Quote:
Originally Posted by khryoleoz
I had high hopes for this show, thinking that Light was going to be an interesting and sympathetic character, some form of a dark, righteous avenger. But it looks like the author took a simple view that killing even vermin is wrong by writing in Light as THE chief villain, a wicked byproduct of his own sense of justice that Ooba too readily dismisses as misguided, and leaving his just execution at the hands of someone other than his human pursuers. Death god forbid that "L" or Near was the one to actually pull the trigger on such a punk. And it didn't matter so much that he protected the lives of would-be victims when he began his crusade. Eradicating evil is itself "evil" when "good" is just a matter of changing perspectives and relative notions, which notion by appearances seem to be that all human killing is bad. The production values and the performances were great, and the cat/mouse chase and detective work intriguing, but the simplistic characterization of what should have been a great character gets point deductions from me. I rate it a 7.
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I have to say I strongly disagree; Death Note
does not paint the critical issue of whether or not Light as Kira is evil or not in black in white. Throughout the anime, the question is raised over and over again whether or not Kira is actually evil. Matsuda brings it up early on, voicing the fact that crime has indeed been reduced by Kira's judgments--importantly, Souichirou Yagami, identified by the mangaka as the true personification of justice in the world of Death Note doesn't actually shoot him down, at least not at that point. Matsuda, who in many respects is the most normal and human member of the team, again brings up the point after Chief Yagami's death when he questions whether or not Kira is evil at all. Though he shoots Light in the finale, it's more out of his emotional distress over Light's betrayal and the perception that he had driven his father to his death. In the last pages of the manga, which will most likely be covered in the anime special, Matsuda is still questioning whether or not they did the right thing by assisting Near in Light's elimination.
It is true that Light slips further and further into darkness and his portrayal as the series progresses makes him harder and harder to view as an agent of justice, but before I address that, your post seems to imply that L, Near, and Mello represent some sort of clear good in the world of Death Note. This isn't true either; L and Near represent the law and the entrenched legal system, but they're never painted as truly "good." L is more righteous and honorable than Near by far, and the greater contrast in his way of thinking compared to Light (as well as the similarities) is part of what makes the first arc so good, but L himself is shown to be very capable of ruthlessness in upholding what he believes is justice. Right from the beginning, he sacrifices a prisoner's life, and is repeatedly shown to be willing to let a few people die so that he can make moves that will permanently put Kira down and prevent any more deaths after that. All very sensible things, but not the kind of things a traditional anime protagonist would be willing to do, and certainly not the type of behavior a traditional "do-good" hero would engage in. Near, who I do NOT like, is far more ruthless than L in many respects, and barely seems to value the lives of the FBI agents serving under him. So his defeat of Light hardly seems like a true black and white moral statement. This isn't a case of the hero beating the big bad villain and making a happy ending.
And now, Light himself. By the end of the anime he's started to go a bit insane, but I feel that the writer deliberately refrains from making some sort of blanket, all-encompassing moral statement on whether or not Light's mission, and his killings, were wrong. To me, Light is someone who started with genuinely good intentions, and with a mission, had he been able to stay true to it in the strictest sense (killing ONLY criminals and not the police agents pursuing him, and not those that assisted him in his journey like Takada) might really have become justice. But he's corrupted by the power of the Death Note; he is possibly one of the most capable humans that ever lived, but he couldn't handle it. And therein is the real moral message of Death Note; not that killing criminals is wrong, but with power of such magnitude, no human could possibly resist being corrupted and losing themselves. Near even says something to this effect in his final speech to Light. And in the anime, when Light sees the person he used to be, it's again emphasized that Light was never a bad person at all before he found the Death Note--the sympathy we feel for him at the end is proof that the anime team didn't intend to completely vilify Light.
Fly since ↔...
