Thinking about getting back into Deathnote-Want questions answered beforehand

[Scowling Dragon]

I was thinking about getting back into death note. I liked it initially but I felt turned off when the number of coincidences that needed to occur became unrealistic in my mind almost immediatly.
However an excelent review pointed out its psychological apsects so I felt interested in focusing on that.

However I just wanted to get some questions answered beforehand in a way that wouldn't cause spoilers.

It seems to me that the deathnote can control reality and minds in a way that feels very unlimited.

As long as you just say "And then they die" at the end they will do anything ever even if it wouldn't make sense for that person to do.
Can't this be used for unlimited power?
"And then X person fails to catch me and hands over all their money to Y and then they die of a heart attack"

Seems like such a wide and flimsy clause.

[Gnoman]

That's explicitly dealt with. The Note will try to achieve the specified method of death, but if it is impossible to achieve then the target will just have a fatal heart attack.

However, it will totally control the target's own actions. This is quite powerful.

[Scowling Dragon]

That's explicitly dealt with. The Note will try to achieve the specified method of death, but if it is impossible to achieve then the target will just have a fatal heart attack.

However, it will totally control the target's own actions. This is quite powerful.

That's kinda unlimited power.

Thats kinda nonsense power. I get that it can't warp reality, but it can change how people think and feel as long as you write "And then they die" by the end.

I mean in theory it can be used on yourself to give yourself supernatural luck and the like.

[Kantaki]

To my limited understanding that's not how it works.

For one you need to specify a death date within the timelimit*.
Then you can only control the circumstances of the death.
So X declares Y their sole heir before dying of a heart attack on DD.MM.YYYY at XX:YY should work as well as making the target destroy all Information they have on Kira before they die.

Simply making them incapable of finding you might be a impossible condition and lead to the default death.
Making them commit suicide because they haven't found you yet is fine though.

So yes, there are limits to the book's power.
It's still way OP though.

*Both the one to write it down and the maximum time till death one (about a month I think)

[Scowling Dragon]

I mean screw killing inmates:

"X Criminal Reconsiders his life and becomes and upstanding citizen and dies within 100 years"
And if 100 years is impossible they will die when they are supposed to of a heart attack.

Not "OP" that bothers me but just these sorts of writing leads to sloppy storytelling.

[Douglas]

The primary limitations of the death note are:

• You must know the name of the victim.
• You must know the face of the victim.
• The death note does not change what is physically possible. If you specify details of the death that are impossible, the victim just dies of a heart attack instead.
• Only one death per written victim. If the details you specify would cause anyone not written into the death note to die, the victim just dies of a heart attack instead.

I think there's also a limit to how much time before the actual moment of death you can control, so you can't do "X person does Y for 3 years and then dies."

But yes, even with these restrictions it is a very broad and powerful ability. It's very limited as a defensive power, though - you have to have enough knowledge to use it preemptively to stop someone from doing anything to you - and if you do anything too obvious you risk drawing attention to yourself.

Most of the show is a great game of cat and mouse between Light and various law enforcement organizations trying to find out who the death note user mysterious killer is, and they figure out the "name and face" requirement very quickly. Light has to keep the law enforcement people from identifying him, and it doesn't take long for them to start hiding their faces and/or using aliases so he can't directly use the death note against them without first defeating their security measures.

[Scowling Dragon]

Most of the show is a great game of cat and mouse between Light and various law enforcement organizations trying to find out who the death note user mysterious killer is, and they figure out the "name and face" requirement very quickly. Light has to keep the law enforcement people from identifying him, and it doesn't take long for them to start hiding their faces and/or using aliases so he can't directly use the death note against them without first defeating their security measures.

I mean it seems pretty trivial overcoming the security measures since its so broadly overpowered.

Even with only a 1 month time limit, with a loose enough sense of ethics and the willingness to carve a bloody path, I could kill Any opposition pretty easily with the will warping abilities of the deathnote.

Thats the problem. Its so MASSIVELY overpowered that it would require stupid writing and massive amounts of good luck to make any amount of plot work.

[Douglas]

I mean screw killing inmates:

"X Criminal Reconsiders his life and becomes and upstanding citizen and dies within 100 years"
And if 100 years is impossible they will die when they are supposed to of a heart attack.

