What I find most fascinating about Light is that he thinks like a serial killer. You have to read it with the idea that he’s actually the antagonist in mind.

But yeah, the ending of the manga is a huge payoff. The anime goes way too easy on Light and tries to make you feel sorry for him. The manga is merciless, he gets exactly what he deserves :p

The story does falter in a few places where it’s clear the author wrote himself into a corner, but try to stick with it even during the silly parts.

maybe your right about human nature- light’s impact on society is understandable. if something like deathnote really did happen- the religious movement would be plain abominable, and i think things could just flush down the drain right there and then.
the reason i was upset with it because i saw very little rebellion to kira’s killing, didn’t anyone ask a ‘why now?’ question. i won’t get into religious discussion here (i don’t think anyone likes those) but it just seemed somehthing like kira is a bit outta the blue.
‘ hey god just suddenly decided to punish people! yay thats so awesome, bad guys are getting what they deserve lol!’ is the message i got from the general public in the story- or atleast the younger generation if i remeber correctly.

i guess what i wanted to see was someone having doubts- it could be anyone- i didn’t care who, they didn’t have to even be involved with light. SOMETHING to show that the world isn’t so automatically gulible, i mean we are human, and we have doubts- doubts that we either keep to ourselves of confide in a few. does questioning someone of authority automatically get you in trouble? even when you’ve done nothing wrong? i mean there are PLENTY of intelligent people in the world, PLENTY! Are we suddenly suppose to assume all of them got so scared they wouldn’t let out a peep, even towards people they know and people they love? that just seems unrealistic to me.
understandably, i can see why the story wouldn’t show random people having thoughts or talking quietly to each other. it wouldn’t progress a plot and character driven story like ‘death note’, and i’m not sure anyone would care to see that kind of thing worked into the story. it just bugged me because i would have liked to see that, but its not my story so i can’t really complain
.
anyways- maybe you’re right about the ending though, heck- the whole series might be better then the way i see it now (all i’ve done is skimmed through a lot of parts). and if the manga does portray him the way you decribe, it might just be worth it. thanks for replying Sai

Still, it’s human nature. Think about it. If there was a seemingly omnipresent person out there that would kill anyone at any time for being bad or opposing him, what would people do? You’ll probably hate the ending too, after everything is over the world pretty much goes back to normal as if Kira never existed :p

Light doesn’t fall because he’s intelligent, it’s because he’s immature. He’s extremely childish when you think about it. Even L says that Kira is most likely “an affluent child.”

Trust me, the manga ending is very satisfying if you hate Light. Once stripped of his security he shows what a sniveling coward he really is.

i can see why everyone who likes intelligent does enjoy the show, it is in general a very good story (though i have yet read the whole thing- i get a general idea of the plot).
but i can’t for the life of me keep reading about the interesting ‘raveing’ madman light, instead of interesting me, everything i’ve read about him makes me hate him, no not just him, its how the story portrays society. its like a series completely filled with ilk of the world and the genius turned bastard god, and still the whole world just goes along with it with only a minority actually fight him to bring him down.
why does that sound so much like a run of the mill shonen series? given death note could be considered a much more realistic version of what a typical shonen plot could be.
I guess i find it hard to read because it paints such an ugly picture of the world- that most of the world is full of nothing but idiots who will fall right into the hands of an arrogant teenager with too much time on his hands to do any good.

that is a very depressing message if you ask me. Even more so when such teenager is portrayed as the most intelligent person in the world, who ends up “he orchestrates his own fall”, what the hell does that tell us about human potential?

gosh if anything- the general ‘deathnote’ idea says we, normal human beings, can do little to nothing towards bringing those who have caused crime to justice. no we need a god (or well accomplished god complexed teenager) to step in the way and clean up our screwups ( and then we delude ourselves into thinking that is FINE).

arg, wow, that just reaally speaks to me. i get the fact that life and the world are not preety pictures- it is damn ugly
but its also pretty beautiful at times too, and when i can’t find any of that in a series- i can’t read it, it might as well be the same a painting a farce of a story about a perfect world (but no one would read that- not even me haha).

okay now i’ll shut up, i gotta let go of that part if i’m going to ever get into the series

Sometimes I swear people just jump bandwagons. Like “Light is super sexy! He is great!” No. Ted Bundy was sexy, but he was never great… lol.

I love this review! <3 Thanks for shedding some light!