But what do we know about those orphanages?

If they were like Wammy’s House, they were spacious, barely furnished places. One could argue the children there required rooms with little to no furniture as they would use the space to play like Near does by building card towers. It’s interesting to notice, then, that the rooms don’t have chairs or even cushions for the children to sit in when they are expected to do so (take for example Mello and Near speaking with Roger and the children speaking with L).

The adults responsible for the care of the children seem to care very little for them and Roger allows a fourteen-year-old to leave his care.

The children collected and taken to his orphanages are gifted and they are trained to become the next L. Those children are raised in a competitive environment for no reason other than Mr. Wammy decided they should.

It doesn’t matter they may choose not to become L as long as they want to have the skills required to still be an option. The objective of the orphanages is not to house orphans but to house gifted children who have the potential to be L’s successors.

The autonomy of those children is denied from a very young age in such a way they grow to believe the way they are guided by beliefs they were manipulated into having are actually an expression of their own independent self.

The system in place to control and raise the gifted children at Wammy’s House does not care for the children’s needs and desires. In fact, it makes it so the children are led to believe their needs and desires are the ones the institution expect them to have, aka to become L’s successor.

If someone looks closely at Watari’s work, he doesn’t seem to be such a great man.

Article by Lua Cruz

Here is at least one house for gifted children, assumed to be orphans, who are raised in an unfriendly and competitive environment for no other reason other than Quillsh Wammy thought this was an important thing to do. Those children are taught their skills should be directed to a very specific goal: becoming L. L is a detective so the point of collecting those children is to groom them into becoming detectives. More than that, they are trained to be confident in their own reasoning, their own methods of doing what they enjoy.

If the children are taught to find a hobby and to find their own way of achieving the goals of said hobby, can we talk about indoctrination in Wammy’s House? Considering John White’s definition that indoctrination takes place if the intention of the teacher is to make it so that “(t)he child should believe that ‘p’ is true, in a such way that nothing will shake this belief” (White 1972a, 119 and 1973, 179), it could be said the point behind Wammy’s is to make sure the children believe their goal is worth everything.

If they want to solve a case, anything they do to accomplish that (be it breaking the law or putting themselves at risk or indirectly getting people killed or cheating) is worth it. Their conclusion is absolute to the point their actions are justified as if they are justice.

Mello joins the Mafia, K joins a bio-terrorist group, B becomes a serial killer, L himself admits to being a criminal by current laws and is willing to use torture against Misa. Letting them do as they pleased, confident on their own skills and conclusions, seemed to be a pretty chaotic project.

As it is, Watari died before his experiment was complete and we only have bits and pieces of it to try and make sense of his project. But why was it important to Watari to create a group of people with that level of confidence in their own reasoning? Why was it important to let them loose in the world with no guidance or direction?

Article by Lua Cruz

While canon doesn’t linger on Quillsh Wammy on his own, Watari’s existence on itself is implied to occupy a much bigger role than what we actually see.

We are introduced to him as the connection between L and the outside world, and, as the story progresses, we also see Watari is responsible for carrying L’s orders as well as taking care of L himself. We see Watari as the liaison, the butler, the bodyguard and the assistant but we aren’t given a reason to explain this renewed inventor taking on those functions.

We are told, both in the original manga and in the L: The Wammy’s House One-shot, that Quillsh Wammy is a man of wealth.  There is no reason keeping him from paying someone to look after L other than he chose to do it himself. And as we see when L arrives at Wammy’s house, he makes that decision soon after he is introduced to L. That is a choice we are left to explain on our own.

The orphanages weren’t created out of altruism and kindness. When we see one of them, we see a place with barely any furniture and a warden who cares so little for the children he’s responsible for that he doesn’t mind handing over private information he knew could endanger them. It’s not a place for children to grow up happily and safely, neither it is a place for children to be adopted.

After L, the point of, at least, Wammy’s House was to produce a successor and there is no explanation as to why the orphanages were meant to produce something in the first place. In that case, it’s more likely L was what they were looking for and not a random child Watari decided to entertain.