Not "OP" that bothers me but just these sorts of writing leads to sloppy storytelling.

I think writing that would just make X criminal die of a heart attack after the default time interval (just a few minutes), completely ignoring the "100 years" part.

I mean it seems pretty trivial overcoming the security measures since its so broadly overpowered.

Even with only a 1 month time limit, with a loose enough sense of ethics and the willingness to carve a bloody path, I could kill Any opposition pretty easily with the will warping abilities of the deathnote.

Thats the problem. Its so MASSIVELY overpowered that it would require stupid writing and massive amounts of good luck to make any amount of plot work.

How? Keep in mind that your starting point must be someone you know the name and face of, and that before long your opponents are hiding their names from each other, not just you. The primary antagonist is completely anonymous, with no one besides himself knowing his name.

Also, there's a near endless supply of law enforcement people in the world, and Kira draws worldwide attention.

[Scowling Dragon]

How? Keep in mind that your starting point must be someone you know the name and face of, and that before long your opponents are hiding their names from each other, not just you. The primary antagonist is completely anonymous, with no one besides himself knowing his name.

Also, there's a near endless supply of law enforcement people in the world, and Kira draws worldwide attention.

Because you can always draw the net wide enough. Again if Im willing to be a bloody monster.

Do my targets have family? Family of family? Dentists? Doctors? neighbors?

Lets say they hide that. Does the person hiding that information have to remain anonymous as well?
Random Hackers or IT personel that I can brainwash to get me that data?

The power becomes more and more powerful and monstrous the more you think about it. And all that is required is for that rando to post the data on TV or something (I can brainwahs TV holders to air that data for no reason), and bam I have it anonymously.

[Celestia]

The show is great. It's quite possibly the greatest interpretation of an intellectual cat and mouse game. However, it is still fictional and relies on fictional things to work. Thus, you shouldn't look too closely at the physics. Besides, how the Death Note works isn't particularly important to the interaction between Light and L.


Still, I love it. 25 of the best anime episodes ever made.

[Douglas]

Because you can always draw the net wide enough. Again if Im willing to be a bloody monster.

Do my targets have family? Family of family? Dentists? Doctors? neighbors?

Probably. Do you know who their family, dentists, doctors, or neighbors are?

Lets say they hide that. Does the person hiding that information have to remain anonymous as well?
Random Hackers or IT personel that I can brainwash to get me that data?

Do you know who's hiding that information, or where it is stored? What if it's not even in a computer system in the first place?

The power becomes more and more powerful and monstrous the more you think about it. And all that is required is for that rando to post the data on TV or something (I can brainwahs TV holders to air that data for no reason), and bam I have it anonymously.

You have to have a starting point to work from. If all you know is "there's this police guy going after me" and all information about him is hidden, you don't have anything to use the death note with.

Again, the primary antagonist is 100% anonymous. He goes by an alias, he has always gone by an alias, he is an independent investigator with no superior who knows his name or organizational records that have it in a file somewhere, and even the people closest to him in the investigation know nothing about him but his alias and his track record of solving tough cases.

Also, Light is operating with a sudden death defeat condition - if law enforcement identifies him, it's all over. And every time he kills one of his law enforcement opponents, the choice of who he killed and how he got the information to do so is another clue for the remaining ones to use. On the flip side, if Light kills off a police officer, FBI agent, etc., there are many more to take his place. And if Light manages to kill off or otherwise defeat an entire law enforcement organization, there are many more to take its place.

[Scowling Dragon]

Also, Light is operating with a sudden death defeat condition - if law enforcement identifies him, it's all over.

More simply I wonder why doesn't Light make his powers known explicitly as supernatural. Nothing throws off police like downright paranoia and fear of the Unknown.

Id have criminals announce Im a Ghost of the Unjustly killed and Im here to make the world right and to not stand in my way.
And do it in a bunch of ways that would demonstrate my supernatural capabilities.

After that "Clue" finding would continue but on a much lower scale. When in a sense people "Know" the limits of my capabilities but don't know their origin, they are left downroght hopeless.

Doesn't matter what clues I gather if I am a formless spirit of death. Maybe Il have inconcistencies, but people can find divine perpose in the smallest of things and with that deflection Im left mostly unmolested.

