I just got this inspiration from another thread which i just replied to.

Do you think Yagami Light from Death Note good or bad? Was he doing something wrong or was it actually the right thing to do. And please give an explanation of why.

To tell you the truth I think he was doing the right thing besides from killing the innocent ones like Ray Penbar, his father and L. Like as they say in the anime the crime rate of japan went down by alot and they were bound to die one way or another eventually.

Light's not truly good nor is he truly evil. He's more of a nice mixture of of both, a person who wishes to make the world better through use of evil means. Also in Light's defense, the people who you mentioned as innocents, perhaps he shouldn't have killed them but they were on the verge of discovering that he was "Kira". So he had to use extreme means eliminate them so he could continue his work.

Thanks for the spoilers, not like I have been looking forward to seeing Death Note.

Sorry about that.

It's fine.. I mean there's got to be more of a twist than that.. right? No don't tell me.

Of course! I won't spoil it for you.

Alright that's it no more going off topic.

Light's complex, really. I find him to be more ammoral rather than good or evil. You can't really classify him and his actions into any catagory.

He has some good intentions, but some bad ones, as well. He wants to rid the world of crime, but he wants to become a god in doing so. He manages to decrease the amount of crimes, but in a way that's pretty extreme and absolutely horrifying. All in all, he wants justice in the world. It becomes increasingly obvious that he just doesn't care how that is achieved.

It also proves that his way of method and ability makes him even more corrupt in his actions and reasonings. However, he still maintains the presence of mind throughout the series of wanting to only kill criminals rather than going on a radical killing spree of everyone he can manage to gather a name and face for.

He also still proves that he isn't completely 'evil' in his hesitance of the thought of killing Sayu when Mello kidnaps her in the second arc.

Let's be open to the idea that L wasn't exactly 'good', either. He has the same train of thought that justice is the way to go, but look at the lengths he goes to just find Kira. Kira being this unknown person who's mysteriously killing of thousands of criminals. In the name of 'Justice'.

Now, we could possibly say that L was 'innocent' if he was a good boy and just went on through a traditional investigation. With a lot of high-tech computers and sugar, of course.
But no; L is manipulative, secretive, and willing to use some rather shady tactics and terrible actions to achieve what he wants.

But that's going off-topic. What I'm trying to say is that Light is neither good or evil. I'd say he's without morals if you have to classify him as anything. 8]

If you had to choose what would you label him as?

I already said, hun. If anything, he'd be ammoral - without morals; neither good nor evil.

I think he's neutral, if anything.

yes but if he was really so neutral why did the cops want to catch him to begin with?

Isn't that changing the question? You asked if we thought Light was good or evil, not why the cops wanted to catch him. :/

The police were on the side of L, obviously, who were on the side of their justice. I kind of want to use the excuse of wounded pride and Kira basically taking their jobs away, but that's not really true nor the case.

You can see in the series how some of the police are a little torn in which Kira is really all that 'evil'. Matsuda was the one who spoke up asking if what Kira was doing was really a bad thing.

More or less, the police got involved when L contacted them with his proclaimations about Kira's murderous actions. At least, that's what I can remember; was the police involved in the case before L? Or was it after?

Anyway, the police was divided, in a sense, between those who believed and were willing to follow L and then you had the rest (the mass majority of them, right?) who didn't trust L and wanted nothing to do with him.

But lemme get back on track. The police probably wanted to capture Kira for the same reason as L. He's a madman who's using capital punishment to serve his form of justice in the shadows and getting away completely unscathed. We can add the idea that the police had their pride hurt as it seems like Kira's done a better job than them in only a few months, weeks, however long between when Light got the Death Note to when L got on the case.

But don't forget that the entire police force was not involved in the Kira case. Only a few of them were after a certain point.

Depends on what Philosophy you hold in life. It's Delita Hyral's ultimate maxim: The Ends Justify the Means.

If you believe that no matter what happens, as long as people are helped practically, then that's all that matters. If in the end Yagami Light created a society with no evil and crime, then why wouldn't it be a good thing? If that was the ultimate goal, then what does it matter who dies in the process?

I believe the Ends Justify the Means, so I guess you could say I think Yagami Light is good. Because his intent wasn't to kill innocent people, it was only when innocent people tried to dethrone him did he retaliate. Other than that, he was killing bad people, ridding society of evil.

***Spoilers Below***



Light to me, was more evil then good. He started off ok, but steadily grew more and more corrupt as the extent of his power over people grew.

Yes he killed those who were innocent because he thought he had to in order to protect his goals. But he also took pleasure in doing so, that to me is evil right there. He never showed remorse, not even when his father died (the crying was definitely fake considering his thoughts beforehand). The way he treated his followers (Misa, Takada, Mikami) was cruel and manipulative. It also seemed as if he was neglecting his Mother and sister? Or more likely isolating himself from them. Light was evil because he became Kira, but Light was good before Kira. I never wanted Light to die, because I was always hoping the good side of Light would resurface, even just a little. Especially when L died, I was waiting for a 'Zomg what have I done?' look and maybe a tear? *Sigh* But no, just an insanely evil grin.

Kira was evil because he developed a God complex. Kira was evil because he used the notebook for his own means.

Even though he was evil, I still respect and admire him, his brilliance and resourcefulness was unmatched. Until after L died, then the bastard got overconfident

Eh, those are just my thoughts.

Warning: Long post (as I'm sure you can plainly see). Also, I may start going in circles, because I try to keep an open mind. (I may also be all over the place with my ideas, simply because I'm not always great at organizing my thoughts, so forgive me if it gets a little hectic. The main points should still be intact, though.) I may not even have a straight answer in the end, but I'll try to give one.
Also, potential spoilers, of course.

