Chapter Text
mellos-weed
Misa is so annoying oh my goddd
light-yagami-deserved-worse
actually, if you look at bakuman, you’ll see that ohba is just a sexist pig no matter what female character he writes, so you can go fucking kill yourself. Misa is only annoying because Ohba wrote her that way. Don’t blame female characters for being stuck with a sexist writer. Just look at how he treated naomi, sayu, sachiko, takada. This man doesnt just not know how to write women, he fucking hates them, and before you argue it’s light who’s sexist, you can see it in ALL of his works that the author himself is a misogynist.
Naomi would’ve caught kira but obviously we cant have a smart female character so she suddenly becomes gullible and trusts light for NO reason and shows him her drivers license AFTER she says that the reason raye died is because hs showed HIS ID, and believes light when he says he works with L with 0 proof?? Making her suddenly OOC just because Ohba realized he wrote himself into a corner and needed a way to kill her off. Misa is introduced as her saying that she's more powerful than kira, she has the shinigami eyes, she doesn't have the pride that makes light do all these irrational things, shes the only one in the world who knows kira’s true identity, and she gets relegated into ‘clingy girlfriend’ and ‘creepy stalker’ and ‘annoying whiny Female’ because again, he. Hates. Women.
Now, dont get me wrong, misa sucks- she’s abusive, she’s a trigger-happy axe murderer, she is fundamentally an awful person in every way, maybe even worse than light- but instead of writing her as an interesting, evil woman, she’s just a dumb blonde. They should've explored how Misha was affected by seeing her stalker die in front of her, by watching her own parents die in front of her, but she just becomes a nagging wife caricature.
Note how soichiro gets an entire character arc, how the narrative treats him with nothing but solemn respect and admiration and fleshes out his character in so much depth, but you’d be hard pressed to find a death note fan who even knows light’s mother’s NAME, which is SACHIKO BY THE WAY, because she just exists to fulfill the role of ‘wife’ and ‘mother’, not as a human, whereas sorichiro gets to be more than just husband and dad— he gets to be a fucking person, with complicated feelings and thoughts.
Don't even get me started on takada and sayu.
Not to mention the task force has no female agents, how the manga literally says ‘naomi passed all the fbi training quickly, FOR A WOMAN’. Get the fuck out of here with this nonsense, the female characters all deserve better.
damn-it-matsuda
I get where youre coming from but i dont think light is a fundamentally horrible person. He was corrupted by the death note, the whole moral of the show is no one should have the ability of the death note. He had the right idea and started off with good intentions of wanting to make the world a better place, but when he killed naomi and taunted her about her suicide was when i knew he was truly gone.
light-yagami-deserved-worse
The right idea? Killing criminals is not the right idea. Murdering hundreds of thousands of people is NOT the right idea. Good intentions??? Wanting to kill prison inmates is! Not! Good!
He’s a child who thinks that killing bad guys makes him a good guy, that he can make a world full of ‘good honest hardworking people’. What kind of puritan bullshit is this?! Light isn’t someone who had a good goal, he’s the son of a COP, and like any cop has the mentality that justice isn’t about helping others, but about punishing the wicked. Christian drivel and you’re all eating it up because cops look cool.
The show has the premise of ‘kill criminals’ yet ohba was too dense to even examine what that means, what the label of criminal means, what drives someone to commit crime, that the majority of crimes disproportionately affect poor people. ‘The law, in its magnanimity, punishes everyone equally for stealing a loaf of bread’ or however that quote goes. Guess who’s going to get caught shop lifting, because sure as fuck isnt billionares in their precious yachts. People in prison are there because they got caught, which meant they couldn't afford a good lawyer, couldn't bribe themselves out, and lets be honest, could've even been falsely accused. How would light know if someone is actually guilty? He just sees what's on the news and kills them without even stopping to think what motivated them. The majority of women who are criminals have a history of domestic violence. So it's okay for him to kill women who kill their abusive husbands, or homeless people who were desperate for some food?