[A.A.King]

In Chapter 6 of Death Note Light starts doing some experimentations, one important one you might want to consider is the fact that when he ordered a prisoner to write down: "I know L distrusts the Police" that failed (meaning the victim simply got the basic Heart Attack rather than the delux-extra-special). The conclusion Light draws here that he can't write about someone he doesn't know nor can he write about thoughts he'd never have.

It's a very unclear limitation, but something to keep in mind when you want to control people to gather information. It might very well not be possible to control someone to ask questions in the hope to find out stuff that the victim doesn't want anything to do with.

It's true though that, the Death Note as written, is a horribly overpowered item which could make it piss easy to get extremely powerful if utilised well.

HOWEVER

There exists limitations on the Death Note which aren't part of the Death Note but part of the protagonist. While I think it's quite arguable that you could do a lot more with this if you were wiling to be very bloody, however the protagonist wants to become God of a new world, he wants to deliver justice and as such to justify his actions to himself he is limited to killing Criminals and people who can be considered a threat to his goal. If rather than killing people who were trying to catch them but killing their families (or both them and their families) it would have been much easier for him, because few who are willing to risk their lives are also willing to risk the lives of the ones they love. The serie however does not allow for such tactics based on the protagonist and you shouldn't look at a great mind game story with the view that brute force would have solved all the protagonist his issues.

The story doesn't exist because of the the Death Note, the Death Note exists because of the story.


If had the Death Note (and found myself able to use it to kill) then I would live a happy quite easy life and have no fear of being caught, but here we have a story of someone who wants the world to know he is out there killing criminals and wants that world to accept him as justice. Killing families to stop the police would have mad him a tyrant rather than a god and make it a lot less believeable that he himself sees nothing wrong with his actions. You can kill those who oppose you, for that was their sin, but the sins of the father do not become the sins of the child.

[Scowling Dragon]

There exists limitations on the Death Note which aren't part of the Death Note but part of the protagonist.

I can handle Okuyasu Nijimura style then.

Il pretend Light has just brain damage and has no imagination. That SHOULD make the pill easier to swallow.

[Douglas]

More simply I wonder why doesn't Light make his powers known explicitly as supernatural. Nothing throws off police like downright paranoia and fear of the Unknown.

Id have criminals announce Im a Ghost of the Unjustly killed and Im here to make the world right and to not stand in my way.
And do it in a bunch of ways that would demonstrate my supernatural capabilities.

After that "Clue" finding would continue but on a much lower scale. When in a sense people "Know" the limits of my capabilities but don't know their origin, they are left downroght hopeless.

Doesn't matter what clues I gather if I am a formless spirit of death. Maybe Il have inconcistencies, but people can find divine perpose in the smallest of things and with that deflection Im left mostly unmolested.

Something along those lines actually does happen. The group investigating him figure out that however he's doing the killing, it's not with any known or even speculated mundane means. Police quit the investigation out of fear of being killed. Light openly announces (through an intermediary and using an alias) that he's working to make the world better, and that he will kill anyone who tries to oppose him. He proves the authenticity of the announcement by announcing an obvious death note kill immediately before it happens.

And, eventually, a lot of people start siding with Light (under the alias Kira) - he is, after all, successfully reducing crime rates to all time lows - and many organizations stop attempting to investigate him. That takes time, however.

Ultimately it comes down to the primary antagonist, a specific individual and his closest coworkers, being very very persistent and very very anonymous. It is the struggle between Light and L, specifically, that forms the backbone of the plot's conflict.

[A.A.King]

I can handle Okuyasu Nijimura style then.

Il pretend Light has just brain damage and has no imagination. That SHOULD make the pill easier to swallow.

That's obviously not what I meant.

First of all, your Spirit idea (which I didn't see as I was typing my own comment) most likely wouldn't work because of the limitation I meant from chapter 6. The prisoner couldn't express a thought about someone (or on this case something) he never heard of.

Similarly, why would namedropping a fake spirit make the killings any more obviously Super Natural than the fact that crimimals suddenly start getting Heart Attacks? If it wasn't for L nobody might have even believed there was a single person responsible and L probably would have looked past the fake proclamations too (which would have just given L the extra hint that people can be controlled to say things, if the idea is possible).

