I’m not convinced. If Nao can identify a person through it, there’s no reason why an entire organization supposedly dedicated to finding them can’t. Sure most people don’t take occult seriously, but again, these are evil scientists who are experimenting on superpowered children; occult magazines are a great place to search for clues. Something doesn’t add up; it could be bad writing, or the evil scientists don’t actually exist or at least aren’t nearly as resourceful as Nao leads us to believe.
Ayumi is going to die because she actually got experimented on as a kid. It would explain why her character is so incredibly boring and flat, only ever able to foreshadow things.
Did the flying remind anyone of the opening with Nao+Yu? I think this power will play a role later on, like powers getting used by other characters. If powers are a reflection of a person’s personality/aspirations, then maybe they disappear as they lose their aspirations due to graduating from high school (aside from the similarities to Angel Beats, this is a common theme in Japanese culture/anime of like, high school is the only time you can have dreams because after that is SADNESS AND DESPAIR AS YOU BECOME A COG IN THE SOCIETAL MACHINE FOREVER). Powers could correlate to “strength of feelings” because anime and feelings, which could then be (psuedo) replicated by others. Example: Nao dreams of filming a ZHIEND PV -> filming herself flying through the sky? -> she becomes able to fly.
Eh, I thought it was obvious that this “school” is as much a school as the one full of fake Nao friends. Maybe secretly evil, maybe not, but either way, if it’s really the only place where superpowered teenagers are safe from evil scientists (whose existence I’m beginning to doubt with each passing episode), it’s far more interested in gathering these people for whatever good/evil intentions as opposed to being an actual school. All school appearances it has are just that - appearances for those unaware about powers.
Here’s another baseless theory: Nao’s brother isn’t crazy from evil scientists. It’s what happens to people who can’t mentally cope with losing their powers. This happened to bullying girls’ friends, and so they are pissed their friends still ended up crazy despite being “saved” from the evil scientists. Nao keeps her mouth shut about this for reasons.