L vs Light (Victory=/=Superiority)

It's always bugged me that whenever i discuss Death Note with someone, and we discuss who's the smartest character in the show. My opponent always falls back on the same tired resoning everyone uses to claim that Light was better than L. They say that he beat L, ergo he's better than him. Problem is, my personal bias aside, any way you look at their battle it's clear in all respects that L is the smarter cookie. Thisnever seemed subjective to me, it always seemed provable. A fantastic WMG puts it better than I can, but the main jist of it is that Light only won because of either Luck, or just happening to have information L does not. I cannot deny that the way Light uses the death note is genius, but you can't ignore that he gets dominated in every straight up battle of wits he has with L. Light's Memory Gambit was probably his highest point intelligence wise, but despite everyone saying that L is fooled, he isn't, he figures out EXACTLY what Light is up to, he just can't stop it, because he lacks information, information that he had no possible way of obtaining. L lost and Light won true, but to use this as a base for comparing their intelligence when Light only won because he cheated (not in an underhanded way, he was using a Magic notebook and his allies were the most pathetically easy to manipulate pawns i've ever seen) and L only lost because of his team.

Eh...Light's victory there was a result of Xanatos Roulette at best. It pretty much relies on what Rem does. And that relies on what Misa does. It was pretty lucky that some girl turned up on his doorstep with the namedar he needed and who declared her love and loyalty to him from the get-go.

Oh jesus are people still arguing about this?

-shrug- Just adding my thoughts since it came up. I don't really get into many arguments on this, tbh.

Let's go back to Madoka yuri pairings, that never gets old.

Well, then, knock yourselves out, I don't have any thoughts on that.

Eh i wanted to get it off my chest. I'm still kinda new to these forums,so i don't know what's been talked about, discussed etc

edited 11th Jun '11 2:20:33 PM by gingerninja666

What I experienced was that people pretty much unanimously thought L was smarter than Light. Seriously, I don't think I've seen someone not think that. When people are discussing the smartest anime characters, L's name will fall for Death Note, and not Lights.

It's pretty obvious that L is smarter. He never made a mistake. Light beat him with magical bullshit hax. He couldn't even do it despite playing from a ridiculously advantageous position, no, he basically had to tell a God of Death "go kill this guy". And of course he was lucky enough that one such Shinigami was dumb enough to be so in love with a human he'd let himself willingly be manipulated for her. (Death Note writing so gud!)

It depends what sort of intelligence you are talking - because there is no universal measure of intelligence.

Or to put it the other way, L is outstanding at theories and facts and planning. But Light is much better than him at manipulating people (including non-human people), and the whole Memory Gambit is basically Light playing to his own strengths much better than L is at playing to his.

Light's victory was about him using what he had to the best of his capacity, which L didn't - he mightn't be as intelligent as L, but he made better use of his advantages.

Light eats potato chips. L eats sweets. We all know Potato Chips>Sweets.

I dunno, as I said, his victory relied on variables that he actually had little or no control over.

I agree that he played to his strengths, and that L, strangely, did not play to all of his strengths (such as not being as meticulous when looking at the extra rule), but all of his moves were down to him. Nothing miraculously advantageous to him sprang up in order to help him like Misa did for Light.

Not to say that Light isn't a master manipulator, but he'd have had a harder time of things if he didn't have a little puppet who remained easy to control throughout the whole thing.

See, the thing is that arguably Light is so damn good that he did have control over those variables. I've heard the argument that counting on Rem's behaviour was an unreliable plan, but there's also the interpretation that he is sufficiently good at manipulating people to be sure Rem would do that. And to be honest, I have to say that it was, indeed, reasonable to suppose that - Rem's obsession with Misa is pretty obvious.

Misa was as much a liability as an asset to Light IMO. She just had to go run off and do stupid things like calling out Takada. And she proved to be the weak link in the first half when she allowed L to trace her down because she wasn't careful enough (i.e. Light-level paranoid) with erasing evidence.

As for his Memory Gambit, I think he pulled it off well. Sure, it didn't fool L, but the point was not really to try to fool L - it was to strip him of any evidence to use. L doesn't win if he knows Light is Kira, L wins if he can prove Light is Kira. (Or if he is willing to kill Light on incomplete evidence, which Light knows he won't do.) Which he failed to achieve.

edited 11th Jun '11 11:23:01 PM by ashnazg

Much as it galls me to admit it, I'm not sure that Light is necessarily dumber than L. But I'm positive that L is more mature. Maybe not by a whole lot, but L's at least more self-aware; if he wasn't being sarcastic when he said he admired people like Aizawa, it certainly points to him understanding, even if only rudimentarily, that human beings having value and strengths beyond what they can do for him personally - something Light should have kept in mind.

Blah blah blah hindsight is 20/20.

Well, I do agree with Drakynda when she says that intelligence isn't quantifiable, especially when there's different strengths to be played to. Even Misa has her strengths that she plays better than the other two. It's probably down to methods rather than intelligence, itself, here.

^^I disagree with the idea that Light was sure. There's always room for variables when predicting what somebody will do. He's better than most, sure, but he couldn't have been completely certain. There's always possible outside influences, unless the people you're manipulating live in a bare cage and are never let out. Also, I'd say her advantages in the long term outweighed her disadvantages.

