Poll: The DeathNote

[ZergInfestedJesus]

i will not vote because while it may seem to be a black and white question what he did was more gray.

much like dropping the nukes on japan in WWII it ended the war, but the civilian casualties are uncountable, what we did was wrong, but doing it for the wright reasons made up for that.

light was doomed from the minute he tested it out to see if the book worked "he who rights a name in the Death Note can never go to heaven nor hell" in essence as soon as he found out it was not a joke he was damned so what he did with it was irrelevant so it dident matter how much good or evil he used it for his sole was lost.
but this isn't a discussion about his sole, sooo...

what he did was good at first for the right reasons. (a well my sole is gone, but i can use this now power to make the world a better place)

then good for the wrong reasons. (as soon as the people backed him he felt like he was on a power trip, he was important, not because he was killing bad people but because no one could stop him)

than bad for good reasons (when he was being hunted, were the people hunting him evil? No. but if they had caught him they would have killed him so it was self preservation. and that is as good a reason as i think is needed to kill)

than wrong for the wrong reasons (it became a game, each move he made to expose his enemies also made him vulnerable, and the first person to slip up would loose this game and also there life.)

so the only thing i can say to this is (and i feel that a quote is appropriate) "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

{of course he cant go to hell can he.}

I don't know if it was in the manga, but when ryuk said you couldn't go to heaven or hell, Light guessed that was because neither of them existed. Ryuk was surprised that Light got it right since he thought " most humans believed in that kind of stuff".

 

[Therumancer]

I have this series but haven't seen it all yet (I bought an import copy of it).

It's an interesting and thought provoking premise, but I don't think Light can be considered a good guy. I think the turning point for the character was pretty early in the series (as far as I've seen) when he tried to kill the police for simply saying on TV that they wanted to stop him. He wasn't even under serious threat at that point and did it to make a point. Really there was no excuse for it.

I am one of those people who does not nessicarly agree with the maxims that power corrupts, or that only those who don't seek power are worthy of wielding it. However this seems to be the point of the series (as stated) and it really jumped into that territory with both feet pretty quickly on. I didn't really see Light as being corrupted over time but as being pretty bloody unstable to begin with.

I could agree with SOME of what he was doing, but he took it too far. I can also see creating a better world, but I feel anyone who believes they can create a true utopia given human nature as being off their rocker.

As someone who has in the past advocated mass murder under certain circumstances I was also less than comfortable with the way he was exterminating people who had already paid for their crimes or were in prison. I support the death penelty to some extent, and can even support a degree of vigilanteism but he took it from "some criminals deserve to die" to "I will kill anyone I don't like or find inconveinent".

Such are my thoughts from as far as I've watched it.

As far as the quality goes, well Anime is not a highly intellectual medium and is intended for a teenage audience. Allowing for this as a teen horror/drama I think it isn't too bad. It's a work of high art compared to say most of the "Fear Street" novels.

 

[Lullabye]

i will not vote because while it may seem to be a black and white question what he did was more gray.*snip*

this

killed bad people, went bats shit crazy in the end......kind of a "respect is given where respect is due" situation.

 

[Rhodeyo]

actually i really hated that anime... gayest ending of all time

 

[Flos]

actually i really hated that anime... gayest ending of all time

SWIM!

SWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM!

Hypothetically, you have the Death Note
1)Do you kill him?
2)Do you kill the people that bailed him out, let him by, or otherwise incompetently allowed it to go this far?
3)If you killed any of them, what would you do if you found out that law enforcement authorities, some of them friends of the dead cops, were going to arrest you for murder? They know exactly how you did it, and plan on seizing your notebook. Go to court and lawyer your way out? Kill them? Flee? Serve your time?

Y'see, now, that's a horrible situation to be put in. It's akin to the entire 'kill one, save a thousand' situation. Would you do it and have to live with the consequences?

I know I wouldn't. My morals are not able to be bended. I believe murdering for any reason is wrong. ._.

Does that make me a killer by association? Well, no. The same way the people who let him off aren't murderers. I didn't make his choices, I simply didn't stop him.

I'd feel guilty as hell for the rest of my existence, though.

 

[Lekonua]

He started out good. I probably would've done the same thing. But he let is arrogance get the better of him. He went from "I want to make the world better" to "I want to be a god."

It all went down hill when he got pissed at L for calling him out.

Spoiler

If Light hadn't killed the fake L at the beginning, the real L never would have found out anything about him. By killing Tailor, Light MADE L his enemy and not only unknowingly revealed his own location, but the limitations of his power. (That he needs a name and a face.)

Thanks the lead he handed to L on a platter, Light had to start killing off detectives and police who got too close to catching him. That, in my opinion, is when he actually became evil.

