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L isn't a genius. Light is just CATASTROPHICALLY stupid
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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Disclaimer because I’m about to start defending his intelligence: Light is a horrible person regardless.
Light’s first slip up is his temper, causing him to act without thinking to kill Lind L Taylor on live TV. In all fairness, until that point he had killed hundreds of people already with zero resistance and if you want people to “know of my existence” what better way to do so than to kill someone on live TV and get away with it.
The next “mistakes” he makes are in focusing on killing L instead of hiding from him. But really he would rather play a deadly game with L than anything else, and he does play that game intelligently and win despite many unforeseen obstacles.
Point is, light doesn’t get caught because he isn’t intelligent, he gets caught because he’s more obsessed with power and domination than not getting caught or actually saving the world.
I mean that’s literally why he’s evil: he’s not trying to fix the world.
He himself mentions that society just tends to decay and—knowing that he won’t live forever—he must know that killing evil people and trying to keep people in line with fear will not work and will not last. However, he does it anyway because fixing the world is just the excuse he uses to justify his god complex.
He’s not stupid, he’s just more entertained playing with death than he is doing anything else.
It was probably on my second watch of the anime that I figured this out. When he was killing FBI agents who were clearly good people.
One other interesting thing is that he's not interested in elevating himself in the traditional way.
If he wanted to fix the world, and become super rich, he could easily do it at the same time. Because the people who are actually ruining the world aren't the murderers that he killed in the story. The people ruining the world are actually the same people who have all the money. And he has the ability to control them. He can alter their wills if he wants to.
With the Death Note, it would be trivial to become the richest person in the world, but that would attract a lot of attention, so it would also be trivial to become a much less rich, but still incredibly wealthy person. And Light could have done that in a way that would be very hard to trace, if he wanted to. But he didn't want to.
Light begins the story with a very biased view of the world, due to his father being a police officer. He's quite authoritarian. He blames small time criminals and never really considers that there are societal and governmental reasons that they became criminals. Instead, he comes up with a very Machiavellian solution that people should follow the law because they're too afraid to commit crimes.
Since when have cops been good people?
Since Light doesn't immediately write his police-chief father's name in the book. Since light planned to become a cop himself.
Nobody is forcing you to mindlessly meme all the time. You possess a human brain that is capable of considering individual people based on your personal observation of their actions.
Action; became cop. Is bad. Yup, all lights green here.
You don't see cops as the enforcement of capital with a side gig of solving crime. He does. Just because the show doesn't bother to dive into that aspect doesn't mean it's an invalid point especially if we are just talking about "goodness".
Here's a better way to put it. Light would view the FBI agents as good guys due to his general views of law enforcement in general so targeting them is light showing that what he thinks is good in the world is irrelevant to his choices.
Instead now we are arguing ideology because you don't understand perspective in literature. Womp womp and acab
You spend too much time on this platform, I think.
Oink
Well said!
Do you know of any other shows where it is about the mind games like this?
Its been a long time but how about Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo. Although in that one its one person playing 3d chess with everyone else being unaware.
"Monster", which IMO is much more interesting and clever then Death Note. And if you like that, "Pluto" by the same creator.
Code Geass is basically the same premise, but I feel like Death Note does a better job pretending to be some 400 IQ mind games then actually being intriguing and clever. Way more telling us the protagonist/antagonist is smart then showing us in subtle, engaging ways.
Still both good shows, but I just didn't see them as 10/10 masterpieces.
Code Geass is Death Note with giant robots and magic powers.
Lelouch is fucking insufferable, so the comparison checks out
Unfortunately no, also I haven’t really watched much anime (I only know who three of the people on the chart are).
However, in the non-anime category, the tv show “Hannibal” has two very intelligent characters play this same kind of game of cat and mouse.
You know who the antagonist is, but the other characters… not so much. So you get the same kind of dynamic where people are talking with Light like he’s a normal person when you know he’s Kira.
You also get some seriously fucked up mind games between the antagonist and protagonist and get those same moments of “well how is he going to get out of this?” For both of them.
It’s also like a normal-ish crime TV show. Anyway, good stuff, idk if it’s what you’re looking for but you might like it regardless
Yeah, I'm not really into anime either but sometimes there is that nice mix between weird and clever that you can't get anywhere else.
Ajin: Demi-Human hit some of the notes if you are interested.
Oh Hannibal is one of my all time favorites. Great performances, great story and the images are beautiful despite the subject manner. Maybe I go watch it again if I don't find something new.