i've set things up so theories will
continue to appear over the next three
weeks
just watch me theorists i'll make dinner
with my right hand and write theories
with my left i'll take a potato chip
and eat it i'll take my leftovers and
reheat it
i'll play mario and beat it i'll open
the script for doctor who part three
and complete it well maybe not that last
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one
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hello internet welcome to film theory
so here's a fun fact when i'm at
conventions one of the most popular
things i'm asked to sign are people's
recently purchased death notes it makes
me wonder whether they're fans of the
show or just haters who want to end the
channel
by any means necessary either way i'm
totally in the clear since i don't take
chances and sign with a misspelling of
my name
it's totally true the paranoia is real
seriously if you have ever asked me to
sign your death note check it out
usually what i do is i attach a little
bit of extra text at the end where i'm
like haha this isn't how i actually
spell my name also side note apologies
to any matpats out there who spell their
name with a double t
anyway today we're talking about death
note since netflix just released a
live-action death note movie and since
i'm writing this episode before it comes
out let me just cover my bases here
man it was the worst i mean l in public
light second guessing himself i can't
believe that they didn't stay true to
the original anime
or wow it was so great right ryuk
was perfect and they nailed mises
character sorry i hate to make you guys
work like that but i thank you for going
the extra mile and inserting the
appropriate of the two responses so let
me just put this out there i
love love the original anime it's like
25 of the best written episodes ever put
to a tv screen
but matpat there are actually 37
episodes like i said 25
of the most tense densely plotted
episodes ever put to air
for those of you unfamiliar main
character light yagami has it all
the top grades in his class the
attention of all his female classmates
and a magical notebook that has the
ability to kill people when he writes
their names in it okay so one of those
things is not quite like the others
unlike most people who get kind of icky
over the prospect of killing people with
the flick of a pen
light sees this as his opportunity to
purify the world of evil taking out all
the world's criminals and in the process
becoming the vigilante known
as kira and no that's not a racist way
of saying killer his name
is actually kira along the way he
attracts copycat killers and plays an
intense game of cat and mouse against
the brilliant deductive mind of a
mysterious detective known
only as l it is without question my
favorite anime
but as i get ready to watch the netflix
movie it suddenly occurred to me we
spend so much time
zoomed in on the personal conflicts
between light and l that we
as the audience lose sight of the larger
conflict here
just how many killings are happening
over the course of the series light has
some epic montage sequences
well about as epic as you can get when
the action consists of writing people's
names down
the entire point of these montages is to
illustrate the extent of these killing
sprees but when it comes to the question
of how many names were actually written
into the death note things kind of get
blurry so today i'm working to get the
best estimate possible for how many
lives
light cut short during his reign as kira
now i say estimate since most of his
killing occurs off screen
meaning we can never get a 100 accurate
number that said though we can get close
if we know one
the duration of time during which kira
is active and two
the rate at which kira kills so number
one how long does kira kill for
well it's a simple question that has a
complicated answer you see for one thing
there are a total of
four people who operate under the kira
alias at one point or another as light
creates these complex notebook handoffs
in his attempt to evade capture
making matters worse is that sometimes
multiple kira's are active at the same
time with as many as three
death notes at play fortunately we have
access to the complete timestamped
list of all the major events that
happened throughout the series thanks to
the handy timeline that was printed in
the bonus 13th volume of the manga and
it bears mentioning that yes
this is a timeline covering the manga
however it tells the exact same story as
the anime only time shifted three years
earlier because it came out
first they kept the months and days
consistent from manga to anime only
changing the year by three years so
really the absolute time that kira is
active remains the same
so now spoiler alert i'm about to show
you a timeline mapping out the whole
series so go binge watch it and then
come back here
seriously it'll be a great weekend
activity for you everyone back
great and here it is yep it is a lot
six years of killing spread across four
main kiras using three separate
notebooks and a partridge in a pear tree
add to that the police the mafia and ooh
boy it is more confusing than light
playing musical notebooks in the woods
but at this point we have a solid idea
of how long each of the kiras was in
operation
as expected light was the longest at
2033 total days the second kira model
and actress misa amane is only active
for 67 days
primarily because she was less
interested in killing for justice and
more interested in getting into lights
life light's life kyotsukehiguchi is
kira 3.0
active for 136 days and finally
tirumikami a devoted disciple of tyra
holds the note for the shortest amount
of time
only 61 days but he's also the most
enthusiastic
about it
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well backspace on up there buddy because
