Justice? Or Just A Murderer?

I know Tsugumi Ohba didn’t really intend for Death Note to inspire its readers to question good and evil. And I know that I’m not the first to actually think about this subject. But I often find myself wondering weather or not to hate or love Light, weather the character is actually good or a murdering psychopath with a god complex.

First off I should probably briefly explain a little about the story. It starts out with a young man named Light Yagami, a bright student at the top of his class with great prospects for his future. All of that changes when Light stumbles upon a notebook drooped by a bored Shinigami named Ryuk. The notebook poses the power to kill humans, and it's thusly named ‘Death Note’. To kill with the Death Note all one needs is the persons name and face. Light sees finding the Death Note as a way for him to bring justice to all the criminals of the world, and as a way to create the ‘perfect’ world. Of which he would be God. Eventually the worlds top detective -L- gets on the case and so the story really gets going.

Light's intentions are good. He believes the world is a ‘rotten mess’ that needs to be cleaned up, and with the Death Note he believes he can do just that. I believe his exact words on the matter in the beginning were: "I’m going to make the whole world know I’m here. That somebody is passing righteous judgement on them! And then nobody will commit crimes anymore. The world will start to become a better place. And, while people who obviously deserve to be punished are dying of heart attacks I’ll gradually be killing off immoral people and people who harass others, through Illness and accidents. Even that will be noticed by the idiot masses. They’ll realise they’ll die if they don’t change their ways. I’ll make this a world inhabited only by people I decide are good!”

I believe that Ryuk then brought up the fact that, if light does go through with said plan, he himself would be the only ‘rotten’ one left in the world. Which I agree with, by Light's rules he would have to kill himself for killing off those he doesn’t deem fit to live in his new ‘perfect’ world. Which seems like it would defeat the purpose of everything he’s striving to achieve. If Light dies who’s going to continue to make ‘righteous’ decisions on whom to kill to keep order? No one, that’s who. And the world will go back to the way it was before, as it did.

Over the course of some odd years, Light kills L. L's successors - Mello and Near - take over for L and eventually ‘capture’ Light. But not before the people start to support Kira(Light), some even going as far as referring to him as God. The crime rate was practically diminished. And the world was, seemingly, on the fast track to being the perfect place Light dreamt of. Or was it really? A lot of people were probably only supporting Kira because they were afraid of him. And I personally don’t think it was the ‘perfect’ world because of the means Light used to get it to that point. No one has the right to pass that kind of judgement on others, deciding who should live and who should die. It would take a really sick individual to think that they could, and should, do it.

After going over all that Light achieved, and what he did to get there, I’d have to whole-heartedly agree with what Near said in the last book after Light admitted to being Kira. Nears words being: "You are just a murderer. And this notebook here is the worst murder weapon in the history of mankind. If you had been a normal person and had used this notebook once out of curiosity you would have been surprised and scared of what had happened, regretted what you had done. And never used this notebook again... To speak of extreams, I can actually understand those who would use this for their personal interests and kill a couple of people, and even think that they’re normal. But you have yielded to the power of the notebook and Shinigami and have confused yourself with a God. You’re just a crazy mass murder. Nothing more, and nothing less."