The trouble with L
    I think L is adorable, but he just didn't get enough development to really come into his own. I.e., he is the good guy. He happens to have a lot of quirks. He likes Macs, perches like a street urchin on living room furniture, and hot damn, that looks like mascara. But he just didn't get enough backstory. So for a while, though I thought he was my favorite character, I realized I thought he needed more dimension.

The trouble with Light
    Light, on the other hand, has a bit more dimension. He starts out as a brilliant brat. I nearly gave up on him, and would have entirely, but for the (spoilers!) episode where he temporarily forfeits ownership of the Death Note and all of his memory of being Kira -- and grapples with, for once, genuinely trying to catch the killer while being disturbed by his own sympathies for some of the killer's choices. Yay, he wasn't being a total ass!
    However, he ruined it. He recovered the Death Note and all of his megalomania. Sigh. If he didn't take himself seriously when he made those allusions to being the god of a new world and all, I think I'd really like him, as a character. But that last bit, as soon as I realized, "Okay, wait, no, this is stupid, but he's not kidding..." just made me realize he was in la-la land and there was just no saving him.
    "I'm too sexy for my stationery!" Fine, fine, you did good with your tools, you can do your Tiger Woods fist-pumping and your victory dance, but a little prudence, please?
    If only he just winked at Ryuuk.
    "I am the god of the new world!" *wink* "Psych!" See, that would have made it all better. Then not only would he be Kira which is playing a joke on everybody, but he'd be telling his inner circle he thought he was god, and also would be playing a joke on them. Then nothing has a hold on you, not even the ego of being a capital-g GOD, and that makes you a cooler character, IMO. Be thorough, dammit, and don't believe your own media machine. *sigh*
    But no such luck. At least he wasn't emo, philosophizing all the time. Being god has a decisiveness about it, so even if that puts you in la-la land, it frees the rest of your brain up for action, I guess.

Light's name
    I wonder if the author was thinking of Lucifer when writing the character of Light. My understanding is that the original name of Lucifer is, literally, the "Morning Star," and he was an angel of light in his own right. Then, of course, Lucifer, the original Lucifer, got too big for his britches and got booted out. Sucks to be him. Is there a connection?
    The kanji for Yagami Light is 夜神　月. My kanji's a bit rusty, but I believe that makes his last name, literally, "night god," or "evening god." So you, what, have a light, the moon, in the night? Light in the night? Morning? Just a thought.
    Name aside, the fall from grace seems quite obvious. Lucifer, too, started out as a good guy. Angelic good guys, apple of everyone's eye (haw, haw), and both, in seeking to create a new empire, were eventually put back in their place. What goes up... must come down.

So. I think L is cute but dull after a while. I think Light has a compelling fall-from-grace story, but is, at the end of the day, a sucker for his own myth and too immature to see beyond it. Now, the main point.

The modern Panopticon

    In the late eighteenth century, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed a prison. It was circular, with a central core for the guard(s) and all of the holding cells radiating from the central core. The guard or guards could sit at leisure in the center and see, at any time, exactly where a prisoner was in his cell and exactly what any of the prisoners was doing. The prisoners, for their part, could not see their guards. They could not know when they were being watched, indeed, or if they were being watched at all. Like having a constantly recording security camera directly on you at all times, you knew that someone might have the ability to see what you were doing at any time... and since you could never check, you had to assume that they were watching you all the time.
    This, indeed, was the entire point of this prison's design -- to play on each's prisoner's natural paranoia, and natural conclusion that he was always being watched, to keep the prisoners well-behaved.
    It occurs to me that although nobody has made the connection, this is Light's premise as well. I believe (I read the manga last year, if I'm wrong tell me) at one point (spoiler!) he decides he needs to rein in Mikami because Mikami is punishing criminals who have sincerely repented/done their time. This demonstrates that Light's purpose is to augment what he thinks is a limp and toothless justice system. If the justice system's punishments on their own are not stopping crime, they are not harsh enough!
    He wants mind control, just like Bentham's design. He needs to be that invisible guard, always there, and always scare the living daylights out of criminals who would offend or re-offend, such that they just don't do it for fear of being caught. His killings are like spot checks, proof that yes, he is paying attention and his killing mojo still works. The fact that his killings are continuous in turn proves that Kira's is a full-time job, and yes, he's always watching.
   
Serving scapegoats to the vain philosopher king

1. There's no shortcut to justice, so be prepared to become a toy for criminals
    But oh, I don't care if Light is hot and a smarty-pants who tops the nerd charts. Smart is one thing, and wise is another. Light is firmly, most firmly, in the former category.
    Have you ever noticed that whenever just about anyone makes an argument about smart people or stupid people, they generally assume they are one of the smart people? Plato's utopia would be ruled by a philosopher-king; he apparently said, "Philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize." Notice that Plato was a philosopher. I'm jumping to conclusions, but I do wonder if he wouldn't just love that top job in his ideal world. Light falls prey to the same sort of argument: "I am smart and competent enough; the world would be so awesome if everyone would just do things my way!"
    Except, my dear boy, you are fallible. I think that the manga made a big mistake in not pointing this out, or at least mentioning ONE story like this...
    Anyhow. Imagine for a second that someone with Light's abilities surfaced in the world today. Criminals die in numbers and with an efficiency unprecedented anywhere. Eventually people realize that what's needed for a criminal to die is a nice big media report.
    Hmm. So if I want someone to die, I need to get him or her in the news for doing something reeeally bad. And then this criminal-killer will kill him and say he has punished the guilty. Nice!
    Come on, please tell me, the next step is obvious, right?
    Stories of framing!
    "I hate my wife and want to divorce her. I also hate my mother-in-law. It happens my wife hates her mother. There's an opportunity here -- I will kill my mother-in-law next Thanksgiving and make it look like my wife did it. Then, see you dear, you won't survive the six o'clock news."
    Yeah. I think that in the real world, Light would have to deal with a TON of false reports... and would find out time and again that he got the wrong person. He might reason that it is just going to be the sacrifice of innocents in the greater picture of the quest for justice... but the point remains. Light is a slacker who doesn't do his own investigative journalism on all the criminals in the world, nor could he if he tried. He's at the mercy, yes, at the mercy of media information.
    Impeccable power to punish without something approaching decent power to properly convict does not a justice-maker make.

