Light has no internal conflicts and no character development

>>161965733

Light isn't the protagonist of death note. He is the bad guy.

He felt bad for like a minute at least
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Q8Vhk5Qjc

>>161965764
>thinking "antagonist" and "villain" are the same
This is a common mistake, but no. Protagonist and antagonist are merely terms to define a character's role in the story, while "hero" and "villain" are the characteristics we give them outside of the story based on their actions. A bad guy can still be a protagonist.

You idiot. Not all characters have to be developed.
Death Note is a cat and mouse type psychological thriller. It is perfectly okay for the characters to remain static, since that isn't where the audience's attention is drawn to.

>>161967415
>cat and mouse type psychological thriller.
That can only last for so long before becoming stale.

>>161965925

But the fact remains, Light is not the hero of the story. He doesn't have to have some arc of personal growth.

>>161965733
Oh fuck off, many stories have no character development whatsoever and are still good. Namely, tragedies and mystery/crime fiction are frequent offenders. And oh, would you look at that, Death Note just happens to belong to both. Who would have thought.

>>161967592
Light being the protagonist is a fact. Hero is but a subjective appraisal of a character.
Basically, that's just like, your opinion man.

>>161965733
That's becayse he's a play on shounen battle heroes and their 2d morality, just like the entire fucking manga is a twist on the overplayed genre cliches of WSJ's battle series. How do you manage to sit through an entire series and somehow miss every single point in it?

>>161967504
it only became stale after L died. you can't tell me keikaku doori wasn't the hypest fucking thing you've ever seen in death note. that fucking nigga knew the whole time he would win right there. that scene is the entire point of death note. no one cares about anything in death note but the constant cat and mouse games between Light and L. The same goes for code geass except with LeLouch and anyone else. like how he predicted everything mao would say in a conversation to btfo him completely

>>161965733
The guy who wrote one of the most iconic manga characters ever.

>>161967592
There doesn't have to be heroic growth, but his ideology can evolve. For example, time could be taken to show exactly how he copes with the fact that at one point he should start not only killing criminals, but also innocents that stand in his way. However, he just copes with absolutely all implications of his ideology at the beginning. One of the rules of writing belieaveable fiction is "show don't tell". Death Note does the opposite with Light's ideology, it's just automatically assumed that he has already thought through every single moral aspect that could potentially challenge his beliefs. That might make some sense within a story (he's a genius after all), but it doesn't make for a very interesting character, as that's not what people normally do. Their beliefs evolve over time. If we were able to just think through everything that could potentially challenge our worldview and be 100% sure about it, life would be much easier.

>>161967739
Tragedies without character development are a product of the very basic classicism, something that's not usually done in our post-modernist era because that's just too simplistic.

As for mystery/crime fiction, once again, you can't do it for too long. It's a fairly popular opinion that DT took a dip in quality after L's death, but I don't think his death itself was really the problem. The problem was that they just kept doing the same thing, what'd been captivating during the first half was being driven into the ground. More and more sophisticated plans started popping out, becoming the norm and it was harder and harder to surprise the reader/viewer with those.

>>161967935
Ohba has been pretty clear about themes and ideas of DT, and I don't recall him ever saying something like that. I mean, I'm all for Author's Death and that sounds like an interesting interpretation, but 1) I need more context for that 2) it's kinda vague and you'd think there'd be more clues to it had it been the point.

>>161967785
a hero actually means you act on the behalf of God, people calling fags heroes doesn't change that

>>161968603
They literally dedicated an entire story arc of Bakuman to it. The entire thing is just generic successful shounen formula with their particular artistic and writer's sensibilities filling in the details. Light haired normal boy gets super power from ineffectual mascot character, fights evildoers, gets useless love interest who loves him for no discernible reasons, etc... etc... etc... The difference is that they were fully aware of all the stupid cliches and went out of their way to subvert them at every turn. The powers being passive, the evil doers being explicitly so, the mascot not being cute, the mascot's uselessness being his own stated goal instead of just cliche plothole, the irrational affection of the obligatory love interest being explicitly irrational not just bad writing, etc...

>>161968838
Thank you, that does sound a reasonable explanation/interpretation. But it seems this subversion would be much more powerful had the series continued upping the scales until the very end For example, instead of merely giving him another rival after L's death, progress the story and focuse it on how Kira influences society more and more and eventually does become a sort of god, building a completely new world order, which ends up having its own flaws and imperfection, which in turn tear it apart and lead to Kira's downfall. I think that would be the logical progression of this subversion, helping emphasize the implications of the 2d morality system and the consequences of the supposed hero achieving their goal. Now that I think about all this, it really is a shame the series just kept on doing the same thing after L's death.

>>161969255

> basically another manga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost%2BBrain

>>161965733
He's japanese Walter White but he died before his self redemption arc

>>161965733
Light was a Weekly Shounen Jump protag. Internal conflicts are for antagonists who get converted by Light's talk no jutsu.

Like Near and Matsuda.

>Light is not the hero of the story

What? Light reduced crime drastically.