Everything coming out about the new Death Note shows how much they’re missing the point of Death Note.
Light is not a weird loner kid. He’s a top of his class, “that kid’s going places” type. People admire him. He stays beneath suspicion until L enters the fray by seeming so perfectly straitlaced and normal that no one thinks he could ever be a serial killer. The idea of Light having a locker sign saying “normal people scare me” is ridiculous, Light would probably mock the kind of person who’d put that in their locker. Light is handsome, confident, and while his ego is horrendous and his god complex ends up going to sociopath levels eventually, he has great charisma. He’s great at talking people into things and getting them to trust him.
Light is not an outcast. He is not a punk or a rebel in any way.
If you were committed to doing “Death Note but in the USA” Light would be an all-American boy, the local sheriff’s son who plays sports and gets good grades and just seems oh-so wholesome. That was why back when I was in high school and people floated Zak Effron as the casting for an American Death Note I thought it was a great idea since Light would probably be a Troy Bolton type in the USA, albeit with a bit more focus on his academics than sports.
Light is not an outcast. He is the sort of boy where if he was American and was accused of a crime you’d have two thirds of the town online going “that good boy would never do such a thing.”
Just…where did this idea of “punk” Light even come from? Where in any version of Death Note has Light ever done anything remotely teenage-rebellion-ish? Just…where did this even spring from?
i’m convinced it’s because here we’re in love with the idea of serial killers who aren’t actually evil, they’re just misunderstood kids mixed up in things they don’t understand. we romanticize the hell out of that, just look at the serial killer fandom and fandom surrounding other fictional serial killers (american horror story, and as i just learned courtesy of the gf ezra miller’s killer movies).
also, i think it’s romanticizing whiteness and maleness as inherently good traits. they were vehemently opposed to an asian-american lead actor because they got the idea to have a white lead and when it didn’t work for their conceptions of what is “good” changed the story in a way they thought would “fit” a white male lead better, because a white male lead must be likable. notice how they also made misa into the True Villain while L was very physically violent, this wasn’t an accident, it was by design.
We also have a major issue with refusing to believe that the popular, All-American boy can be a monster. We’re comfortable with the idea of an out-cast becoming a killer, for the punk that is bullied to be the one that snaps and starts offing people or committing other crimes.
In the movies, the killer is always the weirdo creep. In reality, serial killers are statistically most likely to be a White Male with a strong sense of entitlement and usually blend into society.
Ted Bundy is probably the most famous example of this, being this wholesome-seeming man that was charming and did volunteer work. Who also brutally murdered women. He charmed women during his trial, and had many fans throughout his time in prison.
Dennis Rader was a church-going family man that was a pillar of his community. He was a Cub Scout leader, and a member of his church’s council. He was also a sadistic monster that tied up, tortured, and murdered people in his community leading to his moniker of BTK. He admitted that he went dormant for so many years because raising his children didn’t leave him enough time for stalking and killing people.
But the creators of the American version of Death Note were uncomfortable with this reality. And instead of presenting a portrait of a monster that has everything going for him, they had to fall back into the stereotype of the “misunderstood loner” and the idea that only weirdos and freaks become killers.
Just think of The Lovely Bones. That story/movie and others like it are almost always based on true stories. The serial killer played in that movie was an admired person in his community so no one really expected him until he got nervous and starting slipping up here and there. The same way Light in the manga/anime did, gradually making small mistakes that ultimately led to his downfall.
Gringos don't like the reality that their ideal of society and men is what constructs serial killers and killers in general. No for nothing they are the country with more serial killers and murders.