I am just saying, when going in there accept that the goal of the main character is "God" even though a lower goal is easier achieved and still comes with all the perks you could desirr and accept that his motto is "justice" and as such certain tactical options you propose are not possible because of his believe system.

Don't look at a boxer and think "what a ****ty fighter, I'd have kicked my opponent in the d*ck by now and killed his only daughtsr just to be sure", accept that he has chosen to fight with just his fists to proof a point.

[Scowling Dragon]

First of all, your Spirit idea (which I didn't see as I was typing my own comment) most likely wouldn't work because of the limitation I meant from chapter 6. The prisoner couldn't express a thought about someone (or on this case something) he never heard of.

Thats strange because i definetly remember something like that happening in the anime in the early episodes that I watched...Hmm. I may need a refreshed.

Edit: OK I was right the choices are just completly arbitrary. So a prisoner can make a pentagram for no reason but he can't write things for no reason.
Pentagram, OK, a sentance? No.

[Kantaki]

Thats strange because i definetly remember something like that happening in the anime in the early episodes that I watched...Hmm. I may need a refreshed.

Edit: OK I was right the choices are just completly arbitrary. So a prisoner can make a pentagram for no reason but he can't write things for no reason.
Pentagram, OK, a sentance? No.

Well, „pentagram” is a concept the prisoner might know, the same goes for that weird poem he made people write.
Although that one stretches things a bit.

But that guy named „L”? Literally a unknown entity.

[Scowling Dragon]

Well, „pentagram” is a concept the prisoner might know, the same goes for that weird poem he made people write.
Although that one stretches things a bit.

But that guy named „L”? Literally a unknown entity.

L is also a letter. That doesn't make any sense at all. If he wrote "I want him to write 100 unrelated letter just in a specific pattern the way Im writing it down now" would that work?

What if the sentance was a poem? Just a very short one that doesn't rhyme.

Like thats my shattering of immersion. Its when the plot actively requires mind caulk to make sense, thats when I just can't believe it.
And why can he control truck accidents and not prison escapes? Could the prisoner escape if he gave him like 10 hours or the like?
When what can happen is arbitrary it makes most of the mind games "And then the author allows X to happen".

[Rynjin]

I mean screw killing inmates:

"X Criminal Reconsiders his life and becomes and upstanding citizen and dies within 100 years"
And if 100 years is impossible they will die when they are supposed to of a heart attack.

Not "OP" that bothers me but just these sorts of writing leads to sloppy storytelling.

Some excerpts from the "How to use" segments of the manga:

"If you write, die of disease for the cause of death, but only write a specific time of death without the actual name of disease, the human will die from an adequate disease. But the Death Note can only operate within 23 days (in the human calendar). This is called the 23 day rule."

"In the Death Note, you cannot set the death date longer than the victim's original life span. Even if the victim's death is set in the Death Note beyond his/her original life span, the victim will die before the set time."

A particularly pertinent one RE: "Why doesn't Light do X?"

"In the world of gods of death there are a few copies of what humans may call user guidebook for using the Death Note in the human world. However, the guidebook is not allowed to be delivered to humans."

Basically Light has less info on how it works than we do, and some of the rules are really weird and convoluted, or oddly specific.

"Once the victim's name, cause of death and situation of death have been written down in the Death Note, this death will still take place even if that Death Note or the part of the note in which it has been written is destroyed, for example, burned into ashes, before the stated time of death.

If the victim's name has been written and then the Death Note is destroyed in the middle of writing the cause of death, the victim will be killed by heart attack in 40 seconds after writing the name.

If the victim's name and cause of death have been written and the middle of writing the situation of death, then the victim will be killed within 6 minutes and 40 seconds via the stated cause of death if the cause is possible within that period of time, but otherwise, the victim will die by heart attack."

Ryuk is allowed to teach him:

It is perfectly okay for gods of death to read the guidebook for him/herself and teach humans about its contents, no matter what the content may include.

...But Ryuk's a prick.

TL;DR: A lot of the questions asked here are explained in the manga.

