#first rule of Death Note analysis: if your argument depends on taking Light at his word you've already lost | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mikami · 3 months

Note

It's hard to imagine Light doing a thorough check of criminals being guilty, considering the manga. Volume 3, 6 pages into the first chapter.

"Until now, every time a criminal was reported in the news, | eliminated them that day, or the next day at the latest."

If he's usually killing people off the day they're reported, then all he'd really know is there was enough pointing in their direction to lead to an arrest. Doesn't necessarily mean that an investigation wouldn't have eventually shown innocence. Considering discovery is a process that can take years, there's no way to get an accurate reading on someone's guilt in a day or two.

The other issue is that, despite being in Light's head 80% of the time, this is the first time we're hearing that he actually

does any research at all.

Anon, first of I am SO grateful that you provided a direct citation for your quote, I LOVE HAVING SPECIFIC PANELS TO POINT TO. Genuinely, bless <3

Here's the panel in question for posterity.

And I do think you make a good argument.

I feel like between the panel I showed and this one, we can assume his research amounts to 'reading the basics of the case file' rather than anything in-depth. (And that only when he has the time for it, he obviously does not do background checks on the people he kills via bag of chips TV.)

(The thing I'd nitpick is that criminals would often only get reported a long while into the investigation - in Japan, being ever accused of a crime is life-ruining even if you are proven fully innocent at the end of the proceedings. This also plays into what I mentioned in the other ask: people only get arrested when the investigators think there is a totally certain case against them. )

But that said, yeah, I think you're right - this timeframe being stated for the rhythm of Kira killings drastically lowers the chance of Light actually being able to do more than a cursory glance that rules out cases like 'well, this was a car accident on a slippery frozen road and not an intentional murder'.

I think this is somewhere in between 'Light absolutely killed a lot of innocent people' and 'Death Note as a story is wholly uninterested in the legal drama of false conviction and the narrative itself just kind of assumes all reported criminals are guilty', depending on which angle you want to center in your analysis.

#answers

29 notes · View notes