Machina, Societally Defensive
The Machina are like. Insanely interesting because they are the closest we get to an outright pacifist society, but they're less pacifist and more… defense and protection oriented. This is reflected in like everything about them.
They make some of the only weapons that can hurt Mechon naturally and like, sure, it's likely just for balancing purposes that they do less raw damage than normal weapons w/ enchant, but it can also be seen as a reflection of the Machina. Do what you must to defend yourself, but do not go so far as to purposefully hurt others.
There is a total of ONE monster quest that is not given a plot, and even then it's to protect the Machina Village. Same for the two Unique Monster challenge quests. Every other quest that involves killing Mechon/monsters are explicitly to protect the village/Machina or to allow a Machina to save others.
Then there's Monado Armour, one of the best defensive skills in the game and you get it from some of these "protect the village/stop the Mechon that could hurt us" quests. Because, you know, why not drive home the protective nature of the Machina even further
This seems like a cultural/societal thing to me. Protection and defense comes first for all Machina… except for Egil, maybe.
Even with Egil his offense is a form of pre-emptive defense based on like everything he says. He is doing all these things to protect his home, his world, from destruction. Meyneth Shrine, imo, even implies he wants to protect his people still. It's not until then that he sees them as having betrayed him, which to me implies he still saw them as worth fighting for/saving until then (maybe even after).
Hell, Egil goes out protecting Junks from Zanza. He goes out protecting the future Shulk and his friends could bring about, defending the wishes of Meyneth to the end.
It's just so interesting to think about the way defense/protection play into the mindset of all Machina, especially irt Egil.
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