Forum - View topicTen Years of Death Note: Is Light The Bad Guy?
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DuelGundam2099
 Posts: 533 |
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Except FBI agents are trained for combat and would easily beat Light in a direct fight, plus they did jeopardize his existence, so this is wrong.
The system, one person is still one person and easy to replace, a system would easily survive over a century.
So most of the population of the southeastern US? (I'm from there, most people think that way to some degree)
Because most of them never come into contact with a Death Note for long. Not to mention Teru did have similar thinking in mind when he was using it, so this statement is wrong.
I felt the exact opposite, it screamed coward and spinelessness.
Except that was Mellow that killed him; on top of that "empire" would imply more than just him.
Nope, still an anti-hero, even the author blatantly admitted he took no sides to the morals and ethics. |
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FackuIkari
 Posts: 411 Location: Argentina |
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Of course he's the bad guy, having that kind of power will corrupt you to the core and more people like Light who already had a massive ego. Sure he made some f***ed up things but, global crime rates reduced by over 70% in six years, numbers don't lie.
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Mune
Posts: 379 Location: Minnesota |
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This actually makes me reflect on how this series panned out. We originally get the impression that Light is the good guy from the beginning. Hell, his name is "Light", an indicator that he must be good. I believe the issue is how he kept his identity secret for so long and why he used the death note.
Awkwardly as it sounds, I believe that Code Geass took this idea and played it out to serve a larger goal. Both protagonists (Light and Lelouch) are very much alike, but live in vastly different environments. spoiler[While I'm not sure how far Light got trying to get rid of crime (as he was the main perpetrator of murder for years), I imagine that it did have world altering changes to crime (maybe just the amount of televised reports of crime to feed Light's ego). Whereas Lelouch went straight to a source of oppression and war and ended up becoming the thing he hates most, in a way becoming a martyr for his cause. Can we call Light a martyr also?] Truth be told, Death Note has had an impact on the anime industry, as well as other media- where we can sympathize with the protagonist, even though they may be evil? There is no black and/or white; just a multitude of grays/greys. The moment we make Light the white (hero), L becomes the black (villain); and I do not believe anyone wanted L to be depicted as such. Last edited by Mune on Fri Mar 18, 2016 12:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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KitsuneBella
Posts: 16 Location: Philadelphia, PA USA |
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I read the companion book Death Note: How to Read it by the creators, Ohba and Obata and Ohba pretty much said the same thing in supposition. That if Light never found the Death Note, or even began to use it, he would continue to go on with his normal every day life. I also don't agree with this article either on whether or not Light was a villain. Being a villain means that Light had set himself up to do evil from the start and I don't believe that at all. Before the Death Note ever touched his hands, he was a good person and incredibly intelligent. But....he was also---bored. He so much as says so when Ryuk asks Light why he used the DN and he simply says: "I was bored too, Ryuk." I had to chuckle with that one. I guess that was what made him to be so easily influenced by the Death Note. He already had a negative world view; that the world was rotten. He may have thought that what he was doing was out of a twisted view of nobility....but as soon as he mentioned that he was going to be the God of the new world he was going to create.....that was when he stopped being that good person he was in the beginning and you begin to notice his total soul corruption. I also don't think it was Ohba's intention (again based on my readings of 'DN: How To Read It') to put any sort of judgement on any of the characters. He wanted the reader to draw his or her own conclusions to the story. Everyone is going to have their own opinion on Light and whether or not he was a villain or not. Antihero yes, he was definitely that. He had the strength of his own personal convictions behind him. Like him or not, Light is perhaps one of the manga's more interesting characters. And I love the apple motif within the series (both manga and anime). I always think back to the Bible in this one, the 'Forbidden Fruit' and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Once Light took a bite out of that apple, in this case started to use the Death Note, his soul became corrupted by it. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18394 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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This is how I always looked at it. And considering that I named Light as my Most Memorable Villain in the editorial we did a while back, my absolute agreement with Jacob's arguments is probably a given. Still think he's an enormously interesting character because the anime is practically a study in what can lead a person to become evil. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Even though L was the manga author trying to interpret "Autistic Prodigy", the whole series still comes off on the level of a good Columbo episode-- One of the early classic episodes where the killer came off as such a rich, arrogant, privileged, overconfident rhymes-with-stick that he thought he would get away with his impossibly complex alibi and all covered-up traces, that by the last half hour, we'd get the inevitable "I don't know, Lieutenant, think whoever it is may have finally outwitted you this time"...At which point we knew that the Lieutenant had the One More Thing up his sleeve, and was going to enjoy delivering it. 
