i find it genuinely baffling that people resonated with Light Yagami the character. when i finally watched death note i found him hilarious, he was such an evil arrogant mustache-twirling supervillain. its like saying that you want to be like skeletor
@wallhackio The "he just like me frfr" crowd always gets it wrong but Light really might be the wrongest they've ever gotten it
@wallhackio Not only is he hilariously evil he's also fucking stupid
@wallhackio Then again he DOES lack all self-awareness so in that sense they're correct
@coriander im pretty sure the people who wrote the anime adaptation believe that anyone who had the power to indiscriminately kill those deemed criminals would do so and immediately become mad with power, and im sorry mr death note anime writer but not everyone has the same sickness of the soul you have
@wallhackio I haven't seen the anime but I've read the manga a few times and the pacing is actually really deliberate, like, it's less "power makes you instantly an evil motherfucker" and more "power is an insidious and corrosive force that, if left unchecked, will have you abandon every principle you ever held dear in the name of those same principles"
@coriander from what ive read from comments on reddit the manga does a much better job of portraying light undergoing a progression. as someone who only watched the anime he starts killing indiscriminately REALLY fucking fast
also the anime softens the ending for light quite a bit to try to make it more tragic instead of judgmental which is.... certainly a choice
@wallhackio @coriander i think the anime retcons Light as having undergone a progression; once he loses his memories he is like very clearly a different dude than before, even tho you don’t notice the progression when it happens the first time
but also L does say straight to Light’s face “yeah i always thought you had serial killer energy”; i think it’s pretty clear that the Death Note did not make him a killer it just gave him means
@wallhackio @coriander like i do not think the anime thinks Light is tragic or corrupted by power. it thinks he was born evil and just got lucky for a bit, and then at the end his luck runs out
@wallhackio The sense of tragedy is there in the manga but that doesn't stop it from casting judgement. The tragedy is "Look what happened to this poor boy, look at his sense of justice and what became of it." It condemns him while also recognizing that he was manipulated every step of the way.