last update and no one cared about what happened to her. Even though as of recent, she gets at least one L per update she's in. And the biggest L of them all comes from this update. Sel stripped away the most interesting aspect of her character, then proceeded to give her the shaft constantly afterwards. At least when Noriko constantly got the shaft, she had a likeable personality to fall back on. Nu-Maya doesn't even have that. Sel made it hard to like this stripped down version of Maya, when there's nothing left to like.
It didn't affect us as much because it was a cheap shot. The death happened in the first place because Maya was being stupid. How tf can you remember being raped by someone, abused by her all year, have an out and not take it. Again, probably commentary about abusive relationships but again, overshadowed because Ami is being a gigantic cunt again. What did Ami even get out of decapitating Maya and showing her head to Akira. Isn't she supposed to be looking out for him?
Then we literally fix Maya in the next event so we never saw any proper consequences. Nodoka had more consequences with her death simply because she talked to Akira before it happened. And then the update wraps up with a cliffhanger so specific that it killed ALL discussion of the game.
Does anyone remember how the thread was silent 3 days after 0.52? No one really wanted to talk about the killing, I think because it was already fixed (Though there were a bunch of people wondering if there were going to be lasting consequences, there was a chance this would be chapter 5). We had no reference point to theorise what kind of place a interdimensional safe zone outside of Terminal 23 would be like. We had no update to compare what kind of update 0.53 would be like because no previous update has been half main events and the other half being one character's events. We had to previews to give us clues to the update so there was nothing to do.
I'm pretty sure Aramaug's theory about Maya's death and the noodle bar has been the first big theory of 0.52, and that was mere days before 0.53 which had a two month gap.