Sure, Japan has a very different legal system than the US, which means that we don't even touch on how here prison is just an excuse to enslave POC, but there’s no such thing as a good carceral system- and the show never ONCE engages with any of these ethical dilemmas, never once question the philosophy of the legal system. Japan only has a high prosecution rate because they only take on criminals who are willing to confess, which is why so many get away— which is probably why light was so driven to his form of justice, as a response to watching how futile the legal system is, and that WOULD HAVE been really interesting to explore, the helplessness and hopelessness he feels at the current state of things, but instead it’s all oh yes all criminals all evil and deserve to die, and while the task force and l and his dad and all are like oh kira is evil we should catch kria because hes murdering people, and murder is wrong, it only attack the premise of murder being bad, without having a serious discussion about how criminals are the target, and what that means for how light’s mentality has been warped by a father who says things like ‘i will not bow to evil’.
Good intentions? Fuck off. Light is a fascist cop because the author just wanted to write a fun little thriller without thinking about morals or anything that would hurt anime bro brains.
potato-chip
I do think there's an argument to be made in favor of light. After all, his actions did canonically decrease the crime rate, which means lots of innocent people were saved from potential crimes. Objectively you could say that kira ultimately succeeded in making the world a safer place. You could argue that L is the real villain for obstructing this tangible progress—
You slam your laptop shut.
Dumbass author, dumbass anime!
For reasons entirely unrelated to your nightly Reddit keyboard warrior sessions, for far more tragic, miserable, frankly depressing reasons that you have yet to unpack, you die.
Unfortunately, the phrase ‘dumbass author, dumbass anime’ was precisely the correct pass-phrase, the open-sesame to unlock the magical cave, and so your precious mortal soul doesn’t get to go ascend to Heaven to lounge around in eternal bliss—
Rather, by some stroke of pure dumb misfortune, you are in—
A bed.
You’ve scrolled past enough isekai slop to know exactly where you are, immediately.
Well. Mostly you know that because you can hear the maniacal cackling through your bedroom walls, that evil laugh you had seen in many and sundry edits, memes, reels, what have you, that you know instantly:
You’re trapped in fucking Death Note.
One of those ‘the time I got reincarnated as the sister to the serial killer protagonist of my least favorite Y2K shonen anime?!’
Damn it all. Why couldn’t it have been Ouran High School Host Club, or Fruits Basket, or Kamisama Kiss or something where you’d be surrounded by hot guys? Or even something funny like Saiki K. or Uramichi, or something magical like Sailor Moon or Witch Hat Atelier… but then again…
Then again. This could've been Tokyo Ghoul. Or the Promised Neverland or Another, or God forbid, fucking Danganronpa.
… fine. So this isn’t the worst possible anime. Still up there, though.
(But at least it isn't, like. Attack on Titan.)
Thankfully, you’ve read the Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, so you totally know what you’re getting into. You're practically an expert at this whole transmigration thing already!
Sayu Yagami’s bedroom is everything you’d expect of a teen girl in the early 2000s: glossy boy band posters plastered along her walls, the edges fraying and tape peeling, a shiny Hideki Ryuga staring down at you, all golden-karat smile and cherry-blossom lips. Bottles of nailpolish lined up along her dresser, cluttered with lipstick tubes and makeup brushes. A comfortable bed, with its plush pillows and cute plushies, and wow, oh wow, you’ve really never had such luxury in your life. None of the fabric is yellowing, or scratchy, or coarse. No visible ants or roaches in any corner. The lights don’t flicker, the fan doesn’t stutter, and there’s no noise whatsoever in the walls nor outside. The windows and blinds open and shut just fine.
Damn. Upper-middle class families fucking rock.
She even has a head-to-toe vanity mirror. You peer at yourself, blinking back at the 15-year-old girl in the refection.
Sayu before the trauma. Sayu before the kidnapping. Sayu before she lost her brother and father.
Sayu before…
[Task unlocked: Check on your big brother ^_^]
I don’t want to check on him. I'd rather never interact with him, actually.
[Task-]
No way. Fuck that guy.
[You must check on him.] The disembodied voice grits out with forced patience. [This is your first quest |˶˙ᵕ˙ )ﾉﾞ ]
He’ll kill me.
