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[–]Frostfright 20 points21 points  (15 children)

I love the idea of this but I'm also skeptical just based on how apparently little he lost from killing Lind L. Tailor. Prior to that point, yes the scheduling suggests that if we assume this person with the ability to murder anyone from any range at any time with a heart attack has a day job or school then yes, Japan is a likely culprit.

But what if an alternative motivation were proposed? Instead of the Death Note, assume the deaths were caused by beyond-top secret technology used in experiments by a superpower government (could even be Japan). Then the 4 hour time blocks might correspond to testing periods for using this technological macguffin. Suddenly the likely location of the timezone of the killer based on their hours of operation has shifted significantly. Now you're looking for a killer who operates during a workday, instead of after it. Given that disinformation is the strongest measure for maintaining anonymity, I'd think the modern detective would immediately disregard the entire "Kira as a deity wanting to cleanse society" story from the prisoner's dying message, and focus on finding a more plausible explanation. Primary guess would be power (ie - governments), secondary guess would be money.

I think the Lind L Tailor death was the one that offered the most data to L as a detective, but it's hard to reflect that in math terms without some kind of regression. Remember, the death of Tailor after provocation on live television confirmed three key things:

  1. The murders weren't a divine or supernatural being. They were done by a human, who was tricked into revealing himself.

  2. The location, as stated, was narrowed to the Kanto region of Japan. Suspicions were held prior to that due to the initial experiment on the hostage situation at the kindergarten when Light first got the note, but by no means was that conclusive proof. Correct me if I'm wrong, but L had planned to broadcast to each time region worldwide, and stop when he landed on the right one. Did he ever say if Kanto, Japan was his first try? I'll have to rewatch that scene.

  3. The requirements for the kill being a name and a face. Not really relevant to his anonymity level, but significant in an investigatory sense.

I think the math is also limited in how it approaches Light's use of his father's connections and access to privileged information. Obviously L couldn't have known what we as the viewers do, but the assumption had to be constantly there that Light either had a mole, or easy access to that info through use of the Death Note's suggestive powers. No name no face, sure, but police officers are public employees and their information would be obtainable even without supernatural ability. From there, some clever writing could get him what he wanted, and as much as a 30 day lag time on the actual death (the limit of the note's powers) would ensure they wouldn't know the source of the leak or even that there was one.

The murder of Penbar I agree was insignificant, and as he used Penbar to get the FBI to drop their investigation wholesale due to losing their entire agent roster on that case, I'd say it was the correct choice. But the death of Penbar's fiance definitely narrowed it further, and if L had suspicions of Light prior to that point, it was this murder that sealed the deal and confirmed to him that the deduction phase was over, and it was time to obtain the evidence needed for his personal standards to be satisfied.

As for what Light should have done, your conclusion is spot on. But I think his pride and his fervor were his downfall, and the only things that make for a good story here. Sure he could have ignored L's display on TV, or randomized the death times, or (and I think this is the most obvious solution) made each death a different cause. But his goal was volume, not anonymity. He overestimated his intellect, and the power of the tool at his disposal, so he just wrote as many names as he could. He was an incredibly intelligent, and unbelievably brazen character that needed to show more restraint in order to realize his ultimate goal, but he wasn't able to do that. One of my favorite characters.

Cool writeup.

[–]080087 5 points6 points  (14 children)

To me, the Lind L Tailor play confirms four things, the first three of which are 100% necessary to solve the case.

  1. The deaths were in fact murders.

  2. Kira can kill without being present.

  3. Kira will kill people who haven't committed a crime, but there are certain conditions that stop him killing anyone.

  4. Kira is in Kanto (by far the least important piece of information, but still very useful).

Take away any of the first three realisations, and the Kira case is impossible to solve.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but L had planned to broadcast to each time region worldwide, and stop when he landed on the right one. Did he ever say if Kanto, Japan was his first try?

Kanto was the first attempt, chosen because it had the highest population.

[–]Frostfright 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Take away any of the first three realisations, and the Kira case is impossible to solve.

This is true, but also moot. L had to operate under the assumption that the first one was true, because if that wasn't the case, then there'd be nothing he could do anyway. Lind L Tailor did confirm his suspicions though, and in my opinion was the only thing that gave him a fighting chance in figuring out who was doing it.