now that we know who had a death note
and for how long we can calculate how
many people each of them killed based on
their rates of killing
man if this video doesn't get flagged by
youtube as being advertiser unfriendly
it will be a
miracle so the key to estimating light's
rate of killing lies in his first
encounter with ryuk
light shinigami or god of death when
ryuk first appears we learn that light's
been writing the names of criminals in
the death note for five days
several death notes have made their way
into the human world in the past
but you're the first to have written
this many names look at how many people
you've killed in only five days
and look we do the show gives us a
glimpse of his open notebook where we
can observe that he writes names divided
into four columns and 39 rows each
that's a total of 156 names per page
that clip
also shows us that light's already
completed two full pages a total of 312
names if we take the lowball estimate
and assume that light only has filled
those two pages in the five days then
the average comes out to 62.4 names per
day
now realize that this is only an average
light obviously isn't writing exactly 62
names every single day for instance
there's one day where he kills exactly
24 criminals one every hour to make a
very specific point to l
and then on the days where he's under
surveillance he probably kills fewer
criminals but we also know that light
likes to cue up criminals to die even on
days when he's not diligently writing
names in his death note so what matters
here is the average
not the exact he writes down on any
given day so that 62.4 is a good
baseline
then comes the five intermission after
light defeats elle during which light is
acting completely
uncontested assuming the role of kira
and knight and the role of the new
l during the day and as you can imagine
since he's a serial killer leading a
task force out to catch him
he's not too good at his day job during
this period a narrator tells us that the
kira killings accelerate
in the summer of 2012 kira's killings
increased at an unprecedented rate
light's first five days as kira are a
pretty good representation of what an
unimpeded kira looks like he comes from
from school does his homework and then
spends the rest of his free time writing
names in his notebook like a lovesick
middle schooler when like defeats l he
still has to perform his day job with
the police task force and at night misa
is also distracting him wink wink don't
you hate it when the blonde actress
model who adores everything that you do
pulls you away from your nightly killing
spree so let's assume that the rate of
his killings during this period doubles
per day it's nothing too
extreme just an extra 60 or so names at
night because he has misa helping him do
research
running those numbers across his 2033
days as kira gives us
242 112 names in the book
hold up 242 000 approximately 62 names
per day times 365 days
doubling for when l is defeated and run
that for five years yeah that number
checks out and that's a conservative
estimate think about that
200 000 names that's more than the
populations of 47
separate countries in fact near the end
of the series near
yeah his name is actually near calls the
death note the deadliest weapon of mass
murder in the history of mankind
that's a pretty tall order but when you
actually look at the numbers it's true
the third death note alone the one light
yagami used during his five years
uncontested
killed more people than the atomic bomb
dropped on hiroshima at the end of world
war ii which was itself the single
deadliest attack in recorded history in
the end
you're nothing more than a crazy serial
killer oh no
light is much more dangerous the term
serial killer specifically excludes war
crimes and government-sanctioned
killings and by that definition kira
comes out on top by a
huge margin some of the deadliest serial
killers in recorded history louis
garavito and pedro lopez have fewer than
200 known victims while kira's number
in the hundreds of thousands even the
deadliest conventional serial killers
are around
only one tenth of one percent as deadly
as kira and that is
just light we still have three other
kilas uh kiras
to discuss misa's number is just a drop
in the bucket compared to light's
killing spree
only around 400 she had a short run and
only killed her attention any killings
that she does do during that five year
intermission period are more for helping
out lights total because he's the type
of person who wouldn't allow that power
to anyone else he probably wants to
savor all that writing to himself and as
we see during the montage for that
segment they're both on computers
together researching but he's the only
one that we ever see writing names when
the audience learns that higuchi is the
third kira we see his notebook laid out
on the table and it shows that he's
written a total of 64 names 16 rows
across
four columns if that's what's in a day's
work for higuchi then that would make
his daily body count almost
exactly the same as what we calculated
for light earlier
an average of 64 names per day times 136
days works out to 8704 people dead at a
gucci's hands
and lastly terumikami out of all the
kiras mikami holds his death note for
the fewest number of days but he fills
in
one page per day that might not sound
like much but one
page for mikami is serious business with
over
6 columns and 76 rows per page
mikami is executing a whopping 456
people
every single day i'm not sure what's
more impressive the number of names that
mikami manages to write every day or
that he manages to squeeze them all in
there
mikami might not be the brightest when
it comes to executing light strategy but
you've got to give this guy
points for penmanship with a total of 61
active days mikami's total kill count
tallies in at 27 816.