Considering Watari made the decision of establishing several orphanages after World War II, his motivation could’ve been to prevent another war, to find the one mind capable of intervening and putting a stop to such horrors. If L was the answer to the question he was trying to answer with his orphanages, Watari was looking for a kid capable of saying their own methods, their own morals, were just.

In fact, we can go beyond that and consider Watari didn’t change his methods after finding L as much as he was lucky enough to find a child who already did and strongly believed what he wanted the children under his care to do and believe.

Watari forced the children under his care to abide by his own moral inclination despite their own desires but to do so believing in their own deductive skills. They were indoctrinated to believe they, too, could be justice, but only if they were the very best. Personal safety, personal happiness, mental health, physical well-being, etc… were not as important as the good of the majority, but the good of the majority was taught to them as a consequence of their own actions, their own inclinations, their own search for answers.

Not only was Watari morally irresponsible as he allowed L to do as he wished (choosing the cases and methods he pleased under the pretence of representing justice), he was also morally wrong on the orphanage system he created. If he thought the world needed a moral compass that he could provide, he, at least, knew his methods were condemnable enough he should keep them hidden.

As a police detective lacking in experience, Matsuda becomes the one character involved in the Kira case that is just an ordinary person. He doesn’t have, yet, the strength of will to do good despite himself and, as we see when Matsuda is confronted by the reveal of Kira’s identity, his personal feelings and his moral views are still pretty much the same. If his importance comes from being the less experienced detective, it also comes from Matsuda being our constant reminder of a common sense point of view among more specific moral inclinations.

That is not to say, in any way, that Matsuda isn’t willing to sacrifice himself. The values Matsuda holds true and that motivate him towards acts of selflessness are not motivated by the greater good, so to say. If we look closely, he acts kindly and in a caring manner not as a police officer but as a friend or an empathetic acquaintance. Matsuda’s acts of bravery don’t hold the same meaning as Soichiro’s or Aizawa’s because their reasoning is presented to us as something done because that’s the right thing to do despite their internal conflicts while Matsuda’s actions are shown to be motivated by a desire to do good but an inability to detach himself from his personal desires and conclusions. For example, to show the contrast between Matsuda and the other investigators, we can take Ide as an example.

Ide disagrees with L and walks away from the investigation, he is still unable to walk away from the case itself as that would be turning a blind eye into a situation considered morally wrong. Ide couldn’t bring himself to choose neutrality when he was faced with the consequences of letting Kira run free; walking away from the investigation becomes a shameful act. When Matsuda is faced with doubts regarding Near as L, he isn’t ready to choose his convictions over his work even when he seems convinced Near did terrible things to be able to end the Kira case.

By the end of the manga, Matsuda has acquired some experience and that’s enough to make him doubt Near’s intentions. Nevertheless, Matsuda is, still, only beginning to abandon the path of an ordinary person and truly becoming an investigator. As he chooses to put aside his worries about Near, he also shows us there is a transition to be made from an ordinary person who is meant to be protect by the law and whose concerns can be perceived as personal ones, an actual investigator who can understand doing the right thing requires more than a good heart.

Moreover, Chapman contextualises Kira within the wider auspices of justice.  Making me happy, he also alights upon issues of human rights, which Light Yagami certainly never goes near.

Though he never elaborates upon the point, the columnist does demonstrate quite clearly how easily society will accept the wicked and insane, if the justification is presented gradually and enticingly enough.  In this regard using Kira apologists amongst the Death Note fandom as an example, rather than, say, Donald Trump's supporters.  Seen from a long view, their pro-Kira arguments are denigrated as 'commonly insane'.  Can't argue there!

His ultimate dismissal of Light Yagami as God - or Kira as a force of justice and good - pretty much serves as the Japanese populace turning its collective back upon such grandiose pretensions of divinity.   Or as Chapman puts it:

And though Chapman doesn't go so far as to say it, doesn't that make Matsuda our representative in the Death Note universe too?  The Everyman serves as spokesperson for the readership, as we get seduced by the rhetoric of Light Yagami and symbolizes our own slap in the face by reality, as Kira's descent into insanity becomes way too obvious to support.