The Trump joke at the top of the thread does kind of bring up the fans who fall for all of Light's philosophical smoke-and-mirrors about "Creating the omelet of a better world by breaking eggs", and if the Don hired Light to off a few Muslims on the sly, it wouldn't be quite as academically philosophical. |
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Saffire
 Posts: 1256 Location: Iowa, USA |
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meiam
Posts: 3444 |
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Well most of it come down to good and evil being stuff we invent and different people have different definition for them, so there's no real answer.
There are some stuff we can quantify, we could compare the number of people Light kill versus the number of lives spared from the crime reduction (not even observing whether the life of a criminal is worth more or less than an innocent victim). Problem is, its a book and we don't have hard number, so without those I'll reserve judgment. But its interesting to think about, for example would all the ugliness coming out of Syria now be happening on a world where Kira exist? The war has killed something like half a millions people, kira would take years to reach that number. You could make a case that this situation wouldn't happen with Kira around and so he'd easily off set his death tolls when considering war like these. Although ultimately the main problem is that Kira can only kill people he hear about and know there real name, which would severely reduce the impact that Kira has, people would quickly catch on and nobody would use there real name anymore. (random though, if someone's name at birth is determine but then they immediately give him a fake name that they use in lieu of there real one for the rest of the live, which one does the death note require). As far as the author though, irrelevant. The story is the only real source, the author can, at most, determine what's cannon and not (and even then when there's contradiction the original source prevail). |
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KitsuneBella
Posts: 16 Location: Philadelphia, PA USA |
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That's an excellent point....in many ways I think Light did become a martyr for his own cause. However, as we see how the final few episodes start toward the finale, we know that Light's "reign" is going to come to an end.
This is another good point. I just finished watching Psycho-Pass which also makes some very good social and psychological points in regard to the nature of good and evil, what is the meaning of justice and truth, and how things like crime are also judged and punished. How can one be judged for a crime someone has the potential to commit if he hadn't committed any crime at all? We can make Light out to be a latent criminal (a term used in Psycho-Pass) because he has such a negative world view; that he believes the whole world is rotten to its core and the only way to make it "pure and good" is to get rid of the criminals and those who make trouble for others. How would Light's character fit in with the Japan depicted in Psycho-Pass? And I wonder what Light's Crime Coefficient would read if he were scanned? It would be interesting to see how he would fair in that world and whether or not he would be able to do the same things. Just like in real life, there are no absolutes here. Just a ton of great philosophical what-ifs. That's what makes Death Note and others of a similar vein all the more fascinating. |
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DuelGundam2099
Posts: 533 |
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They have guns, manpower, money, and resources most civilians do not have access to; that would be like hiking in the woods without a means of fending off wolves and bears or diving into the ocean without knives to fight off hungry predatory fish like sharks. Edit: I am not advocating for law enforcement to be killed in the real world, I am saying they technically are a major threat in that fictional scenario. Last edited by DuelGundam2099 on Sat Mar 19, 2016 2:33 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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When you get right down to it, Death Note is the quintessential modern tragedy. It's main plot is that of a young man who throws away a guaranteed happy life to pursue an impossible dream, then is brought down by his own flaws. Light's true enemy isn't the FBI or the police or even L. It's himself.
