Why a Death Note Could Turn You into a Killer Too

The manga series Death Note written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata attempts to answer the question: “What is justice?”. It features Light Yagami, a studious high school senior that stumbles upon the Death Note; a notebook that allows its user to kill anyone, provided they know their target’s name and face. The notebook comes from the supernatural Shinigami realm, which is where death gods, or Shinigami, reside. Each Shinigami has a copy of the Death Note, and the notebook that was dropped into the human realm belongs to the Shinigami named Ryuk. Ryuk is only visible to the wielder of the Death Note, which in this case is Light. The series starts with Ryuk bored of his dull life in the Shinigami realm where all everyone does all day is gamble. The same can be said about Light, who is depicted bored, staring out of his window at school, and thinking about how the world is a rotten mess. This scene is the first indication of Light’s sense of justice that he displays throughout the series, which is that he must bring order to a corrupt world.

Five days after Light discovers the Death Note, he meets Ryuk for the first time, and has already killed enough people to cover multiple pages in the notebook. With this, Ryuk tells Light about the consequences of a human using the Death Note; they don’t go to either heaven or hell. This statement Ryuk makes indicates that he doesn’t believe in justice. It implies that there is no form of judgement cast upon you when you die, and that heaven and hell don’t exist. Ryuk’s perspective of justice further builds upon the idea that we don’t really know what justice is, and that it might not even exist at all.  

After Light and Ryuk’s first meeting, there is a flashback to the time Light first used the Death Note. At the start of the flashback, he is intrigued by the Death Note and wants to test its power, but at the same time he knows that if it really works it would make him a murderer. Therefore, he justifies using it by killing a criminal shown on TV, so he can see if they actually die and won’t feel remorse becoming a killer. When Light sees the man die, he denies the power of the Death Note, stating that is must be some coincidence, and hurriedly puts the notebook away. The next day, Light is walking home from school and witnesses a biker gang harassing an innocent woman. Using the Death Note, he kills the leader of the biker gang, who then dies in a car crash right before his eyes. Witnessing the murder occur in person makes Light accept without a doubt that the Death Note’s ability to kill is real. Initially, he struggles with the idea that he has killed two people, and even considers disposing of the Death Note. However, he realizes that the Death Note was what he wanted all along, that it could serve as a means to creating the perfect society that he dreams of. As we flashback to the present, we find Light intent on using the Death Note to become a god of a new world, passing his judgement on all of its citizens. 

 Light’s perception of justice is a fairly standard one among humans. Governments enforce the idea that there are laws that people should abide by, and that by breaking them, you will receive justice accordingly. Many religions do the same, making a division between right and wrong action. If you received the Death Note there is a chance that you would follow the same route as Light, using your own sense of justice to make the world a better place. The whole point of Death Note, is that there is no universal definition of justice that everyone can agree on. Therefore, it leaves it up to the reader to decide what they think justice is.