Death Note

Crazy question I had.

If someone used the Death Note to make a select few people lauch nuclear missiles on other countries, then later kill themselves, would that still fall under the "If that person's death brings about circustances that will kill someone else, then circustances will change so that it does not harms anyone else." rule?

And if that is the case... then how would that happen? The missiles would just malfunction before they are detected and thus stop any chance of conflict arising?

Most likely the person being controlled would suffer a heart attack before they could even enter the launch code.

I'll note that not only would this fall under the "cannot harm somebody else" rule, but it would also, in the vast majority of cases fall under the "physically impossible" rule. Even the President of the United States can't just order a nuclear strike.

edited 4th Apr '15 9:49:06 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Yeah, the Death Note is quite good at detecting if you're trying to bullshit it, and whenever it does the victim simply dies of heart attack after 40 seconds.

Yeah, I mean this is a notebook that's so anal retentive about the "no doing things you can't physically do" that telling somebody to write "I know L is suspicious of the Japanese police" fails.

edited 4th Apr '15 8:47:48 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

And there wasn't even "I know" in those instructions, it could have been baseless speculation on the victim's part but the Death Note still rejected it.

There's one little thing that has been bugging me for awhile, if you write a person's name while thinking of their face in the circumstances of death section for somebody else's death does the Death Note understand you're not killing that person? I can't remember a time where Light wrote down someone's name in the circumstances, and I was planning on using that as part of a fan fiction I might someday actually get around to writing.

Any name on the Death Note will end up killed by it. If you write "Soichiro Matsuda dies after being approached by Touta Matsuda", Matsuda will die. Probably 40 seconds after writing his name. But I think one can get around this by using an euphemism, such as "his closest co-worker".

However, I'm not sure if one can get around this by simply writing "Matsuda" instead. The DN supposedly demands a full name, but Lind Taylor's middle initial was sufficient.

edited 6th Apr '15 12:02:25 PM by JonnasN

Possibly due to Early-Installment Weirdness

So good. The Death Note is so good at bullshit detection that in the event of someone attempting to abuse the "A name incorrectly written 4 times becomes unkillable by Death Note" rule to deliberately render someone unkillable by Death Note, the Death Note will immediately kill you, the writer. That's how dedicated the book is to fraud prevention.

Do not attempt to outsmart the Death Note. It will not end well for you.

edited 6th Apr '15 12:24:14 PM by TobiasDrake

I now imagine the Death Note as having the face of a long-time Game Master when a new player thinks he's being smart because he's trying to exploit a supposed hole in the rules that everybody figured out years ago.

edited 6th Apr '15 1:59:14 PM by Cozzer

Well... I just finished watching the series.

I gotta say, Light falling apart like that was really painful to witness. Just... Holy crap.

Painful? More like deeply cathartic.

Just started watching. Love all the little mind games. Anytime L gets Light to think "Damn, it's a test!" just makes me smile every time.

Not everyone hates Light as deeply as you do ya know.

truthfully the only reason i can see people enjoying light is because he's fun to watch (to a degree). as a person, he's kinda loathsome.

There have been many "loathsome" characters who get Alas, Poor Villain. In fact it is often the mark of the more messianic type of heroes that, no matter how vile the villain is, they never just give up on them.

There are many villains who have done more heinous things than Light ever did and with even less justification yet the hero still pities them. Because, in the eyes of many, that is what makes them a hero.

I'm reminded of that Justice League Unlimited episode where Vandal Savage is the last surviving human. You don't get much more stereotypically evil than Savage was up to that point. Yet many came away feeling deeply sorry for him.

edited 24th Apr '15 11:49:06 PM by Nikkolas

I'll just remind everybody that the general reaction to Downfall was not huge helpings of Schadenfreude.

Exactly.

It's actually one of the more...uplifting aspects of human nature that I think many people, if they found Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin or whoever you want to name, dangling off a cliff by one hand, they would help them up instead of just stamping on said hand, breaking all their fingers and laughing as the person fell to their death.

edited 25th Apr '15 2:05:13 AM by Nikkolas

Oh, I'd help him up, but that's because you don't solve problems by violating the law, not out of any genuine sympathy. Then I'd drag his ass to a police station so he could be tried, arrested, and thrown in the deepest hole that we can conveniently locate for the rest of forever.

That's assuming I'm in a democracy, of course. I find said dictator in the situation you described in his own country, where he won't be punished, over the cliff he goes.

I'll also note that the comparison of Light to that version of Vandal Savage doesn't work, because that version of Savage has regrets. He's become a better person, as a result of what has befallen him, and actively assists Superman in putting things to rights. None of that happens to Light, so no Alas, Poor Villain for him.

Downfall's a study in the banality of evil, exposing Hitler for the pathetic, sad little man that he was. It still doesn't act as if his exit is any sort of loss, and Light's isn't either.