I made a bunch of posts in a who would win thread about whether or not Sherlock Holmes could have caught Light if he had replaced L. The biggest hurdle in my opinion was whether Holmes could narrow the field in a similar way to what L did with Lind L Tailor. That play was a dangerous gamble that paid handsomely, and I don't know what Holmes would do instead.

[–]080087 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The main thing that distinguishes L from other super detectives or geniuses is that he applies heavy psychological pressure to force mistakes. Every single breakthrough he made in the case was because he forced Light to make a mistake.

Copying something I put elsewhere

The opening gambit proved otherwise un-confirmable information.

The "potato chip" scene showed that Kira behaved oddly while Light was under observation, increasing L's suspicion of Light. It resulted in him physically introducing himself to Light.

The pressure L put on Light and Misa meant that Higuchi got involved, and the police ended up getting their hands on the Death Note itself.

[–]Infiking385 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Lind's death didn't confirm that he could kill people who didn't commit a crime. Lind was chosen because he was a death row inmate.

[–]080087 1 point2 points  (1 child)

At the time, Lind was thought to be an investigator trying to catch L. He did not commit any crime, but Kira killed him anyway. Therefore, Kira will kill people who did not commit a crime. (Difference is will kill vs can kill)

Then, L taunted Kira saying that the person Kira killed wasn't him. But Kira then didn't kill L. Therefore, Kira can't kill absolutely anyone.

[–]Infiking385 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not being able to kill L doesn't prove that he can kill the innocent. They had no way to know if Kira could just automatically know if someone committed a crime or not and was just limited to the guilty. L didn't commit a crime as far as I know.

[–]Selynx 0 points1 point  (8 children)

There's a better way to phrase No. 3: "Kira can make mistakes and is therefore fallible."

Lind L. Taylor might have been the face on the screen, but the message was composed and masterminded by L. If Kira had, in fact, been some omniscient, mind-reading god he would have known Lind was lying when he said he was L and known that he was just a proxy messenger being forced to read.

The fact Kira didn't know about or couldn't go after the mastermind and just shot the messenger instead meant that Kira wasn't an all-knowing god, but someone capable of making mistakes and most likely human. And thus subject to human law, thus making his killings murder. That his judgment was not perfect.

This one point alone, I feel, was probably the most important thing to emerge of the gambit. Confirmations 1, 2 and 4 could all be true and Kira could still never be caught if he was really an omniscient, all-powerful and vengeful, non-human deity who just happened to be living in Kanto, Japan.

But proving he could make mistakes meant he could be tricked and cornered. That even if he had the power to turn invisible and never had to eat or sleep, he could still be fooled into revealing himself or perhaps manipulated into inadvertently killing himself with his own power, even if he was invulnerable to every other conventional weapon.

It proved Kira could "bleed" so to speak.

[–]080087 0 points1 point  (7 children)

At this stage, Kira was always assumed to be human. In a world where nothing else supernatural occurs, the first assumption would definitely not be Kira is supernatural. And humans are by their nature fallible.

[–]Selynx 0 points1 point  (6 children)

At this stage, Kira was always assumed to be human.

That's the problem. It was just an "assumption" at this stage. Nobody knew whether the assumption was true. If it wasn't or couldn't be proved, there couldn't have been a case.

At this point, all anybody knew was that heart attacks were happening and there was a pattern. Nobody actually knew (nor could know) for certain that it was being caused by a human. It was a theory that L was probing.

But the Lind L. Taylor gambit managed to turn that assumption into hard fact. From there, L could proceed to cornering Kira instead of just dangling bait without knowing if there were even actually any fish in the water.

[–]080087 0 points1 point  (5 children)

That's the problem. It was just an "assumption" at this stage. Nobody knew whether the assumption was true.

No, this is not how investigations work. Do you see IRL police investigate that maybe a god, ghost, demon or whatever was the murder suspect? No. And neither would L.

If it wasn't or couldn't be proved, there couldn't have been a case.

Again, look at real life for the answer. It cannot be proved that a god did not murder someone. And despite that, there are many successful solved police investigations.

[–]Selynx 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Do you see IRL police investigate that maybe a god, ghost, demon or whatever was the murder suspect? No. And neither would L.

This is my point exactly, actually.

When people drop dead of heart attacks and there is absolute no evidence whatsoever to suggest any other human was involved with it, there is no case. It becomes a tragic accident, not murder. "Act of god" is an actual legal term.

