Again, short post, but it'll hopefully help McHaggis and Daxam with their posts.

Akio's mother is also a kinda NPC. It's really to create some link to Jian and Akio. Just to help shrink the world a bit so there's a reason for them to meet eventually. She's not that important so if you want to use her for speech and such it's not going to matter too much.