Then we too, like Matsuda, get to retrace our own allegiances back through each worsening compromise to that first loosening of all common sense and good morals.

Instead, Chapman sees in Matsuda a proxy for Tsugumi Ohba's own secret views on the matter, which itself makes fascinating reading and compelling food for thought.   It's definitely worth the time to check it out.

But it's OK.  No-one will ever know.  Just a bit of fiction wrapped around with fancy, that anyway is never going to happen.

So we mentally kill a politician or two, whomever is being an idiot on the news that day, or whose policies have actually ruined our world. An opening gambit in our meandering musing bid to save humanity; improve our lot - not us per say - the little people without much of a voice, trampled historically from ancestor to ancestor and then well into our own lifetimes. Or those suffering properly in far-flung war-torn places; repressed, helpless, bereft of hope and security; certainty only in that looming loss of life and liberty.

Because we personally know plenty of them.

Nevertheless, it sounds suitably heroic. And we can be heroes, David Bowie said we can.

Except then we cerebrally kill the rude commuter just now pushing past us in the queue, and the jobs-worth conductor on the train, and the incomparably selfish git who sent that smug email waiting for us when we get in.

Suddenly the self-congratulatory glow of knowing ourselves to be superheroes - secretly - has slipped a little, and its going to take a lot more justification to accept the slip of their wanton murder, than it does for that of a talking head politician abusing your mandate to act upon domestic and world stages. 

How far did you get in your mental musings, before you found yourself skirting a little too close to becoming Kira?  Scary, isn't it?  When there but for the Grace of no shinigami, bored and visiting to enable us, we might all be Kira next.

Incidentally, I do see a rotten world and take names, write them down to make it better. Because sometimes urgent action needs to be taken.  I've been doing it for years, and you can too.  Better to light a candle in the world than curse the darkness.  Better Light, than Kira.

Though trust me, there are times when I wish that the letters I penned where written on pages from a shinigami notebook.  No better than Light in the end; just a human being, that's all, in want of peace and a world as beautiful as it can be.  Which is what causes that endless craving for action when things go wrong - somebody to just do something - and what makes Death Note such an attractive and intriguing concept.

What do you reckon?  All secretly seething with the inherent instinct of a Kira?  Or was Light Yagami somehow special, insane or burdened with a flawed sort of personality?  Over to you.

Not long ago, I watched a video by YouTuber Onision. In this video, Onision basically says that Light Yagami's mistake is not considering PREVENTING crime, as opposed to punishing criminals who've ALREADY done bad things.

And by preventing crime, I mean writing for example, "Anyone who THINKS of committing a crime will be killed by the power of this notebook, before they get to actually fulfil their intentions."

I disagree, because preventing crimes by killing anyone who intends to commit them makes deaths looks like coincidences or normal deaths. In other words, if you were to hear of the death of a certain person of which no one knows the intentions, it would've NEVER occurred to you there's someone out there "passing righteous judgement", which we all know is one of Light's ultimate goals, to make Kira famous and worshipped.

I think yes, because all that sentence written in Death Note needs in order to be applied is a strong willingness to kill, which is present in the example.

But then again, that's just my wicked over-analysis and my own point-of-view to which you are free to reply.

Would Kira have been Kira if he wasn't Japanese?  What if he'd been Welsh? Or Somali? From Uzbekistan or France?  Would an American Light Yagami have targeted criminals with such gusto? Would a Tibetan Kira's motivation have been the same?

Death Note is a Japanese story, whatever its global appeal, and much of what occurs within it is infused with Japanese culture, morality and mores. Certain stances of etiquette, expectation and projected outcomes could only have happened in Japan.

Would an Icelandic parent have stood by and let their home and family be subject to such surveillance? Could a Briton have been persuaded to volunteer themselves for torturous weeks of detention without charge? And would the perpetrators have been allowed to get away with it, if their victim actually agreed?  My cynical self says yes. But that's by the by.

It's wrong to generalize based on national stereotypes, but intriguing to surmise the outcome had the Death Note fallen anywhere else in the world. Or how much Light Yagami's inherent Japaneseness affected the manner in which it was used; the motivation, thought processes and justifications that he passed through along the way; and the profile of those he killed, however vague their points of commonality may be.