Police do not automatically assume heart attacks are unnatural when they happen, especially after the coroner comes back and finds no trace of any foreign drugs or external stimuli that could have caused it. Murder investigations only happen if there is evidence it WAS murder and that there is a culprit at large. IRL, all of these deaths would have been ruled as deaths from natural causes. The victims were all over the world and had no connection to one another, save that they were criminals. The "pattern" was so loose as to be almost non-existent.

With no evidence, the assumption that a human might somehow be involved in these (physiologically-speaking) natural heart attacks is so shaky that almost nobody in their right mind would devote significant time or resources to investigating it. To assume so would be to assume the possibility that there is some human being with the power to induce heart attacks from a distance (i.e. effectively a superhuman or magical entity or demigod or demon, etc).

Between that and the possibility that the pattern is just a big coincidence and all these criminals happened to have heart attacks while it was afternoon in Japan?

Obviously, the coincidence is far less impossible and the far more likely option.

IRL, if the same man gets struck by lightning from the sky at the same hour of the same day, three weeks in a row, he is simply a very unlucky man. Everybody knows humans can't call down thunderstorms at will, so the police aren't going start looking into the possibility of a human with electrokinesis or weather control. You'd have to be insane to pursue the assumption that such a being exists and crazy people are unlikely to have the resources to investigate extensively.

Only the fact that L DOES happen to be rich, paranoid and quite a little bit insane drove him to follow up on the ridiculous assumption of a psychic killer and made the Lind L. Taylor thing happen.

And even then, you'll notice that after Lind died and L started speaking, L himself mentioned that he himself hadn't really believed in the human psychic killer assumption until that point and hadn't thought he'd actually see it happen.

No other organization would have bothered acting on an assumption that ridiculous and it is likely that if L hadn't managed to bait out Kira quickly enough, even he would likely have run out of interest eventually and concluded it was coincidence and not psychic murder. By his admission, he'd already believed it was the more likely possibility from the start. But once he proved the assumption had merit - that's when they could begin looking for the human, instead of just trying to prove there WAS a human involved.

[–]080087 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Before you read the wall of text below, think carefully about your argument. How much of it is "we need to prove Kira is human (and yes, that is what your position actually is)" vs "we need to prove that the heart attacks were murder".

Because I've already said that proving the heart attacks were murder was the number 1 benefit from the Lind L Tailor gambit.

To assume so would be to assume the possibility that there is some human being with the power to induce heart attacks from a distance(i.e. effectively a superhuman or magical entity or demigod or demon, etc).

No. This is another assumption that does not need to be made by the police at this stage.

There are mundane explanations for what is happening. Those explanations might be beyond a normal murder, but still do not invoke any sort of supernatural elements.

e.g. Adrenaline overdose would not be detected on the standard autopsy/tox screen and can cause heart failure. Combined with a global conspiracy to poison criminals, it would produce the same result.

Obviously there could be better explanations that require less of a stretch (I made that one off the top of my head), but notably they don't involve the supernatural.

ridiculous assumption of a psychic killer

L himself mentioned that he himself hadn't really believed in the human psychic killer assumption until that point

I'm sorry, I don't remember any time L was betting on the killer being psychic.

He simply did the gambit to get Kira to make a mistake.

The closest I can find is L wondering how Kira can kill without being present - a far cry from thinking Kira is psychic.

But once he proved the assumption had merit - that's when they could begin looking for the human, instead of just trying to prove there WAS a human involved.

You've wandered off topic here, and you're back on my point 1 - the fact that it was a murder at all. Which as I've already said, was one of the big takeaways from the gambit.

[–]Selynx 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Except the Lind L. Taylor gambit was pointedly targeted at a supernatural psychic killer, not at a global conspiracy (which again, like murder, you need at least some basis for assuming exists before you can establish a case and the police would have had nothing to go on, because there was no conspiracy and therefore no evidence for it whatsoever).

By L's shocked admission, he had been looking for someone that could kill remotely. From Episode 2 of the anime, the exact words he used immediate after Lind died were: "I had to test it just in case but I never thought it would actually happen! Kira, it seems you can kill people without having to be there in person! I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't just witnessed it!". L set up a death-row inmate to deliver the speech because he was looking for evidence that Kira could kill simply through a television set. Even an adrenaline overdose or other "undetectable" drugs would need to be delivered in person at some point to kill a man and as L mentioned, Lind was chosen because his details weren't public and L could presumably screen him and the few people who came into contact with him to make sure nothing was delivered beforehand.

