It's often true that a mask makes people more comfortable in themselves, they have fewer insecurities and in some cases, they even get the courage to speak their mind. Because the symbol of our existence, the representative of our personality and identity is our face. Not your leg, Not your stomach. It's your face. That's what you are to people. People may ask of your name everywhere, but it's your face that they attach your name with. Our embarrassment, jealousy, happiness, and sorrows are best projected by our facial expressions. You hide your face when you don't speak up on the stage. And when people get to mask their faces, they become less self-conscious, their insecurities vanish. They get more comfortable with themselves. A mask doesn't hide you it reveals you. It is a strange paradox.
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| Light Yagami |
The story of Light Yagami has a similar reality but more dangerous. It's dangerous because Kira is not just a mask of Light Yagami but Kira has power as well. A supernatural power to kill people. And the combination of anonymity and power is usually dangerous. Are you really a good person or you are just scared to be caught? Because the power in itself is not corrupt and neither everybody who has it. But if you can avoid the accountability of using that power or if you can get away with it, you may misuse that power. Light Yagami was an academically-gifted, extremely intelligent, and athletic student. Praises from parents, recognition from teachers and popular among students, Kira had a life that every student desire for. He was perfection in himself..the top of the class. But at the same time, his life was boring too. Nothing much was going on with him. In the first few scenes of the series, we see how disconnected he was from the people and events around him. Neither home nor class..he didn't like being anywhere. With such a high intellect, everything around seemed dull to him. He is alone in the crowd.
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| Light Yagami Personality |
Light has a very ordered personality. Detail-oriented and organized. It is the opposite of chaos. While nothing is certain in chaos, an absolute disorder, people with ordered personalities are arrangement-obsessed. They like to see everything in order. Perfect and clean. The pen cap should be right behind the pen. And when this gets severe, it becomes pathological, which we call OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Though no such disorder is shown in Light, but his obsession with order is obvious. Light has a very structured lifestyle. The way he lives, his room, his dressup... he does his chores in a very structured manner. He is not a typical teenager. He is self-disciplined. And due to the level of praise and popularity he has grown up with, he is also very self-righteous. I am always right. But it is also true that he does everything with a high degree of perfection. From his report card to his bedroom, you will find everything in tip-top condition. And this very order-obsession gets for the whole world when he finds death note. He gets onto bringing the world into order and make it perfect He starts eliminating criminals and immoral people thinking "World will be a better place without these rotten people". In his perspective, criminals cause disorder in the world, so eliminate them.
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| Joker and Kira |
If Joker is an agent of chaos, then Kira is an agent of order. Who is moral, who is immoral, who is rotten and disordered...this will be the judged Kira. The problem is that when it concerns millions of lives, we can't solely rely on the intelligence of one person. Because whoever you are, however intelligent or passionate you may be or you might have an IQ of 180, but you can still act stupid. you can be biased. you can have an ego. you can be arrogant. And these are human nature. And every mortal person without any exception is subjected to these. The 21st century is not the making of one person. It is the result of collective intelligence. We often see a single face behind these big companies, but it involves many intelligent minds to run the company. We don't have one science genius telling us how the world works. Every theory is first peer-reviewed. It is criticized by experts in the same field. We check and balance each other's errors this way. To make up for one person's stupidity, we employ 10 more minds around him. That's why in democratic governance, we distribute the power by making parallel institutions. Judges, courts, etc. So that they can keep the government in check. One supreme leader is dangerous even if it is Kira.
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| Bored Light Yagami |
Read More - The Problem of Boredom in our Life
Anyway, did Kira genuinely want to make this world a better place? Or was he just bored of his life, like Ryuk? Was he doing all these for the moral or kind-hearted one? Or he was just desperate to prove his existence? And the most important question, would he actually stop the killings once the world becomes crime-free? I do not doubt Light's intention but I am also not sure. As far as I know, obsession knows no end. Obsession ends with you, never before that. And Light was obsessed with order and perfection. Death note built this obsession even more. To such an extent that he started to consider himself as a God. But in reality, he was only a human being. Just another mortal being which even caused his fall. By killing Lind L. Tailor Light further proves his human nature. The fact is that Light was scared and after killing him, he also blurs the distinction between his moral and immoral. He can kill non-criminals too. He can even kill for his own self-interest. And this was very crucial information for L. And another crucial point that ensures the fall of Kira was Mikami, who was giving judgment for Kira. Mikami was also order-obsessed. His lifestyle was equally structured if not more. He had his itinerary and tasks fixed every day. When Mikami goes to the bank on the second consecutive day to get the notebook and kill Takada it appears to be unusual of him. Because he always went to the bank only once on the 25th of every month. Given his ordered lifestyle, this appears suspicious to Near. later it exposed Kira's real identity.
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| Teru Mikami |
Whenever we take any big decision in our life or decide to do something big, we also keep justifying ourselves of why we are doing it. And in doing so, we always take our favor. When a person develops a passion for something, he also often finds a reason to convince him that he was born to do that particular thing. Our intentions and emotions feel genuine to us.
But in some cases, a person wants to feel passionate only to fill the void that is deep inside him. He wants to distract himself from something else. He wants to bury something deep inside of him. Maybe he is desperately searching for something to resue him of this gnawing reality. and Passion does that. gives us an escape. Sometimes we are existentially anguished and hollow and a sense of passion or obsession rescues us from such situations. It gives us a new narrative to live life. It makes us forget our broken life. When we are onto something, we forget how we are inside.
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When Light picks up the Death Note for the first time, he thinks of it as a prank. But deep inside, he wants it to be real and not a prank. And when he finds out just that, as we talked before, he conveniently convinces himself of as some savior. As if he was chosen to save the world. Nobody could do what he did. But the truth is that he was bored with his life. He was annoyed by repeating the same exact things every day. He neither had any meaningful relations with anyone nor was he interested in anything. And in such a situation, Death note gave him just that what he was desperately looking for - a distraction. A distraction from his boring, meaningless life.
There are some people who think that all the problems are out there in the world. They don't see themselves as part of the problem. They cannot see their own faults. They feel they are not part of the equation. In fact, they are sure that they are problem-free. They are perfect. And if such people set out to correct the world, then they just exacerbate the situation.
“You don't have to be crazy to be a murder. You
just have to think you are right.” – Yoko Taro
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