What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[KageTokage]

I can't really judge how good Venat's plan was or how justified it was for her to choose to sunder Ancients to stop them from Zodiark sacrifice restoration paln. But, the important part is, what they were preparing to do was very much on scale of evil that Ascians ended up doing down the line. And the moral compass we're expected to follow, I think, is neither Venat nor Convocation, but... our own old self - Azem. Azem who opposed the plan to summon Zodiark AND refused to participate in plan to summon Hydaelyn.

I feel a touch reluctant to call exchanging the lives of ill-defined lifeforms to spare the souls of those who gave themselves to save the world from languishing in purgatory "evil" without deeper context.

The Ascians crossed a line once their plan shifted to involve the lives of sundered mankind, but if we're talking strictly animals and other non-sentient life, they (And mankind as a whole regardless of the era or fiction vs. reality) were already okay with using those beings for their own benefit. In the end, it wasn't even the morality behind the decision that was being opposed but the ideology.

As far as Azem goes, all the evidence suggests that the former instance was simply a case of putting emotions before logic and reason as it's discussed that they had tried several alternatives, exhausted avenues of approach and that Zodiark was an absolute last resort because nothing else was working.