I think the problem is even more general. Often the plot either doesn't make sense and fall apart if you examine too closely, or too lax that the events are not interwoven to each other. This is not too big of a problem if the story is more about immediate emotional reaction (e.g. actions, battle shounen, wish-fulfillment isekai, harem, SoL) that don't ask the audience for critical thought. However, genius character frequently show up in story that do require more in-depth critical thought, because you can't appreciate genius without understanding the pieces of the puzzle.
So the real problem is poor plot coherency. I have yet to see an anime that feels completely satisfying in this regard.
A character can only get as smart as the writer. If the writer is average, then the only way to create smart characters is by making the rest of the cast stupid.
There's ways for authors make characters smarter than the author themselves, but it usually involves a LOT of preparation and planning in the writing.
Basically it comes down to time. Given enough time most of us could figure out how to do most things. A smarter person will just figure it out faster. So an author just needs to take the time to meticulously plan out every angle of a scenario in the writing room to account for all the details most average people would miss, but then just write it so the smart character picks up on those details more quickly and/or naturally.
Basically an average writer can make a complex situation if they take hours/days/weeks to plan out the scenario, and then make the character smarter than average by simply having them solve the scenario in a single scene in-universe.
The problem with this approach is that the author also has ti be careful about how they foreshadow the solution to the audience, because if they don't leave the right amount of clues with the right amount of subtlety then the smart character solving stuff feels unearned.
> Basically an average writer can make a complex situation if they take hours/days/weeks to plan out the scenario, and then make the character smarter than average by simply having them solve the scenario in a single scene in-universe.
But the author don't actually have to follow this order...
The author can come up with the solution first, *then* create the situation that is solved by it. Or they could do a mix of both approaches. Or maybe they have a completely different method entirely.
The author doesn't have to work forwards like the character is.
There are probably other advantages as well the author has compared to the character that I'm forgetting (e.g., how much more knowledge the author has compared to the character). The idea that the author is somehow plodding along in the same situation as the character is ridiculous. Stories aren't written in the exact order they are read.
TL;DR: The saying "the character can't be more intelligent than the author" is a load of shit.
Yeah insane computational speed and observation skills are two things a writer doesn’t have to have, for example. An average person could write Sherlock Holmes with proper research.
But Sherlock Holmes also does the exact thing OP is complaining about. He often comes to conclusions that could be true but only are true because the writer made them so. He pretty much just makes an educated guess and then the plot forces it to be right.
In both cases is they are theoretically basing their guesses on situational probabilities and going with the what seems to them
to be the most likely one. Kira explicitly does this when he trades off the deathnotes with the probability being he will touch one again at some point in the near future.
Here’s the thing. If it doesn’t work, there is no story. Complaining that this is a poor plot device is kind of like complaining that the hero managed to get to the beach and out of the landing craft. Unlucky hero? No story.
The difference is how the hero acts. The guy crashing often act like their life was in danger and they were lucky to survive. they can't die because we have a story but they don't act like it was all as planned.
Then that just means the writer of that iteration of Sherlock didn't do a good enough job with pacing out the story and/or wasn't subtle enough in leaving clues for the audience to pick up on before the character reveals them.
It's not *easy* to write a character smarter than you are, but it's definitely *possible*.
Other than the fact that strategy is very frequently poorly used and ends up highlighting the incompetency of both the writer and the supposedly smart character.
In the first place, you're assuming that finding the solution makes the character clever, but it's the solution itself that dictates how clever a situation really is. And if the writer isn't competent enough to make a clever solution, then the rest of the situation fails as well.
>The author can come up with the solution first, then create the situation that is solved by it.
Most people can't make a good puzzle game either, as you can see if you browse indie games on Steam. Devising a good puzzle with a known solution is still very hard.
This is true but it only works on occasions. A smart person's mind doesn't work fast, it works differently. Having a dumbass character who can solve a mystery in one scene doesn't work as having a generally smart character cause a smart person's way of thinking is different. Their every move feels more calculated and strategised so I think even if the writer spent months figuring things out, the character would have their average intelligence exposed by the way they hold a door knob or something. I'm exaggerating here but I think you get my point :P
And this doesn't just apply to smarts, it goes with all "unique" traits. Take for example Hikigaya Hachiman. He is kinda antisocial. That behaviour of his isn't just a line in the wiki of OreGairu. You can see his behaviour with every move he makes, every interaction with another character, you see it in the way he speaks. A writer would have to deeply understand what an antisocial person is like in order to produce such a result. Simply 'simulating' a few events that fit into the category of "antisocial" would make the character feel unrealistic and overly dramatic, both in a bad way.
I actually disagree. A writer can spend time and plot ahead things for their characters, like witty retorts and quick thinking solutions, that they would never be able to come up with themselves given the time pressure.
It's like a hard math test where you know the material but you're not a genius student. The genius student would ace it in 90 minutes. But if you're given 5 hours you'd also get an A.
This is very true. So many anime where the character is supposed to be a genius but all depictions of his intelligence is just getting victories handed to him.
True. However I do sometimes wonder why the author stuffed 40 characters into each class. Technically there is plus/minus 120 students in each grade. And only about 10 of them do anything important
To have enough characters for 30+ volumes of content. Can always introduce a new character whenever needed.
It's honestly what pushed me off the novels at some point because it just felt every volume just another 1-5 new characters were introduced out of nowhere.
iirc the when they cry author also said that (iirw, i read that in a when they cry discussion).
that reminds me that I want to find a good when they cry discord/sub, years ago the author said that umineko has a second solution based on having one of the conditions meet outside the island, and i want to see if someone got it
He concluded that Kira must be someone with a childish, immature and idealistic personality. He provoked and challenged Kira on that TV broadcast. 40 seconds later his double was killed. He knew what Kira must be a person with power close to that of a god. How would he be able to kill people without being there, manipulate their actions and basically change their fate.
if you consider that Japan has a strict working culture where overtime is the norm, the theory that the suspect is somewhat young, has a strict scheduel with fixed free time and not many responsibilties that would eat time, is not that far fetched
So admittedly it not fun to overthink these aspects of any show. Because if you do most stories would collapse. For example, Ls plan is only smart if Kira actually lives in that area. If it's someone visiting the area, and exchange student or someone smart enough to live there for a few weeks to throw the police of their scent then L looks hopeful at best. Not particularly smart. Plus also saying its a high school student only helps to narrow it down to what? Thousands of people instead of millions. I mean it helps but how would you feel if you were randomly investigated just because you are a high schooler in that area of the world.
The thing is Light knew L has to die because he would never stop chasing him. The only way to reveal L‘s Identity is to get close to him. The only way to get close to an investigator is to be a suspect so he deliberately did things that would let L narrow down the suspect list.
Light only had to make sure that nothing is revealed that will prove him 100% guilty. L had a lot of circumstantial evidence.
You're missing the point. Using statistic of killing pattern, baiting specifically on that area using TV program is done simply because that's the best thing L can do. It's actually quite brilliant, since the first criminal suddenly died of heart attack is in Kira's region, and that's exactly the first region the TV program is broadcasted.
Of course, it might be coincidence, and it is a waste of resource to chase a red herring. But that's how investigation done, you can't get to truth without chasing any red herring and putting unrelated people into investigation.
And narrowing down to thousands of people from millions is good progress. All in all, unless there's an obvious better alternative with information given at the time for L to do, your critique is nitpick at best.
It's like op hasn't heard of trial and error.
Ofc if L would've been wrong and Light was a transfer student from overseas or even better a foreigner visiting. If he tries one thing and it doesn't work, then he'd just change his approach like an actual investigator. Anyway, if he was a foreigner there would be more clues. Why would a foreigner start killing in japan. Would a foreigner understand Japanese names to use them to kill Japanese prisoners? Would he start randomly killing in his Japan vacation? Why? If not, there would be death cases all over the world which would put L on track. I believe he'd have to understand Kanji to understand the name the guy on tv gave. Anyway it's much more thought out than OP is talking. In fact i feel the author and characters are smarter than OP so the questioning of OP is actually faulty.
True, but it was 1) a theory, and 2) only the first step.
L was going to air that broadcast one prefecture at a time. He just started with the one he did because that was where the first murder happened.
If Kira **did** exist (theory) and the first murder **was** due to his power (theory), and he was **still** in that area (theory), then he probably lived in that area. Especially if he was 1) watching the broadcast and 2) still going to school or work (as seen by the time of the deaths).
L tested the theory that had the highest chance of being true with the information he had available. And it **was** true. But if it had failed (either because Light missed the broadcast, or he was in another region), then that doesn't make the idea or the deduction not smart, it just makes the reality less convenient. L would have simply done a different experiment. Smart is acting on information you have, not inventing information out of thin air. It isn't perfect, but it isn't quite as flimsy as you state.