^Also, yeah, there's that and also the fact that Light was so sure he wasn't going to lose that he didn't make preparations in case of his death to continue the name of Kira, whereas L did. Because it was all about him being God, really.

Seriously. If it were primarily about the world, Rem wouldn't have been instructed to find someone like Higuchi.

Does that mean that if anyone on the show ate chocolate dipped chips or pretzels that they'd be the best person on the planet forever?

edited 12th Jun '11 12:01:53 AM by Grahf

^ Clearly.

actually, going by the manga, L was pretty damn meticulous about the fake rules, he wanted to test it minutes after finding out about it. unfortunately Rem was already in position.It should be noted that L was scaring light with how much he was able to deduce about the notebook

My beef is that it became impossible for L to win after Rem appeared. There was no way he could deduce Rem's personality without seeing and hearing her, and even if he could, the second Light got in trouble, Misa would cry, and Rem would help him.

But L had Light cornered after Rem appeared. He confined Misa and was closing in on Light really fast. The only reason Light got out was because of his genius memory gambit.

Shit, I was tricked into actually responding seriously to this thread.

edited 12th Jun '11 9:54:46 AM by neobowman

you don't have to hate me Neo

I have to agree completely with gingerninja on this one. L was way smarter than Light, who was smarter than Mello or Near. Light could have been smarter than L, he was a full-on Magnificent Bastard, while L was just The Chessmaster, and had detective abilities that at the very least rivaled L's. However, as Kira, his Pride always got in the way of making intelligent decisions. And while Light was a Manipulative Bastard, how many people you can control is not a measure of intelligence.

Anyway, L's death was assured as soon as Rem appeared. She was basically a literal Deus ex Machina for Light. Had there been no Rem and Misa, Light would have averted suspicion longer, but would have likely have been caught eventually unless he made the eye trade.

edited 12th Jun '11 6:05:17 PM by shiro_okami

Without the eyes, the only way to figure out L's name would be to interrogate Watari or L himself. Unfortunately, neither would ever actually cough up the name under any circumstances. I wouldn't say L is smarter than Light just because Light would never be able to figure out L's name without the eyes.

L's actions are definitely a lot more well-thought out than Light's. Light makes quite a few several rash mistakes but when he does plan, he generally does it better than L. His memory gambit was based on him knowing exactly how each and every character would operate and predicting everyone's actions. If even one thing went wrong, he'd either never get his memory back or be screwed over by L.

L on the other hand, while he doesn't do anything outright stupid like Light sometimes does, he usually operates from a pretty standard logical standpoint. I doubt he'd be able to do anything like the long-winded predictive moves like what Light did.

Near and Mello are often overlooked. Mello's social skills are most definitely better than L or Near's but he executed like, one plan in the entire story. He spent seven years preparing for one single plan. Granted, the plan went perfectly and was brilliant, but he never showed that much on the spot thinking.

Near gets a lot less credit than what he deserves. He had Light completely cornered at the end. If he tested out the notebook before the final confrontation, he wouldn't even have needed Mello's help to capture Kira. His escape from his HQ up against Kira's nation, his identification of Mikami, etc, etc, were all really well thought out and I don't really think he gets any recognition for anything he does. Instead, his achievements get drowned out by all the fans saying "second half of deathnote sucks, etc etc"

God, stop making me post so seriously.

edited 12th Jun '11 6:39:34 PM by neobowman

I agree with your notions about Near and Mello perfectly, their underplayed in the grand scheme of things by nearly every fan, yet they all have their moments.

Actually, that's something. Everyone on this show has their area of expertise I noticed. Their all masters of Xanatos and Batman Gambits but beyond that:

• Light is at his best when performing a Xanatos Roulette. His ability to plan ahead is truly outstanding and given enough time he can outthink anyone (including L I hate to admit it) This can be seen by his Memory Gambit, and his scheme to kill the FBI agents. He's also a brilliant manipulator and a lier.
• L is brilliant at Xanatos Speed Chess and Indy Ploy. He's capable of thinking quicker on the fly than Light, as seen by his plan to catch Higuchi, his saving of Matsuda and his saving of Soichiro. When Face to face with Light and simply talking to him, no notebook involved, L ALWAYS ended up winning, or at least finding out something while Light learned nothing.

Though Light never actually has anything to find out other than his name. Anything he says can and will be used to his disadvantage.

People like to say that Light had an advantage due to having an Artifact of Doom whereas L did not. Therefore, their conclusion tends to be that L is smarter, but Light had an advantage which allowed him to win. This is very faulty reasoning. The truth is that L actually had a hage advantage over Light. He had a shitload of money, tons of gadgets, aliases, and the cooperation (to an extent) from the government and police force. All Light had was a notebook where he needs a name and a face to kill someone. The fact that he managed to acquire that information about L and triumph is no small feet. Also, Light had to work in secret with basically no help from anyone. When he did acquire an ally, it was Misa who turned out to be more of a hindrance than a help. But Light managed to work around all that and come out the victor. I may be biased due to being a Light supporter, but I think my reasoning is pretty spot-on.