Poll: The DeathNote

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Erja_Perttu

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May 6, 2009
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Too much of a gray area to comment on. Light was an amoral bastard when it came down to it and he didn't believe in his own principles. He was a sociopath and a murderer.

But the crime rates went down. People felt safer. He got his own cult.

It could go either way.
 

mindclockwork

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Jul 17, 2008
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i really liked the deathnote, up to the point that something massive happened. (quess it or watch it, not gonna spoil allthou everyone probly has seen the whole thing.) after that the quality went to bullocks and the ending was really crappy and not logical at all.

but on the topic, i don't think that there should be such "power to kill the bad". it ain't right to do that way, when theres possibility educate and such the wrong doers. in summary, if someone wants to kill someone, he's free to do it, but it also gives us the right to protect that target by killing the person thats going for a kill.
 

God's Clown

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Aug 8, 2008
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Where it the option for "It was a terrible manga/anime and I am glad they all died" or something. Did they all died? I got bored half way through and re-read all the chapters of One Piece out.
 

Durxom

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May 12, 2009
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I prefered the Live-Action over both the anime and the manga...after about book 5 or so, it just started to slag on and lose it's touch, especially with that Mello and Near stuff...

The LA finished it off a lot better too, and in a 4 hour(2 DVDs) timeframe:
They basically end it at where L dies in the manga/anime, but then, when he confronts his father when he is bring the Deathnote back to HQ, it turns out L wasn't really dead....L had already wrote down that he had 30 some-odd days left to live, so Light couldn't kill him, and ends up with Ryuk writing down Light's name..etc., forward a few month, more criminals are out and about now that Kira is gone. Light's sister and dad talk about how they miss him and how he was a "good" person. End Movie. Ryuk flies over Tokyo..or whatever.

But ya...Light was a dick.. =/
 

MassiveGeek

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Jan 11, 2009
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To much power under one person leads nowhere good, and being in control of life and death in such an easy way simply is to much power for a human being. Life's life, shit happens and there will always be bad people, deal with it.
 

lodo_bear

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Nov 15, 2009
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No discussion of Death Note is complete without Tom Smith's summary of the series, to the tune of "Bad Horse": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtcmzZ9im5Y
 

Nemu

In my hand I hold a key...
Oct 14, 2009
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Damn, I hate that series...

Anyway, it depends on the crime. Personally, I'm more into vengeance, ie: a child-molester/rapist deserves to get tossed into GenPop more than given the sweet escape of death.
 

Viivrabe

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Sep 24, 2009
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ZergInfestedJesus said:
Viivrabe said:
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".
interesting, i must have missed that.
 

Viivrabe

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Sep 24, 2009
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Nemu said:
Damn, I hate that series...

Anyway, it depends on the crime. Personally, I'm more into vengeance, ie: a child-molester/rapist deserves to get tossed into GenPop more than given the sweet escape of death.
the sweet escape?

if you put them in with gen pop what do you thing will happen, and also if they dont kill him then the tax payers are just paying money to keep an unwanted/dangerous/hazard to society, alive, money that could be used on other things... but still that could be said about most convicts.
 

Psypherus

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Feb 11, 2009
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pimppeter2 said:
He deserves to make me a sammich

Take that as you may
I'll take that as you are not afraid of evil books. Evil books are afraid of you.

OT: I'd say yes, Kill criminals and save the inncoent.
 

Legion

Were it so easy
Oct 2, 2008
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Ultrajoe said:
I think the main point of the series was to point out that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that L is one crazy son of a *****. So yeah, even the show paints Light as the villain.

I simultaneously hate and adore this Anime.
Agreed on all points. Although L was also awesome.

I hated the Anime once:
He died. Everything up to that point was pure awesome, it wasn't the fact he died but all the crap that happened afterwards.

Nemu said:
Damn, I hate that series...
All of it? Any particular reason? I think it made some excellent points on 'morality' as well as the abuse of power.
 

Lazy Kitty

Evil
May 1, 2009
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If only I could get my hands (and pen) on that book. First thing I'd do is get a list of everyone in the world.
 

Supreme Unleaded

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Aug 3, 2009
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He's in the grey area. If he's killing Sociopaths, mass murderers, reapeat offenders then its still a grey area but alright. But since he's killing the cops trying to get him that makes him a bit of a bad person. I havent seen the anime since i dont watch much anime but it seems like this guy is gunna go all corupt and think he can do whatever he wants.
 

Saarai-fan

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Nov 12, 2009
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I'll go with bad, not only because I think the Deathnote gives a person like Light too much power which can ultimately corrupt them, but because I'm personally against killing any human being even if they've done a terrible crime. Even if the majority of evidence can support a person had done the crime in question, there's always a chance, if only a slim one, that the individual is innocent of the crime.

I'll go into more detail about my thoughts on this, as I'm a fan of this anime and I'm against the death penalty, as that's what Light is basically giving to anyone's names he writes in his deathnote. Ultimately, Light believed that a presence of a God of sorts in people's lives would've kept humanity's tendancy to sin or commit crime in check, especially if that being had the ability to kill any who did wrong. However, it is unfortunately part of the human condition to sin and do bad things occasionally, no matter what forces tell them not too, even if death is the punishment for their sins. People sin or kill for basically three reasons - profit, passion, and compulsion. Those who do it for profit do it very rationally, beliving they'll never be caught, such as gangsters and professional assassins. Then there's passion, as if you're that angry at someone or something that you'd do something terrible to whatever is in question, then nothing not even punishment by death can deter you because thinking rationally can't usually overcome such a level of anger, such as finding your brother in bed in your wife and you kill them both in a fit of rage. And finally, compulsion, in which there is no reason for why the sinner commits the crime in question, because they did it on compulsion to get some kind of satisfaction out of it, such as serial killers. Granted, the presence of some kind of force that would punish criminals with death can probably deter them from commiting crime to a certain degree, but you can't fight instinct, and humanity itself has a very unfortunate complex balance of it's instincts of self-preservation and self-destruction.