[He would never hurt his precious baby sister (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)]
He literally has multiple inner monologues about killing her!
[... he never acted on them.]
That doesn’t count for anything.
[Yes,] the feminine voice says firmly, this light youthful lilt that you can’t quite place, [it does.]
What are you defending him for?
[Everyone deserves a second chance.]
Not him.
[Especially him.]
… Sayu?
[I should've checked on him. If I had, maybe everything would've been different. It’s the fact that I thought he was this perfect genius, that we all thought of him like that, that never made me consider that he might be suffering. That made it so I never reached out, never helped him when he needed it most. It's my fault my brother became what he is. If only—]
He wasn’t suffering. He’s just a capital-C Conservative with a God complex.
[Please.]
You grumble your way out of her bedroom, complaining internally all the while.
It’s… interesting. You’ve never been rich enough to live in a house, and here was one with two whole flights. Stairs and everything.
It’s nice.
Of course you recognize Light’s door— you know all about his handle trick, about his slip-of-paper trick. You fucking weeb.
You also remember reading an essay or two on tumblr [1][2] about how Sayu is so comfortable with Light that she never even needs to knock, that he just lets her barge in without problem, so you grab the handle.
Locked.
You inject false cheer into your voice. “Hey, Light!” You can picture the manga panel in your head, the rattle rattle written out in all caps. “Why is it locked?!”
“Sayu, aren’t you supposed to be doing math homework?” Oh, there’s that I Am A Normal Person voice Light employs.
You huff. “Well, I need your help!”
Shit. You hadn't actually brought any.
Acquiescing just as a good older brother should, he opens the door to invite you in.
“... you’ve lost weight.”
“I haven’t had an appetite.”
“You’ve been hiding in bed for the past five days.”
“I’m stressed about college entrance exams.”
You snort. “Right. You've never once stressed about an exam in your life.”
“Sayu, if you’re just here to—”
“Move over.”
He closes the door behind you, and you sit on his bed beside him. “Light.” You inhale. “I know about the Death Note.”
[What are you doing?!]
“I know you killed Kurou Otoharada, and then you killed Takuo Shibuimaru.”
[Are you insane?]
“I know the rules of the Death Note, where you keep it, how you found it—”
[You can’t—!]
Trust me on this.
“I know you feel so guilty about it that you've locked yourself up in your room, unable to eat or sleep. And that's a good thing,” you tilt your head, “you didn't immediately accept that what you did is okay. You’re actually grappling with it. I know you think that you have to act as if this is what you wanted all along, what you’ve always said: because you're not used to making mistakes, you don’t know how to handle it when you've finally made one— a serious one. Your greatest weakness is your belief in your infallibility— which led to me thinking you’re infallible, too. But… It's okay. You messed up. You don’t have to twist it into being a good thing, just so that you can absolve yourself. You can just admit you messed up and move on, end of story. It’s that easy.” And, because you refuse to give him the time to inner-monologue and 4D-chess his response, you press, “well?”
“How do you know—?”
“I’m actually—”
[You can’t tell him.]
Why the fuck not?
“I watched you become a mass serial killer, killing hundreds of thousands of people— not just criminals, but news anchors, cops, and even causing your own father’s death— before ultimately dying yourself, defeated and a failure. You never even make it to 30.”
[What do you think you’re getting out of this?]
Do you have the power to punish me?
Light’s eyes flash with one shadow then the next, one emotion then the next, a million calculations behind his eyes. Eyes that are still soft and wide and rounded, still those big doe-eyes he had before they sharpened and darkened with every thread of life he snipped. “Sayu, where is this coming from?”
Light Yagami keeps his voice level, rational. Non-accusatory. Politely curious.
… just what is he thinking right now?
“You don’t believe me. Of course not. Well, I can prove it.” You clap your hands together, “Have you set the fire trap?”
“How do you—”
“So you have. Perfect.” You grab his pen off the desk, unscrewing it, and push it into the little hole at the bottom of the drawer, wiggling out the false base from below so as not to trigger the trap he’d set, and there it is, this weapon of murder, this vile thing, in the palm of your hands.
