aka marblucifer

[ID: A Softer World x Death Note three-panel comic. A pillar in darkness: "I have a two part question." / The same shot a bit to the right, showing a staircase lit from a window: "1. What would you do if you were going to die?" / Light lies on the staircase, limp and bloody. "And 2. How did you ever convince yourself you weren't?"]

one of my strongest anime opinions is that light should have had to kill L with his own two hands. make him confront the reality of what he’s been doing all along. make L’s death more narratively satisfying and less convoluted. i’ve heard there was debate between the author and publisher on if light should get to “win” and i think not being able to kill L with the death note (the thing that makes him a god) and having to get his hands dirty in this very human and intimate way would have been a really interesting compromise

it's also imo an error to think of stories like death note as being a battle of wits in the sense that you should expect the characters to make optimal decisions. that's a flawed approach to any text, but death note in particular i think tricks people into thinking it's about a highly optimised game of chess specifically because the characters are highly intellectual and their game is likewise very thoughtfully planned and stepped out. however that's a misdirect. it's almost never about a battle of wits, it's always a battle of personality. the question "who's smarter, L or light" has almost nothing to do with who could reasonably be expected to win their fight. L is smarter. L can't win, not because of his intellect but because of his character. L can't win because light is his opponent and they are so well-matched in personality that neither can resist making a tactically poor move because it would be the "right" move in their game and they need to see if the other is going to match them. it's not chess, it's poker. it's a tango. it's a game of tennis where the goal isn't to score a point but to rally as long as possible. it's almost a team game. near doesn't beat light because he's smarter than light or L, he beats light because light steps up to do a choreographed dance and near just shoots him with a gun. the reason near wins while L can't is that L and light are playing each other's game to play, but near isn't playing, he's just trying to win

I’ve talked about this before but thinking about the taskforce getting older over the years and realising more and more how young light was. 50 year old Matsuda thinking about how he shot a boy barely out of his teenage years. Them at 60 with grown up kids considering how light started his murder spree before he was even out of high school, thinking about how their biggest worries for their kids were exams or social drama. Aizawa with teenage Yumi suddenly understanding why Soichiro couldnt possibly imagine light as Kira, because who would think that that man who had been a child just a blink of an eye ago was capable of that? And suddenly Light is frozen in time and the older they get the further away he drifts