As for the criminal in question being possibly innoncent when proven guilty by court or by the feelings of the general public, there have been several instances where people have been convicted of terrible crimes and later discovered that they were innoncent. This is due to that there is always a chance some kind of evidence, no matter when or if it ever comes in, or how weak or strong it is, that it can show proof that the person in question is innoncent of commiting a crime. And there's always the chance a witness to the crime or sin in question can mistakenly indentify a person for the one that did commit the crime, or even lie to protect whoever commited the sin if they happen to know who the person is. Even various prosecutors have been caught from time to time withholding evidence that the person they're trying to convict is innocent. You just can't kill somebody over something, because they'll always might be something that may prove of their innocence, and Light is basically giving into his temptations of wanting to rid evil in the most dumb way possible. Also, many also think killing someone in order to prevent others from possibly following their footsteps or teachings or even think of doing so, can possibly believe that, but if you do, then you should look towards several historical people like Jesus or Guy Fawkes that prove there are inspirational people who have been killed and who's beliefs still resonate in the hearts of many people who admirred or worshiped them.

As for Light himself, I once read a book that discussed about Deathnote and Light, that there are fans who believe and theroized that there's a possibility of Light doing what he's doing because he feels guilty over killing his first two victims with the deathnote. After realizing he killed two people with the deathnote, and his two victims crimes were the least serious of all the criminals he's killed, he obviously tried to rationalize to himself that they deserved to be killed and that all who commit crime derserve the same thing. He obviously knows deep down that he himself is a killer and by his logic, he himself his a terrible criminal who deserves to be put to death, regardless if he was doing whatever he was doing was for the benefit of mankind. But if it were up to me on how I'd punish Light for his crimes, I wouldn't kill him but I'd put him in some kind of Hannibal Lecter-like cell where he'd spend his entire life in, though Ryuk would of course kill him as he did in the final episode/manga of Deathnote when Light was found out that he was Kira. As far as I'm concerned, criminals should be kept in prison. If the prisons start getting overcrowed, make more prisons. If it's becoming more expensive, feed them cheaper food. Punishment doesn't always have to fit the crime, because if we have to try to be a better people, we must not submit to our sinful instincts, including the desire to get rid of those who threaten us or each other with a threat of death or misfortune.

In the words of Near in the final episode of Deathnote, Light is nothing more than a multiple serial killer with a god-complex, who posesses the most destructive murder weapon in history. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'll get off my soap box now. :)
 

Caliostro

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Jan 23, 2008
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... My god OP, your spelling could cause a miscarriage, I swear... Do pay some attention to that, think of the children... Anyways...

Ultrajoe said:
I think the main point of the series was to point out that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that L is one crazy son of a *****. So yeah, even the show paints Light as the villain.

I simultaneously hate and adore this Anime.
Was more than that. Certainly there's the point that power corrupts, but ultimately the point of the anime was the ambiguity of morality. Is Light (Lighto? Righto? The translations are split, but the most common seems to be Light, so we'll go with that) really bad? Sure we may not agree with his means, but we can't say we don't empathize with his goal. Sure, by the end of the show he's a complete megalomaniac, but from the start his intentions are noble: stop crime, injustice. Certainly any of us at one point or another in our lives felt some douchebag got off easy. Some rapist that was acquitted on a technicality. A cold-blood murderer who got a sentence way too lenient for us. Someone who purposely ruined someone else's life simply because they could. Boy, wouldn't it feel good to kill him? You can say no, but you'll be lying.

On the other hand, he is a megalomaniac trying to become a god... He does kill an innocent person or two during his campaign raising the question, what is he really capable of? He is only human after all. Can someone really be trusted with that much power?

Then we got L Lawliet, Hideki Ryuga, Ryuzaki, Eraldo Coil, and heavens knows what other names. His purpose is equally noble, he shares Light's view of a world without crime, but he goes about it the opposite direction. He sees anyone who tries to take the law on his own hands as just another part of the problem. One can definitely see the point he makes. After all, isn't taking the law on their own hands what makes a criminal in the first place?

On the other hand, he certainly has no problem using more "shady" approaches, like torturing a little girl... And certainly his rigid, downright obsessive, following of the law can't be too good. After all, if the law was meant to be mechanical and absolute we wouldn't have judges or juries.

And even by the end of the anime you never know who was right.
After L dies and "Kira" takes over, crime rates go down immensely. Hard to say that was a bad thing... Hard to say it wasn't worth it at all... But by the time Light dies, he's certainly sounding like a complete tyrant. He's putting himself in the position of a GOD. How long till he started killing anyone who dared oppose him?

See, the point is... It's all ambiguous. It makes you think. And that's what makes it excellent for me. The world we live in is one of relatives, not absolutes. There is no such a thing as "good" or "evil", regardless of what we want to believe in, and this anime/manga does an excellent job of exemplifying that.
 

DuplicateValue

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Jun 25, 2009
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Hey, he created a perfect world - I see near as the villain for plunging the world back into crime and evil.
The bastard.

Plus I'm all for vigilante justice.

Light went a bit too creepy towards the end, though.