…
It’s lighter than you expected. Smaller. Somehow it doesn’t weigh nearly as much as it should.
“Oh, hi Ryuk.”
He was always your least favorite character, but then again, that would be true for any given character you interact with. Still, you could appreciate a true chaotic neutral. Or is it neutral evil?
He grins, that eerie cheshire smile that slashes his skeletal face in half. “Your sister knows my name! How fun.”
You tap your chin. He’s right: this is fun. “On second thought, I should've triggered the fire trap after all— destroy this insipid piece of garbage and get this all over with. Let me try again.”
You go to put it back in and set off the trap, but Light’s eyes widen, one hand bolting out to latch around your wrist. “It’ll explode and burn us both! Are you crazy, you could die!”
You shrug. “I’ll end up in a wheelchair after being kidnapped by the mafia— a hostage exchange for the Death Note— so what’s a few burns now?”
He reaches for this crown that singlehandedly granted him godhood, but you hold it out of reach. Light folds his arms, and you think, this bickering is something he’s used to, isn’t it, this bossing around his sister, this air of maturity while she can rib him all she wants. “Quit being childish. Give that back.”
“If I do,” you say simply, “you’ll die.”
“Sayu,” Light says patiently, and you think you can hear his teeth grinding into a fine powder, “I think you need to explain.
You plop back onto his bed. Lap of luxury. “Sure. First you’ll need to catch me up— what’s happened so far?”
He arches a suspicious eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you already know?”
“If a bird flew across the entire ocean, it might need a pointer to know where it’s currently dipping its feet. Although I guess I can check.” You flip through the notebook, skimming names— most of which you don't recognize, but… all these people… all these poor people… all these poor, faceless, lifeless people… how many of them even deserved to die? Not this many. Maybe not even half, not a quarter, not a—
No. None of them deserved to be sentenced, judged, and executed by a fucking seventeen-year-old.
No mention of Raye Pember, no mention of Naomi, so you’re either at the part where his house is wire-tapped and there’s a camera in every room, in which case you’re super fucking screwed for everything you just said, or you’re before that, in which case, go off.
Considering the weight loss and sleep deprivation thing, it must be before that— must be so recent that Light is still adjusting to being Kira, but not so recent that he hasn’t gotten into the martyr mentality. Actually…
“Have you been given a public name by the masses yet?”
“Yes,” he says simply, “it’s Thanos.”
“Nice try, Kira.” You grin, “you can keep testing me all you want. Please, by all means, as much as it takes for you to feel secure in what I'm saying and believe me. Do you want me to detail to you how you found the Death Note, how you first used it, right down to your inner monoglue?”
“That’s—”
“You were staring out the window, bored as all hell, thinking about how the world is rotten, when you saw it fall out of the sky. When you picked it up, you thought it was just as bad as chainmail, and didn’t take it seriously. But natural human curiosity kicked in, so when you saw that a man was holding a school hostage, you tested it. Of course, working once wasn’t enough, so when you saw a girl being sexually harassed by some sleazeballs, you had one die, too. Then—”
“Okay.” He raises his hands placatingly, “okay, so let’s say I believe you.”
You look at him incredulously. “You should believe me. Why would I lie?”
“What do you get out of telling me? Why not keep it a secret? If it was me, I wouldn't have told you.” Of course. He never did trust his naive, optimistic, trusting baby sister with anything.
[He never trusted anyone. Not a soul. That’s the problem.]
He sure trusted himself plenty.
[I wish I could’ve done something to make him trust me]
That’s exactly why—
“That’s exactly why I’m telling you. I want…”
And then it clicks: Light doesn’t give a damn about what you want: you have to hit him where it hurts. Think of what he wants. “I want to save dad, Light. That's why I came to you. I suffered through his death the first time— I want to prevent it.”
Of course, you're far more invested in saving Naomi, Rem, and L, but this is the only life that Light would truly mourn— the only common goal that he would readily not only accept, but even willingly want to help with. And, well, it could work as a domino effect, couldn't it?
