I always hear people talk about how great Death Note is so I tried watching it a few years ago and it just made me very uncomfortable the whole time. The show made sure to point out how great things are goin in the world when ever it could, like one point after the time skip it said that wars have stopped(???). At no point did it ever try making a point about how there could be a flaw in the justice system where someone innocent could be in jail and thus a casualty of the MC. Every non “criminal” he kills is someone who could potentially put a stop to his actions and thus comes off as as antagonists that the viewer Shouldn’t feel bad about dying. The whole thing feels like the author thinks that Light is actually a good guy.
The show is following Light's fall down the path to be the bad guy as he starts out thinking he's being the good guy by ridding the world of criminals. To him it matters less if they are absolutely guilty and more that he created the sense that there is a new god of death that people fear and so they won't commit crimes in the first place. It's also worth noting he tested with a live shooter case and started with ones on death row anyways iirc.
He rapidly descends into a power trip with it though deciding that he will be that god, and quickly breaks his own rules to kill innocent people trying to stop him. So the issues you see you are supposed to, that's the point of the series.
but that’s where my problem lies. The show isn’t saying that he’s a bad guy because his views and actions are inherently wrong or evil (they are!). The show is saying that he only becomes the bad guy when he starts taking actions to stop the people trying to stop him. The show’s stance is that if someone goes to jail, the world would be a better place if we killed them Instead.
The intended message is not that killing them is better than jail but that while Light did make progress because people stopped committing crimes out of fear a god they couldn't escape would kill them, that still made Light a bad person and the "progress" he made was only by happenstance of that fear.
I'm not gonna say the author was particular good at getting their message across as the series definitely hits a point where they just didn't know how to wrap it up, but the intent is that you do take issue with the presented stance as the story's heros do in their pursuit of catching him and be evident as Light becomes willing to kill anyone in his way, family included.
who does he kill that's an innocent? L does massively unethical psychological torture on people to extract confessions.
FBI agents, one of their girlfriends, his own dad (albeit that one was indirect), one of his followers to prevent her possibly revealing him and he attempts to kill the other investigators at the end.
Deff not gonna put FBI agent in the innocent bystander catagory.
The only one I'd be willing to put down as innocent is the agents gf. I'll call trolly problem on this one. He saves enough lives to justify dropping the ball here. It was however still dropping thr ball.
The shows has Kira's plan work. Maybe in real life it wouldn't. However thetext of thr work has those cops seeing thr world become a better place, identify its cause and then try to undo it. Nah, they get the note as well.