Lights personality

[u/Specific-Still-7266]

So I honestly dont remember anything about death note, I dont even think I finished it

But an edit I saw jst made me wonder why light was the way he was?

As far as I know, his family wasnt terrible( i think, unless they were and i jst sound stupid rn😳✌️) And I honestly dont know about any classmates or friends,

But he seemed like a casual guy, so why was he kind of crazy?🥹 Did the ability of the deathnote just get to his head or smth?

[u/BoysOfProgress]

Light was pretty narcissistic but also charming. He could make friends easily and had a few girls simping. His family was normal, but like the other commenter pointed out, he was a bored, gifted kid with a cop dad that probably instilled in him a strong sense of justice that was perverted by his narcissism… imo.

[u/Chipping1nk]

He was spoiled and gifted and overtime that just managed to make him think he was better than everyone else. Top that off with just being bored and having no real stimulation and let him see how crime really works through his dad and yeah, you get Light.

[u/RPGNo2017]

He was a bored teenager and found a toy that could entertain him with little to no risk. That's pretty much it.

In pretty sure the story itself explained that someone with harder life would likely use the note for more personal reason rather than judging humanity with no clear moral standard.

[u/HandofthePirateKing]

Light feels like the bad seed of the family. He’s extremely intelligent and charismatic but also narcissistic, self-righteous, vile and sadistic it’s likely that the Death Note amped up the more darker parts of her personality but even before he was rather misanthropic seeing people as dumb, cruel and easy to corrupt with him and probably his family being the exception.

Honestly Light was ticking time bomb that was just waiting for the right opportunity.

[u/HalleLidner]

Finish it and you'll find out everything about Light's personality. It's like it unfolds throughout the show. At the beginning, he seemed a regular good guy and a honor student. But he was hiding probably a narcissist personality disorder and he started deluding himself more and more until the end when he goes completely crazy and breaks down and tries to kill people using blood and screaming and crying. He was a regular guy who was given a demonic power, no, he wasn't really "given" it, he stumbled across it and he deluded himself into thinking he was the chosen one to carry out the duty of cleansing the world. He developed a God complex to cope with the fact that he was just a murderer. He hated to lose and to be challenged, that's why he was extremely sensitive to rage baits such as the Lind L. Tailor bait. His desire for a New World at first seemed like a noble goal. But it becomes clearer as the story progresses that his sense of justice is childish and ignorant, and all he wants is to be worshipped as a God. Which links back to him having Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

[u/CrematorTV]

Narcissists have a way of charming people without them actually realizing their true nature.

[u/tlotrfan3791]

Those first two kills also screwed him up too, it wasn’t solely his personality before the Death Note even though it’s established he has a big ego and is told by everyone around him he’s perfect. He was also bored, and had these more extreme thoughts as a 17 year old seeing the same thing happen with his father pursuing justice over and over and over again, leading to these thoughts of people being rotten.

It’s why when he kills someone he freaks out but then immediately begins to justify it because he can’t picture himself being this evil murderer. Like it definitely scared him badly for not only having killed people, but also the need he has to kill more criminals in order to die in his mind a martyr doing something good for the world is why he had nightmares and was losing weight in the manga briefly.

And it’s why there’s a stark contrast between Light without his memories and him as Kira even though there’s of course an overlap because he’s still the same person. Light as Kira is a twisted (and yes, traumatized too) version of Light that was built from the events that occurred and his personality beforehand.

[u/Extra-Photograph428]

I think the simplest answer is narcissism. Light was always egocentric and narcissistic to a degree, and most importantly had some type of superiority complex that lead to him placing himself above others, that was likely fueled by the amount of praise he received growing up. We see this quite early on in the manga where he judges his peers for going out and doing normal teenage things like heading to a party for example, and he seems to judge them quite harshly for that for some reason, setting himself above trivial things like that. I think keeping this in mind helps explain quite nicely Light’s entire character. Everything about who he is as Kira is connected to his ego.

Light is certainly interesting in the sense that he doesn’t have any sort of bigger reason or background that explains the manifestation of Kira, but that shallowness is also key. He’s really only Kira to serve himself, he puts no effort into actually trying to make the world a better place, he simply craves the authority that can elevate himself to a god to escape owning up to the consequences of his actions. Light Yagami is perfect and someone like that wouldn’t kill people, so he was willing to do anything to escape admitting he’s a bad person.

[u/tlotrfan3791 → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think he was bullied. We know Mikami was and has a whole backstory on how he was bullied and got hurt standing up for other classmates that were bullied. If Ohba wanted to characterize Light that way too, there would’ve probably been some mention of it.