[Yes! Maybe it would change everything. Maybe it would fix it all.]
… yeah, right.
“I don't want dad to die either,” Light says, and you realize rapidly that the disadvantage of new dialogue options is that you’re experiencing all this in real-time— in other words, you have no idea what his inner monologue is. There's no ominous Latin choir chanting behind him, no red light eerily illuminating the planes of his face, to clue you in on if he's lying through his teeth or being honest.
… Since this is Light we’re talking about, probably best to just assume he’s lying at any and all points in time for the foreseeable future. “But if you’re asking me to stop using the Death Note… you’re too late. Maybe if you’d come after I killed the first, or second, or maybe before I'd ever picked it up— snatched it up before I had a chance to see it. But since I’ve killed hundreds upon hundreds— Ryuk himself even said that he—”
“ —has never seen a human kill so many people in such a short span of time before. Yes, yes, I know.” You wave a dismissive hand, and draw upon yet another essay you’d read on tumblr [3], “but, Light, let’s be honest.”
“Do I want to hear this?”
You steel yourself. “You thought that Ryuk was going to reap your soul. You told him yourself— that you'd been expecting him, waiting for him, because you thought that he would come to kill you as punishment for using it. The reason you killed so many people is because you thought you had a deadline, a few days to live, and that you had to enact as much good as possible in that limited time span. Who wouldn’t? You took on the mantle of a martyr, genuinely believing you were sacrificing your life, to make a better world— a just world. And then when Ryuk came, well. He’s a god of death. Of course you were scared.”
Ryuk lets out a tickled jeer. “Is that true, Light? You certainly didn’t seem scared. Not for more than a second, anyway.”
Light shoots him a look to shut up.
This here is a gamble. “He said he was bored, so you said you were bored, too— so you could establish a common ground with him, so you could endear yourself to him. You said you'd become god not because that’s what you secretly wanted all along, but because you know he wants entertainment, because he just told you that he will be writing your name in the notebook. Of course you had to say whatever it is you could think of to make sure he would keep you around!”
Ryuk positively guffaws, and of course he does, because amusement is what he signed up for and amusement’s what he’s getting in spades. “Man… humans really are so interesting.”
You fix your gaze on Light. “But it’s not too late— you haven’t hit the point of no return.”
“And what’s the point of no return?”
“You, yourself, choose your own point of no return.” You say firmly. “You decided it yourself, didn’t you, when you said that if Kira hurts your father, you'd catch him and make sure he gets executed yourself. In saying that, you established what your line is, the one threshold that you wouldn’t cross.”
For the longest time, Light simply looks at you, and you can only wonder what mile-a-minute inner monologue parses through him, picking apart your every word, turning it over and weighing it in his hand likes stones, choosing what to believe, what to discard, what to mull over.
It’s terrifying, being on the receiving end of his analysis. He’s terrifying.
“But you're saying he dies,” Light states finally, “which means I do cross that line eventually.”
“Yes— but by then, you’re too far gone to even realize it.” So far gone. Quite frankly, you think he’s a goner already. “And, you know, he basically disowns you— rejects you right there on his deathbed— you never get the approval you craved because with his last words, with his dying breath, he renounces Kira, saying he’s so happy that you’re not Kira. When he dies, the hope you'd had that your father would one day see that Kira is justice dies with him— what’s worse, he says he’s relieved you’re not Kira, and with that comes the hurt that even after years, even after you’d ‘proven’ your innocence— he still had that sliver of doubt, niggling in his heart. I personally found your tears to be nothing but putting on a show, but well, you tell me— you know best if you’d cry over your father’s corpse.”
“What are you saying?” He protests immediately— a kneejerk reaction, not a scripted response. This is the first time you’ve well and properly insulted him, angering him by striking right through the sole chink in his armor. Painting a picture of the death of his father… would it even get through to him? Would he even care? “Of course I—!”
“Really? Because when you died, you yourself renounced him too— when a detective is angry with you for causing his death, you say dad? You mean Chief Yagami? That’s how much you've distanced yourself from him. How much of yourself you kill, to become Kira— till there is nothing left of Light Yagami.”