2. The issue of succession
    The manga got this one -- power to kill or no, Light is gonna die eventually. And then, who is going to succeed him?
    Gotcha there. Light thinks nobody on earth is as hot as the particular species of hot shit that he represents. So nobody can replace him. So nobody will replace him. And like all big-ass eras that dictators dream up (usually in 1000-year denominations), his Kira Era is doomed to die at least at the same time he does. Pretty unstable god plan, let alone society blueprint, if you ask me.
    Sorry, kiddo, your party will have a curfew.

The justice by many is the only kind we can depend on

    I recently watched the second Death Note movie, and yet I forget what exactly Yagami says in defense of the imperfect current justice system. Something about it being people's best shot. Or the best they can come up with. My argument here is along the same line, but hopefully a bit more articulate and memorable. ^_^;

1. The conspiracy we all agree to
    Suppose you walk out the door tomorrow morning to pick up the newspaper the paperboy threw onto your lawn. You see your neighbor across the road and wander to the sidewalk to chat. Your neighbor's huuuge German shepherd runs up to you, gets your legs hopelessly tangled up in his leash -- and just as a car is coming, he darts out into the road, pulling you with him.
    The dog is mortally wounded. You, in turn, break your arm. You don't know it, but you've cut an artery, and you're bleeding at a rate with minutes to live. Somehow your roomie woke up early this morning, and has called 9-11. What happens next?
    In the first ending, the paramedics arrive. The head medic comes out, looks at you, and says, "Oh, I've never seen this particular person before. I don't know how his/her body works. I can't do anything, sorry." You die.
    In the second ending, the paramedics arrive, and the head medic comes out, looks you over. He has never met you in his life, but he makes an intuitive judgment based on all his years of treating people of all shapes and sizes. He knows where to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. He knows to call the medics to load you up into the van like so. While you are in the van, he directs them to put inflatable pants on you to stabilize your blood pressure.
    In the end, you've lost a lot of blood, but you survive.
    The point of this being that there are many things about people that work the same way. He has not met you personally, but he has known enough people -- who, together, share enough with you to inform him about how to treat you -- so he still intuitively knows how your body works and can save your life.
    Well, that was your arm. Let's replay this for a second. What if in the accident, you had hit your head? What if instead of a medic speaking, it was a brain surgeon?
    Brain surgeon 1: "I've never seen this brain before. You know, all brains are so different. How can you expect me to operate on this one?" You die.
    Brain surgeon 2: "Hang on. This is a deep wound... (but I have 25 years of experience and have seen areas and wounds like this before.)" She does her thing. You live.

2. The analogy
    Let's replay this in a completely different setting. Suppose, this time, you were standing in the middle of the road, with your dog who stubbornly insisted on stopping and sniffing something there, and you just can't pull him away. It's in the morning, and you're hoping your dog will just finish up and you can get back on the sidewalk. Not so.
    That same car comes barrelling down the road. This time the driver is drunk, yup, in the morning, and you and your dog look like a fairy to him. Your dog tangles you up in his leash for a second, and you can't move! Just as the car is about to make an impact, the dog untangles himself and runs free -- but not fast enough for you to move. You die. Your dog is sad, the car is smushed. The driver is still going on about fairies, is arrested, and brought to court. It's the day of the trial. What happens next?
    Ending 1. The judge looks at your family and says, "Well, I never knew the victim, and the victim is no longer alive to speak for him/herself. Justice is all relative, and what is fair for one person isn't fair for the next... there is no way to arrive at any kind of decision on this." The case is thrown out of court.
    Ending 2. The trial proceeds as normal. There is a jury, there are witnesses, and although you are dead, the drunk driver is tried, convicted, and punished on your behalf.

3. So, my point.
    The safest way of taking a crack at a justice system is the democratic one.
    First of all, the more people involved in the carriage of justice, the less likely they will all be taken for fools (i.e., taken for a ride by savvy criminals using the media, as could have easily happened to Light.) So it is more stable, as I've pointed out before.
    Secondly, justice determined by one person is only fair to that one person. I.e., Light's brand of justice is really going to be fair to Light alone. The fewer the number of people involved in the making of laws and the carriage of justice, the riskier it will be that that small group of people will choose in a way somehow detrimental to everyone else. The inverse is true. The more people who have input in the justice system, the more likely the laws will be more general in order that the most people can agree with them. This makes this type of justice slower, true, but it also thereby provides an incredibly potent safeguard by making it more likely that what is finally agreed upon is really a fundamental principle that most people share. (I.e., innocent until proven guilty -- instead of Light's "die if you risk exposing me.")
    And finally, the democratic method is the only self-sustaining, self-renewing type of justice. As mentioned, Light's brand dies with him. An impersonal brand of justice, however, that is always changing, even slowly, is always adapting itself to new realities of what people need in a justice system. And because it is a product of several people, hopefully, not the ego-project of one person, it can live on long after even the most well-meaning crime-fighter working within its framework has gone.

So, Light, nice try, but I wouldn't want the world's justice system dependent on your whims, and hanging on your mortal shoulders. You meant well, your game grew to control you, and boy, am I glad you're a fictional character.

Thanks for reading. ^_^