Villain protagonists are no strangers to otakus, from Itachi Uchiha to Lelouch there’s always been a debate on their true nature. Light Yagami is no different.
The debate whether Light is a sociopath or a maniac who changed with power is hot even to this day. Hundreds and thousands of debates arise on this very topic on the interent. A single question with multiple answers, everything comes down to a single thing “perspective”
Was Light Yagami actually evil?”
Before you come up with weird conclusions, let’s analyse Light’s behavior and circumstances.
#1 Light was a good guy. Death Note made him evil.
Light Yagami was tall, popular and a school topper. He had everything except excitement in his life. When he first used Death Note, what he enjoyed the most wasn’t the killing, it was the anonymity that came with it. The ability to control things on your fingers without anyone having a clue. If he had received a superpower with the ability to knock anyone down, he would perhaps use it in a different way.
When Socrates told his students, people are generally good even without enforcement, Glaucon one of the elite aruged with the following tale.
He told of a farmer named Gyges, who stumbled upon a ring in a corpse. When Gyges put on the ring, he found that it had super powers. It made him invisible. With invisibility comes freedom, and with no one to monitor his actions he went on to do woeful things- seduce the queen, kill the king, stealing gold and so on.
Glaucon’s action posed a serious question-
“Can any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew that there was no one watching him?”
Did the Death Note make Light evil?
Yes, it did! Everything changed when he received the Death Note.The ropes which kept him human to this day, were set free and he wasn’t bound by rules nor anyone’s eyes. This changed Light Yagami.
