White?
He is literally Japanese.
He's not white, but other than that, I thought these points were obvious. You're not supposed to like him.
He's not white, but he is the equivalent. Also a son of a cop, and Japan still also has very racist and colorist views. In comparison it works.
i think the creator of this meme (not me if that wasn’t obvious) made a mistake in that it was actually L who was coded to be white:
When asked about L's ethnicity, creator of the series Tsugumi Ohba responded, "I think of him as a quarter Japanese, a quarter English, a quarter Russian, a quarter French or Italian, like that." fandom
"White Privilege" is going to be relative to where you are. They could have just said Privileged.
Okay I'm too lazy to Google it right now so feel free to completely ignore this, but would you happen to have a tldr on Japan's ethnic groups? Or a link to a good and hopefully concise source?
I don't really have much on other native ethnic groups aside from the Ainu people, which as a minority group went through colonialist oppression similar to other native/aboriginal groups in other locations. Some site links: https://minorityrights.org/communities/ainu/#%3A%7E%3Atext=These+policies+and+legislation+aimed%2Con+their+traditional+economic+activities.
https://www.ff-ainu.or.jp/web/english/details/post-5.html
As for colorism, the culture trends conservative. I don't mean strictly politically, which it probably does too, but as in don't act out and stick with traditional values. Due to that, white skin is generally considered better looking and proper, and there is a negative stereotype for darker skin.
They are similar to S Korea like this, and there is a sort of blatant implied racism towards dark skinned and especially black people in the culture. There is of course some fetishizing of dark skin too, but mainly in a fling but don't settle down kind of way.
Some younger people are of course bucking some of these trends, and I'm not quite up to date as stuff in my own country, but it's definitely still there. There are people who have given personal experiences, some positive, some definitely not.
who said they weren’t obvious? it’s called framing. applying a political lense to a fictional character’s traits and coming to a conclusion within the political framework.
literally no one is saying these observations haven’t been picked up on or that the character is meant to be liked.
no hate to you individally but, as a pattern, these anti-intellectual comments do make me sad. it’s like picking up simone de beauvoir and saying “duh i already knew women were historically oppressed.” the point isn’t already knowing. it’s about intellectual growth from the process of analysis, the meaning generated from the uniquely human application of knowledge. :)
That's fair. I do get annoyed at other comments like "if you didn't figure out how to resolve the Paradox of Tolerance the first time you saw it, you're fascist". It doesn't leave room for people to grow.
ugh you’re so right and what an excellent example too
Has no sociological imagination
The initial ideas that drive him in the beginning are that people are no longer functioning in a larger social structure and that their true beliefs don’t reflect the way they typically act “most people would say ‘it’s just wrong to kill people’ but on the inside…”
kills people en masse without considering what might be driving them towards criminality in the first place.
He’s literally able to deduce that Yotsuba Kira is not the original Kira (himself) because the original Kira (himself) did take circumstances into consideration and would show mercy and the other Kira did not.
Believes that societies flaws are due to individual failings rather than systemic ones.
He literally bullies the CIA out of operations and if I recall, his actions lead to most global conflicts stopping. He does bring up war as a problem and government corruption as a problem along with corporate corruption occasionally. So I’d say this point is pretty off the mark too.
Operates purely under the definition of criminality set by the state.
He (and Mikami) literally slaughter a huge organization that is ripping people off in the name of Kira. Their scam was legal, but it was evil, so they died. He kills 21 FBI agents because they’re annoying him. He kills multiple cops and law enforcement that were otherwise innocent. And, as aforementioned, he takes pity on criminals who were convicted but had understandable circumstances. While his morals may overlap with the state they are definitely not “purely” set by the state.
White
Japanese. However this one is probably the most accurate statement in this image. He is a rich kid from a stable family, is not a minority in his country, and if he receives any bias it is positive and not predjudiced against him.
Disincentivizes criminality using fear tactics rather than rehabilitation and economic incentives…
It’s called a deathnote not an infinite-source-of-economic-and-medical-resources.
Says he’s going to start killing homeless people
I do not recall this but maybe I’ve simply forgotten.
Anyway, I tend to dislike people who try to pick out random specifics like this. You shouldn’t hate him because he’s not going about things efficiently or without considering other perspectives or whatever else. You should hate him because he’s a manipulative bitch with an obsessive god complex that leads him to cause massive amounts of pain and suffering to those around him and the rest of the world too.
