User blog comment:Striker10/Main Protagonist/@comment-7948498-20131016013412

I believe that Rito already has shown a more serious side to himself whenever he defends or comforts the girls. Maybe they can pull a Yami for the other girls and give them a serious backstory with unresolved issues for Rito to help fix.

Maybe Mikan can reveal why she doesn't call Rito "Oniichan" anymore, or her mixed feelings about being too mature for her age and how she doesn't cannect well with others. I still don't like the thought of Rito and Mikan not being related to each other. That just feels like a forced change in the story just to satisfy Mikan fans.

I think that Rito just needs to grow up a bit (actually, a lot). I like him just fine as an ordinary human boy caught up in huge misadventures while surrounded by aliens. Maybe Rito can reveal a deeper reason why he's such a blockhead around women. But completely changing who he is and giving him some explosive backstory just to make him more special is too forced and unconvincing. That's like an ordinary teenage boy meeting an aging superhero, succeeding him and becoming special and amazing in his own right, only to find out that he is actually that superhero's long lost demi-clone son, or something.

A more obvious idea, though clearly still clichéd, is to reveal that Rito and Lala have met each other in the past, and seem to have been reunited by fate in the present. They actually did that with Yui.

Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is, if you try to evolve and develop a character via a big reveal that completely changes our perspective of the character, you stray very close to "jumping the shark".