thinking about light yagami again. i am the only person on Earth who understands this character
"light yagami was a good guy before he found the Note, he started with good intentions, he was just corrupted by power" is such a dogshit antitextual reading on its face and it's insane to me how common it is. convinced people only think it because light is charismatic and we see the story from his perspective. like setting aside the morality of the Kira killings in general (to me these are obviously evil on their face but i know some people would support the Kira killings if they started happening), Light was never acting out of selflessness or values, Kira was an ego project from minute 1. it takes him like a day to start referring to himself as a god. he doesn't just kill Lind L Tailor/Penber and the FBI agents/Naomi Misora out of self-defense, fear for his life, or because he's weighed it morally, he kills them gleefully (he fucking looks Naomi in the eye and says "i'm Kira". the only reason he would do this is that he's a piece of shit) and justifies it with "this is what happens when you defy me (the God of the New World). because it's about ego!
start-of-story light yagami has politics (he's conservative, a rich kid with a cop dad who considers crime an individual moral failing instead of the result of socioeconomic forces) but those politics are almost completely irrelevant to his actions. we see the story from his POV so we know he's completely aimless before the Note: he's a once-in-a-generation intellectual talent but we never see any reason to believe his academics mattered to him or he has dreams that drive him. we know he's popular, but we only see this matter to him when getting a date is convenient to him for the busjacking scheme. light does not have a single friend who is important enough for us to meet them or know their name.
we don't see him take any joy in his academic, professional, or social life, but despite that he works hard enough to maintain his academic standing, and he is social enough to be popular (maybe you can say "well he's attractive and charming, he doesn't have to try to be popular" which is a little true, but he's not some asocial bookworm - the fact he thinks to casually call Yuri for the busjacking scheme, and the fact Yuri doesn't think much of it, really implies he goes on casual dates regularly). he is, in this sense, completely hollow - he performs the perfect student (the perfect son, the perfect man, the perfect cop/statesman, whatever) for no reason, living life with no drive. and critically he thinks nothing of this. one critical scene early in the story has him explain to ryuk that (paraphrasing) "if you asked a person if criminals should die, they'd say no. but they don't actually believe that. they're just saying it because of social pressure, because it's what's expected of them". he thinks everyone in the world is performing everything about their identity, and that anyone who got an anonymous way of killing people at scale would quickly arrive at his conclusion. (we know this isn't true in-universe because we know Sidoh's note, which Light gets, is far from the first Note to be found by humans. nobody's ever used it at scale like Light.)
Light is basically an isekai protagonist, except his "other world" is murdering people. he's moving through the world as a hollow shell, he experiences no passion for anything or warmth for anyone (the sole exception we see being Sayu. i have thoughts on the Sayu/Light relationship that i won't derail this to explain), and then he finds the Note and he comes alive. it's thrilling and gratifying, both to be Kira and to play the Kira-L game. the only things we ever see make him happy are because of the Note. the reason he is able to so quickly view life as disposable, even the lives of people who his politics view as "good" (cops, L, FBI agents, Naomi), is because his own life is so nothing. he's a completely empty performance, and he thinks everyone else is too. he thinks this is just... what life is like. what humans are like.
we understand L as a foil for him in this sense - L is also a character whose actions are not really motivated by morals. he casually does fucked up things for the sake of the case, tortures people violates civil rights etc, and he doesn't really care about these things, all he cares about is solving cases (what makes him feel alive). he solves cases because it's fun. he and Light are the same. "Kira is childish and hates losing. (how do you know that?) because I'm childish and hate losing". but L is a nonmasking autistic person, he doesn't worry himself with how he's perceived, he dresses and sits comfortably instead of how he's "expected" to, he is willing to admit to a room full of people that he's childish and hates losing which Light would never do. despite playing all the bullshit mindgames, the essence of L as a person is genuine. he has something in the world he has passion for, and he lives shamelessly reveling in it. Light can only do this anonymously as Kira.
Light is not a person who acts in accordance with a coherent moral code. he's a person who lacks anything, who finally finds something to care about and would do anything for it. this is why he's so terrified of death, why he doesn't even consider the Shinigami eyes, and why he never in his 6 years being active as Kira tries to find a legitimate successor in the event of his death. the Note didn't tragically turn Light into the tragic figure Kira, Light was already a tragic figure, and that's why the Note could turn him into Kira. finding that notebook is the best thing that ever happened to him and you will never convince me otherwise
