Really liking the new stuff. Looking at Carol's Wild Kick in action for the first time had me afraid that it would be the ultimate bane of midbosses the world over, but it's surprisingly well-balanced. Strong, but not overpowered.
Speaking of balance, I noticed a couple of things in the Academy that you might want to have a look at.
Sometimes, when clearing the last target in a room while falling, the "Clear" text, final time listing, and "New Record" (if applicable) tends to clump together. It got really bad once in Stage 11 for me, but I've also seen it happen in Stage 3. On a side note, it was getting pretty tough to get a good example picture of this.
Is the edge of the stage supposed to act like a normal wall that can be climbed or bounced from? It completely trivializes Stage 13 for Carol.
Are you supposed to be able to attack during the "Ready" countdown? It can only really be abused in Stage 14, but still.
EDIT: Couple of other things I noticed and didn't want to doublepost about.
An issue I had with earlier versions of the game that recently returned to my attention. Occasionally, when using Lilac's boost ability, she skips straight to the boost instead of charging for a moment and then boosting. It seems to occur completely at random and it's always an angled shot. Worst of all, it always seems to happen when I'm trying to get a forward shot. If it helps, I use a wired XBox360 controller to play this and the pad sometimes likes to think I'm pressing up or down as well as to the sides.
In the Mahjong minigame, the game got stuck after I clicked on the Stop button. The pieces disappeared, but the "Win" text never appeared. The background and all the animating bits kept doing their thing, but I couldn't move the cursor and couldn't back out of the minigame. Had to Alt+F4 out. I had been playing for a while when this happened, though.
If you pause and quit during the silent moments when you beat the first snake boss then re-enter the stage (without backing out to the title screen), the stage music will start normally, then suddenly stop when the title card comes in. Getting to the first snake boss seems to remedy this, as does dying. On that note, if you die to the boss in question, the "Act 1" boss theme still plays when you respawn at the checkpoint. I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned before for previous versions.