Death Note (Spoilers and Thoughts)

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE END OF DEATH NOTE!!!









OK, so I finished off my Death Note manga collection at Anime Expo last weekend, and read the whole thing in rather a marathon session (well, the whole thing except the parts I read in line at the convention). And, I have to say, I was completely satisfied with the ending--it was pretty much how I'd expected it to end, and pretty much how I hoped it would end.

Afterwards, I talked with one of my friends, who had also seen the end of Death Note (in his case, the anime rather than the manga, but I understand they're similar enough in that respect). He liked the ending, but was also a bit bummed that Light had to die. I was not only expecting this (Ryuk had promised as much from the very beginning) but was glad to see him go. Light annoyed the crap out of me from the very beginning--he was one of those guys who's good at pretty much everything and thinks he's better than everyone else. Exactly the sort who'd jump at a chance to make themselves gods. Throughout the manga, I was saying things like "L! You're right, Light IS Kira! No, don't believe what he's saying--it's just a trick!" and later I was saying similar things to Near. (No, I wasn't actually talking out loud--don't worry that I'm going crazy and literally talking to manga characters). I was really starting to fear that Light had got the better of Near, and that Kira would really prevail.

I was horrified by Kira's ideal world--yeah it might SEEM safer, with the criminals living in fear of inescapable death from an invisible judge, but I'd be too afraid of getting on the wrong side of Kira. Plus, even if Light Yagami really was a just judge, he doesn't get to add the years he takes off his victims' lives to his own like a Shinigami does. Who's to say the next Kira wouldn't turn out to be a straight-up psycho killer? That lawyer that he had do his dirty work while he was unable to do so himself was a good example, taking Kira's ideals too far (or at least too fast).

I understand there are quite a few Light/Kira fans out there, but I'm definitely not one of them. I'm firmly in the L/Near camp, and liked both of those characters the moment they were introduced.

I'm wondering if some of this is due to my personal beliefs. I hate to pass judgement on people or things, but I like to understand them instead. If I see someone doing something bad, my first thought isn't "They're bad--punish them!" but "Hmm...I wonder why he did that..." Perhaps that's wrong, and bad people are just straight-up bad, with no understandable reason, like D&D monsters that are "Always Chaotic Evil." But that's how I am, and I will likely go on trying to fix things instead of condemning them.

I like to debug programs--I treat it like a mystery in need of solving, as I add debugging code to gather evidence and narrow down the list of suspects to a single line of code that's not doing what it's supposed to be doing. That's one of my favorite parts of programming. Debugging is a challenge to me like tracking down Kira was a challenge to L. Though, null pointer exceptions and array overflows aren't likely to get my name written down in a death note, fortunately. I know that my friend with whom I was having my conversation about Death Note isn't like me in that respect. He likes to design error-free code from the very beginning, using engineering principles rather than the scientific ones I favor, and he likes to be tough on crime and criminals whereas I tend to be more forgiving (so long as I can understand the reasoning behind a crime, even if I don't accept it).

It's with thoughts like these that I tend to get recursive, thinking about thinking about thinking about things. I'm wondering now why the two of us (who like so many of the same things and get along so well) differ in this respect, and whether it's a matter of innate genetic tendencies, upbringing, or some intangible factor that transcends both of these. I suppose in the end it doesn't matter. Some people like Kira and are fine with killing dangerous (or even not-so-dangerous) criminals, and others like L and prefer to understand and "solve" criminal problems. Just like some people like anime and others can't stand it. I just have to think about things like that, just like I feel compelled to watch anime and read manga--I'm addicted to thought like I'm addicted to Japanese comics and cartoons (and gaming, and many other "nerd" things). It's just how I am. Whether this is a fault in need of correction, a fatal flaw that condemns me, or just a quirk, I don't know, but it's me.