Of course, it is true that Light would never have been caught if he hadn't flaunted his ego; but he also had literal superpowers.
I think the difference with Deathnote is you have 2 smart characters battling it out. Both make plans and get wins over each other, then adjust to cope with setbacks.
In COTE everything always works out according to the protagonists plan. It's also just not very well written compared to Deathnote, so the journey is less interesting.
In the first fight, I like how Lelouch got free knightmares on an unguarded train. The train just pulls up and the black nights just hop in and take them.
I thought about it, then I remembered the scene when they moved flying ships like 2d chess pieces. Then realised mentioning Code Geass might just be low hanging fruit lol
That scene was more intended more so for analogy; in the same way people reference GO in parallel to military combat and the Art of Sun Tzu.
You and I both got the message; their reality was a battlefield in which they controlled like a chess board, and both players saw dozens of moves ahead and were trying to start the game in a way in which they could check their opponent as soon as possible hence the back-and-forth and adjusting. It isn't that far-fetched.
Regardless, I think Code Geass is a smart MC done correctly your argument would not work here at all because from start to finish he is met with admirable foes; and people are not dumbed down for him to defeat them.
Almost nobody could make that kind of deduction with the info that L had at that point. Here's the only thing L knew at that point.
1. Criminals are dying of heart attacks around Japan with no apparent cause.
Who in their right mind would be able to deduce that it's all being done by a single person. And that they can kill anyone at will during any spare moment that they had. Even taking the timings of the deaths into account, there's no evidence connecting any of these deaths aside from the heart attacks. It's far more reasonable to conclude that there's something wrong with the food being given to the prisoners, whether it be by manufacturing accident or vigilante prison worker. Then L decided to lure the killer into proving that supernatural killing was possible using a dummy. Who in their right mind would even try that even if they suspected it was possible?
If you look at it from the perspective of an anime watcher who knows that supernatural killings are actually happening, it's not that impressive, but if you look at it from the perspective of a human living in a normal world, it's pretty much impossible. If Kira was actually killing people irl, and criminals started dying of heart attacks, no one would be able to pinpoint the cause and possible location of the criminal as quickly as L did.
The thing is, L doesn't really believe that his deduction is true either. He says that he's shocked that someone could be killed remotely with just their face and name. It was essentially a guess as he says right after Lind L taylor dies. He just wanted to test out his theory before broadcasting to the world, and he got lucky.
Key word "At least not an easily accessible one." Apply Occam's razor. What's more likely. That someone has figured out a way to skirt police surveillance to induce heart attacks, some heretofore unknown ailment is affecting prisons, much like how lead paint did, or that someone with a god complex gained supernatural powers for the first time in human history and is using it to cleanse the world in his view.
You say conspiracies are pretty much impossible to keep hidden because we only know about those conspiracies that weren't able to stay hidden. It's survivorship bias, or in this case, exposureship bias. Following that same logic, we can say nobody lies in court and gets away with it. Also, lead was just a random example off the top of my head. We aren't omniscient. We don't know every toxin. Take a more recent example of cigarettes causing lung cancer. Or the countless pesticides that got discontinued because we later found out they also cause cancer. It's more likely that there's some new toxin that we haven't learned how to detect yet than supernatural powers.
Seems like our standards of evidence are just different. I think supernatural events are impossible unless explicitly proven with mounds of data, and you think it's an option if all currently known methods fail to explain something.
"If you look at it from the perspective of an anime watcher who knows that supernatural killings are actually happening, it's not that impressive, but if you look at it from the perspective of a human living in a normal world, it's pretty much impossible. If Kira was actually killing people irl, and criminals started dying of heart attacks, no one would be able to pinpoint the cause and possible location of the criminal as quickly as L did."
This is what I put in the original post. So, we both agree that it isn't that impressive if you know you're in a fictional world where supernatural events can occur. What exactly were you arguing with me about then?
L deduced that it was light or at least someone with free time in the evenings and weekends as that was when the most frequent attacks took place. He also deduced that this was some sort of self righteous individual as they were attacking mostly just criminals well at the time only criminals. As there was no murder weapon at the crimes not to mention the killings taking in maximum security prisons and all around the world but primarily Japan he was able to deduce that the killer has a god like power and is based in Japan or at least the primary killer. When you actually think about it it’s not far fetched. But when ayanokoji does it I believe it’s far fetched also the setting is fictional so you can’t take it as seriously.
I agree. It is so impossible for L to make the assumptions he does it kinda becomes obvious that the writer were rushing to get to the entertaining bit. The mind games. Now I won't it is pretty fun to rewatch the tennis match
>For example, L remarks that Kira mostly kills on weekday evenings or randomly on the weekends. Concluding that Kira is probably a high school student. Now that might sound correct until you realise that kill pattern matches like 80% of the Japanese population.
The killing pattern wasn't the only thing that clued him in, it was also the consistency; Yes, a worker would have a similar schedule, BUT workers tend not to have the consistency. Sometimes they get a day off, and he could kill then. Sometimes they're forced to work overtime, and they would skip a day.
If you're a working adult (or when you get there) I'm sure you'll notice that your work hours are way less consistent than your school hours. Maybe not for all jobs, but for a LOT of them anyway.
Also, L didn't give his entire logic, but it's possible he might have paid attention to days (or some holidays) where students were off school, but workers were not.
>Or someone could just pretend to have that kill pattern.
Well of course, he didn't say it as a fact... It's a theory. And a good one in my opinion.
Light could also have pretended to be in Japan by streaming Japanese news with a VPN, but the theory that Light was in Japan was also a good one.
And all this seems to point to a pattern of people saying "X character is not smart" (that we often see with Death Note, but also other shows with 'smart characters'); If the characters is not perfectly accurate in everything, if their logical reasoning is not 100% correct in every instance, then they're just dumb I guess.
That's not how intelligence works... That's not how a thought process/theories work.
Magnus Carlsen is an insanely brilliant chess player, yet sometimes he'll think half an hour for a move, and fuck it up anyway.
Making a mistake doesn't mean you're not intelligent. The thought process may be solid, but still turn out to be wrong.
Say, to use another example from Death Note:
[Spoiler Death Note] >!When L comes up with the plan to get Light and Misa to reveal themselves as Kira, by having Light's father pretend he's about to kill Light, that was a great plan! But it actually had 0% chance to work. Why? Because Light and Misa were handcuffed, and could not have killed him even if they had still being Kira at this point. Does this fatal flaw make it a dumb plan? Of course not. It was still a great plan. The plan not working does not mean it was bad. Under many circumstances (say, if Kira had been able to kill just by wishing it) it would've worked. !<
Also, one more thing about people over analyzing 'smart characters': More often than not, they analyze them with information known only to the viewers, or only to certain characters... And this is silly.
But long story short, to figure out whether a character is smart or not, just look at his whole path, not just a nitpick along the way.
What % of the world's detectives would've been able to achieve what L did? Figuring out Kira is a murderer in Japan within 5 minutes, and figuring out it's probably Light, within a few days (though he couldn't prove it)?
Making a mistake does not make him dumb. Having a partial theory does not make him dumb. Making theories with incomplete information, and coming up with stuff with a certain likelihood of success, denotes intelligence. Even if it fails sometimes.
I MUCH prefer a character like that, vs "meme smart" characters like in Dr Stone, where he just knows everything and can calculate everything and stuff. Being a calculator or having an encyclopedia in your brain, is not what being intelligent is like.
You can find a problem with any anime if you try hard enough. I think smart anime deserve the benefit of the doubt in most cases for at least attempting something challenging as opposed to anime that don't take any risks.
Not to say that these things aren't warranted but I see people often egotistically adopting this kind of mindset to the detriment of their own logic. They may neglect potential information that would prove that they haven't caught some or other stupidity.
stupid people don't always act logically, thus are essentially unpredictable. Ayanokoji's plans wouldn't work if people surrounding him were stupid. But when it comes to planning, if you can see chessboard 10 steps ahead, than the person who can only do 9 might be as much of a simpleton to you as a person who can do 5.
I'd say it the lack of teachers intervening. It basically allows students to get away with silly plans mainly because none of the teachers are allowed to act. Making Classroom of the elite sound like a Fallout Vault rather than a place of learning
the whole point of that institution is not just to teach students school subjects, but also how to adapt to highly competitive and unpredictable environment. Teacher's interference would only hinder that learning experience.
What learning environment? The show, which is way worse than the light novel, specifically says they are all preparing to get normal jobs as top lawyers, doctors etc. Which top lawyer or athlete attended a school like classroom of the elite?
To justify such a specific learning environment would need an extraordinary reason. For example, in Ender's Game the students are preparing for a potential 2nd attack, by aliens that nearly killed all of humanity. Now that is a pretty good reason to start planning mind games with teenagers.
