[Vicious108]

Originally Posted by Traece

I feel like a lot of people are disappointed in what happened with Makishima because they wanted something cool to happen.

If you're going to quote me, then address my actual points. Don't strawman me, please.

What we got was realism.

Realism is perceived differently by different people. What you found to be realistic can simply appear to be out-of-character behavior in the eyes of others. And a more realistic outcome doesn't necessarily make for a better fictional work. One might consider Makishima and Kougami's confrontation in this episode to be more realistic than Makishima and Akane's confrontation in episode 11, but I'll still take the latter's thrilling events over the former's boring "realism" any day of the week.

Makishima doesn't have a-human fighting abilities.

He doesn't? Then what do you call a skinny bookworm like him completely schooling a guy with twice his physique and who fights for a living? If you're going to talk about realism as if it should be the indisputable goal of any fictional work then that alone threw it out the window.

He just finished a huge fight, he got overconfident, and he wasn't expecting Akane. It makes sense no matter what stick you shake at it.

Not entirely if you take their difference in physical ability into account, but ultimately it doesn't matter, because it being a believable outcome or not was never the reason for my disappointment (again, strawmanning). My problem with it is that what should have been the most enthralling and rewarding scene thus far was instead dull, vapid and a major anti-climax that wasted what appeared to be a much more interesting and complex antagonist (of course, this last part can still be redeemed depending on what happens to him from now on).

Originally Posted by U. N. Owen

And talking about Maki loosing some character depth by taking pleasure in dominating in a physical confrontation? Don't all people delight in that? Granted, going giddy at the thought of carving the defeated up is a bit less common.

In case you missed it, Makishima has been characterized as someone a tad different from "all people". And more importantly, up until now, he was shown to be someone uninterested in base physical stimulation, usually preferring to observe and test those around him and being generally more concerned with the meaning behind one's actions than the actions themselves. So yes, his behavior in this episode did cheapen his character somewhat, in my view.