Is Light Yagami, the central character of Death Note, a hero or a villain? For those of you that don't know what Death Note is, it is an anime about a high school student named Light Yagami who obtains the power of a god when he acquires a Death Note. A Death Note is a notebook where whoever's name is written in it will die when that person's face is pictured, and they are used by the Shinigami, who are Japanese gods of death.
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| Light as Kira image found on http://stuffpoint.com/death-note/image/53529-death-note-kira.jp |
When Light first acquires the notebook, he believes it to be a hoax, as such, his first victim was a trial, to see if the notebook actually works. When the desired person drops dead of a heart attack, and after he tries killing a couple others successfully, Light is convinced that it is real. After, he makes it his mission to rid the world of sinners and evildoers by slaughtering all of the world's criminals. He adopts the Internet-given code name, Kira, and while he starts by purely killing criminals, he eventually progresses as the show goes on to killing anyone that gets in his way, good or evil, morphing into a cold-blooded murderer by the end of the show. Without a doubt, Light is evil at the end of the show. In the final episode, he openly admits he is Kira and that he knows what he was doing was wrong, yet he did it anyway. The part that truly shows he is a villain is when he reveals to Matsuda that he doesn't feel remorse for his father's death, and when he calls him a fool for dying. It could be even earlier on, when he states he might kill his sister. The mark of a truly wicked individual is when they kill their family or witness their family dying and don't feel any remorse. The extremely wicked are those individuals that are grateful that their family died or think that they got what they deserve. At the end of Death Note Light embodies all of these qualities, labeling him as a wicked person.
But where is that tipping point? When exactly does Light become bad, and by what means? The answers differ depending on the person, but I think that after Light kills a certain person, or rather, group of people, he loses it and capitulates to the power of the Death Note. That point happens in episodes 4 and 5, in which Light learns someone is following him, a member of the FBI, and manipulates him so he can learn his name and the names of the rest of his squad, all of whom he later slays using the Death Note. The killing of the FBI agents is when Light crosses the line. They were just doing their jobs. They were good, innocent people that were trying to help out mankind. To just purely kill people like that is a very heinous crime and marks the beginning of Light's domination and transformation to Kira, which continues to the end of the show.
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| Light's Shinigami, Ryuk Image found on http://cdn.smosh.com/sites/default/files/bloguploads/ryuk-cosplay-ryuk.jpg |
But where is that tipping point? When exactly does Light become bad, and by what means? The answers differ depending on the person, but I think that after Light kills a certain person, or rather, group of people, he loses it and capitulates to the power of the Death Note. That point happens in episodes 4 and 5, in which Light learns someone is following him, a member of the FBI, and manipulates him so he can learn his name and the names of the rest of his squad, all of whom he later slays using the Death Note. The killing of the FBI agents is when Light crosses the line. They were just doing their jobs. They were good, innocent people that were trying to help out mankind. To just purely kill people like that is a very heinous crime and marks the beginning of Light's domination and transformation to Kira, which continues to the end of the show.
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