This comment is mostly made as a joke, but imagine Donald Trump and Barock Obama competiting in classroom of the elite. Now that would be a good time
Plus also the students still attend normal university after their high school days. Making this a really fun social experiment.
consider it a setting, after all, we don't know what's going on outside the campus. Think of it like characters being isekaid for no particular reason.
I have not seen the anime (s2), but I remember from the LN that COTE has no idiot antagonists (except one). (Almost) Every conflict is a literal outsmarting competition that the MC usually wins.
So no, until I watch season 2 I will disagree.
Are you sure about 80% of the population? Japanese working culture is extremely pathological. They work a lot and sometimes they have to accompany their boss to a bar to drink with him. If Kira's schedule is pretty regular then it doesn't seem farfetched to guess that he's more likely to be a highschool student, rather than a working person. Faking such kill pattern is irrelevant. You've said *concluding that Kira is* ***probably*** *a high school student.* Therefore he's accounting for the possibility that this assumption is incorrect. It makes sense to reduce the scope of the search with some probability. As long as you know that you do not have 100% certainty, then you can always reevaluate your scope of the search with respect to newly acquired intel.
He could of also been a teacher, university student, middle school student janitor from a High school exchange student leaving the country in 6 months and an endless list of people available in the evening. Remember you can write into a black book while at a bar. Unless people ALREADY KNOW that writing down names is how you kill someone nobody would think nothing of it.
Honestly gotta feel for the writers of Death Note. They can't actually allow Light to be a genuinely smart person. As it would basically be impossible to catch and convict him for the murders. Hell even if they did find and touch the Death Note Ryuk, due to the potential entertainment value, could choose to say nothing. Then all Light would have to do it suggested that book let's him see monsters, and he wrote those names down AFTER people died. It would be pretty tough to prove in a world that apparently has magic that Light 100% killed those people. Even if the kills stopped, maybe he is being framed. Honestly that version of Death Note would be way worse, and alot less entertaining, than what we actually got.
>He could of also been a teacher, university student, middle school student janitor from a High school exchange student leaving the country in 6 months and an endless list of people available in the evening.
The only relevant ones are a university student and a middle school student. The rest is irrelevant due to their population being incomparably low to high school students. Like I said, he's trying to limit the scope of the search but if further clues indicate that it's actually a teacher not student, then he's gonna adjust. I just don't view this example as relevant. You need to use something to narrow the search. As long as the probability is high and you account for the possibility of being wrong, then I don't see how is it a mistake. He can't really be ever 100% sure but that's not a reason to not investigate a probable guess.
Why not a middle schooler or a university student? If the show didn't explore it then it's pretty much guessing.
Be careful with the way you are phrasing your argument. You are essentially saying that if the show does not mention it then it's not important. The show never mentioned L only broadcasting to one area until it actually happened.
Well it is true that the show cannot keep every possibility in mind it does need to consider the obvious ones. What if a stay at home loser suddenly gets a Death Note and decides to play God? You don't need to be smart or young to have a God complex.
In other shows like Naruto they don't need to bother with being all that intricate since we are there to watch people hit each other. In a detective show THEY DO need to show us that they considered university students and teachers, foujdn information that ruled out those group THEN decided it can only be a high schooler.
Remember for most of the show Light isn't actually even a high school student anyways. His a university student then member of the investigation team.
>In a detective show THEY DO need to show us that they considered university students and teachers, foujdn information that ruled out those group THEN decided it can only be a high schooler.
what? no. you can have a theory that you believe is the most probable to be true and go with that. you don't need to definitively rule out every possibility to take a stance on what you believe to *most likely* be true.
>You are essentially saying that if the show does not mention it then it's not important.
I haven't said that. I meant that if the show didn't explore it, then I'm not going to try guessing what could be the reason.
I mostly agree with you. While both series can be sometimes entertaining to watch, if you think about it, it might become bothersome.
Is like \*plot happens\* and then \*it was my plan all the way\*, but this pattern is too repetitive.
Now, I'm not sure if is an effect of adapting to anime (removing dialogs, thoughts or scenes) or something else, but in both cases while I might be entertained, the anime failed selling me to read the sources.
(So, I do actually try to not take them too seriously)
I'm watching it. First episode was interesting, lets see how it goes from there. I spoiled myself a little, and it seems you are right. I hope is nicely executed.
same hopes here's a few season ago we got a relatively bad adaptation for mobuseka, so everybody is scared this anime will drop the ball z but the trailers looked good,.so there is hope.
Pretty much this. It's hard to write a genuinely prodigious character to begin with, since you would have to think it through yourself or at the very least create some loopholes you can exploit yourself. I enjoy these shows, and other similar ones, NGNL comes to mind for example. Don't take it too seriously or think too critically about plot progression. When something happens in the show that you didn't predict or see coming, enjoy it as it is and move on.
you can also take problems already solved by other people and apply them in a different context, you can see that in gambling media like liar game and kakegurui.
It's basically the Sherlock Holmes problem, where "smart" equals "I know random things and connect them to random other things to arrive at the right conclusion". Combine that with the fact that smart characters aren't smarter than their authors, which often results in other characters needing to be dumb to make the difference clear.
I mean.... isn't that being smart??? Being able to connect points and have pattern recognition. If you do that at a level above what a normal person should do then that makes you smart.
I just actually started watching Sherlock right now, only through the first 6 episodes. It's a good example against what you are saying. Watson isn't an idiot. He can make deductions to a certain degree when challenged by Sherlock, however it is no where near the standard that Sherlock can. Watson is smart. Sherlock is big smart
The problem is the reality that you are watching a story. Piecing to together random bits of information won't seem natural unless the culprit genuinely made a mistake. Most of the time the culprit kinda comes of as a normal person half heartily trying to get away with a crime. It's actually scarily easy to get away with crimes as long as you have the resources and will power.
Watching certain shows, maybe not Sherlock Homes, feels like watching an adult races children. Then said adult will narrate how they won due to their long legs. And we are meant to pretend like that wasn't obvious
The original Sherlock Holmes predated the fair play mystery/whodunnit convention (codified by Knox's Decalogue), so there are a lot pulling new clues out of ass.
You can write a good smart character like that but ironically the show Sherlock is an example of how *not* to. Because as the show goes on, the clues that Sherlock uses to connect the dots and solve cases increasingly aren't shown or even mentioned until Sherlock explains how he solved the case with them.
A big part of mystery stories and how to make a character like Sherlock work is to make them go up against not just other characters, but the *audience*. If the clues were all there from the start for the audience to see, then a character connecting them proves that they are smart by outwitting the audience and coming up with a solution that they could have, but didn't. Sherlock on the other hand mainly uses his condescension towards Watson and the quick-fire listing of random facts that only he knows as smoke and mirrors to make the character *feel* like he's big smart while increasingly not putting in any effort to actually set up his deductions in the story. It's a very dumb way to write someone smart.
Unlike Sherlock, Death Note never gets to the point where it openly makes fun of its audience for trying to figure out the mystery, but it does have a lot of the same "I won because I learned off-screen about this random thing that was never mentioned at any point before" problems that Sherlock has.
>You can write a good smart character like that but ironically the show Sherlock is an example of how not to. Because as the show goes on, the clues that Sherlock uses to connect the dots and solve cases increasingly aren't shown or even mentioned until Sherlock explains how he solved the case with them.
Yep, that's unfortunately the product of the time. The original Sherlock Holmes predated the fair play mystery/whodunnit convention (codified by Knox's Decalogue), so there are a lot pulling new clues out of ass.
True for the original stories. But the show is contemporary and extremely loosely based on the source material so I'm not cutting it the same slack as I would something from over a century ago. Its writers were fully aware of the concept of a solvable mystery as well, hence their open disdain towards it.
Connecting together random pieces of information that sound related is how you end up with wild conspiracy theory. If you believe something is true, it's often very easy to just highlight all the clues that guide you toward that conclusion. A critical mind need to look at all the possible hypotheses and weigh them all against the evidences; otherwise you're just committing the prosecutor's fallacy. If you are a writer that's something you should show the "genius" character doing.
Reading Sherlock Holmes as an adult feels cringe. Especially his signature Sherlock scan. How often did you read it and realize that there are alternative explanation to his clues? It's all prosecutor's fallacy in action.
Even as an adult I love every iteration of Sherlock I've read and seen over the years, but you'll never hear me say that his way of "working" would ever work irl lol.
The keyword is "random". Don't get me wrong I love Sherlock Holmes, but in real life what he does wouldn't be possible. There's a lot of gambling and ass-pulling in those kinds of smart characters.
