In ep 16 when light gives up the death note the show sort of loses its charm that it got from the rivalry and psychopath-ness of light anyone agree?
shareI think this is a universal thought and it nearly splits the season into a before/after scenario
shareWhile the tone does change and the series seems to go a new direction, it is just delayed satisfaction: when Light gets the Death Note back and his whole plan is revealed it shows how monstrous and brilliant he really is.
shareIt's worth it JUST for the payoff when he gets the Death Note back. Although I'd say the quality drops around episode 12 when Misa and Rem are introduced. People just don't seem to really notice until later. The first 11 episodes will always be the best to me.
shareI don't know, I think the middle part is what makes the anime a tragedy. You see how Light could have possibly been a good person. He genuinely hated Kira. When his memories returned it was as if the good was ripped out of him all over again.
What could Light have been if he had never found the Death Note?
Everyone that used the Death Note became evil. Ryuk knew this when he dropped it on Earth for his entertainment, but that was the point. He wanted the chaos and excitement. He wanted Light's soul.
. You see how Light could have possibly been a good person. He genuinely hated Kira. When his memories returned it was as if the good was ripped out of him all over again.
It's not perfect but the point would be that Light was corrupted the instant he used the Death Note, and that's why he began murdering innocents so early in the series.
The Death Note took Lights natural instinct for justice and pushed it to their extreme ends (absolute power corrupting absolutely and all). Without the Death Note Light was less willing to risk innocents than L was.
The only issue is that NOTHING at all suggests the Death Note supernaturally corrupts you to become bad. Like once you touch it and all of a sudden you're bad or corrupted like Lord of the Rings with the Ring. It's just a notebook that can kill people. It doesn't physically transform you.
If it was the Death Note's fault [literally] then that detracts one of the main theme's of the show / manga. You know..Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, like you said. Instead, your theory takes the blame mostly on the book itself and not human nature.
Thus, his post-amnesia personality still doesn't make sense.
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The only issue is that NOTHING at all suggests the Death Note supernaturally corrupts you to become bad. Like once you touch it and all of a sudden you're bad or corrupted like Lord of the Rings with the Ring. It's just a notebook that can kill people. It doesn't physically transform you.
If it was the Death Note's fault [literally] then that detracts one of the main theme's of the show / manga. You know..Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, like you said. Instead, your theory takes the blame mostly on the book itself and not human nature.
Thus, his post-amnesia personality still doesn't make sense.
This isn't entirely correct, necessarily. Ryuk implies several times that everyone who holds a Death Note is cursed; this could mean cursed to misery, which he states when Light's father dies, but it could also means cursed to other things, such as corruption, and that does not conflict with the theme of human nature as much as you might think for reasons I'll extrapolate below.
Light questions himself a couple of times when he has no memory of the Death Note. He asks himself more than once if L's theory could be correct, asks himself if he would bring himself to kill in order to stop crime. In his monologue he says he doesn't think himself capable of it, but he sounds unsure.
The point is that, when given power, common and even good people can instantly flip and turn bad. Look up the Stanford Pirson Experiment: people went crazy after a couple of DAYS out of a planned weeks-long program. The experiment was stopped because the effects were IMMEDIATE and SEVERE--two days was all it took for primal, violent, and sociopathic behavior to begin to show. People are far more fickle than optimists and moralists would like to think, regardless of education or intellect.
The Death Note's power to kill is an instantly corrupting influence in and of itself. It does not influence Light's behavior directly (no hypnosis, mind control, etc), yet its effect on his actions and outlook IS almost immediate, and that is NOT a contradiction OR far-fetched given similar real-life examples.