1. They're armed with cannons, with a maximum range of 5km. It's interesting to note that Touma was able to block one of those cannon fire, so they are mostly magic base.
2. Itsuwa was kinda cute, she spent the whole volume just giving wet towel to Touma
Her friends call it the 'Towel Battle Plan', it seems that all the Amakusa gang knows that she likes him and were edging her to take stronger actions- But it was not mentioned why...
Oh I guess I should mention, aside from their leader, all the members of Amakusa seems to fear/respect Touma. Aside from single handedly stand up to 250 roman catholic battle nuns, he is also the man who had seen their priestess aka Kanzaki naked, took a blow from Nanasen, and walked away from it alive
3. Ursula gets alot more wordtime this round. Moving away from her role as the in-her-own-world helpless damsel, it's her turn to become the Heroine and take part in the rescue of Anieze and her Nuns. The Ursula in this volume is shown to be more confident in herself, she was the one that brought the Nuns together. She was also decribed to have a very
'womanly' feel about her... I suppose this means mature and lady-like?
4. In contrast, Anieze takes the role as the damsel in distress. After the failure in volume 7, Anieze and her 250 nuns were punished to work on board the Queen's Fleet. She is fated to be sacrificed in activation of the
La regina del mar Adriatico. Comedy-wise, lets just say that Touma pulled a "Walking Church"stunt on her as well
In all honesty, it was Sister Angela and Lucia that were featured more than Anieze herself, throughout the entire story they were the ones who wouldn't give up and abandon Anieze. It's not all serious stuff though- There was one scene where Angela lifted Lucia's skirt for all to see, just to get everyone's attention