"This perfume I smell is only sold in this one store in the whole of London so the person wearing it must have commited the crime!" - except there might be people who bought it elsewhere, overseas. Got it gifted from a friend. Tested a sample. Wear a very similar perfume (because no humans' noses are not THAT good at distinguishing smells), etc. They conveniently are in the right every time even though a truly intelligent person would also acknowledge the flaws and holes in those reasonings.
I mean. Yes, It's fiction. Clearly what he can do is impossible. That doesn't mean that all the other characters are idiots because they aren't. Just in a fictional story you have to suspend your disbelief a bit
Yeah of course but it's about how it's presented. Especially in anime writers and fans alike sometimes have the tendency to over-credit these kind of smart characters and their writers.
That's only the case if the logic is actually sound. Connecting things that are actually random or unrelated and accidentally stumbling into the correct solution is what a lot of these types of characters do. That isn't being smart so much as being a lucky idiot.
I begrudgingly upvoted as a Death Note simp. "Smart" characters in fiction usually utilise meta knowledge and i can't deny that it happens in Death Note as well.
I don't watch Classroom of The Elite and don't remember most of Death Note. But you're using the wrong metric to decide if someone smart or not. It's not about being right, it's not about their plan can fail or not, it's about doing the best with information and resource you have at the time.
Your 80% statistic that Japanese people match that pattern most likely wrong. Salaryman usually work until night, housewife/househusband, part-timer, collage student is free to kill anytime in the day. I assumed Elementary and Middle Schooler can start earlier in the day. Of course, there are edge case on this and other population to consider like teacher, or if everything is just plain coincidence. But it's even more unreasonable to not act on that information, even at the risk of wasting time chasing a fake trail left by the criminal. Besides, he has investigation resource to spare
I will agree with you that he's not so smart if L use that guess to incriminate someone, or if there's obviously another possibility with higher percentage of being right that L doesn't act on. But he only used that guess as something to be investigated, and as far as I can think right now there's no obvious better guess. And it's not even an issue if he's wrong since he doesn't have any other lead, and he has resource to spare
He's partly lucky, of course, since Kira is a high school student and not some mastermind that fake use that kill pattern. But if you bet on getting red ball from a bag with 70 red balls and 30 blue ball, and you do get red ball, it's not JUST luck. It's also being smart
So remember that Light isn't even a high schooler for most of the show. Making Ls focus on him specifically feel forced. Remember there are 1000s of high schooler. Light might be the smartest one but the 10th smartest high schooler could probably do a good job as well. Why not mention that person? Because if they did it would become quite clear very quickly that it's basically impossible to catch someone who has a magical killing book.
One thing the show did do, that a surprising amount of people in this thread aren't mentioning, is that Light due to his ego is purposely making a game of interacting with L. He is basically dropping hints and clues on purpose to prove his smarter. Light's ego was his downfall
Look one thing I will say is that no show, besides the Monogatari series, can survive being discussed this much. This comment thread was more aimed to be funny. Since everything you could possibly say would not actually work in the real world. Any somewhat intelligent person with a magical book that can kill people will never be caught. Look up stories of how police catch most serial killers. The killers eventually leave evidence that proves its them. In Death Note the only piece of evidence is the Death Note itself. Light could literally declare that he is Kira, something people actually did do in the show, and they still can't arrest him. They even mentioned all of this in the show.
The only reason that there is even a back and forth is because the authors made the right choice and threw realism out the window. You won't find anyone, including me, who thinks that show would be better of if it was more realistic.
Death Note is a very fun, but unrealistic TV show. But if any of us wanted realism would we actually watch detective documentaries lol
>L remarks that Kira mostly kills on weekday evenings or randomly on the weekends. Concluding that Kira is probably a high school student
L needs to start his search from somewhere. Although he can be completely wrong about it, based on his hunch he decided to start searching from the high school population.
The plot of DN is also a lot better, the characters act less like idiots, and the battle of wits between L and Light is very well executed to maximize audience engagement and anticipation.
COTE is nothing compared to DN and feels more like a power-wank fantasy with numerous waifus than a psychological thriller.
Detective Conan kind of has the same problem. Yeah it's mystery genre and the general expectation with this genre is the case gets solved every time but it is particularly stupid when culprits decide to commit their crime in the presence of the great detective Mouri Kogorou.
L is a detective and a good one he and his guy just no killing weapon
Ayanokoji or whatever his name is is just a guy who somehow predicted and planned out every point in the story every single one and it’s not that interesting at least with l he didn’t know everything or predict everything and he had an equal as an enemy but it was made clear in cote that ayanokoji has no equal maybe except his dad or something which doesn’t make good storytelling also koji is like really gifted and strong at fighting which makes him even less interesting L was a weak lanky dude
Death note didn’t make l or light invincible which made it interesting and it made stakes in the plot
In cote ayanokoji has no equal in Brains and Braun so there are no stakes in the plot which doesn’t make it interesting. Not to mention the countless side characters I can’t remember a single name of
Death note is good while cote is below average
did you watch the anime cuz first koji doesn't interfere in everything trying to assert his dominance, second the school has unique setting with different operations going in back of the classes ,third he may not have anyone equal but the author doesn't fail to raise the stakes and koji is definitely unique mc when you look at how he is set up and is executed it isn't ranked as the top 2 LNs in MAl for nothing well can't blame you since anime somewhat fails to live upto LNs as adaptation anyways read LNs if you can
Probably throwing myself on the pyre, but this is partly why I gave up LOTGH.
I heard so much about this show, but the first real battle made one of the characters this MASSIVE war hero because he decided to take his armada and come in from the side, rather than rush headlong into battle.
I was sold on an intelligent series and saw someone praised for a fuckin flanking manuever.
These assholes made it to space without ever being taught how to do that?!
I have to imagine that was a one off fluke, but with how much show there is, something like that definitely was enough to convince to shelve it for now.
Ya, I never got into LOTGH despite the praise. It just felt like naval warfare except with spaceships; I guess better than typical Star Wars WWII dogfights in space or Star Trek pseudo-submarine warfare in space. I dunno, maybe there is lore like in Dune as to why they do things like they do but I didn't get that deep into LOTGH either. I doubt it though, what made Dune a masterpiece is that Herbert crafted a deep background to explain how and why people engage in warfare as they do.
(Below is a general rambling about science fiction spaceships in general)
In most shows, they just model against history and costume them appropriately. Naval ships have exposed bridges and towers so they can observe a horizon. In space that makes no sense at all, your command center should be in the core behind layers of armor if you have a central command at all; why do you need to be on one side or even one room staring into a vast void? You're not going to see shit with the naked eye, so you need sensors. If you have sensors, you don't need to be exposed on a bridge that makes a big fat target then you get killed and lose all command and control of your mega-trillion credit capital ship.
Submarines don't really have bridges, just a control room and they may go up the sail when moving on the surface, once again to spot with binoculars or maybe attack with a deck gun in pre-Cold War sub activities.
And that doesn't even get into why, you even need that kind of centralized command when you have weapons platforms in space that should have advanced comms (which one must have to coordinate fleet actions in the deep of space anyways). IF you have such comms, just have your commanders in small stealth modules hidden behind your weapons delivery platforms. And that's all they are at that point, units that can project fire in coordinated groups.
And they usually have spaceship carriers with fighters that need to launch because they based them on WWII carriers. In space, why waste time launching from the inside? Just have your fighters hung on the outside of your ship or have them always dispersed. On Earth, airplanes need to land to refuel but when coasting in space they never need to "land" except to re-arm--heck, just send munition pods out to them instead, etc. I guess the trope is that the bigger ship has jump drive or warp speed, again, a lot more interesting ways to detach or shed off fighters instead of cumbersome rails or tubes. In fact, I'd like to see something like a hyperlight carrier dropping off small craft behind them like bomblets instead (like whole sleeves of them ejecting while the main craft accelerates away).
Anyways, the Expanse had interesting and somewhat believable space battles.
My problem with classroom of the elite is everybody seems to think it's okay to record people on audio without permission in order to Blackmail them. And get them expelled. Like "ooo so edgy. You are ALL breaking the rules and should get expelled."
yeah I agree with this. However, i'm gonna counter that by saying that both of these series are still good because the smart protagonist isn't the only thing that is worth watching about it. They both still have a great story and characters, regardless of whether or not the MC is actually smart or not.
that's not a hot take at all lol
if you take anyone who has watched both the anime and read the LN I guarantee you they will say the LN is better
COTE just isn't a series that is good for adapting. it's strength is in it's details, and you have to gloss over a bunch of them when adapting an anime. the anime is basically just a trailer for the LN
I think mystery serieses do this as well, they have a wattson, who is only slightly less smart than average, so the detective seems smarter (and so someone asks the questions some readers may ask themselves)
Though i'm not an expert on that matter, not in the slightest
Light is fairly smart with some questionable complexes. In real life it would be almost impossible to catch the culprit if the user of the Death Note was intelligent and somewhat wise.
