I thought Sakurai said that Nova did have malicious intent, I'm pretty sure I heard it from you too. Did he go back on that or?
First of all, apologies for taking so long to reply. Still, I feel like it's worth answering this one in case there are more people confused about this.
Sakurai has never stated that Nova acted out of malice in either Super Star or Air Riders. He has only said the exact opposite in that one interview from March.
Moreover, I think that Nova not being villainous is an idea that made Star Dream work especially well in Robobot. The Mother Computer merged with Haltmann was a great way of showing what levels of destruction a clockwork star would be capable of if its intentions were malicious. So, while I obviously can't prove it, it feels to me like HAL were aware of Sakurai's intentions with Nova and built the Access Ark part of Star Dream around them 🤔
As for you having heard that from me: I'm sorry, but that's impossible. I could've speculated it in some post or been sad about Air Rider's badly-written story, but I would never try to pass it as a fact, when Sakurai had not addressed Nova's morality at that point yet.
Side note: the way Nova was portrayed in Road Trip has felt awfully out-of-character to me since day one. After that interview from March, I now feel like... that might've been Sakurai's intention, and that the clock was meant to come off as acting out-of-character. Except the man did not take into account how many people already had the headcanon that Nova was evil and that she e.g. wanted to ram into Popstar in Super Star. If that's the case, then it must've been a rude awakening for him when he saw how people reacted to Air Riders' story on the internet and realised those things about his characters that he thought were obvious, were actually obvious mostly to himself 😶