Given how he taunted Kira immediately after Lind died and challenged him into trying to kill his real self and then pinpointed the random Shinjuku murder as Kira's work, he obviously wasn't running off the theory that it was a conspiracy. He had been looking for someone with powers.

You've wandered off topic here, and you're back on my point 1 - the fact that it was a murder at all. Which as I've already said, was one of the big takeaways from the gambit.

I think the issue here is the definition of "murder" you and I are using.

When I say "murder" I don't just mean "killing". I mean specifically the killing of one human by another human. Being mauled to death by a wild animal isn't murder, it's just a tragic accident. If someone is omniscient and their judgment is never flawed, such a being could claim to be a god and above human law. If Kira is a god, his killings aren't murder, it's just divine retribution.

Granted, proving that a killer is, in fact, human (and not an animal, demon, god, etc.) generally isn't something that needs all that much work to accomplish. But when the death has just been proven on live television to be caused by instantaneous psychic heart attack instead of drug overdose or puncture wounds or blunt force trauma or anything a human would ordinarily be capable of... it does become a genuine question.

However - Kira killed the wrong man. This one lapse proved he wasn't an infallible omniscient god or demon; that his judgment, if nothing else, was human enough such that whatever else Kira might be, his killing spree ought to be considered human-on-human murder rather than an animalistic rampage or divine retribution.

Basically, I'm conflating "Kira being human" with "the killings being murders" because they're inextricably linked - the first needs to be proven for the second to be true.

[–]080087 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You're jumping to supernatural conclusions where none necessarily needs to exist.

Another hypothetical explanation - it could be a rogue nation with a space laser that can break off small chunks of flesh inside a human body, which then results in a heart attack. Similar devices are used medically as non-invasive surgery tools, the only difference would be the range/precision of the device.

Yes, it is farfetched, but not supernatural in any form.

it seems you can kill people without having to be there in person

L also says he doesn't know how it is done, but that he will find out. No mention of it necessarily being supernatural.

One person in control of the hypothetical space laser would be able to replicate what Kira could do in his entirety, including his limitations. As long as a person's location is known (via spy satellite, or because they are being filmed), they could be killed. But L's location is unknown, so he can't be killed that way.

I'm conflating "Kira being human" with "the killings being murders" because they're inextricably linked - the first needs to be proven for the second to be true.

It doesn't have to be proven that way. Proving that the deaths were murder also proves that a human did it. Edit: Proving it is murder is proving it was done by a human by definition (your definition)

[–]Wolfgod_HoloStill Waiting for Spice & Wolf Season 3 6 points7 points  (0 children)

could've avoided all that cat and mouse game by making the kills less obvious and using proxy murder methods

[–]Selynx 10 points11 points  (2 children)

Numbers 1 and 3 arguably weren't really "mistakes". Abusing the sudden-heart-attacks as an MO and even having criminals write messages on the walls before having heart attacks were pretty much intended given Light's god-complex and him wanting to set himself up as some sort of recognizable divine source of retribution.

That is, he didn't intend to be completely anonymous. He wanted it known that the supernatural killing was the result of some superior, sentient being. Killing Lind L. Taylor was a natural follow-up since, even if he didn't know about it being a ploy to narrow down his location, allowing insults to the perceived god Kira to go unchallenged would incur damage to Kira's reputation. The anonymity "gains" from holding off would have, in his mind, come at a cost to his endgame objective (establishing Kira as a cognizant and wrathful divine force of lethal retribution). The imperfect information he had at the time just meant he didn't realize how much anonymity he would lose.

Similarly, Mistake 4, the most costly mistake and dumb as it seems at first glance, would actually have been somewhat difficult to avoid making. One of Light's intentions for Kira was to punish people who could avoid being caught or held by the justice system. People who the police had internal files on but, due to insufficient evidence or them having too much money or political pull, couldn't be effectively prosecuted by the police and could keep from having their details disseminated on the public media (which was where he was getting his other targets from).

Light especially needed/wanted to kill these people too and if the only place that had their names, faces and incident reports of alleged crimes were the databases that limited numbers of individuals like his father had access to, there wouldn't have been much way for him to obfuscate where he got the info from. Trying to manufacture a large-scale database hack to leak the info to the public would leave even more traces in the process since at that point he didn't yet have a cult of followers to do the job for him of their own natural volition.

