[Shinji103]

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

You keep talking about 'exoneration' and 'responsibility'. What exactly is your point by that? Are you saying Saten falling unconscious is the deserved consequence for her to 'take responsibility' for endangering her friends? Or what? How do exoneration and responsibility play into the matter here?

Umm, "exoneration" and "responsibility" play into the matter here, because Saten isn't exonerated of the reponsibility of what has happened to herself and friends from using the Level Upper and giving it to them. She even admitted that she was cared of using it alone. I'm explaining why I can't and don't feel sympathetic to her at all, and why I criticize her for what she did.

Everybody makes mistakes. Saten's, honestly, is not particularly huge. Certainly in no way comparable to taking and handing out drugs . There is nothing inherently wrong about the idea of a level upper--,

Now it's this, I apologize, naive way of thinking that gets people ripped off or hit with drug side effects in the first place. When I see a shady and susicious anything, especially something that has anything to do with affecting my body/mind balance/chemistry, I don't just go "okay, it should be fine to use" or "hey there won't be a problem if I use this thing and get doped with it." What proof or official statistic is there that says Level Upper is safe? This is naivety and negligence, in their most dangerous forms.

and as for the side effects

Spoiler for future events; based on manga:

those are only the effect of the mastermind trying to do something else with the level upper network anyway. If she didn't need the computational power of their brains, there wouldn't even be any side effects.

How does that change the fact that there are side effects of the Level Upper? How does that change the fact it was a suspicious, shady "item" that Saten should have exercised common sense with and gone "Hmm, I have no idea what this will do to me, maybe it'll give me powers, maybe it won't. I think I'll play it safe and not take the fishy mind/body-altering 'drug'."

Spoiler for In reply to Sol's spoiler:

Kiyama is obviously using the Level Upper and taking advantage of all those people who want powers themselves by using the Level Upper as a medium for her to get the usage of these peoples' brains into her network. It's no different from somebody taking advantage of another's naivety and desire for something to rip them off. This is why common sense tells people to be wary of things like this.

Worse, actually, this episode she even admits to Uiharu that she was scared of taking it alone, hence she gave it to her friends, and thus showing us she even suspected herself that it was dangerous. Yet she ignored that fact and gave it to others as well as taking it herself. Then look what happened.
I like the ring of what Simmons said in Transformers RotF: "Sometimes you get to the end of the rainbow, and the Leprachauns went and booby-trapped it."

You laugh sarcastically about the level upper being traded 'suspiciously' under the table just for fun, but yes, basically, that's what it is. Level upper is not being handed out with any malicious intentions towards the user, and is ultimately harmless. I'd feel more sorry for Saten if she hadn't taken this brief opportunity to experience the joy of being an ability user, actually.

Umm, so Saten and her friend falling unconscious from using Level Upper is harmless? Where are you coming up with this? I somehow doubt that Kiyama is spreading this thing around with the users' interests at heart.
So she's not handing out Level Upper with the express purpose of harming the users. Neither do heroine, dope, coke, and ecstasy dealers; they're not dealing drugs to hurt people, they're dealing the stuff for their own goals and purposes, in their case to make money. Are you going to say drug dealing is harmless too?

Originally Posted by Altima of the Gates

Rather than thinking of her giving something dangerous to her friends, look at it this way. She is a middle school student. She is thinking they want it as badly as she does, and since they are her friends, she wants to help them. They have heard all the shady rumors of the Level Upper, and they aren't brainless animals, so they have decided to take it. She didn't force it onto their ears. If they had rejected it as too shady, I'm sure she would have just done it herself eventually, she wouldn't force them to do it. Yes, she didn't want to try using it alone, but they themselves tried it of their own volition. She was ignorant of the side effects until Akemi just collapsed, and she has only seen the good benefits of LU.

If she was so scared of using it that she didn't want to take it alone (a selfish and irresponsible thought in itself), she shouldn't have used it in the first place. Taking it with other people isn't going to prevent her or others from getting hit by whatever side effects it has, and just because they wanted to take it doesn't free Saten from the responsibility of giving it to them to take and possibly die from in the first place.