Considering aptitude is gotten from just a body scan, I doubt that Houki can rigged her exam result, and remember that aptitude is decided from birth, so most likely you can't rigged that, unless you're a certain genius.
But really, my qualm with Houki's upgrade is not in the upgrade itself, but in the way she got her upgrade. She can be stronger than Chifuyu for all I care, but make the upgrade more flowing, not just "You're upgraded because your genius sister who happened to be the creator of IS wants you to be". That was just bad plot writing IMO. I would hate it too if Ichika suddenly become hax piloting wise just because Chifuyu suddenly decide to let Ichika inherit her skill without training whatsoever, or Charlotte, or Cecilia, or anyone in that matter. Make somebody good either by background story(Cecilia, Laura), hard work(Charlotte, Cecilia), or story development(Ichika, although his development hasn't showed much in his case due to his idiotic nature
), not some deus ex machina. In Gundam's reference, it would be as if Amuro suddenly become better at piloting MS than Char because the creator of Gundam wants him to be and upgrade his piloting skill through the Gundam's interface(which didn't happened. Amura become as great as Char through experience. The only reason he can get a draw with Char in the early story is because his unit is vastly superior to Char, not his piloting skill).
Well, no point debating more about it until the author reveals more next volume, but it certainly has made the rating of this series goes down a lot in my list
.
I don't think that was as literal as you said here. The appearance that Ichika doesn't recognize refers to Houki's beauty and feminism that grow when he wasn't with her IMO.
About author favoritism make him lose popularity, it will certainly happened in a harem story because some of the other girl's shipper will stop following the story once the author decide on a main girl to be the winner, but not as major as n0m@n thinks. It always happen in harem story unless the author establish who the main male protagonist likes from the start of the story.
Summary will wait till later today. I'm at the office now and don't bring my copy of here of course.