Death Note

No, that would make Light the villain. That's why it's called Villain Protagonist.

Mello, Near, and L are the antagonists but Light is the villain.

edited 21st May '15 7:21:33 AM by TobiasDrake

...oh, yeah, never mind. i only just woke up so that didn't really register.

There are several villains in DN. Light is obviously the most prominent but my point was that Ryuk was the most successful. He's also the most successful character period in teh whole series as he gets everything he wants and suffers no punishment or setbacks.

I think the problem with Ryuk being a "prominent villain" is that he feels more like a natural calamity than a villain. I mean, he's completely alien, he never risks anything, he has no other plans that stay there and see...

Yeah, I wouldn't call Ryuk a villain, either. More like a Chaotic Neutral.

Light was still pretty successful in his own right. He killed his nemesis, reached his goal, and "ruled" the world for several years before being toppled (and his influence lingered for a few years more, no doubt).

Ugh, what the fuck is up with my brain? I just had a dream about the moment that Light confessed, but instead of it playing out like it did in the show and him being all crazy, he took off his mask - because he was fucking dressed like Zero - and uttered something about Lelouch VI Brittania something something something. I do really wish that I remembered the dialogue...

ITT when you know you've watched too much anime, huh?

and

As I pointed out when I read the series, Rem proves that Shinigai think and feel just like we do. It's just that Ryuk is a sociopath. He doesn't even have a veneer of nobility about him like Light did. I have no doubt that Light, on some level, thought he was doing good. At least in the beginning.

Ryuk just wants to see mayhem. I still like my analogy of, would a man who purposefully drops a handgun in a school playground in order to "see what would happen" not be held accountable when a kid picks up that gun and shoots someone?

edited 1st Jul '15 3:15:47 PM by Nikkolas

Oh, I was most definitely not saying that Ryuk isn't an evil son of a bitch.

I was just saying that it's difficult to see him as a "villain" since it's clear from day one that he will never be defeated and will just leave once the show is over.

I don't really think you can use labels like good and evil to describe Shimigami, since our concepts of good and evil are based on our society and our humanity and Shimigami aren't human.

You can't really use Rem to prove anything about any other Shimigami, since we only have about four shimigami who get any real focus. Rem acts the closest to a human (although Gelous probably wasn't that much different when he was alive), but she still has no qualms about killing anyone whose name isn't Misa or whose death wouldn't be bad for Misa. All the background Shimigami seem to enjoy watching the mayhem Ryuk's unleashed, and going by the epilogue chapter other Shimigami are starting to follow his lead and drop more Death Notes in the human world.

Ryuk fits true neutral the best because you can't apply human morality to him or any other Shimigami.

Meh, for me "sentient being who gives zero value to the life of other sentient beings" is basically the defition of Evil, human or not. But yeah, good and evil tend to lose value when you introduce whole races with completely different lifestyles.

Well when I look at Shimigami I see a species that needs to kill humans to survive. That is that something we humans can't really relate to. Sure we eat animals, but we don't have to eat a specific animal and in theory we could eventually create a synthetic food source, so our survival isn't dependent on us killing cows. But let's say we had to kill cows to survive, and cows were sentient, do you really think humanity as a whole would give any value to a cow's life? I doubt it as thinking about would drive someone insane.

So by your definition pretty much every Shimigami is evil by virtue of taking the steps they have to in order to survive.

Yeah, I mostly agree... Still, Ryuk doesn't kill to survive but For the Evulz, so I really can't see him as "neutral".

Yeah but he kills a grand total of one person throughout the entire series, whom he is contractually obligated to kill. Dropping the Death Note into the human world kicked off a lot of deaths, but he never forces nor encourages Light to use it.

I put him in neutral because he defies human morality; no Shimigami puts any value on humanity as a whole beyond a food source, and only two Shimigami put value on a single person with no further concern for the rest of the species. So he's obviously not good, but I can't classify him as evil either.

People overstate the importance of sentience. Humans don't even respect the right of other humans to exist; expecting respect towards "sentient" life in general is asking a bit much.

Light should've left the task force and gone dark.

Thus resulting in a manhunt he has no ability to control?

Inside information and the ability to psychologically manipulate his pursuers are Light's biggest advantages. Without that, he wouldn't have lasted five days.

Not unless he was willing to back off and stop challenging the task force directly, but with Light's relentless egomania that's never going to happen. Psychologically speaking he has to respond to anybody who picks a fight with him, and he'd never be able to leave L alone for any real length of time.

the main reason the japanese police was looking for him so soon was because he took l's bait with lind l tailor. had he not done so, i figure L would have probably gotten the japanese police involved anyway at some point, just to be sure, but he wouldn't be as confident about the fact kira was japanese.

edited 16th Jul '15 11:45:44 AM by wehrmacht

They did the Lind L. Tailor thing in Japan first, though, because L was pretty confident Kira was Japanese. This confidence stemmed from the fact that his killings started in and were centered around Japan.

Kira biting the hook clinched it, but there's a reason L cast his line there first.

There are many sad elements to Light's life but, in discussion about "the Best Relationships in Fiction" I realized one of the saddest is the fact Light's only real friend is a sociopathic embodiment of death.

I believe Tobias talked about this a few pages back when I was reading the manga and he's absolutely right. Ryuk is the one person Light shares his "true self" with. Even among those who knew he was Kira, Light was always on guard, always lying and deceiving. He lived years of his life like this. Ryuk was the one person he was never on guard with and who he seemed to trust implicitly. And that trust - that friendship - all came to a head when Light asked Ryuk to kill his enemies.

And we know what happened.

edited 21st Jul '15 11:43:29 AM by Nikkolas

To Light, Ryuk was the only true confidante he had. The only person he could rely on.

To Ryuk, Light was his favorite TV show. He kept with it until it Jumped the Shark, then changed the channel in disgust.

Well, Light was treated with as much respect and empathy as he treated others. Sort of tragic, in a way, but also so satisfying...

But yeah, I do agree with your analysis of Light and Ryuk's relationship.

Does the way Light died in any way effect your judgment of his intelligence? Do you think he's not a genius because he died screaming and pleading?

This is something Ambar brought up in the Gundam thread and I want to bring it here. It all started when I brought up a scenario where Light was a Gundam or Eva pilot or something instead of a guy with a magic notebook. I think he'd act very differently than how he did in DN because the circumstances are entirely different.

Ambar thinks he's stupid and so he would be no different. As "proof" of Light's stupidity, he pointed to how Light died.

edited 26th Jul '15 10:20:51 AM by Nikkolas

Crossing threads to recruit people for an argument in another thread isn't usually what we're referring to when we talk about importing drama, but still strikes me as bad form nonetheless.