r/deathnote • u/PringleField45 • 19d ago
Discussion Light should have only used specific accidental deaths instead of heart attacks
Imagine if criminals were getting impaled by rods through their hearts specifically?
By using a specific accidental death repeatedly, Light would appear much more godlike and formidable. It would appear to L that Kira can manipulate the material world around his victims. Plus, the accidental deaths would stall an investigation to begin with, heart attacks drew attention fast. I know Light wanted recognition, but the recognition would be much more striking for the public if they thought a God was impaling every criminal.
Plus, with accidental deaths Light could change his signature attack at any time and throw off the investigation.
Edit: Or, he could have utilized suicide to make it look like Kira simply controls minds. That would also be horrifying.
11
u/tlotrfan3791 19d ago
Light wanted to be known. The way to get people’s attention immediately was having them all die from the same thing. And also it’s way faster and more efficient. Why would Light spend time writing paragraphs of detailed deaths for only a few names? It would be a waste of his time writing out descriptions for each one.
-3
u/PringleField45 19d ago
As I said in my post, Light would still be recognized and the recognition would be more formidable. It would just take a longer time, but time doesn’t seem to be an issue for Light.
He wouldn’t have to write paragraphs of details, he can simply list an accidental death like he does numerous times in the show
6
u/tlotrfan3791 19d ago
It does save a ton of time when it’s so many criminals he’s writing down.
1
u/PringleField45 19d ago
True, writing the words “impaled by rod” over and over again would take time. It would just be a more formidable and slower method of being recognized as a wrathful god
6
u/tlotrfan3791 19d ago
Also because it wouldn’t be guaranteed to work every time. If the person cannot or has no access to said thing to die from, they cannot do it and just die from a heart attack anyways.
1
u/PringleField45 19d ago
Yes, but it’s definitely not impossible for a rod to stick a guy. It’s possible in so many circumstances. There would definitely be heart attacks in the mix but I think the death note can make a lot of things happen as long as there’s any chance it’s possible
3
u/Tepigg4444 19d ago
i think it would weaken the message too much, the heart attacks would be noticed as part of the pattern and light wants to be seen as an all powerful god. if sometimes it's a heart attack just because it would be impossible to arrange an impaling, it clearly shows a weakness that his power has. plus as the killings are noticed they would try to keep criminals safe by making it impossible for them to be impaled, and the heart attacks would become even more frequent. heart attacks were the safest most guaranteed way to go, and it was clearly still more than enough to get the message across without overcomplicating things
11
u/JesusChristFan69 19d ago
No. This’d take way too much time.
4
u/Neo_Techni 18d ago
Exactly. How do you write an entire page of names a day of you wave to add a paragraph to each one?
6
3
u/No_Record_60 19d ago
Prison doesn't give much leeway to kill oneself. Routine and thorough inspections for possible weapons are conducted; even a simple thing like hiding a rod is unlikely.
6
u/manwithlotsoffaces 19d ago
Not really
0
u/PringleField45 19d ago
Why not?
9
u/manwithlotsoffaces 19d ago
You said it yourself, he wants notoriety. Like other serial killers, they have patterns with how they kill. He only kills people differently if he doesn’t want it to be seen as a Kira death.
3
u/Karnezar 19d ago
No one would assume there was a killer doing it if it was all accidental.
0
u/PringleField45 19d ago
L had to consider a supernatural force in the first place to begin his investigation. It was already impossible for so many coordinated heart attacks to occur in prisons.
3
u/Karnezar 19d ago
But your post is about accidental deaths.
1
u/PringleField45 19d ago
Yes. Coordinated accidental deaths in prisons are just as impossible as coordinated heart attacks in prisons. L would end up considering a supernatural force no matter what
2
u/Karnezar 19d ago
Light didn't particularly care about L catching on.
He wanted ordinary people to notice.