Light's fatal flaw is pride, as shown in Episode Two. Notice when he chooses to kill Lind L. Taylor (who, as far as he knows, is not a criminal in the slightest, and only finds out he was one AFTER Taylor dies). When does Light write down his name? When he calls Kira an evil stupid doodoohead. So one of the crimes you can be executed for in Kira-land is questioning the cause or even implying that O-Kira-sama is wrong in any way. Suffice to say, if Light had kept his emotions in check, he wouldn't have fallen into L's trap and the plot wouldn't have happened the way it did. One thing I want to mention that the article didn't is Light's relationship to Misa. That is to say, it's textbook abuse. I went into it a bit more in my own thread, but to sum it up, nothing about Light's treatment of Misa is healthy in any way. He manipulates and emotionally abuses this poor insane woman, and believe me, if she were to stop being useful to him at any time, he'd write her name down. Yet at the same time, Light is not an entirely awful person. Deep down, he really did want to be a superhero. He really did want to change the world. He really did love his family (at first). The Yotsuba arc proves that Light does indeed have the capacity for good. It's just that his methods were morally questionable at best. You know, one of the things I noticed is that people love comparing Lelouch from Code Geass to Light. This really isn't the place for it, but if I had to say, there is ONE big difference between the two that I haven't seen a lot of fans talk about. By the time we first see Lulu, he has gone through hardships such as losing his mother and seeing his sister be severely wounded in front of his eyes spoiler[and for those who bring up that it was all fake WHAT SEASON TWO], being publicly humiliated and disowned by his own father, and forced to be a substitute parent to said sister. Light...hasn't suffered. In fact, he has it all. From the size of his house, Light can be inferred as upper middle class at the worst, and as a result, has probably never known what it's like to be without. His father is a well-respected officer, and Light himself is set up to follow in Daddy's footsteps. He's smart enough to get in a prestigious university at the top of his class. Light has probably never experienced failure or even been told "No, you're wrong" for his entire life. And what happens when you always tell a kid how amazing and darling and special and perfect he is and how he can do absolutely no wrong? You get an utter tyrant and bully. I'm not trying to blame Mr. and Mrs. Yagami, because how could they have known? Actually, they're the ones who suffer the most throughout the story. So the question remains; can Light be redeemed? Honestly, yes. You can convince Light that he's wrong. You can get him to stop. Because in his heart, there's still a side of him that wants to be good. It's just buried beneath all that insanity and hot tragic mess. Shame the same thing can't be said for some of the other users. (Hi, Teru.) And yeah...the fandom. While I consider myself a fan of Death Note, I do not consider myself a part of the fandom. That's mostly because the antics they get up to are the type that end up on the evening news and as a result, make the anime fandom look worse in the public eye than they already do. That's not even getting into the Draco in Leather Pants aspect (God I hate that trope) and EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of the Unfortunate Implications that ensues. No, I will not fight those sorts of fans because I already have and I know the ensuing debate will go nowhere because of course it won't. *phew* That was a lot of words. I think I'll go spend some time with my family. My little baby brother's home from the hospital, and we have a lot of catching up to do on Case Closed. Hmm...I wonder what sort of thing a crossover between those two would be like. 
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Whis-pur
Posts: 131 |
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People actually debated this? It's pretty simple, he started out with good intentions, but eventually it caught up with him and he changed.
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ZeArNkN
Posts: 96 |
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This doesn't really have to do with the topic at hand, but I have a question regarding Death Note.
I've seen the final episodes multiple times, and I still don't fully understand the details surrounding Mello's kidnapping of Kiyomi Takada and what the purpose of it was. Was Near trying to get Mello's name written in Mikami's notebook to test if it was real? Why did Mello agree to sacrifice himself? And I find it really hard to believe that Near surmised that Light killed Takada with a notebook clipping and the fact that her name was written in the real notebook revealed that the one Mikami was using was fake. That seems like a big leap in logic. Was the killing method Mikami wrote down different from Light's? (I can't read Japanese) If Near had his suspicions that the notebook wasn't real from the start and he staged the kidnapping to prove it, then this whole thing would make more sense, but in the anime he said that Takada's killing is what made him consider that possibility. The whole thing just confuses me. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4575 |
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Early on, I wasn't sure if Light was necessarily the villain of the story, but it became pretty hard to see him as anything else after what he did to Penber's wife. Not only was this another example of him killing a good person to protect his role as Kira, but he used her as an experiment to see how well he could use the Death Note to cover up actions by Kira, as well as to test unwritten ruled of the Death Note. So, he was already anticipating that he would need to keep killing people whose only "crime" was trying to find a killer. As an added bonus, he seems to enjoy tormenting her by revealing his identity with only enough time for it to sink in, but not enough time to act on it.
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Paul D. Atreides
 Posts: 128 |
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Death Note was one of the first anime I saw, and for the longest time Light was the most disturbing anime character to me.
The reason he was so upsetting to me was because in some ways I could relate to him. I too have at times (in a state of anger or despair) thought that the only solution to all the world's problems would be to kill anyone who might corrupt it or otherwise make it "less perfect". In other words: if you don't like someone, then just kill them. To see that side of myself taken form was deeply disturbing, and it resulted in a lot of soul-searching. What makes it even more disturbing is that throughout history (and even today) there have been many people who've thought along those same lines, and it has never ended well. Sure, sometimes killing is the only option you've got. But to kill anyone who you may not like is never a good way to go about. |
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