What if the shinigami's notebook of death had landed in Syria?  Would war crimes have factored much sooner in the programme than it occurred to Light to do so?  Would Mexicans have taken on drug barons? Or those in the Niger Delta started on the profit-ridden oil polluters of fresh water -  environmental evils trumping thuggish anti-social behaviour in the street?  Callous corporations and white collar criminality could well come first in many an Industrialised, Capitalist nation.  While localised gangs and small-time, blue collar crime would occupy erstwhile Kiras from other lands.

How about your own?   If the Death Note had dropped into your neighbourhood, how might Kira look then?  And would (s)he act anything like Light Yagami? 

The discussion is open.

Since the late 18th century - when racial science first reared its ugly head - there have been a dozen or more definitions of the Caucasian taxon, and which ethnicities it covers.  But as our goal is to assess the tag 'serial killer', the only one which matters here is what the FBI meant by Caucasian, when the Bureau made it a point of serial killing criterion.

Ethnologically Japanese, Light Yagami dodges a bullet in the FBI's definition of Caucasian - or 'white' as its literature elsewhere puts it - encompassing those races natively derived from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.  Kira doesn't count.

However, the notion that most serial killers are Caucasian is subject to fierce debate.  Even the FBI's own statistics show Caucasians account for only just over half - 52.1% - of serial killers. The prevailing argument amongst academics is that such murderers, who otherwise fit the profile, may be found throughout all racial classifications. But non-Caucasian serial killers are unlikely to be the focus of blanket media coverage; much less central to several books, biographies, dramatized TV documentaries and finally a major motion picture release. In fact, most are lucky if they're even tagged 'serial killer' by the under-reporting press.

The rule of thumb seeming to be that, in the media, Caucasians may be serial killers, but non-Caucasians are always 'just a murderer'.  It's less glamorous.

In short, Light Yagami may be a serial killer - albeit unlikely, as Asians made up just 0.7% of those profiled - but the US press is unlikely to bother with him. Ordinarily anyway.  As Kira, he made quite a splash in the world's media. But by the time he got there, Light was deemed Saviour and Messiah, rather than any negative type of mass murderer.

Less open to question are the next two items.  Serial killers tend to be aged late twenties to early thirties, and 92.3% of them were male.  When he first used the Death Note, Light was seventeen.  By the time he was forcibly made to finish killing, he was twenty-four.  Atypical then.  Nevertheless, he was indeed male.

Without knowing much about Japanese social hierarchies in comparison to what 'lower to middle class' might mean in American society, it's difficult to call the next criterion.  Would anyone else like to jump in here?  While the final one - was Kira Sociopathic? - is well beyond the scope of this analysis.  Hopefully it will be addressed in another article at a later date.

As for the rest of the data, eighty-eight of the serial killers profiled by the FBI came from Japan.  We can only assume that once of them was Light Yagami, while the other 87 were despatched by him via his Death Note by and by.  Unless, of course, we conclude that Kira wasn't a serial killer.  In which case, the latter figure leaps by one and all unanimously become victims of Kira's regime.

This section of classification seemed doomed to be unhelpful from the start.  Nor did it disappoint in that.  To my mind, the result remains inconclusive in assessment of Death Note's protagonist and his murderous tendencies, though more discussion may pay dividends as regards the last two points.

Nevertheless, we can trust the BSU's serial killer demographics to be internationally pertinent from now on, thus relevant in examining Light Yagami.

But to qualify as a serial killer, Kira needs to have incorporated cooling off periods between his killing sprees.  There is one very notable time of inactivity, when he was held under L's detention in a prison cell. However, that counts more as enforced abstinence from slaughter. Though voluntarily there, Light felt the caged, 24/7 surveillance to be fundamental to his own survival and continuance as Kira.  It was inactivity to ensure future activity.  That was all.

