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Oh, about the personality of Orimura Ichika...
He is viewed as a strong-willed and righteous type.
Remember that the social status for male is in the crapper - for a simple reason that female can use IS while male can't.
All women are possible candidate for critical national asset - IS pilot - while men don't even get a chance to be a candidate.
And that means all women gets special treatment that men cannot receive.
(Also, married men have virtually no chance of winning a divorce suit... )
For that reason, most men tend to either lay low or become submissive toward women.
But it's a little different from a typical female-dominated world, because women still need to marry men, and they definitely don't want to marry loser.
It's possible that women are unable to catch up with the drastic change in social status.
True, there are a few women who mistreat men, but those are only fraction of all women.
Contrary to the change in social status, most women tend to look for strong - preferably both physically and mentally - and dependable men as their love interest and possible candidate for spouse.
Also, the girls in IS Academy are another reason for his popularity.
The fact that they entered highly competitive IS Academy means they are elite, and most probably were educated from very young to become IS pilots.
That means school with special IS-related curicullar, which in turns mean girls-only school
(It's waste of tax money to run IS-related curicullar in a school with boy students.)
So, they didn't get to socialize with boys from very young,
Thus, the girls in IS Academy are not very experienced in socializing with boys of similar age.
Finally, the mind-set of Ichika, combined with all the reasons above, is what makes him so popular among girls.
For an example, in EP01, Ichika asks for handicap(on his side) when challanged for duel by Cecilia.
Considering the fact that Cecilia is well-trained national representative candidate and already has personal IS, everyone in the classroom was expecting Ichika to ask for handicap(on Cecilia's side)
※Ichika did not have his personal IS by then, and thus no training time. Also, his only experience with IS was his first 20mins activation time during entrance exam. (This part was not covered in Anime)
But he did the opposite, and while other girls(uncluding Cecilia) considered him as ridiculous, it is highly possible that internally, they viewed him as confident and strong individual.
※Of course, he would needs to win the duel(or at least leave a strong impression) in order to gain the latter impression. Losing the duel in one-sided match would only result in him proving himself to be a ridiculous loser.
Nevertheless of the change in social status, Ichika views girls as someone he should protect. (although the girls in IS Academy are probably stronger... both in hand-to-hand fight and IS battle)
This old-fashioned mind set of chivalry, combined with the current social status for gender, makes him appear as confident, strong-willed and dependable male.
(BTW, Chihuyu educated Ichika this way... mostly through brute force)
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