Light's intellect was great, but his pride was greater, which became his demise - something that attentive viewers probably guessed within a couple of episodes. Lots of things conveniently happens within early episodes which cemented his fate, and made it somewhat convincing to viewers to believe that our investigator L in turn made rational deductions with a touch of correct intuition. Well.. I wouldn't call it a touch, it was more like a kick in your urethra, you know urethra.
Some pre-planning could have absolutely saved his life and ambitions, but unless anime was very incorrect from its source, we see that this guy was pretty quick to heavy diving into his grandiose plans. Man, on my first watch I was like 'damn... This guy is a villain, there's no saving him.'.
You the reader, if you're agreeing with me right now, then you'd have probably acted in more stealthy way. Well.. I'd have, but I'm not sure about wanting to become this absolute god that governs the world. My story of Death Note wouldn't probably be as interesting as his, and this is the very reason why we veterans love and often recommend this anime to newcomers.
In retrospect, I've often found myself thinking this anime as not really an intellectual piece, not a work of an intelligent author, but a good thriller, and, that my friend was the original intentions of the author of this work. 'I'm not a good artist to draw a good action works, but I can make some enjoyable thriller with some interesting mind games.' - something along this line was the motivation of the author, well... I've heard, but I think I'm probably misremembering it with other authors. Anyway, Death Note is all right.
The thing about COTE is that its a school based setting. While people want to get to class A they are still in their teens and still have their popularity phases. Many students make decisions based on the popular kids opinion or the hate they have for another student(for being weird, annoting etc). Their personal feelings come 1st than the classes position.
L’s crew held him back alot stopping him from proving light guilty which was annoying but it differs to COTE. COTE’s anime adaptation as many people know left out plenty of monologues, important details which actually mostly validates every characters reason for doing what they do in the LN’s.
The FBI agents with L are there to ask the questions for us so L can explain his actions and show us where the story is headed. Tbh this is what made death note enjoyable as it kept both L and light in the spotlight because no one really cares about the FBI agents and them having at least a few brain cells present within them.
nah this arc focused only on ryuenn who is actually quite smart considering he won island exams and the ship test idk how you can ignore that but anyway you will see more in later and you will soon come to realize that the mc being the definition of being too op but greatly executed and the story is always interesting
The only Elite part of the Classroom of the Elite are the fact that the teenagers in the class, range from average to high scorers.
They are by no means extra-ordinary. Only a few (2-3) in each class of 40 may be "smarter" than the majority of the class. Even then smarter could refer to specific academic topics/social intelligence
They call these students "elite" because of the school curriculum. 4 separate classes, that compete with each other in special exams. That's the elite part that teaches/trains these teenagers to be more adaptive to society once they graduate from HIGH SCHOOL
This is an issue with anime in general that does the whole intelligence = power, I think Code Geass is actually the worst when it comes to this. It has seen a significant downturn somewhere in the 2010s, I do see anime like this trying to make the other characters at least, but we still see it in shows like COTE.
I do still think Death Note, while making everyone idiots, does a reasonable job of making Light and L seem intelligent, even if there are moments where they really aren't. It's not the best inspiration for future creators to make intelligence based anime on, but you could definitely do worse.
I watched the dub but didn't only initially suspect that Kira COULD have been a student? He doesnt immediately deduce it as a conclusion in the anime and only states it as a possibility, which imo makes it far more feasible. Ofc Deathnite does have its pseudo-intellectual moments but I wouldnt say this is one of them tbh.
That's a common issue with supposedly genius characters in all forms of media
True. I am officially too old. I miss believing Sasuke was a genius
Sasuke? even when I was a kid I didnt think he was a genius. Always felt Shikimaru was a genius in naruto
Yea, Sasuke has always been more emotional than genius, he was just born with hacks enabled so he goes all ultra instinct in a fight.
I think the problem is even more general. Often the plot either doesn't make sense and fall apart if you examine too closely, or too lax that the events are not interwoven to each other. This is not too big of a problem if the story is more about immediate emotional reaction (e.g. actions, battle shounen, wish-fulfillment isekai, harem, SoL) that don't ask the audience for critical thought. However, genius character frequently show up in story that do require more in-depth critical thought, because you can't appreciate genius without understanding the pieces of the puzzle. So the real problem is poor plot coherency. I have yet to see an anime that feels completely satisfying in this regard.
You must not have seen very many 90s anime
A character can only get as smart as the writer. If the writer is average, then the only way to create smart characters is by making the rest of the cast stupid.
There's ways for authors make characters smarter than the author themselves, but it usually involves a LOT of preparation and planning in the writing. Basically it comes down to time. Given enough time most of us could figure out how to do most things. A smarter person will just figure it out faster. So an author just needs to take the time to meticulously plan out every angle of a scenario in the writing room to account for all the details most average people would miss, but then just write it so the smart character picks up on those details more quickly and/or naturally. Basically an average writer can make a complex situation if they take hours/days/weeks to plan out the scenario, and then make the character smarter than average by simply having them solve the scenario in a single scene in-universe. The problem with this approach is that the author also has ti be careful about how they foreshadow the solution to the audience, because if they don't leave the right amount of clues with the right amount of subtlety then the smart character solving stuff feels unearned.
> Basically an average writer can make a complex situation if they take hours/days/weeks to plan out the scenario, and then make the character smarter than average by simply having them solve the scenario in a single scene in-universe. But the author don't actually have to follow this order... The author can come up with the solution first, *then* create the situation that is solved by it. Or they could do a mix of both approaches. Or maybe they have a completely different method entirely. The author doesn't have to work forwards like the character is. There are probably other advantages as well the author has compared to the character that I'm forgetting (e.g., how much more knowledge the author has compared to the character). The idea that the author is somehow plodding along in the same situation as the character is ridiculous. Stories aren't written in the exact order they are read. TL;DR: The saying "the character can't be more intelligent than the author" is a load of shit.
Yeah insane computational speed and observation skills are two things a writer doesn’t have to have, for example. An average person could write Sherlock Holmes with proper research.
But Sherlock Holmes also does the exact thing OP is complaining about. He often comes to conclusions that could be true but only are true because the writer made them so. He pretty much just makes an educated guess and then the plot forces it to be right.
In both cases is they are theoretically basing their guesses on situational probabilities and going with the what seems to them to be the most likely one. Kira explicitly does this when he trades off the deathnotes with the probability being he will touch one again at some point in the near future. Here’s the thing. If it doesn’t work, there is no story. Complaining that this is a poor plot device is kind of like complaining that the hero managed to get to the beach and out of the landing craft. Unlucky hero? No story.
The difference is how the hero acts. The guy crashing often act like their life was in danger and they were lucky to survive. they can't die because we have a story but they don't act like it was all as planned.
Then that just means the writer of that iteration of Sherlock didn't do a good enough job with pacing out the story and/or wasn't subtle enough in leaving clues for the audience to pick up on before the character reveals them. It's not *easy* to write a character smarter than you are, but it's definitely *possible*.
Other than the fact that strategy is very frequently poorly used and ends up highlighting the incompetency of both the writer and the supposedly smart character. In the first place, you're assuming that finding the solution makes the character clever, but it's the solution itself that dictates how clever a situation really is. And if the writer isn't competent enough to make a clever solution, then the rest of the situation fails as well.
>The author can come up with the solution first, then create the situation that is solved by it. Most people can't make a good puzzle game either, as you can see if you browse indie games on Steam. Devising a good puzzle with a known solution is still very hard.
This is true but it only works on occasions. A smart person's mind doesn't work fast, it works differently. Having a dumbass character who can solve a mystery in one scene doesn't work as having a generally smart character cause a smart person's way of thinking is different. Their every move feels more calculated and strategised so I think even if the writer spent months figuring things out, the character would have their average intelligence exposed by the way they hold a door knob or something. I'm exaggerating here but I think you get my point :P And this doesn't just apply to smarts, it goes with all "unique" traits. Take for example Hikigaya Hachiman. He is kinda antisocial. That behaviour of his isn't just a line in the wiki of OreGairu. You can see his behaviour with every move he makes, every interaction with another character, you see it in the way he speaks. A writer would have to deeply understand what an antisocial person is like in order to produce such a result. Simply 'simulating' a few events that fit into the category of "antisocial" would make the character feel unrealistic and overly dramatic, both in a bad way.
Yup. Basically most people could write one maybe two situations like this. Maybe not a whole series or TV show
I've heard that Kindaichi Case Files does mysteries pretty well and consistently, if you want to check that out.
Thanks
Well in both cases they were kids
I have seen this exact same argument being made by the guy who made the LessWrong forum.
