Long time followers of this blog know that I’m not a huge fan of the Death Note anime, but today is January 28th and I feel like I should probably say something about the date as I am the mastermind behind this Death Note blog that disproportionately features Yagami Light.
This scene is filled with things that I ought to find annoying, but kind of don’t. I don’t care that in the anime Light takes a shot to the right anterior chest that ought have given him a nasty tension pneumothorax / hemothorax that would have made his running escapade medically impossible because this goddamn scene.
It literally gets me every time I see it.
Please note that this isn’t meant to be taken as meta, but rather meant to be taken as semi-organized blather on why this scene makes me want to punch pillows and sob grossly.
On the one hand, you have Light at the end of his life running as far away from the site of his indisputable defeat as possible. He is running desperately, but he has nowhere to go. He has no future. He has lost everything, he has been disgraced and humiliated. All that is left for Light is to bleed out and die.
Juxtaposed to this, you have an apparition of Light at the very beginning of the anime before he’s even laid eyes on a Death Note. Unlike the first Light, he is not running. He’s walking steadily forward towards a future that he subjectively feels holds nothing in store for him. Light is bored at this point of his life. The world is rotting, and he is powerless to change any of it. He has no idea what the future holds in store for him. His unawareness is visually highlighted by the way he appears to be oblivious to his surroundings. His entire world is condensed down to him and his book. This Light is metaphorically just as aimless. He has places to go, but he goes to those places out of obligation and duty. He does not have a future that he anticipates will be satisfying.
And in that precise state of obliviousness, the apparition of Light as he sees himself in the past is marching straight towards the warehouse.
He’s heading straight towards the place that his metaphorical aimlessness becomes considerably more literal.
And just look at the backwards glance that Light, the one who knows where his past self’s road leads gives. Look at the horrified look in his eyes.
I just… ugh.