[Anonymouswizard]

Il pretend Light has just brain damage and has no imagination. That SHOULD make the pill easier to swallow.

Although that goes against the series as a whole, because while he's not the most imaginative person, he is incredibly intelligent. Just as shown by the various experiments he performed to establish the limits. He's performed a lot of experiments offscreen as well, so he knows if 'X writes the following sequence of letters' works just as well as he knows that 'X writes the following' doesn't work.

Also remember that if any rule is violated it defaults to a heart attack in fourty seconds (also the time limit is very strict, about two weeks). Another rule is that it can only identify people by name and face (that you visualise), and will try to interpret circumstances to kill as few people as possible. This means that killing L without his name and face is really hard, although it would be simple if a Shinigami was willing to do it for him.

There's a lot of things to like, but it's not without flaws. Notably the writers are not as smart as their characters, so they don't take every possible opportunity they could or use the Death Note as efficiently as possible.

[Douglas]

L is also a letter. That doesn't make any sense at all. If he wrote "I want him to write 100 unrelated letter just in a specific pattern the way Im writing it down now" would that work?

What if the sentance was a poem? Just a very short one that doesn't rhyme.

Like thats my shattering of immersion. Its when the plot actively requires mind caulk to make sense, thats when I just can't believe it.
And why can he control truck accidents and not prison escapes? Could the prisoner escape if he gave him like 10 hours or the like?
When what can happen is arbitrary it makes most of the mind games "And then the author allows X to happen".

I don't recall Light ever attempting to control a prison escape. His experiment closest to that was having a prisoner run to a specific bathroom that was still inside the prison, and it worked. It was the "get to the Eiffel Tower from Japan in one hour" one that failed.

For writing stuff, the distinction between the experiments that seems likely to be important to me is whether what is written has meaning to the person who's supposed to write it that he would never write. So, "prisoner snaps and writes something that seems utterly random to him" works, but "prisoner writes clearly about something he knows nothing about" doesn't.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I thought the presentation of the Death Note as an object was pretty consistent and limited enough for the story to make sense.

[DomaDoma]

Even putting aside Rynjin's comprehensive dealing with the matter, I don't really see any application of this which would both provide extra benefit to Light, and be in keeping with his character.

In point of fact, I only see one real plot hole in Death Note, and it's one no one ever seems to discuss: from episode 29 on, the task force is way, way too blase about a thing which they ought to know perfectly well could end badly.

But at any rate, Scowling, "why didn't he just powergame" was not the kind of question I envisioned from you. I was picturing "is it a coherent story which ends well"? And yes. It very much is that.

[Scowling Dragon]

But at any rate, Scowling, "why didn't he just powergame" was not the kind of question I envisioned from you. I was picturing "is it a coherent story which ends well"?

Usually Im not all about the OP power mixing and nitpicking but in a story ll about chess masters against each other, the truly unlimited nature of the Deathnote and its limitations being arbitrary aspects of the narrator watching the chess match unfold becomes really boring.
I can't get interested in a chess match when the rules are not well defined.

I already quit initially because I felt like the story depended on random chance to string itself along (So the one person who starts figuring out Kira in the beggining just happens to bump into him in the lobby?).

To me maybe I don't feel the consistency in lights character as well. If hes willing to murder good people as long as they stand in his way, why wouldn't he extend the net wider?

Edit:

But more importantly does it pull that sort of coincidence crap again? Id be happy to continue if its just this one bump and the rest of the story is more organic.

[Reddish Mage]

Your criticism is literally that if this guy is willing to kill anybody in his way why isn’t he willing to kill those people friends families neighbors and considering he doesn’t know who those are, any strangers who might be distant associates of that person.

You are not willing to accept the guy has any limits to how many perfect innocents he is willing to kill? None whatsoever? Your strategy is pretty inefficient.

It was also said that Light has chosen to cultivate positive public opinion by announcing himself. That good will would go away pretty quickly if he went public (or simply displayed to the public) his willingness to kill anyone and everyone associated with his enemies, which would have to be things like towns and police departments since when Light doesn't have information, the death note becomes a very blunt instrument.

You started the thread with a wrongheaded idea of just how OP the Deathnote is, but when you do find that the Deathnote isn't that powerful you just double down on your criticism anyway.

