Headscratchers / Next Gen

• Greenwood after having a change of heart says she didn't mean to hurt Mai. Greenwood also ordered her robots to hold Mai down so she could beat her up, leaving Mai visibly bruised for a good chunk of the movie.
  • Children and Adolescents have a limited capacity to understand the harm they inflict in others. That capacity grows as they age and varies by individual but there is an extended period of time where the ability to fully parse causing physical harm or pain is limited. That would be why you have children who accidentally seriously injure their peers react with shock or surprise since they didn't really grasp the full consequences.
    • The point is that when you intentionally render someone helpless and then attack them while they can't fight back, it's not an "accident". She clearly did mean to hurt Mai. But it's also common for children to downplay what they do when they feel guilty about it.
    • As mentioned children and adolescents have a limited capacity to parse that others experience pain and suffering the same way they do. While Greenwood clearly meant to hurt Mais body she didn't realize her repeated abuse was pushing Mai toward violent retaliation, let alone the threat of homicide. The physical bullying wasn't properly recognized for how serious it was and was subconsciously classed as just another social behavior until Mai responded in kind. At that point the "is this what I've been inflicting on others" realization kicked in.
    • Of course, there's also a distinction at most ages between physical and emotional harm, with emotional harm being considered the more damaging of the two. While she certainly meant to cause Mai physical pain, it was realizing she'd actually driven Mai to almost attacking her that led to her Heel Realization.
• 7723 claims to restore his weapons he will need to reset his memories so he'd be useless in a fight not knowing who to fight or why, only when he does it he remembers everything for a very long time with individual memories only deleted every minute and has enough time to defeat Ares.
  • It was done that way for rule of drama.
  • It's a legitimate point to make if 77 doesn't know how long it would take and/or if he assumed the transfer speed was instantaneous; he'd forget who he's meant to be fighting. Perhaps 77 realized he could slow down the purge speed to buy himself more time?
• How in the world has Mai, a young girl, been out in the open for long periods of time all by herself without being kidnapped or something!?
  • We see lots of security and police robots around the city that are able to respond almost instantaneously. People probably wouldn't try that, or at least would be stopped quickly if they did. Also Mai is shown to be pretty capable in a fight, so anyone that tried would probably get fought off - note how she's sending Qbots flying with single kicks in the climax and swings around machine parts as though they're no heavier than a baseball bat.
  • Also, just because someone's young and on their own doesn't mean people will want to kidnap them.
• So why are the Grainland police no help in the climax anyway? They showed they have tons of firepower during the chase scene.
  • Most of that firepower seemed to be automated, probably made by IQ robotics. Of course Ares would have spent time and effort figuring out how to keep them from interfering maybe even programmed a backdoor, after all, he's been planning this for a while.
  • also, upon rewatching the climax, the police do send some of those flying bricks or troop carriers or whatever they are to the climax and Ares shoots them down without even looking, so maybe he decided not to bother.
• Why exactly do the police have missile launchers anyway?
  • Stopping runaway robots, presumably. The interview segment implies there are companies besides IQ that make robots, so even if we ignore the possibility of IQ themselves having malfunctioning runaways, other companies could end up with them instead.