I need to rant about how people hate Ichigo real fast. People give her sheit for episode 14 about trying to keep zero two and Hiro separated. Why? Zero two was legitimately killing Hiro and did not give any craps about him. The reason the viewer wanted them to get together so badly was because we found out their backstory, and zero two regained her memories about Hiro. How was Ichigo suppose to know that? In her mind Zero Two was trying to devour Hiro's soul. Ichigo loves Hiro and was trying to protect him. Does anyone agree with me?
Spoilers ahead: Hiro had lost pretty much all reasons to live at that point. Because a lot of his memories have been erased his only drive in life is to pilot robots but he can't even do that unless it's with 002.
Personally I was really pissed off because it was a cheap way to slow down the action to a crawl so that they can hype up the moment when they finally get back together. You know they will get back together, you know it's probably very soon but you're forced to watch them go through some bullshit drama before. The fact that what Ichigo did was kinda rapey was just the icing on the cake for me.
ikr.
Imagine being this dude's besto fruend since childhood but then he can't pilot a franxx and is about to leave but then is "saved" by a pink clown with horns. Then when you try to ride a franxx with him it fails miserable, you feel jealous. Later you find out nobody can ride more than 3 times with pink clown, so it's perfectly understandable that you'd want to protect him from his certain end but despite all your efforts, he still goes ahead and somehow survives. It's a mix of several emotions at once and you're just confused as to what to do
I found Ichigo's character to be quite interesting~