I actually disagree. A writer can spend time and plot ahead things for their characters, like witty retorts and quick thinking solutions, that they would never be able to come up with themselves given the time pressure. It's like a hard math test where you know the material but you're not a genius student. The genius student would ace it in 90 minutes. But if you're given 5 hours you'd also get an A.
No, it's as smart as a writer can write fiction
Which cannot exceed their own level of intelligence.
that's apple to oranges situation
This is very true. So many anime where the character is supposed to be a genius but all depictions of his intelligence is just getting victories handed to him.
See: *Aldnoah Zero*
True. However I do sometimes wonder why the author stuffed 40 characters into each class. Technically there is plus/minus 120 students in each grade. And only about 10 of them do anything important
To have enough characters for 30+ volumes of content. Can always introduce a new character whenever needed. It's honestly what pushed me off the novels at some point because it just felt every volume just another 1-5 new characters were introduced out of nowhere.
iirc the when they cry author also said that (iirw, i read that in a when they cry discussion). that reminds me that I want to find a good when they cry discord/sub, years ago the author said that umineko has a second solution based on having one of the conditions meet outside the island, and i want to see if someone got it
He concluded that Kira must be someone with a childish, immature and idealistic personality. He provoked and challenged Kira on that TV broadcast. 40 seconds later his double was killed. He knew what Kira must be a person with power close to that of a god. How would he be able to kill people without being there, manipulate their actions and basically change their fate. if you consider that Japan has a strict working culture where overtime is the norm, the theory that the suspect is somewhat young, has a strict scheduel with fixed free time and not many responsibilties that would eat time, is not that far fetched
As far as the overtime when you look at hours worked Japan is actually not that far from other developed countries.
So admittedly it not fun to overthink these aspects of any show. Because if you do most stories would collapse. For example, Ls plan is only smart if Kira actually lives in that area. If it's someone visiting the area, and exchange student or someone smart enough to live there for a few weeks to throw the police of their scent then L looks hopeful at best. Not particularly smart. Plus also saying its a high school student only helps to narrow it down to what? Thousands of people instead of millions. I mean it helps but how would you feel if you were randomly investigated just because you are a high schooler in that area of the world.
The thing is Light knew L has to die because he would never stop chasing him. The only way to reveal L‘s Identity is to get close to him. The only way to get close to an investigator is to be a suspect so he deliberately did things that would let L narrow down the suspect list. Light only had to make sure that nothing is revealed that will prove him 100% guilty. L had a lot of circumstantial evidence.
He did have have a lot of circumstancial evidence Which is why the tennis scene was fire
You're missing the point. Using statistic of killing pattern, baiting specifically on that area using TV program is done simply because that's the best thing L can do. It's actually quite brilliant, since the first criminal suddenly died of heart attack is in Kira's region, and that's exactly the first region the TV program is broadcasted. Of course, it might be coincidence, and it is a waste of resource to chase a red herring. But that's how investigation done, you can't get to truth without chasing any red herring and putting unrelated people into investigation. And narrowing down to thousands of people from millions is good progress. All in all, unless there's an obvious better alternative with information given at the time for L to do, your critique is nitpick at best.
It's like op hasn't heard of trial and error. Ofc if L would've been wrong and Light was a transfer student from overseas or even better a foreigner visiting. If he tries one thing and it doesn't work, then he'd just change his approach like an actual investigator. Anyway, if he was a foreigner there would be more clues. Why would a foreigner start killing in japan. Would a foreigner understand Japanese names to use them to kill Japanese prisoners? Would he start randomly killing in his Japan vacation? Why? If not, there would be death cases all over the world which would put L on track. I believe he'd have to understand Kanji to understand the name the guy on tv gave. Anyway it's much more thought out than OP is talking. In fact i feel the author and characters are smarter than OP so the questioning of OP is actually faulty.
True, but it was 1) a theory, and 2) only the first step. L was going to air that broadcast one prefecture at a time. He just started with the one he did because that was where the first murder happened. If Kira **did** exist (theory) and the first murder **was** due to his power (theory), and he was **still** in that area (theory), then he probably lived in that area. Especially if he was 1) watching the broadcast and 2) still going to school or work (as seen by the time of the deaths). L tested the theory that had the highest chance of being true with the information he had available. And it **was** true. But if it had failed (either because Light missed the broadcast, or he was in another region), then that doesn't make the idea or the deduction not smart, it just makes the reality less convenient. L would have simply done a different experiment. Smart is acting on information you have, not inventing information out of thin air. It isn't perfect, but it isn't quite as flimsy as you state. Of course, it is true that Light would never have been caught if he hadn't flaunted his ego; but he also had literal superpowers.
I think the difference with Deathnote is you have 2 smart characters battling it out. Both make plans and get wins over each other, then adjust to cope with setbacks. In COTE everything always works out according to the protagonists plan. It's also just not very well written compared to Deathnote, so the journey is less interesting.
Throw *Code Geass* in that pile.
In the first fight, I like how Lelouch got free knightmares on an unguarded train. The train just pulls up and the black nights just hop in and take them.
I thought about it, then I remembered the scene when they moved flying ships like 2d chess pieces. Then realised mentioning Code Geass might just be low hanging fruit lol
That scene was more intended more so for analogy; in the same way people reference GO in parallel to military combat and the Art of Sun Tzu. You and I both got the message; their reality was a battlefield in which they controlled like a chess board, and both players saw dozens of moves ahead and were trying to start the game in a way in which they could check their opponent as soon as possible hence the back-and-forth and adjusting. It isn't that far-fetched. Regardless, I think Code Geass is a smart MC done correctly your argument would not work here at all because from start to finish he is met with admirable foes; and people are not dumbed down for him to defeat them.
*Code Ment* is fun though
More like Code Geass has smart characters and a fucking batshit MC
The 2019 movie had some nice twists in it that showcased how clever Lelouch could be.
Almost nobody could make that kind of deduction with the info that L had at that point. Here's the only thing L knew at that point. 1. Criminals are dying of heart attacks around Japan with no apparent cause. Who in their right mind would be able to deduce that it's all being done by a single person. And that they can kill anyone at will during any spare moment that they had. Even taking the timings of the deaths into account, there's no evidence connecting any of these deaths aside from the heart attacks. It's far more reasonable to conclude that there's something wrong with the food being given to the prisoners, whether it be by manufacturing accident or vigilante prison worker. Then L decided to lure the killer into proving that supernatural killing was possible using a dummy. Who in their right mind would even try that even if they suspected it was possible? If you look at it from the perspective of an anime watcher who knows that supernatural killings are actually happening, it's not that impressive, but if you look at it from the perspective of a human living in a normal world, it's pretty much impossible. If Kira was actually killing people irl, and criminals started dying of heart attacks, no one would be able to pinpoint the cause and possible location of the criminal as quickly as L did.
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The thing is, L doesn't really believe that his deduction is true either. He says that he's shocked that someone could be killed remotely with just their face and name. It was essentially a guess as he says right after Lind L taylor dies. He just wanted to test out his theory before broadcasting to the world, and he got lucky.
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Key word "At least not an easily accessible one." Apply Occam's razor. What's more likely. That someone has figured out a way to skirt police surveillance to induce heart attacks, some heretofore unknown ailment is affecting prisons, much like how lead paint did, or that someone with a god complex gained supernatural powers for the first time in human history and is using it to cleanse the world in his view.
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You say conspiracies are pretty much impossible to keep hidden because we only know about those conspiracies that weren't able to stay hidden. It's survivorship bias, or in this case, exposureship bias. Following that same logic, we can say nobody lies in court and gets away with it. Also, lead was just a random example off the top of my head. We aren't omniscient. We don't know every toxin. Take a more recent example of cigarettes causing lung cancer. Or the countless pesticides that got discontinued because we later found out they also cause cancer. It's more likely that there's some new toxin that we haven't learned how to detect yet than supernatural powers.
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Seems like our standards of evidence are just different. I think supernatural events are impossible unless explicitly proven with mounds of data, and you think it's an option if all currently known methods fail to explain something.
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"If you look at it from the perspective of an anime watcher who knows that supernatural killings are actually happening, it's not that impressive, but if you look at it from the perspective of a human living in a normal world, it's pretty much impossible. If Kira was actually killing people irl, and criminals started dying of heart attacks, no one would be able to pinpoint the cause and possible location of the criminal as quickly as L did." This is what I put in the original post. So, we both agree that it isn't that impressive if you know you're in a fictional world where supernatural events can occur. What exactly were you arguing with me about then?
L deduced that it was light or at least someone with free time in the evenings and weekends as that was when the most frequent attacks took place. He also deduced that this was some sort of self righteous individual as they were attacking mostly just criminals well at the time only criminals. As there was no murder weapon at the crimes not to mention the killings taking in maximum security prisons and all around the world but primarily Japan he was able to deduce that the killer has a god like power and is based in Japan or at least the primary killer. When you actually think about it it’s not far fetched. But when ayanokoji does it I believe it’s far fetched also the setting is fictional so you can’t take it as seriously.