Was there any other occasion when Light Yagami paused his usage of the Death Note?  Without first setting up a series of secondary Kiras to do his killing by proxy?  I'm struggling to identify one.  Misa Amane; the Yotsuba Group; Teru Mikami; and Kiyomi Takada; all assisted in maintaining those relentless murders reaching across the globe, at Light's direct or indirect instigation, throughout the entirety of that seven year reign of terror.

It's difficult to see where any cooling off breaks occurred in their midst, let alone those regular enough for Kira to be considered a serial killer.

That would appear to be that. Kira cannot be a serial killer, if he doesn't fit all of the criteria.  However, he isn't the first to fail at this part of the classification. It's occurred in reality too - notably with Andrew Cunanan - leading criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky to suggest a hybrid tag of 'spree serial killer' or 'serial rampage killer' could be usefully employed.

And look how he describes this sub-section of serial killing:

Over the next pages, he goes on to say how spree serial killers suffer some kind of nervous breakdown which traps them in this predatory persona. They cannot stop, hence the lack of a cooling off period.  Nor can they retreat - 'they can never return back to their previous lives' (p 224) - they become the serial killer in all regards but inactivity.  They become it 24/7.

I think Kira fits the bill right there, completely.  Death Note's spree serial killer.

Finally, there's the fourth criterion - did Light Yagami kill for psychological gratification?  By which is meant that the motive wasn't material nor honour based (such as robbery, profit, revenge etc), but something much more internally self-fulfilling. 

A serial killer's motive for murder is typically slotted into four categories, subject to considerable over-lap.  Two of which are instantly game over, when we apply them to Death Note to see if psychological gratification was a motive in Kira's compulsion to kill.  In order from least relevance, they are:

The Power Controller

Doing it all to feel powerful; subjugating their victims in any way possible, just to have that rush of absolute domination.  Light touched here when he had prisoners across the world do strange things before their deaths.  But that wasn't really about power and control. It was merely testing his Death Note's capabilities.

The Hedonist

Thrill-seeking; pleasure pandering; killing because they can, and people are expendable.  Forensic psychologists further split this group into three sub-sections:  comfort, thrill and lust. Comfort hedonists are the closest serial killers get to robbery-based murders.  It's all about getting hold of the material possessions of their victims, or eliminating an obstacle to personal power.  Thrill hedonist serial killers want the adrenaline rush of causing terror and pain, whilst exerting absolute control over their victims.  Lust hedonists are your Jack the Ripper types, getting their kicks from mutilation, torture, dominance et al, but mostly what's implied on the label.

Light Yagami wasn't beyond this category.  His elimination of Lind L. Taylor, twelve FBI agents and Naomi Misora established that within the opening chapters of Death Note.  But it wasn't his main raison d'être.

In the USA, the BSU studied life histories of known serial killers. Though researchers warned that serial killers could very easily hold down steady jobs, raise families and otherwise seem like fine upstanding members of society, some less savoury factors commonly and frequently arose.

In all likelihood, the background information in a serial killer's profile will include elements from this list:

1. Alcoholism;
2. Animal cruelty;
3. Arsonist/Pyromaniac;
4. Biochemical/genetic abnormalities;
5. Bullied in childhood or adolescence by their peers;
6. Childhood abuse victim;
7. Compulsive behaviour;
8. Drug abuse;
9. Drug addicted or alcoholic parents;
10. Engaged in petty crimes (like shoplifting or vandalism) for the thrill or because they could, rather than any material need nor as action under peer pressure;
11. Isolated socially as children or adolescents;
12. Low self-esteem;
13. Pathological lying;
14. Perinatal head injury;
15. Powerlessness in the face of their own urges to kill/unable to prevent or stop actually killing;
16. Propensity to retreat into habitual daydreams or a rich fantasy world, as an escape from reality;
17. Ritualistic behaviour;
18. Severe memory disorders;
19. Sexual assault - perpetrator and/or victim in the past;
20. Sexual deviancy;
21. Suicidal thoughts/attempts at suicide;
22. Unhappy childhood, or periods of profoundly interrupted happiness in childhood;
23. Unstable family life during childhood - broken home; divorced parents; separation from family; or some other breach in the parent/child relationship - commonly seen.  Some studies suggest it's all about an absent father and domineering mother.