27 000 people in two months so to recap
our tallies are light yagami 242
thousand one hundred twelve missa amane
three hundred ninety two kiyasuke
higuchi
8 thousand seven hundred and four and
two mikami 27
816 adding up to just under 280
000 total victims 280
000 people dead to give you a point of
comparison that is
just shy of the 300 000 americans who
died during world war 1.
the only wars to kill more u.s soldiers
were world war 1
2 and the civil war and remember this
estimate is a conservative number we
don't see proof of it but misa could
absolutely be more active during that
five-year intermission if light allowed
her to be and light himself could
definitely be more aggressive in his
writing if he wanted to be for an even
better comparison of the vastness of the
number of people these guys are killing
consider this when we see light's
notebook open
yes we see some western names but
there's also a few names written in
japanese this makes total sense since
the series is set in japan and light's
first language is japanese so it would
just be an easier place for him to
target
in 2009 japan's prison population was 75
250 just a fourth of keira's total kill
count
in other words during his six years he
could have exterminated japan's entire
prison population
and still had time to deal with the rest
of the world's criminals that said the
u.s has a few more
people in prison 2 million 217 000 to be
exact so even if kira's efforts were
entirely concentrated on the u.s
it would have only been around 13 of the
total u.s prison population
furthermore worldwide there are 874
100 people murdered last year oh holy
geez that's a huge number so even if
kira only targeted murders his total
number of killings over
six years would only be 32 percent of
the total number of murders in
one
the world is kind of a scary place
sometimes and i gotta be honest
light for all is purging the world talk
made it a bit scarier you see even
though he sees himself as the embodiment
of justice
i am i am justice
he kills innocents along the way in
order to stay out of prison
ray pember ray's fiance 11 fbi agents
that were sent to investigate him
l watery then of course the killings
that were done by the other kiras
light justifies these deaths as
necessary in his quest to bring peace to
the world and in truth
those people make up only a tenth of one
percent of kira's total death toll but
is he right in this assessment when we
say that kira killed 279 024 criminals
that's under the assumption that all of
those people were guilty but what light
doesn't take into account are false
convictions which
happen more frequently than you might
think according to the national registry
of exonerations the number of prisoners
being released as their crimes are
disproven has been increasing since 2011
a rate of three exonerations per week
other criminal justice studies have
shown that in the u.s specifically as
many as 4.1 percent of death row inmates
in the u.s
might be innocent and that's only in the
u.s and only for people who've been
convicted we know that in some cases
kira simply targets suspects if 4
of the people kira sends to death would
have later been exonerated that means
kira has killed over 11 000 innocent
victims
not quite the drop in the bucket that
light seems to think it is there's also
plenty of other issues that exist in the
criminal justice system for example in
the u.s
94 of all cases are decided by plea
bargains where people confess guilt to a
lesser crime to avoid the risk of being
convicted of something more serious even
if they're not guilty at all they just
don't want to run the risk or waste the
time in trial
some estimates put the number of
innocents who are currently serving
prison time due to plea bargains at
around 20
000 and japan has a big problem with
wrongful convictions
suspects arrested for questioning can be
held up to 23 days during which the
suspect isn't allowed to have contact
with an attorney there is even one case
where a prosecutor threatened to kill a
suspect during his interrogation
japan's conviction rate is kit this 99.8
percent
let me make this easy for you if you're
in court in a japanese courtroom you are
going to prison just
stop wasting your time get started on
your prison sentence and get it over
with faster it's a system where guilty
until proven innocent
really prevails and in kira's eyes
they're all guilty regardless of the
evidence by the end of the series people
in governments just send him names with
light killing hundreds of thousands of
people
you think he's got time to check each
and every one so what's the upshot here
is kira truly justice well let me give
you the numbers and you can go debate it
in the comments
near the end of the anime we find out
that by the end of kira's six-year reign
the world's violent crime rate has
fallen by
70 percent since kida's appearance six
years ago wars have stopped
and global crime rates have been reduced
by over 70 percent
a 70 decrease in the number of worldwide
murders would decrease the number of
killings in a given year by six hundred
and eleven thousand
eight hundred and seventy so by killing
an average of forty six thousand
five hundred people per year around two
thousand of those being innocent
kira prevented over six hundred thousand
murders every single year and that's not
even mentioning all the other violent
crime that went down
this is the dilemma of death note light
is
clearly clearly a villain saying he's
driven by a better world when in
actuality his ego and lust for power are
his true driving motivations and yet you
can't deny
he got results so was he right all along
the show provides no clear answers and
remember it's all just fiction but it
raises a great debate a debate that
hopefully i was able to help you out
with by providing more accurate numbers
so you can assess the situation
and although i can't answer any of those
questions definitively for you i can at
least present you with one final and
slightly lighter question related to
death note could kira kill goku
spoiler alert the answer is obviously
yes but go ahead debate it in the
comments
because remember it's all just a theory
a film theory and
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cut
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you