Death Parade

[Buffalobiian]

Their souls fall, but spiral together and finally merge. If Mayu was being secretly punished for making a selfish choice, their souls would have been separated or she would have gone in a separate elevator.

The final image of the dolls holding hands reveals their fate. There is far less meaning to the masks than you're giving them credit for. They only indicate direction, not the judgment.

But, then why do they not hop into the elevator that's already going to hell? The only point of taking the Heaven elevator only to swap it would be:

1) a change of mind
2) a trick.

As for the judgement system, it's a game of who cracks first. It's not about how sad or sorry or regretful people are for their wrongs. It's about how corruptible they are, not much they repent afterwards.

Whether that should be the correct metric is the question, but I do think that for what they're trying to do (measure maximum darkness), the Arbiters are doing an awfully good job at it.

People are actually not complex. Just a slight difference can send them tumbling one way or the other. If Mayu hadn't been so innocent in her love, Harada might have not been redeemed. If the kid hadn't been pushed over the edge just to see if he would fall, he might have displayed to the cop that people are capable of resisting the need to continue delivering "justice."

But that is complex, and much more complex than the way Arbiters look at humans. From their view, they see fear as the only key motivator in humans. If they sin when provoked they're bad. If they hold out they're good.

That's the simplest look on humans we've seen here. If we weren't so complex, Decim wouldn't struggle to understand us. He wouldn't be reading everything at face value.