So how does the profile of a standard serial killer compare to Kira?  I have my thoughts, but I'll leave this one open to discussion.  Comment if you recognize anything from Light Yagami's past in there; or if you see nothing to fit him there at all.  Let's hash it out between us.

But for now, I think it's fairly determined that Kira IS a serial killer, only he's one of the emerging sub-section suggested by Peter Vronsky labelled 'serial rampage killer'.  Do you concur?

The curious thing about the ideology of Light Yagami is that while he shares his father’s passion for justice he seems to be a fundamentally utilitarian thinker.

Utilitarianism revolves around the idea that the worth of an action is the sum of the aggregate pleasure it creates for people. If an actions creates more good for society than it does bad, than it is a decent action. Under this line of thinking the means can justify the ends! During his insane soliloquy at the end of the series Light concedes that 'that killing people in itself is a crime', but that it had to be done.

While I wouldn’t argue Ohba is arguing that the death penalty is an effective deterrent, he is arguing humans have an innate fear of spirituality and the unknown, and perhaps an intuitive belief in God (hence why people are so willing to accept Kira as God). The reason why Light’s plan is so efficacious is because people perceive a God as infallible, but police officers regularly make mistakes. Hence why people were less likely to commit crimes when Kira was active.

In Yagami’s mind, the pain felt by criminals is nothing compared to the new found safety of innocent men, women and children and therefore his otherwise cruel actions are excusable.

Yagami’s beliefs come in the context of the Japanese legal system. Prosecutors often won’t take on criminals who haven’t confessed or there isn’t overwhelming evidence against in order to maintain a 100% conviction rate. Because of this many criminals walk free in Japanese society. The Japanese films make this element even more explicit than the anime with some of Light Yagami’s fury being actively caused by this absence of justice for the victims after he hacked into police computers and was horrified by the number of people who simply walked free.

Personally, I can’t help but wonder if Light Yagami’s utilitarianism might actually have been prudent within the context of his Universe. One could argue that it was a society based around fear, not justice, and while criminals certainly have a lot to be afraid of, for the common working man or woman I don’t think this holds true. Light Yagami is brilliant, and is unlikely to make errors when it comes to killing criminals, and so won’t kill innocents by mistake. While it’s likely some innocent people who have been arrested for crimes they didn’t commit are killed erroneously, I don’t think this would have been common. Light Yagami being too self-righteous to kill people whose guilt is uncertain. Furthermore, most people (from what we see) actively support Kira which would seem to imply that very few innocent people have been murdered by Kira (with the obvious exceptions of Raye, Naomi and other police officers who attempted to apprehend him).
 
With war and crime being a thing of the past, it’s fair to argue less people die by Light’s metaphorical hand than would have from crime in normal circumstances.

In 2012, the second last year of Light Yagami’s reign in the anime (and the only year I could find data for) over 437,000 people (approximately) were murdered.  In the universe of Death Note, Light says, “Global crime rates have been reduced by over 70%.” So lets apply this number to how many people were murdered under his rule that year, and 437,000 in that one year becomes 131,000; a difference of 306,000. This means 306,000 people were saved from murder in that one, hypothetical year. This number, if you assume it holds true to the four years Light rules after the death of L, becomes 1,024,000.

This naturally excludes lives indirectly saved such as those would no longer die from the drug trade in the absence of major cartels. It also doesn’t factor in the great reductions in other horrific crimes and the beneficial impact that will have on many innocent people’s lives. Light Yagami was in many ways therefore justified, though he killed many, less people died on the whole and so it can be successfully argued that the means justify the ends.
 
 One thing is certain though, even if you don’t agree with what I’ve written, Light Yagami is definitely a supporter of capital punishment.

All over the world today, people are marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

Set on January 27th because that was the date, in 1945, which saw the liberation of Auschwitz.  It's not just an historical 'woe, woe, that was bad' endeavour - though of course it was - but an awareness raising, bridge building day with one key message and goal. 

Never again.

