Dominus comments

@mmwkdw

Okay, let's go.

Let's assume that the company actually did steal the novel and use the material without creditting him. Let's assume that the team working directly on the animation based on this material is entirely aware that this material was stolen. Let's assume it was their intent to use and take credit for the stolen material for themselves. These are some pretty decent sized "if"s already but let's roll with them because they really don't help your case when it gets down to it.

Now, here's the thing. A lot of those people even with those assumptions... They had nothing to do with his novel. They'd done nothing wrong in relation to him. They were just having another day at the office, working on their own projects. There were, undoubtedly a lot of people in the building who weren't related to the project on which accused them of stealing. This is a large animation studio, they're typically working on multiple projects in multiple teams at a time. The people who worked on Violet Evergarden were not neccessarily the same people who produced Liz to Aoi Tori. This is common logic.

So, even if we can take it as this being enough to justify him being pushed over the proverbial edge... Even if we can take it as this being enough to justify murder... The method he took to accomplish this murder was such that he undoubtedly knew he would catch many unrelated to him in the crossfire. He knew he was killing people who hadn't neccessarily done anything wrong to him. He knew that people who were just there, doing their jobs and working to create works that they could be genuinely proud of would be caught in the crossfire. Yet he took their lives in one of the cruelest, most sickenning ways imagineable.

He slaughtered many potentially innocent people simply because they worked at the company he'd felt snubbed by. Regardless of whether they'd stolen his work or not, he still killed people who had not directly wronged him at all... And he didn't care. He stood out the front of that door, pouring gasoline onto the building to set them all ablaze. It's only a pity that the fire he'd set hadn't taken its weight in karma and finished burning him alive along with them.

All that's left is the grim satisfaction that the scars he suffered from this attempt will likely plague him for the rest of his life. It may be too much to hope for that he might have enough of a conscience that the faces of the innocent which he so happily slaughtered might haunt his dreams and nightmares for the rest of his life so as to lend weight to the crime he committed. He doesn't deserve the rope, it is too easy. He deserves to continue on to live an empty, pointless life filled with nothing but sadness and pain until he either dies or takes his own life. At the very least he deserves to spend a lifetime of forced service to the families of those who suffered, trying to make up for the weight of the sin he has committed.

Do not treat his wounds. Do not tend to his mind. He deserves both the pain and the insanity he brought upon himself.