is it true that ohba called L 'slightly evil'? and if so, why do you think that is? I agree that he isn't a 'good' person btw
Yes. And it‘s because Death Note isn’t about good vs evil. Light is the protagonist but also a serial killer, L is his antagonist but he doesn’t go against him out of the goodness of his heart.
This is how L is introduced:
He’s the “trump card” because of his skills and methods, but his role is not about heroism. He doesn’t get a dramatic backstory that explains why he so fiercely wants to protect the world from Kira, or anything like that. His very first move against Kira is questionable: he uses someone else’s life to lure Kira out, to prove to the world he indeed exists (among other things). (Over the course of the story, we can see that L is constantly willing to deliberately let people die for the case, haha. It’s a pattern.)
Story-wise, L is there to be entertaining and an interesting opponent for Light; he has to be ruthless, stubborn and quite extreme in his methods. And L caring more about solving his cases than about saving people’s lives, is exactly what makes him so dangerous. And, to be honest, I will never understand how you can look at the way he treats Misa during her confinement and still believe he isn’t meant to be a grey character. It’s meant to be shocking.
If you do what L does and your main concern isn’t helping and saving people, it’s not surprising that you’ll hurt innocents in the process. There’s a reason why Soichiro, who’s meant to be just and good-natured, constantly makes this face around L:
So I think that Ohba is simply aware of the fact that that’s the kind of character he created:
