#But also Shidou has shown zero interest or ability to actually help or understand Amane in any way

[weather-cluddy]

Man, today's question really reminded of how little interest Shidou seems to have in Amane as a person. He says he's frustrated that he doesn't have the time to "do something" about her, but even when she approached him, he didn't even try to reason with her or comfort her.

She tries to warn him that he's committing an unforgivable sin that will damn everybody, he's just like "Now, what could you be talking abooout? Anyways, just stop worrying about it and help me, okay?". And when she insists, his reply is "Ok, wow, you're so spoiled. Your parents must've been real soft on you until now, but that's not gonna fly with me, alright? I'm a responsible adult, I'm going to ignore you no matter how much of a brat you are"

He just dismissed Amane's very obvious mental breakdown as a mere temper tantrum, presuming that Amane doesn't truly care about anything she's espousing and that she's just trying to test boundaries. May I also point out how Shidou makes zero mention of Amane in his voice drama, either as a threat or as somebody who, like Fuuta and Mahiru, is in a precarious mental state?

And that casts a really different light on what "having the other adults deal with Amane" is supposed to mean. Is it really about making her more able to cope with the situation? Or just getting her out of the way? If it's about helping her, why does it matter so much that the adults do it?

Say, Muu and Haruka are in the best physical and mental shape out of everybody, and they have plenty of free time. Since Haruka says they're "sticking close" to Shidou, why doesn't he take a moment to suggest they should try to spend a little time with her, make her feel a bit better? Even if they can't convince her to change her mind, it'd at least useful to know in more detail what she's planning, right? After all, Shidou is willing to put his utmost ideal (dying to atone for his sins) on hold for the sake of the injured prisoners. Surely he must be very concerned about anything that could threaten their care, right?

Even if you take is as meaning "Well, the adults have the duty to care for the younger ones, so everyone under eighteen is exempt for responsibility", it's kind of really weird to put all the responsibility on three people having their own mental and physical breakdowns (Mahiru, Mikoto and Fuuta), one guy who said re:Amane that "we can't worry about that now" and "We'll just wait until the situation changes" last time Shidou spoke to him, and who's carrying the weight of being the only line of defense against Kotoko (Kazui) and one woman who's already taking mental care of Mahiru and also doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with anyone else (Yuno). Does a few years of age really give you that much more capability, such that it outweighs everything else going on?

So the fact that Shidou takes the trouble of specifying that an adult ought to help Amane really sounds like he's, at best, blinded by ideology. Only adults can help Amane because only adults are capable of taking meaningful action on anything, and only they have real ideological commitments that can beat a child's silly whims. At worst, Shidou is annoyed that Amane is threatening his worldview of "adults act, children obey", so he wants somebody to step in and bring her back into line. Of course, that person has to be an adult if they're to truly reinforce his perspective instead of opening a different kind of hole into it.

And this is hardly the first time he dismisses a child's thoughts on the basis of their age. In Molech, when Es tells him to treat them with respect as the warden, Shidou's answer is essentially "But we DO have a big age difference, so everything else is irrelevant. Let me pat your head to show how much I pity you, total stranger who's already annoyed at me for being condescending". At this point, either Shidou is being deliberately obnoxious or he's so thoroughly drunk his own kool-aid that it doesn't even register on the shallowest level when a kid tells him not to do something. Kids just go agoo-goo until they hit eighteen, yeah? No need to listen to their babbling.

And it's not just Shidou treating Es as both warden and child, he doesn't seem to have any respect for their ability to form their own opinion as a warden either. He literally goes "Hey, why go through the trouble of actually looking at evidence? Just take me at my word, way easier and faster". Even though by this point it's also obvious how much pride Es takes on being the guard and carrying out Milgram's mission, and that they don't necessarily trust Shidou. Again, either mockery or a frightful failure of basic pattern-recognition when the pattern doesn't match what Shidou expects from a child.

And to tie this back to Shidou's "my heart goes out to you" comment, sure, he's so concerned about any mental toll being the warden might take on Es… But he's still insisting on being murdered by them. Why? Surely Shidou of all people would know that murder can be hard on the killer. And if he wanted to die so badly, surely he can wait until Milgram is over and kill himself then, right? No need to make it Es' responsibility.

One of his last lines in the VD is "I feel sorry that you had to be given this role. And, I truly apologise for being so insistent about sentencing me to death as well… But, you’re perfect. You’ll give me the ending I’m most suited for." So apparently the thing is that being murdered by a child, specifically, would be very satisfying to Shidou, and Es' pain is secondary to that.

Kinda undermines all that talk about how tragic the situation is, doesn't it? In one of the app conversations, we see him being overwhelmed by sadness while grading Amane's homework, and he says "If everything about MILGRAM is true… why did a child like you have to become a murderer? Just imagining what sort of circumstances must have led to that, it makes me so sad…". But apparently his sadness isn't so strong that it'll stop him from setting up that sort of circumstances.

The only way this makes sense to me if it's he's subsumed Es' choices into his own so utterly that he can't imagine anybody, not even Es, could possibly hold them responsible if they did kill Shidou. It was simply suicide with Es acting as a tool for it, no more guilty than a bullet. I'm sure you can see how utterly dismissive this is of Es' autonomy.

TL;DR: I'm sure Shidou loves the idea of children, but so far he's been severely lacking in empathy for actual children when they deviate from his concept of how they ought to be or when their wellbeing comes in conflict with his ideals.