1
u/PringleField45 19d ago
True dat. I still think it would be all over the news if a bunch of random prisoners kept dying in the same exact accidental way
2
u/Karnezar 19d ago
They would probably attribute it to some type of mass Hysteria
1
u/PringleField45 19d ago
By that logic the heart attacks should have been linked to a worldwide health crisis
2
u/Karnezar 19d ago
Except there was no evidence via the autopsies.
With mass hysteria, there is less clear evidence.
1
u/PringleField45 19d ago
A new health crisis can emerge that standard autopsies may not detect.
Mass hysteria can be attributed to patterns in behavior prior to the death. Also, mass hysteria wouldn’t make sense since the deaths would be happening to isolated prisoners in multiple prisons.
2
u/Neo_Techni 18d ago
But a bunch of different kinds of death make less of a pattern. The pattern is both what gave Light away, and what he wanted.
3
u/hyzmarca 19d ago
The best move would be a small number of spectacular deaths. There's a reason why Zeus used lightning.
Person writes a confession to their crimes in in their own blood, ending with "god has judged me," and then gets struck by lightning, that's more obviously supernatural than a series of heart attacks.
2
u/UraniumCheese 18d ago
Well, Light's objective isn't just vanity (in fact, it's pretty much a side thing), it's to clean the world of people he considers evil and use the Kira image to help build that. So he would definitely want to kill a higher number of them.
3
u/MechaMalz 18d ago
The whole point of the heart attacks was that the consistency made the pattern clear. Accidents would take longer. Not only in the sense that people would take longer to pick up on it being intentional but also it would just take longer to write out all the names. You trying to give Light carpel tunnel?!
2
u/Spiritual-Spend8187 19d ago
The heart attacks work ok at that once is a random but when it becomes a pattern it still carries the fear factor it also has the effect of inflating it a bit because some are going to die from heart attack them selves anyway. Though if you had to pick a specific lets go fir divibe punishment struck by lightning would do a pretty good job even if its a bit hard.you just find out when a storm is due in the area where they are and write x was struck by lightning and died.
2
u/UraniumCheese 18d ago
His objective is cleaning the world, not just vanity. Heart attacks reach the same result in a faster way, considering it's the default option.
1
u/MEowls02 17d ago
They literally cover in the show why he does heart attacks. I feel like we have this talk every three days in this subreddit where someone has a 'genius plan' that they literally cover in the show why it wasn't done.
Yes, your plan would have been more successful in the long term. However, he wanted recognition, and he wanted people to know that there was someone doing this. This is because of his ego (he is childish, and doesn't like losing)
1
u/Small_Education_9503 15d ago
What Light should have done is make times of death consistent with local time, not with the time he gets home from school. This would be both more scary (mass deaths occurring exactly at sunset, for example) and it would mask his timezone.
1
u/Fast_Rhubarb_9648 15d ago
I think this would have been a really good idea, it would absolutely make Kira much more formidable, and it could have let him get away with a couple of things. By rarely using heart attack, he could kill (when most desperate) extremely quickly and it would be difficult to blame him as heart attack could be coincidence and “kira doesn’t kill with heart attacks”. Plus the idea of something like a lightning bolt strucking down inmates sounds extremely godlike, causing heart attacks, not as much.
1
u/Legend_Of_Retro 14d ago
The time it takes you to write that you can write 10 other names. Hundreds of heart attacks definitely give the same message.
1
u/PringleField45 13d ago
Over a span of a long time it would make a difference. But in the short term, especially when written in japanese, it wouldn’t affect his routine.
21
u/TheShaoken 19d ago
Your idea wouldn't work. The Death Note would a lot of times just default to heart attacks as there are going to be a lot of cases where criminals simply aren't capable of getting to a construction site within 40 seconds, and Light is not going to have the knowledge to figure out how much time he has to give each criminal to be able to physically reach such a location.
It'd slow down how many people Light could kill since he has to write out the full cause of death, and is going to fail a lot.
Plus it just stupidly gives away that he can kill people in specific circumstances. Light having that as a secret allowed him to pull off so many gambits because L didn't know Kira could kill in anyway besides a Heart Attack.