That criticism amounts to why isn't Light thinking like a power gamer instead of a person?

There are plenty of stories that do cat and mouse games between masterminds, nearly all of them are vulnerable to this sort of criticism on some level. If you can't enjoy such a story as a story, instead of a thought experiment and intellectual exercise, I don't understand how you could ever have thought you would enjoy this series.

[Douglas]

I already quit initially because I felt like the story depended on random chance to string itself along (So the one person who starts figuring out Kira in the beggining just happens to bump into him in the lobby?).

Considering that Kira is the son of one of the lead police officers in the group working on the Kira case, that coincidence doesn't seem all that random to me.

To me maybe I don't feel the consistency in lights character as well. If hes willing to murder good people as long as they stand in his way, why wouldn't he extend the net wider?

Because he views himself as an instrument of justice, and targeting innocent bystanders would not be justice. Light kills criminals, and in his somewhat twisted viewpoint anyone who tries to stop him is guilty of the crime of obstructing justice. The friends and family of those people are not guilty of that crime, so he doesn't consider them to be valid targets.

Edit:

But more importantly does it pull that sort of coincidence crap again? Id be happy to continue if its just this one bump and the rest of the story is more organic.

I don't recall thinking anything after that was an especially unlikely coincidence, but I also didn't think that coincidence was all that unlikely.

There is one major plan of Light that requires significant luck to work, but it only needs that luck in the very last step, he's significantly limited by the Kira task force's suspicions when he sets it up, and he crafted his plan to minimize the luck required as much as he could.

[Scowling Dragon]

That criticism amounts to why isn't Light thinking like a power gamer instead of a person?

I didn't know power gamers where inhuman now.
Man, I never knew using critical thought was a superpower. Man I wish I was an Xman instead of inhuman. Those guys are awful.

No the Deathnote is indeed SLIGHTLY less OP then I assumed it was. But -1 from 100 is still 99 which is my concern.
Its whole "Kill people whenever you want" aspect is completely swallowed up by "Mind control anybody for 2 weeks" aspect.

Its powers are just still ill defined.
You can make a subject draw a pentagram (Or a random poem) but not the letter L, it can't let people break out of prison but it can control probability with Trucks and random accidents and gangbangers.

Is this sort of confusion too much? Honestly Im being very fair here. I DO want to enjoy deathnote, but those sorts of free hanging niggles are my concern that would make this chess game very arbitrary when the rules are arbitrary and don't allow for my own logical extrapolation.

Considering that Kira is the son of one of the lead police officers in the group working on the Kira case, that coincidence doesn't seem all that random to me.

No that was definite coincidence. Any other minute that meeting would never have happened.

Because he views himself as an instrument of justice, and targeting innocent bystanders would not be justice. Light kills criminals, and in his somewhat twisted viewpoint anyone who tries to stop him is guilty of the crime of obstructing justice. The friends and family of those people are not guilty of that crime, so he doesn't consider them to be valid targets.

Thats better reasoning though. Il give the show another shot.

[Gandariel]

I think the answer was pretty satisfactory: The death note is actually as OP as you'D think, but it is limited by the owner's intentions (become god, only kill criminals and opponents, be publicly known AND have a positive image).

I've acually popped in just to add one thing I found very interesting (even though I've never watched/read the series): why the death note would completely and utterly fail today.

Spoilers: it's because of Shia LaBeouf. Not even joking.

https://youtu.be/r8OfANX2hEw

[JeenLeen]

I think that the mind control was limited in some significant degree. I guess Light couldn't do anything that would compel someone to execute L, since that means killing another person, too. Are there any instances where Light controlled somebody for more than a few minutes (as they walked to their designated place of death, basically)?

I think the answer was pretty satisfactory: The death note is actually as OP as you'D think, but it is limited by the owner's intentions (become god, only kill criminals and opponents, be publicly known AND have a positive image).

I've acually popped in just to add one thing I found very interesting (even though I've never watched/read the series): why the death note would completely and utterly fail today.

Spoilers: it's because of Shia LaBeouf. Not even joking.

https://youtu.be/r8OfANX2hEw

Making a side note here that the rules governing the live-action Death Note are rather different from the anime, especially regarding mind control.