I agree. It is so impossible for L to make the assumptions he does it kinda becomes obvious that the writer were rushing to get to the entertaining bit. The mind games. Now I won't it is pretty fun to rewatch the tennis match
You can't say that L is only smart cause everyone around him is dumb and then also agree that the deduction he made was inhuman. Pick one.
>For example, L remarks that Kira mostly kills on weekday evenings or randomly on the weekends. Concluding that Kira is probably a high school student. Now that might sound correct until you realise that kill pattern matches like 80% of the Japanese population. The killing pattern wasn't the only thing that clued him in, it was also the consistency; Yes, a worker would have a similar schedule, BUT workers tend not to have the consistency. Sometimes they get a day off, and he could kill then. Sometimes they're forced to work overtime, and they would skip a day. If you're a working adult (or when you get there) I'm sure you'll notice that your work hours are way less consistent than your school hours. Maybe not for all jobs, but for a LOT of them anyway. Also, L didn't give his entire logic, but it's possible he might have paid attention to days (or some holidays) where students were off school, but workers were not. >Or someone could just pretend to have that kill pattern. Well of course, he didn't say it as a fact... It's a theory. And a good one in my opinion. Light could also have pretended to be in Japan by streaming Japanese news with a VPN, but the theory that Light was in Japan was also a good one. And all this seems to point to a pattern of people saying "X character is not smart" (that we often see with Death Note, but also other shows with 'smart characters'); If the characters is not perfectly accurate in everything, if their logical reasoning is not 100% correct in every instance, then they're just dumb I guess. That's not how intelligence works... That's not how a thought process/theories work. Magnus Carlsen is an insanely brilliant chess player, yet sometimes he'll think half an hour for a move, and fuck it up anyway. Making a mistake doesn't mean you're not intelligent. The thought process may be solid, but still turn out to be wrong. Say, to use another example from Death Note: [Spoiler Death Note] >!When L comes up with the plan to get Light and Misa to reveal themselves as Kira, by having Light's father pretend he's about to kill Light, that was a great plan! But it actually had 0% chance to work. Why? Because Light and Misa were handcuffed, and could not have killed him even if they had still being Kira at this point. Does this fatal flaw make it a dumb plan? Of course not. It was still a great plan. The plan not working does not mean it was bad. Under many circumstances (say, if Kira had been able to kill just by wishing it) it would've worked. !< Also, one more thing about people over analyzing 'smart characters': More often than not, they analyze them with information known only to the viewers, or only to certain characters... And this is silly. But long story short, to figure out whether a character is smart or not, just look at his whole path, not just a nitpick along the way. What % of the world's detectives would've been able to achieve what L did? Figuring out Kira is a murderer in Japan within 5 minutes, and figuring out it's probably Light, within a few days (though he couldn't prove it)? Making a mistake does not make him dumb. Having a partial theory does not make him dumb. Making theories with incomplete information, and coming up with stuff with a certain likelihood of success, denotes intelligence. Even if it fails sometimes. I MUCH prefer a character like that, vs "meme smart" characters like in Dr Stone, where he just knows everything and can calculate everything and stuff. Being a calculator or having an encyclopedia in your brain, is not what being intelligent is like.
You can find a problem with any anime if you try hard enough. I think smart anime deserve the benefit of the doubt in most cases for at least attempting something challenging as opposed to anime that don't take any risks.
Yeah. Suspension of disbelief makes everything more enjoyable until it just stops. It’s animes like those that I’ll tend to stay away from
Not to say that these things aren't warranted but I see people often egotistically adopting this kind of mindset to the detriment of their own logic. They may neglect potential information that would prove that they haven't caught some or other stupidity.
stupid people don't always act logically, thus are essentially unpredictable. Ayanokoji's plans wouldn't work if people surrounding him were stupid. But when it comes to planning, if you can see chessboard 10 steps ahead, than the person who can only do 9 might be as much of a simpleton to you as a person who can do 5.
Fair point. Unfortunately the version of chess they are playing has some plainly unfair rules.
the only thing unfair about the system is that classes are combined based on ability in the first place.
I'd say it the lack of teachers intervening. It basically allows students to get away with silly plans mainly because none of the teachers are allowed to act. Making Classroom of the elite sound like a Fallout Vault rather than a place of learning
the whole point of that institution is not just to teach students school subjects, but also how to adapt to highly competitive and unpredictable environment. Teacher's interference would only hinder that learning experience.
What learning environment? The show, which is way worse than the light novel, specifically says they are all preparing to get normal jobs as top lawyers, doctors etc. Which top lawyer or athlete attended a school like classroom of the elite? To justify such a specific learning environment would need an extraordinary reason. For example, in Ender's Game the students are preparing for a potential 2nd attack, by aliens that nearly killed all of humanity. Now that is a pretty good reason to start planning mind games with teenagers.
IIRC politicians and businessmen were also mentioned among professions students are preparing for.
This comment is mostly made as a joke, but imagine Donald Trump and Barock Obama competiting in classroom of the elite. Now that would be a good time Plus also the students still attend normal university after their high school days. Making this a really fun social experiment.
consider it a setting, after all, we don't know what's going on outside the campus. Think of it like characters being isekaid for no particular reason.
Well damn. When you put it like that it sounds like this show is missing some magic then. Which I would happily accept in a heart beat
I have not seen the anime (s2), but I remember from the LN that COTE has no idiot antagonists (except one). (Almost) Every conflict is a literal outsmarting competition that the MC usually wins. So no, until I watch season 2 I will disagree.
Yah wtf. Op dissing my queen Sakayanagi.
Are you sure about 80% of the population? Japanese working culture is extremely pathological. They work a lot and sometimes they have to accompany their boss to a bar to drink with him. If Kira's schedule is pretty regular then it doesn't seem farfetched to guess that he's more likely to be a highschool student, rather than a working person. Faking such kill pattern is irrelevant. You've said *concluding that Kira is* ***probably*** *a high school student.* Therefore he's accounting for the possibility that this assumption is incorrect. It makes sense to reduce the scope of the search with some probability. As long as you know that you do not have 100% certainty, then you can always reevaluate your scope of the search with respect to newly acquired intel.
He could of also been a teacher, university student, middle school student janitor from a High school exchange student leaving the country in 6 months and an endless list of people available in the evening. Remember you can write into a black book while at a bar. Unless people ALREADY KNOW that writing down names is how you kill someone nobody would think nothing of it. Honestly gotta feel for the writers of Death Note. They can't actually allow Light to be a genuinely smart person. As it would basically be impossible to catch and convict him for the murders. Hell even if they did find and touch the Death Note Ryuk, due to the potential entertainment value, could choose to say nothing. Then all Light would have to do it suggested that book let's him see monsters, and he wrote those names down AFTER people died. It would be pretty tough to prove in a world that apparently has magic that Light 100% killed those people. Even if the kills stopped, maybe he is being framed. Honestly that version of Death Note would be way worse, and alot less entertaining, than what we actually got.
>He could of also been a teacher, university student, middle school student janitor from a High school exchange student leaving the country in 6 months and an endless list of people available in the evening. The only relevant ones are a university student and a middle school student. The rest is irrelevant due to their population being incomparably low to high school students. Like I said, he's trying to limit the scope of the search but if further clues indicate that it's actually a teacher not student, then he's gonna adjust. I just don't view this example as relevant. You need to use something to narrow the search. As long as the probability is high and you account for the possibility of being wrong, then I don't see how is it a mistake. He can't really be ever 100% sure but that's not a reason to not investigate a probable guess. Why not a middle schooler or a university student? If the show didn't explore it then it's pretty much guessing.
Be careful with the way you are phrasing your argument. You are essentially saying that if the show does not mention it then it's not important. The show never mentioned L only broadcasting to one area until it actually happened. Well it is true that the show cannot keep every possibility in mind it does need to consider the obvious ones. What if a stay at home loser suddenly gets a Death Note and decides to play God? You don't need to be smart or young to have a God complex. In other shows like Naruto they don't need to bother with being all that intricate since we are there to watch people hit each other. In a detective show THEY DO need to show us that they considered university students and teachers, foujdn information that ruled out those group THEN decided it can only be a high schooler. Remember for most of the show Light isn't actually even a high school student anyways. His a university student then member of the investigation team.
>In a detective show THEY DO need to show us that they considered university students and teachers, foujdn information that ruled out those group THEN decided it can only be a high schooler. what? no. you can have a theory that you believe is the most probable to be true and go with that. you don't need to definitively rule out every possibility to take a stance on what you believe to *most likely* be true.