He knows that people are corrupt that they’ve rotted the world and that it just tends to become like this. So he should know that no matter what, the world will fall right back into chaos unless he lives forever, which again he knows he won’t.
He is either completely beyond reason, blinded by the idea he can truly fix the world in a way that clearly won’t work, or much more likely he just wants to be god and just uses morality/justice to rationalize this desire.
He's not a bad person because he’s slightly inconsiderate or believes in state set laws. He's a bad person because he’s willing to slaughter thousands of people just to feel powerful.
Edit: Rearranged and removed a sentence or two for clarity
He experimented on people that were already on jail.
He’s literally able to deduce that Yotsuba Kira is not the original Kira (himself) because the original Kira (himself) did take circumstances into consideration and would show mercy and the other Kira did not.
Yeah, he showed mercy towards non-criminals, but as soon as someone was marked as a criminal he threw that all out the window
He still fucked up. He should have started by working his way down the list of richest people and list of fascist dictators. Killing billionaires does a lot more to scare the people responsible for crime than killing random murderers does.
You CAN permanently fix the world. You just have to kill all the capitalist billionaires and politicians. Then let the communists implement communism with no organised opposition.
Bud, he's a Japanese fascist.
good comment
I don’t think he was ever supposed to be considered a role model. Sort of like Tyler from Fight Club.
no literally every protagonist is the good guy thats what protagonist means. just like walter white!
Tyler durden, Walter white, Rorschach, homelander, Travis bickle, Rick, Saul Goodman, Eren Yeager - people tend to idolize the most toxic characters. Serial killers get fan mail aplenty. Particularly weird when the character is a child, but I’m no longer surprised at what people are capable of pointing their admiration toward.
In short:
He has been an unlikeable prick from the very beginning. And it only got worse.
Tap for spoiler
I cheered when he lost his marbles before he died. For some reason I remember that he pissed himself.
Imagine having a Death Note. Just open up Wikipedia's list of richest people in the world, and write the top name once a week. After 3 or 4 weeks they would notice what's going on. Then they would scramble to spend all of their money to get off of the list, noticing, that they have too much to spend. For the last couple hours of their lives they would be aware, that having this much money is unreasonable. They would have learned something, developed, grown. Then they would bite the dust. In like 6 months society would be fixed. A man can dream.
death note if it was epic:
Wealth doesn't disappear, so you still need to deal with the inheritors and you still have to deal with warlords who aren't notable or wealthy. Would "General Buttnaked" work in the Death Note?
Also, there's a lot of very powerful and wealthy people who keep on the down low. Trump, Bezos and Musk are outliers. If you really want a list for the Death Note, you use the DN to compel a target to reveal their pedoparty friends publicly.
No... Wikepidia and the internet would just be shut down and the names of all the rich people as well as information about them would disappear. It would also cause mass chaos
He did also kill a lot of people wearing suits but that hardly means much in Japan. They don't talk much about his hundreds of victims in general other than calling them criminals.
Also, it's the Death Note not the Tax The Rich and Redistribute Wealth Note.
Breaking News! Elon Musk has just died of a heart attack after donating his fortune to the communist party of America!
Breaking News! Jeff Bezos has just died of a heart attack after donating his fortune to the communist party of America!
Breaking News! Bill Gates has just died of a heart attack after donating his fortune to the communist party of America!
Breaking News! J K Rowling has just died of a heart attack after donating her fortune to the British Transgender Foundation!
Breaking News! Rupert Murdoch has just died of a heart attack after donating his fortune to the communist party of Australia!
Hey look, drag found the Tax The Rich and Redistribute Wealth Note.
Would be a lot cooler tho
Actually, Light is Made in Abyss creator Akihito Tsukushi.
Upvote because of Minion.
a fellow of taste i see 🍷
He's a teenager...
he’s also a murderer lol. age doesn’t mean you can’t call someone what they are
Not saying he's not a murderer nor am i saying he's not a neoliberal. Teenagers generally lack the life experience required to temper their worldviews, so applying political labels to them seems a bit silly to me. That being said, it's a meme posted on a meme board, so i guess it's supposed to be a bit silly.
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.