[Sol Falling]

A late reply for Triple_R's inquiry...but also this:

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

Anyhow, if you cannot comprehend why cutting someone's oxygen supply off is dangerous and why you can't just learn these incapacitation skills instantly, I really think you should stop posting on this matter. Unless you tell me you regularly subdue dangerous people safely on a regular basis.

Tl;dr it's much easier to hurt someone than subdue someone.

This may pretty much be a difference in experience/upbringing, but to my knowledge/understanding, concussive blows are much more dangerous/permanently damaging than a minor asphyxiation. The punch honestly came off as very bad to me, and I also indicated that I thought a quick chokehold would be safer in reality than putting Moeka out by way of a blow to the head. I think that trivializing the danger of Moeka's punch to the face itself shows a dangerous lack of awareness or responsibility. It is not okay to punch someone in the head unless you want to permanently damage them.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Sol... don't you think Okabe kind of has a right to hate (or at least strongly dislike) Moeka based on how he witnessed her kill Mayuri in cold blood?

In my view, Okabe shows empathy simply by restraining himself to delivering a lone punch, and saying some harsh words to Moeka while he had her pinned down.

If he had went any further than he did, I'd be inclined to agree with you, but the fact is that this is pretty restrained for a man confronting the person who he equates with his best friend's killer. Personally, I see such restraint as a sign of basic human empathy; a recognition that this is another human being that he's dealing with here, so while taking a measure of revenge on her is understandable, he shouldn't totally brutalize or lynch her either. But for Okabe to not want to take any measure of revenge on Moeka would not merely be showing human empathy, it would indeed be him acting like a total Saint, as Archon alluded to. And that's a standard that's higher than what I'm prepared to expect of an anime character outside of a magical girl anime.

From my personal perspective, hate doesn't even make sense until you have acquired a reasonable understanding of motivation. Just because someone has done wrong to you, doesn't make them evil, because this world is to put it simply too small for all of us and we're already trampling over other lives as it is. So for me Mayuri's death is in itself a very poor reason to succumb to hate. The selfish response of simplistically saying "You hurt me or mine, that means you are my enemy and I don't give a damn about your circumstances" is to me by comparison the single most destructive way of approaching the universe.

Contrarily, I can actually somewhat understand Okabe's frustration at the very moment he witnessed Moeka's complete obsession with FB, and the way she was not even responding to anything else. It's not a "You killed Mayuri!" thing, but a "Do you even realize what you have done? You killed Mayuri for something miserable like this?" sort of feeling.

However, implicit in the act of "understanding, then hate" is that you already understand. And in this way, resisting the emotional descent into hate is always possible.

It's not really about whether Okabe has a 'right' or not; humans will always do what they do, regardless of its legitimacy. I am not judging him so much as a person than judging his actions in this single particular circumstance. I think it is always unfortunate when hate is chosen over acceptance (of reality, at least) because hate ultimately does not even do anything for the hateful person him/herself. I don't think it takes a saint not to hate others so much as simply an awareness of the burden that you yourself represent and a willingness to seek understanding.

In any case, foregoing hate itself does not deny resistance or the ability to take action when necessary. Self-sacrifice might be what I would refer to as sainthood. Self-restraint is, in my opinion, nothing all that extraordinary.

Fact is that many people in Okabe's position would have gone all the way here. They would have literally killed Moeka, and/or brutalized her like she was a Jigsaw victim in a Saw movie. They likely would have considered it justice in the name of Mayuri. Personally, I'm thankful that Okabe isn't that much into revenge, at least. Going into this episode, I was expecting Okabe's inevitable meeting with Moeka to be dark and brutal, it just went on longer than I thought it would, thus starting to be discomforting to me after awhile. Did people really think that Okabe would go easy on Moeka given how he witnessed her kill Mayuri?

I didn't like this darker side of Okabe, and I hope we don't see much more of it, but given the extenuating circumstances, I think you're weighing it way too heavily against him.

:P You could say intellectually I'm something of a Buddhist. But indeed, this is the standard to which I hold myself so I don't think it's too much to ask of a main character (Okabe might not be perfect, but in the end he is still acting out these generic good intentions of empathy/sympathy). Whatever the feelings of various members of the audience, for the nature of Steins;Gate as a work and the culture it came from the idea that Okabe could have lynched or brutalized Moeka to exact revenge on her was, to me, never even a remote possibility.