Life of Light Yagami | Evil, good, and everything in between

In a world where only kindness prevails, and no evil can live, is it really an ideal world? Or just a made-up utopia on which laws are frailly built?

Death Note through the eyes of Light Yagami takes the viewers on a journey of moralities and a sense of judgment through a fictional fantasized world where he was set out to create a world where all the evils will be exterminated.

Light Yagami is the kind of character who grows into an evil that deserves appreciation for its evil intellect yet does not sympathize with him due to the moral restrictions of the conscience.

At first, the viewers supported Light through his decisions to kill serious criminals, rapists, and murderers, people who really deserved death as the punishment.

But as the series progressed, the character became a power-hungry-obsessed killer who wanted to be the “God of the New World” with the powers of the Death Note. a world where only kind people deserved to exist.

Problematic aspects of Light Yagami’s character

Light Yagami, despite his intellectual competence, skills, and pride, had problematic opinions about women. Throughout the series, he uses the women for his gains and made them feel like they owed him the favor.

Even in an episode, he says to Ryuk, “Skills have nothing to do with women, they only prefer looks.”

In each of his endeavors, his frequent dates and using their weakness towards him to attain his goals as the Kira shows his characteristic as a problematic protagonist.

When he gets introduced to Misa, despite her attempts at getting closer to him, he uses her weakness and love as a tool to manipulate her into using her Shinigami eyes to his benefit. He constantly takes her for granted when she makes countless sacrifices to get closer to him and earn his love.

Projection of justice and evil through L and Light

One of the spectacular and exciting features of the series was the constant rat race between L trying to catch Kira and Yagami pretending to help him.

With the constant play of pretending and hiding while trying to deceive the entire police force, viewers get an interesting viewpoint of two equally intellectual humans fighting against each other because of their moral conduct.

The two characters fight for justice, one in eliminating injustices accompanied by power obsessive God complex, another an obsessive intellectual who fights for better judgment and decisiveness in deciding the fate of criminals and kindness.

Until L was alive in the series, Light Yagami had morality, a sense of right and wrong, doubts about his powers, and an intellectual equivalence to his opponent. Even with his touch on L, Yagami remained grounded and did not resort to mass killing and killing anyone who would stand in his way.

Despite the character's shortcomings, Light helps the viewers change their perceptions about good, evil, justice, and wrongdoings. His persistent intellectual war and moral stagnance were worth debating over in the course of 32 episodes o the series.

Light, being a human with a terrible God Complex carried a perfection of a Shinigami, the God of Death yet there is an interest in how humans are more dangerous with their intellect, something that surpassed the idea of God.

Takeshi Obata has created something out of art, something that implants the question of good, evil, and human nature all through this fantasy series. The uncanny relevance between Light and his ego and id, hubris and everything leading to him nosediving after setting up an empire of his triumph.

What does it say about someone who chooses the mode of killing without mercy because he wants a world with only kind people? As Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth, “Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair.”