… not that there was anything good in Light Yagami to begin with.
[Don’t say that.]
It’s true. This man is pure evil, a heart of black, not a single redeeming quality to him.
[Except for his love of his family.]
And? Hitler loved his, too. The world is made up of men who love their families, and then sign some paper or shoot some gun or go over to another country and kill other families because they don’t view them as deserving of life as their own.
Tuning out Ryuk’s delighted laughter, Light levels out his voice once more— though the rage still lingers, an aftertaste. “Whether or not what you’re saying is true, I’m not giving up the Death Note.”
“Well, I'm simply not giving it back. If you try to snatch it back, I'll set off the fire trap.”
“Killing us both.”
You can hear him think: this is the first time in my life I’ve ever been tempted to hit a woman!
“You’ll die anyway. Can't you get it through your head? You’ll die, so so young—”
“But I didn’t even make the Shinigami eye contract. I won’t even… I haven’t even cut my life span in half.”
You shrug carelessly, “if you keep going the way you are, you’ll end up with the same results. That’s just common sense.”
He clenches his fist, forcing, begging, pleading for patience, for a modicum of self-restraint. “Look, you can’t just keep my Death Note on you indefinitely. As long as I have ownership of it—”
“I can still hold on to it.” After all, Misa had given Light to her Death Note, and she still retained ownership. “I mean, you can kill me and take it from me in my sleep, sure, but then you’d just be crossing the point of no return that much faster. If you want to end up dead in your early 20s again, by all means, be my guest.” You toss the notebook at his feet. The disrespect does not go unnoticed, his eyes burning as he picks it back up as if it is something holy, an insult clearly building up his throat, behind his teeth. You glare in return.
Hiding his Death Note back in the drawer once more, his back to you, he mumbles something about being careful.
You roll your eyes. “At this rate, you’ll probably die even faster than last—”
“Kids, could you get down here?”
“Coming, mom!” Light calls sweetly, before hissing to you, “not a word of this to her, you hear?”
“Of course, I'm not stupid.”
“Debatable.” He mumbles, the sort where it’s under-the-breath yet intentionally loud enough for the other to hear.
You jounce down the stairs, and Sachiko, the indelible housewife, the doting mother, offers you her beloved husband’s clothes, all neatly folded and packed to go.
“Sayu, won’t you take your father’s clothes to the office for him?”
… Naomi!
“Sure, uh, mom.”
“Really?” Sachiko smiles in maternal approval, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “And here I figured you'd complain and say you had plans to hang out with your friends or something.”
“Nope,” you say, popping the p, taking the bag from her hands, “I'd be happy to!”
“I can take it off your hands, Sayu.”
“I miss dad. I'd like to go see him.”
“He’s probably too busy to see us anyway. You'd have to drop it off at the receptionist.”
“Well, that's fine, I could use the fresh air.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Sayu.”
“Light.”
“Actually, Sayu, I'd feel better if Light did walk you, just to be safe.” Sachiko suggests gently, wringing her weathered hands. “Thanks for volunteering, Light.”
Light shoots you a winning smile. You narrow your eyes at him.
You swear you can hear his inner monologue, a resounding I win this round.
You remind yourself it would look suspicious to Sachiko if you slap him in front of her. Best to wait for later.
You’ll just have to stall. Take your time finding your shoes, dawdle on the way there. Be a slow walker— be a fucking tortoise. If you’re lucky, by the time you get there, Naomi will already be long gone— having left a message, maybe, having passed on her name so that L would know to get in touch with her, and gone straight home.
Lucky? Ha!
Of course, no such luck, and no matter how much you hem and haw, no matter how much you beg Light to make a detour or to sit down and rest your legs or hey let’s get a snack from the konbini first, drawing out the walk to the office as long as humanly possible— you get there, eventually.
And there she is, arguing heatedly with the receptionist, insisting she has information on the Kira case.
[If you want any chance of fixing things… you have to save Naomi!]
Oh, great. Here we fucking go.