light yagami is so fucking stupid in like a month they narrowed it down from like it could be anyone in the world.. to it could be anyone in japan to it could be anyone in the kanto region to it could be any student in the kanto region to its honestly probably one of the family members of these two policemen and my god this mans son is so fucking weird whats wrong with him like honestly i think L should have just taken the risk and hit light with a car one day and been like huh funny the kira murders stopped right this policemans son got hit by a car i asked my chauffeur to drive into him funny how that works out
This is kinda why I stopped reading. Like, you get to Vol. 3 and I’m like, “If both of these dudes are so smart, how are we still doing this same dance?????”
Because they both share the fatal flaw of having to be The Best in different ways. Light needs to prove that he’s Better Than Everyone Else and impossible to outsmart, both in his public life and incognito – every major mistake he makes in the entire series is a direct refusal to be embarrassed an intellectual opponent. He gets his position narrowed down to Kanto because he’s publically insulted by L and reacts in anger. L realises very early on that he’s probably a student, nad he responds by an escalation that reveals he has police info on purpose; he justifies this as trying to drive a wedge between L and the police but it’s very clearly a bad move on his part that reveals far too much in a simple attempt to show off. When he kills the FBI, it’s not because he needs to – it’s far safer for him to ignore them. But they challenged him by being there, and L challenged him by putting them there; the move needs a counter-move. And it gives away his identity. Every single time anyone gets closer to Light’s identity, it’s because his pride is hurt and he needs to show off. Every single time.
L has a similar obsession, except that L doesn’t care about people or their opinions of him. Instead of needing to appear the smartest, he needs to be perfect. Practical shortcuts like hitting Light with his car would save so many lives, but that’s not what L is there for – it’s explicitly stated right from the beginning that L only takes cases that happen to interest him, and this proves accurate throughout the series. He’s interested in the puzzle. He will preserve lives directly in front of him when he can do so easily (such as safeguarding the detectives he works with, or not deliberately provoking Light into killing more prisoners, and using death row inmates for his experiments), but more important than that is winning correctly, with his intellect. Hitting people with cars when you don’t have the evidence to properly arrest them instead is against the rules.
Death Note isn’t the story of two opponents who are doing a good job. It’s two opponents who are just clever and prideful enough to halfway burn the world down in their pissing contest.
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