We'll never know for sure because the show never specifies,
It's true; so they never spoonfed us any information.
but, I think it's a little unreasonable to assume that the remaining 30% of the entire world's crimes were serial murders and other horrendous acts, because those types of crimes already make up only a tiny percentage of crimes, even in high crime nations
This is my point. Because they're a tiny fraction they're definitely in there. What's more reasonable, assuming that the remaining 30% includes the most heinous types of criminals; or that the Jeffrey Dahmers, the Ted Bundies, the Zodiac Killers, and the Jack the Rippers of the world are suddenly and inexplicably intimidated by a threat that never stopped them before? One that probably provides the majority of them with an additional - or even vital - thrill. What's the rest of it? I don't know, probably people of lower intelligence, or people who really are getting away with it. So again - is he really helping?
White collar crime itself and political corruption contribute a lot to the poor state of the world, so, if Kira is also targeting those people, it would make sense that the crimes and wars of the world would decline significantly.
Light's political views are never touched upon either. It's not clear that he did target those people. People who talk about the "filth" of society aren't generally looking out for the little guy. And isn't it said that crime dipped back to normal after his death? Stable economies should have formed during his reign, if they had, that should prevent rates from instantly returning to normal. It's also a commonly held statistic that 1 in 5 executives is a psychopath. So again, you're talking about a person who is fearless by definition. Kira may or may not target people with loose business practices who don't break laws, but like you said "we'll never know" but this doesn't have as much common sense behind it as "Serial killers don't generally care too much about being killed." (relative to normal thinking people) I'd say if the rates do return to normal though, that's pretty strong evidence that he wasn't a reformist of any kind.
Did he ever send out a manifesto, demands, an ultimatum, guidelines? He murdered people from the shadows. He made himself a murderer
first. He's no revolutionary.
A hypothetical world with 70% less crime and no wars is a better world, no matter how likely it is to happen in real life or not. If, in the show's universe, that's how the Death Note and Kira impacts the world, then, of course I'm going to root for him, god complex or not.
Theoretically a world where everyone is a slave is one with 100% less crime.
Once the heroes kill him and rid the world of this supposed tyrannical murderer with a god complex, they'll have to go back to dealing with crime and corruption at the same level as before.
It's funny that you put it this way, after what I said. If you're really looking at the bigger picture, shouldn't you see that the world should be operating as "otherwise normal" under Kira's rule? Governments still have to operate, the people still need order. If Kira eliminates the bad people - who's left? So as I said before, shouldn't there have been some kind of fortification in place, metaphorically speaking - if there was virtually no corruption, then how does the system become instantly corrupt again? Unless people are inherently evil? Then maybe Kira should have been on a mission to wipe out the human race...
I think the real point of the show is to bring up these questions of morality, it's not supposed to be as black and white as you make it out to be.
Actually the author has stated, something like the opposite in interviews. They said that the point of Death Note is to be entertaining, and that the point of it is not whether or not Light's "proposal" (as it were) was right or wrong, and to explore that, it was that Light was "diabolical."
It actually bothers me a little that the author's dismissive of the moral question the anime brings up, but is pretty definitive about Light being evil.
In some ways both sides are evil, and are only trying to satisfy their own desires regardless of the consequences to others.
I can't stress enough that I think this is WAAY off. L uses questionable tactics to capture Kira, but Soichiro and most of the squads actions are not remotely outside the realm of righteous. Going back to the author Ohba said Soichiro is the only "good" person out of the main characters. There's nothing "evil" about wanting to see a killer brought to justice.
However, Kira's "evilness" led to a world almost free of crime and totally free of war,
It had plenty of crime, and plenty of war, it was just lopsided by a man with a selfish cause and an unfair advantage.
reply
share