The only alternative would've been to hold off on killing them, which Light wouldn't do because it goes against his ultimate goal.

[–]gwern 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Numbers 1 and 3 arguably weren't really "mistakes". Abusing the sudden-heart-attacks as an MO and even having criminals write messages on the walls before having heart attacks were pretty much intended given Light's god-complex and him wanting to set himself up as some sort of recognizable divine source of retribution.

As discussed in mistake 1's section, having a god-complex driving you to unnecessary dangerous things is, in fact, part of making mistakes. That he has a motivation for making the mistakes is just good writing, but that is entirely different from mistakes not being mistakes...

He wanted it known that the supernatural killing was the result of some superior, sentient being.

Which is unnecessary and a mistake.

Similarly, Mistake 4, the most costly mistake and dumb as it seems at first glance, would actually have been somewhat difficult to avoid making.

Not at all, if you think about it for even a few seconds. Light has hardly run out of criminals to publish that he needs to stoop to private information, and there's lots of ways to get information through the Death Note without linking yourself so tightly to specific datasets (eg command someone to leak data).

Trying to manufacture a large-scale database hack to leak the info to the public would leave even more traces in the process since at that point he didn't yet have a cult of followers to do the job for him of their own natural volition.

A command doesn't leak anything.

The only alternative would've been to hold off on killing them, which Light wouldn't do because it goes against his ultimate goal.

'Not killing a few specific people' != 'not killing anyone'.

[–]Selynx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's wasn't a mistake because he deliberately intended on not being wholly anonymous. If it was intended, it wasn't a mistake. "Feature not a bug" and all that.

And those people in the special databases weren't just random petty criminals, they were the exact, specific sort of people Light established Kira to get rid of - the ones untouchable by the justice system. Getting rid of those particular ones was the whole raison d'etre for Kira. Leaving anybody "untouchable" would prevent Kira from being an all-seeing god of punishing crime. It would say that there were people who could commit crimes and get away with it, even from Kira. Every other criminal he could've killed in the meantime would just be pawns, rooks and bishops compared to these untouchables; they were the king he needed to take off the figurative chessboard to win his game of crime deterrence.

Commanding a leak would leave traces because somebody would physically have to do it and then their involvement would then be investigated along with anybody they were connected to - like, for instance, Chief Yagami and possibly his family since they were among the few who had access to the databases. This would doubly be the case when said leaker also suddenly drops dead, since the Death Note can't command someone without killing them. When that happens, it would look very much like someone used a pawn to leak it and then killed him to stop him from speaking about who ordered it.

If the individuals then start dying from Kira's trademark heart attacks, it wouldn't be hard to conclude that Kira was involved with the police somehow and close enough to subvert the one responsible for the leak (functionally leading to the same outcome as if it were concluded he had his own access to the database himself).

And if those individuals die from anything else, Kira doesn't get to claim credit and he doesn't get to be as godly as he needs to be as a symbol to deter crime, leaving aside that needing the database leaked before he could go after them doesn't seem very godly anyway.

[–]JTrickshttps://myanimelist.net/profile/JTricks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fascinating read so far, will probably finish it before I head to bed 😅

[–]lexcartoons 0 points1 point  (1 child)

This is unrelated, but where did you get that dinosaur clip art? I remembered when I was a kid I had a software installed in my PC that had that clip art but I could never find it again...

[–]gwern 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's from Dinosaur Comics; North keeps a copy of the blank clip art on his website, although I don't know where the original comes from.

[–]StrayThor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The most boneheaded mistake was overlooking the flaws in his perfect world ideology, given how smart he's supposed to be.

[–]MyLittleRocketShip 0 points1 point  (1 child)

some of the mistakes and information are just incorrect. they conflict with yagami's intentions that are clear in the anime.

ANIME SPOILERSS

there might be some further mistakes in the article but im not interested in a wall of text than a quick skim. there also might be some truth in there. but besides that from my watch, light is more unfournate than boneheaded.

[–]gwern 0 points1 point  (0 children)

there might be some further mistakes in the article but im not interested in a wall of text than a quick skim.

It's impressive you didn't even manage to read as far as the first mistake where I discussed precisely this.