Akira being extremely inexperienced is showing here. It's actually depicted quite well. He doesn't really know what to do, especially when the princess and others aren't around. He would have probably done quite well in an organised battle where he would be surrounded by friendly people, but now, first time fighting the Oder and in a totally chaotic situation, he's basically proceeding following trial and error, as much as his imagination allows.
Suddenly summoning a copy of someone present is pretty wild, though. I don't remember if I've seen that before. Naturally characters creating clones of themselves if quite commonplace, but this is something else.