Vandal Savage became a better person because he spent eons slowly going insane from total isolation within the barren, post-apocalyptic nightmare he himself created. His redemption led to his good self being erased, effectively returning his villain status.

Sylar, from Heroes, did something quite similar, slowly going insane and conveniently realizing the error of his ways, but still kept at arm's length by Peter Petrelli.

Light had 5-10 minutes to maybe an hour after his defeat. The anime adds a scene with his past self walking by, implying regret - the manga has him die like a diseased rodent in front of Ryuk, in a manner that's so comically spastic it borders on Narm.

The loss is that Light could've been a decent person, or at least put his supposed intelligence to work for the betterment of mankind. That's the whole point of the Yotsuba arc. If Light got a "do-over", what would he be? At worst he's a college student who bitches about society while doing little to change it (so, like most people on Twitter), and later a police investigator. Probably would've worked with L at some point or another.

edited 28th Apr '15 4:17:03 PM by Soble

they are all different situations but that's not really important to ambar's point, which is that in his opinion that there was no point in the story where light became a better person; the yotsuba arc was a REGRESSION of his character to what he SUPPOSEDLY was like before.

dying like a diseased rat is the most fitting end for him, and I say that from a storytelling perspective, not out of any dislike for light. it drives home the point of how small and insignificant he truly was. ryuk and the other shinigami are the only ones in the story who are truly close to being an actual deity; Light was never close to being god, he was just a mass murderer who was being allowed to go on a power trip because Ryuuk allowed it. he could have stopped him at any time, were he bored enough. that was clear from the getgo, but light never really understood that until the very end.

I1m not sure that Light would regret what he'd done unless he had a very long time to think about it, like Savage, and even then, that's a maybe, we have no way of knowing.

anyway, my problem is that light in the yotsuba arc doesn't entirely fit his characterization pre-death note, little of it as we see. and it becomes even more jarring when you consider how fast Light falls of the slippery slope to begin with. it's not exactly a very compelling or convincing example of characterization.

edited 28th Apr '15 4:38:12 PM by wehrmacht

I've theorized before that Light told himself he was good, and even genuinely believed that, but deep down he was quite selfish and had too high an opinion of himself.

Notice how, when he goes amnesiac, literally the first thing he thinks is "Wait, I could never lose my memory, and I would never entertain that theory, what am I on about?", and he goes to try to get himself free despite fully believing in his own innocence, and that he would be released as soon as Kira resumed the kills.

Furthermore, at one point he realises that he had opportunity to kill Kira's first victim, blanks in his memory, entertained thoughts of killing criminals... And doesn't report any of this, because he still believes he's too smart and strong-willed to ever forget such a thing.

Once he got a taste of power, and the power to do it incognito, his true character came through.

I don't think he has enough of a characterization to say his later characterization doesn't fit. What we know about Light from the start is that he's smart, and he's bored, and he initially thinks killing people is wrong. Two of those things go bye-bye. When Yotsuba arc happens, he's still smart, but now he's the prime suspect of a worldwide murder case, so yeah, he's not exactly "bored" anymore and he's got a little more pep in his step. And like brought up, he doesn't think he could possibly be Kira, even though his train of thought makes him suspect.

Compelling enough. Convincing, well, I don't find my suspension of disbelief shattered. Fictional characters going mad with power is a common device. I don't think Light went off the deep-end in under 24 hours either.

Okay, fair enough.

You say that, but that's an oddly pointed way of absorbing/explaining the tale. The exposition makes it pretty obvious that the Shinigami are on top and that things will end badly for Light and virtually everyone who uses the Death Note.

edited 29th Apr '15 12:10:00 AM by Soble

So on another board I frequent we were discussing the "Most Dominant Anime Villains.' There were a lot of the usual suspects - your Aizen's, Madara's, Freeza's, etc.. Oh and Nakago from Fushigi Yuugi, which was surprising. Good choice though.

Anyway, I was reflecting on the topic and thinking if I could say Light. Problem is, Light could never be all that dominating because then the series would be extremely boring. And obviously L is not a villain.

But then it came to me - would Ryuk be a good choice for one of most dominant anime villains of all time? I mean, when you get right down to it, isn't he the only person who came out of the entire series a winner?

edited 21st May '15 2:07:37 AM by Nikkolas

The great thing about Ryuk is that the only thing he actually does to qualify as a villain is drop the Death Note on Earth in the first place. After that, he's the guy who is only there to stuff his face with popcorn until the movie ends. Only with apples, and Light's entertainment value.

in a technical sense, the "villains" of Death Note are Light, Mello, and Near. They're Hero Antagonists. Light is a Villain Protagonist.

edited 21st May '15 7:18:29 AM by wehrmacht