It will happen again.  No historian, nor human rights campaigner, let alone sociologist or political commentator, is naive enough to think it won't.  All of the elements which gave rise to the Third Reich in the first place, and its horrific Final Solution of death camps, execution squads and gas chambers, exist right now. They swim endlessly in our society, often in the background, with a quite worrying frequency coming back to the fore.

Meanwhile, Australia is condemning thousands of people to unaccountable 'detention facilities' on islands off their shores.  Human Rights inspectors have been banned from entering.  Legal processes are done in utmost secrecy (with no evidence that they're being done at all). The reports coming out of places like Manus Island and Nauru are unsettling to say the least.  North Korea undoubtedly has death camps. About which much lip service in shaking head disapproval has been afforded by the outside world. But not enough to do anything about it.

All this makes 'never again' seem like a joke.  'Not on my watch' is about the best we can do, and even then it's a terribly uphill struggle.

We have Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th, not because people forget, but because they forget the specifics and that's what allows the memory to metamorphose into lived experience.

Never again indeed, and certainly not on my watch.

However, while these sentiments might be very noble and all, it begs the question - why is Holocaust Memorial Day on Death Note News' watch?  It's a little off-topic for a manga (and derivatives) set half a century on from said Auschwitz liberation. 

You got me. Guilty as charged.  Holocaust historian here, ninja-ing an important date in my calendar into the remit of Death Note.

But because it's an important date, and my thoughts are otherwise largely swirling around content for articles here, the two merged in a musing during my commute this morning:  what if Kira had come a couple of generations before?  What if Light Yagami's statement that 'the world is rotten' had taken place against a global back-drop of World War II, the rise of Hitler and the actuality of the Holocaust?

Would the names written in his Death Note have included Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann, Josef Mengele, Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels and the rest of their ilk?  What would have happened historically, if Kira took out Rudolf Höss before he'd perfected killing on an industrial scale with Zyklon B and cremations?

An intriguing 'what if' in history, but not one which could be answered easily and definitely not within the scope of this article.

Of course, this is all assuming that Light Yagami morally and actively opposed the Holocaust.  It must be remembered that Japan allied WITH Nazi Germany during the period when the Final Solution was being enacted.

Our sense of right and wrong, just or unfair, moral or corrupt, is shaped by our upbringing, societal pressures and the drip-drop of propaganda as fed by every nation's media on any given day.  More so than any of us would like to admit.  Hence it's reasonable to assume that Light Yagami's chief exposure to the Holocaust would be within a generally supportive cultural back-drop.  His information and resultant position could well be akin to Hitler and his government.

Which leads us to another proposal ranked with horrors:  what if Light's Death Note was used for the Nazis?  How even more widespread might be the Final Solution with the Death Note involved?  (Political dissidents, or fleeing refugees known by name and photograph, reached without resource to a death camp.)

Near (no pun intended) the beginning of Death Note, L famously proclaims “I am justice”, which is funny because he has no such interest in justice.

It’s always been an amusing quirk that the character who heads the task force wasn’t pursing the world’s most prolific serial killer for moral reasons, but rather for his own amusement. In fact, there seems to be a massive juxtaposition between the L at the start of Death Note, and the L we see when the task force finally meets him in person.

Partially I think this is because Ohba didn’t fully know what he wanted to do with the character at the start of the series. The early L looks composed, almost handsome when we see his face. He talks about how Kira is evil to the International Criminal Police Organization with deep passion and seems to truly believe it. However, in the Death Note One Shot L tells the children of Wammy House, “It’s not a sense of justice. Figuring out cases is my hobby. If you measured good and evil by current laws, I would be responsible for many crimes.”

This is true - very early on into the series, an L who views Kira as evil is clearly a hypocrite. He lets Lind. L Tailor die to prove Kira can kill without being there in person. He attempts to let the Yotsuba Group kill criminals in order to prove their guilt and is willing to let a criminal possibly die to test the '13 day Rule'.

Whether or not you agree with these actions is moot, he’s prepared to kill criminals to catch a man who kills criminals. This is morally self-defeating in the worst way possible. The most consistent look at L (at least from the manga and anime) is one who, while not completely without redeeming features, isn’t concerned with higher values.