 

[Syntax Error]

I think people miss the point L was the bad guy of the entire series. It shows how power can corrupt those with good intentions. He got power hungry and died like a *****.

You meant Light, right?

Deathnote is the story of a villain, not a hero, which is what made the series stand out.

There is no "hero" in the strictest sense of the word in Death Note. The whole thing pretty much leaves you with that decision.

 

[DerangedBeing]

He deserves to make me a sammich

Take that as you may

That made me outright laugh.

Light was a douche. He was pretending to be God. He's not God. God doesn't need a fucking Notebook to strike down anyone who offends him. He just goes "poof", and they die. As for Light, if he was the good guy, he wouldn't have to have fought the police, his dad, like 3 of his girlfriends, and the world's best detectives, in order to spend his time killing criminals.

I rather like the idea of being able to write down someone's name and kill them, though. Seems like something you do to people who have been absolutely proven guilty in the joke we call our legal system.

On a random note, did you know there've been copy cat murders based on this series in real life?

 

[RagnorakTres]

I voted that he was good, but only up until a certain point. He had this tendency to punish petty thieves the same way he punished rapists: Instant Death, no appeals. That's not good. That's pretty solidly gray. I personally would like to think that, if I were to get a Death Note, I would use it only in A) the direst of circumstances and B) only against people who are threatening others with death or severe injury. And, y'know, wouldn't give anyone any hints as to who was doing it. Like putting a giant "L" on a screen and saying "Hey guys, I'm killing criminals!"

Dur.

Of course, as His Ultraness pointed out, the point of the anime is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. So I have no idea if I could do that.

 

[Valiance]

It's debatable, obviously, else the thread wouldn't exist.

Deciding who lives and who dies to eliminate crime is something I personally admire, but is highly unethical, obviously.
However, killing police and others who try to stop you...That's bad.
Killing people who stand in your way for a questionable cause/goal in the first place is certainly a villainous quality.

Personally, if I could kill a bunch of "Bad" criminals to help "Good" citizens, I'd love to.
However, due to the subjective nature of bad and good, I don't even know where I stand on this.

Some people call them terrorists.
Others say they're just misguided boys with stressful lives who were pushed into bad decisions.

 

[the1ultimate]

Why did I not sympathize with Light in the slightest, even with what he intended to achieve?

Oh that's right, probably because he kept talking about being a god.

Death Note is not such a great Anime, mostly because there isn't a great deal you can do with a book that kills people. Except kill people of course.

 

[MystRunner]

Yeah great anime. Did it just finally end in America cause I kinda already finished watching the entire series about a year and a half ago. Anyway. Yeah the show pretty much was the basic that power corrupts absolutely and yes Light did become insane by the end of the show. But I don't think he was strictly evil. But at then end of the show he kinda had a noble sort of evil yes it was still evil but he didn't think so. Take what you will but I defiantly loved this series and hated it at the same time cause my fav character died.

 

[Socius]

Watashi wa L desu.
Raito was a C**kmuncher who thought he was God.
the fact that shinigami followed him as his "angles"
can't have been very good for his brain eighter.
The death note is evil, yet however the earth is a little
over populaten and if a few ten-hundred thousand people must die
then I'd prefer it'b be the crimminals. this is a very good topic
indeed. well done.
Boku wa Sekida.

 

[Azraellod]

actually i really hated that anime... gayest ending of all time

Actually, I regard this as the real ending. It's far superior to the generally accepted one in my opinion.

Spoiler

And I liked the world as Light made it. I didn't like his motives for creating it, but I did like the results.

But then, I'm worryingly close to Teru Mikami in terms of my personality, setting aside the whole hero worship thing.

 

[Timotei]

Dude, the series wasn't even very good, I don't know why people get so worked up about it

Because we actually picked up on te philisophical propeties of the show instead of just watching it for entertainment.

 

[Tonimata]

To this I say the original premise of the series was original, fresh, played with the powers of darkness and destruction, and involved a maniacally unstable protagonist (which for me is win-win). It was at the point that it started with the stupid police/detective-esque bullshit that it got bad. We don't have enough stories about teenagers unleashing apocalyptic mass murder upon Earth, and we've got more than enough detective stories.

 

[Tartarga]

I thought he was doing the right thing. Its not like the current system is working. Granted he did become an egotistical bastard and if he wasn't so cocky he probably wouldn't have been found out and killed.

 

[Silva]

There is absolutely no way to justify the killing of criminals. If they are at large, I can understand wanting to stop the worst of them, but non-violent means must always come before violent. If they are incarcerated anyway, then the use of such an object on them is merely a disgusting show of humanity, striking against those who have already been humbled.