Light's original intentions were pretty much fine, I'd say. If you think about it, if Light didn't have such an opposing force as L, Mello, and Near, it seems probable that Light would've maintained his original intentions in a better manner. When the opposition came in, Light needed to cover his ass, and make sure that his plans went uninterrupted. That, I think, is when he began to lose it. He was fighting desperately to prevent his plans from being stopped, but as he kept using the powers of the Death Note (often in unnecessary ways, later in the series), he became corrupted.

I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that it was the competition with L that corrupted him more than it was the Death Note, because it was that part of Light's personality that refused to back down that spawned the determination to win that made him resort to the Death Note more and more. Doing so, Light discovered more and more ways to use the Death Note to his advantage, with a seemingly unstoppable force. Knowing that he had such a powerful weapon against his opponents caused him to often ignore other options. This is how he started to take unnecessary actions with the notebook. As his determination increased, so did the pleasure he felt in his victories. This opposition is also something that helped--... well, it fortified his god complex, I suppose you could say. (Seeing as he clearly states in the first episode that he plans to rule over the world as a god.) He felt that those who opposed him were opposing justice. This is one of the many points which bring up some controversial discussion.

Getting to the very root of the matter, there's the subject of the value of human life, and who can judge when a person should live or die. Also, when can killing be justified, and when can't it be? Really, I don't feel like discussing that particular matter at the moment, but rather how Light went about his methods of killing, and how "justifiable" it may or may not have been.

At first, Light killed two criminals: the first which was holding a class of students hostage, and the second was one of a few thugs who were trying to rape a woman (or at least violate her privacy to some extent). These were his first tests of the notebook's power. Now, I'm not familiar with exactly what kind of sentence these two victims may have received had they been caught and tried in court. The first guy may or may not have had his reasons, though I think we can all agree that a rapist is scum. Punishable by death? Not by today's standards in law, I don't think, though I'm certain many people would say it's a crime worthy of death. I don't really have a solid opinion, myself.

Anyway, moving on, Light started to kill criminals who would've received the death penalty anyway. While this may make perfect sense to some people, there's the matter of ignoring the laws (right to trial and such) and rushing things straight to the death of those criminals. Not only is this ignoring the law, but it's also not giving those criminals a chance to spend the remainder of their life... well, period. The ultimate purpose in this, though, is basically just the idea of, "These people committed crimes punishable by death, so they shall be killed." The hastening of their deaths was a method of putting fear into other criminals (as well as just potential criminals), which Light hoped to prevent those people from committing more crimes. This is something that was argued out loud in the series later on. I believe it was Aizawa who pointed out that Kira was creating a society based on fear, which he said was wrong. However, if you think about it, whether it be through the law, or through Kira's killings, punishment is punishment, and the purpose of punishment is to a.) scare people into not doing something that is considered wrong, or b.) attempting to teach a person not to do something that is considered wrong after they've already done it. (The latter is a more justifiable reasoning, as it gives the person the chance to change for the better, rather than just killing them off.) Taking that first part, Kira's methods were simply a stronger version of that concept, by using people who repeatedly committed serious crimes as examples. While the actual killings are debatable, the intention was fine. And the result? As we all saw, Kira did indeed successfully lower the world's crime rate by a significant amount. (And that may even be an understatement.) Kira's ways, basically, were just less lenient than the law. At first, that is.

*** My thoughts on his original methods ***
As I said above, the actual killings of the criminals is debatable, as he took away from them what few (or several) years of precious life they had left. However, I believe Light was "correct" by taking on the state of mind that drastic measures would have to be taken to change the world "for the better." Personally, while I agree with numerous points in the law today, I hardly think it will reduce crime nearly as much as we'd like it to. One reason is that many people take advantage of the leniency that is given to them, not to mention the bit of corruption here and there that allows criminals to get away with things. Kira's methods, as I said, were like a hastened, less lenient form of judgment, and that is why he managed to successfully reduce the crime rate so much. He used repeated offenders as examples, which I think was "right" to some extent (emphasis: to some extent), to warn the lesser and potential criminals with enough of a threat to make them reconsider their choices. While the fear that spawned from these threats later got out of hand, I think that the original intentions were good ones. So, as for pre-opposition Light/Kira, I would say he was "good."

However, when the strong opposition came in, Light had to fight back, often by desperate measures. The determination to maintain the justice that he aimed for was what lead him to become manipulative and abusive of his power. Soon, Light began to lose sight of his original goal, to an extent, and his victory became more important than his morals. Of course, he certainly did try to maintain his morals even while fighting his opposition, but at times, he really did lose them. It was when he began to lose sight of his goals and morals that he became "evil." As Nocinderella pointed out above, he began to enjoy killing people, which was one sure sign that he was becoming truly evil.

Concerning some particular deaths, there's no denying that there almost always must be sacrifices to make great change. I'm not going to try to place a price tag on human lives or anything, but look at it this way: If you had a method to drastically change the entire world, for the better, but a few innocent people had to die, and there was no other way known of to make this kind of change, would you think it would be worth it ultimately? If you had no goal in mind other than improving the world, would you at least consider it? A few innocent lives to change the entire world for the better. Think about that for a while. Ignore popular morals, if you must, but think it over for a bit, with an open mind, and then see what you think of Light's original goal/intention.

Ultimately, though, I'm sure it's pretty obvious that Light became one sinister bastard by the end of the series. Good intentions, tainted by power and determination.