Comment by gwern

> Death Note would have been an extremely boring comic if Light had been smart or a bit ruthless.

It would have been a boring manga if one made Light a bit smarter or more ruthless and tried to stick to the same plot, yes. But that just means they could have tried a different plot, and explored a different part of the world: what happens when states react to a Kira and start switching to secret rulers and figurehead leaders? The most plausible explanation for a Kira would be some exotic form of nanotech or biological warfare, so what happens when states begin crash projects into developing their own assassination tools? What happens when Light reasons that criminals are a relatively trivial cause of death and instead kills Kim Jong-il? What's the fallout of that and what risks does he have to take to fix it? Instead of a second Kira being a fan of his, perhaps it could be one with very different goals and it becomes a fairer version of the L/Light duel (you don't even have to change Light's job); and for that matter, instead of being gray and apathetic figures, what if the shinigamis were the real villains all along and Ryuk's gift to Light was a... poisoned apple, one might say?

There's plenty of stories one could tell, and I think Ohba & Obata are more than talented enough to tell those stories without requiring asspulls or idiotballs.