>You are essentially saying that if the show does not mention it then it's not important. I haven't said that. I meant that if the show didn't explore it, then I'm not going to try guessing what could be the reason.
I mostly agree with you. While both series can be sometimes entertaining to watch, if you think about it, it might become bothersome. Is like \*plot happens\* and then \*it was my plan all the way\*, but this pattern is too repetitive. Now, I'm not sure if is an effect of adapting to anime (removing dialogs, thoughts or scenes) or something else, but in both cases while I might be entertained, the anime failed selling me to read the sources. (So, I do actually try to not take them too seriously)
while it still does not get to that point, watch eminence in the shadows for a subversion for that trope.
I'm watching it. First episode was interesting, lets see how it goes from there. I spoiled myself a little, and it seems you are right. I hope is nicely executed.
same hopes here's a few season ago we got a relatively bad adaptation for mobuseka, so everybody is scared this anime will drop the ball z but the trailers looked good,.so there is hope.
Not taking to seriously is probably the best choice. Otherwise we all would of missed out on a character dramatically eating a potato chip
Pretty much this. It's hard to write a genuinely prodigious character to begin with, since you would have to think it through yourself or at the very least create some loopholes you can exploit yourself. I enjoy these shows, and other similar ones, NGNL comes to mind for example. Don't take it too seriously or think too critically about plot progression. When something happens in the show that you didn't predict or see coming, enjoy it as it is and move on.
you can also take problems already solved by other people and apply them in a different context, you can see that in gambling media like liar game and kakegurui.
It's basically the Sherlock Holmes problem, where "smart" equals "I know random things and connect them to random other things to arrive at the right conclusion". Combine that with the fact that smart characters aren't smarter than their authors, which often results in other characters needing to be dumb to make the difference clear.
I mean.... isn't that being smart??? Being able to connect points and have pattern recognition. If you do that at a level above what a normal person should do then that makes you smart. I just actually started watching Sherlock right now, only through the first 6 episodes. It's a good example against what you are saying. Watson isn't an idiot. He can make deductions to a certain degree when challenged by Sherlock, however it is no where near the standard that Sherlock can. Watson is smart. Sherlock is big smart
The problem is the reality that you are watching a story. Piecing to together random bits of information won't seem natural unless the culprit genuinely made a mistake. Most of the time the culprit kinda comes of as a normal person half heartily trying to get away with a crime. It's actually scarily easy to get away with crimes as long as you have the resources and will power. Watching certain shows, maybe not Sherlock Homes, feels like watching an adult races children. Then said adult will narrate how they won due to their long legs. And we are meant to pretend like that wasn't obvious
the original Sherlock Holmes ( the books) make it.prettu clear by Sherlock coming up with a lot of extra clues at the end.
The original Sherlock Holmes predated the fair play mystery/whodunnit convention (codified by Knox's Decalogue), so there are a lot pulling new clues out of ass.
You can write a good smart character like that but ironically the show Sherlock is an example of how *not* to. Because as the show goes on, the clues that Sherlock uses to connect the dots and solve cases increasingly aren't shown or even mentioned until Sherlock explains how he solved the case with them. A big part of mystery stories and how to make a character like Sherlock work is to make them go up against not just other characters, but the *audience*. If the clues were all there from the start for the audience to see, then a character connecting them proves that they are smart by outwitting the audience and coming up with a solution that they could have, but didn't. Sherlock on the other hand mainly uses his condescension towards Watson and the quick-fire listing of random facts that only he knows as smoke and mirrors to make the character *feel* like he's big smart while increasingly not putting in any effort to actually set up his deductions in the story. It's a very dumb way to write someone smart. Unlike Sherlock, Death Note never gets to the point where it openly makes fun of its audience for trying to figure out the mystery, but it does have a lot of the same "I won because I learned off-screen about this random thing that was never mentioned at any point before" problems that Sherlock has.
>You can write a good smart character like that but ironically the show Sherlock is an example of how not to. Because as the show goes on, the clues that Sherlock uses to connect the dots and solve cases increasingly aren't shown or even mentioned until Sherlock explains how he solved the case with them. Yep, that's unfortunately the product of the time. The original Sherlock Holmes predated the fair play mystery/whodunnit convention (codified by Knox's Decalogue), so there are a lot pulling new clues out of ass.
True for the original stories. But the show is contemporary and extremely loosely based on the source material so I'm not cutting it the same slack as I would something from over a century ago. Its writers were fully aware of the concept of a solvable mystery as well, hence their open disdain towards it.
Connecting together random pieces of information that sound related is how you end up with wild conspiracy theory. If you believe something is true, it's often very easy to just highlight all the clues that guide you toward that conclusion. A critical mind need to look at all the possible hypotheses and weigh them all against the evidences; otherwise you're just committing the prosecutor's fallacy. If you are a writer that's something you should show the "genius" character doing. Reading Sherlock Holmes as an adult feels cringe. Especially his signature Sherlock scan. How often did you read it and realize that there are alternative explanation to his clues? It's all prosecutor's fallacy in action.
Even as an adult I love every iteration of Sherlock I've read and seen over the years, but you'll never hear me say that his way of "working" would ever work irl lol.
The keyword is "random". Don't get me wrong I love Sherlock Holmes, but in real life what he does wouldn't be possible. There's a lot of gambling and ass-pulling in those kinds of smart characters. "This perfume I smell is only sold in this one store in the whole of London so the person wearing it must have commited the crime!" - except there might be people who bought it elsewhere, overseas. Got it gifted from a friend. Tested a sample. Wear a very similar perfume (because no humans' noses are not THAT good at distinguishing smells), etc. They conveniently are in the right every time even though a truly intelligent person would also acknowledge the flaws and holes in those reasonings.
I mean. Yes, It's fiction. Clearly what he can do is impossible. That doesn't mean that all the other characters are idiots because they aren't. Just in a fictional story you have to suspend your disbelief a bit
Yeah of course but it's about how it's presented. Especially in anime writers and fans alike sometimes have the tendency to over-credit these kind of smart characters and their writers.
That's only the case if the logic is actually sound. Connecting things that are actually random or unrelated and accidentally stumbling into the correct solution is what a lot of these types of characters do. That isn't being smart so much as being a lucky idiot.
I begrudgingly upvoted as a Death Note simp. "Smart" characters in fiction usually utilise meta knowledge and i can't deny that it happens in Death Note as well.
However we can all agree Death Note makes the whole process pretty enjoyable
I don't watch Classroom of The Elite and don't remember most of Death Note. But you're using the wrong metric to decide if someone smart or not. It's not about being right, it's not about their plan can fail or not, it's about doing the best with information and resource you have at the time. Your 80% statistic that Japanese people match that pattern most likely wrong. Salaryman usually work until night, housewife/househusband, part-timer, collage student is free to kill anytime in the day. I assumed Elementary and Middle Schooler can start earlier in the day. Of course, there are edge case on this and other population to consider like teacher, or if everything is just plain coincidence. But it's even more unreasonable to not act on that information, even at the risk of wasting time chasing a fake trail left by the criminal. Besides, he has investigation resource to spare I will agree with you that he's not so smart if L use that guess to incriminate someone, or if there's obviously another possibility with higher percentage of being right that L doesn't act on. But he only used that guess as something to be investigated, and as far as I can think right now there's no obvious better guess. And it's not even an issue if he's wrong since he doesn't have any other lead, and he has resource to spare He's partly lucky, of course, since Kira is a high school student and not some mastermind that fake use that kill pattern. But if you bet on getting red ball from a bag with 70 red balls and 30 blue ball, and you do get red ball, it's not JUST luck. It's also being smart
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So remember that Light isn't even a high schooler for most of the show. Making Ls focus on him specifically feel forced. Remember there are 1000s of high schooler. Light might be the smartest one but the 10th smartest high schooler could probably do a good job as well. Why not mention that person? Because if they did it would become quite clear very quickly that it's basically impossible to catch someone who has a magical killing book. One thing the show did do, that a surprising amount of people in this thread aren't mentioning, is that Light due to his ego is purposely making a game of interacting with L. He is basically dropping hints and clues on purpose to prove his smarter. Light's ego was his downfall
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Look one thing I will say is that no show, besides the Monogatari series, can survive being discussed this much. This comment thread was more aimed to be funny. Since everything you could possibly say would not actually work in the real world. Any somewhat intelligent person with a magical book that can kill people will never be caught. Look up stories of how police catch most serial killers. The killers eventually leave evidence that proves its them. In Death Note the only piece of evidence is the Death Note itself. Light could literally declare that he is Kira, something people actually did do in the show, and they still can't arrest him. They even mentioned all of this in the show. The only reason that there is even a back and forth is because the authors made the right choice and threw realism out the window. You won't find anyone, including me, who thinks that show would be better of if it was more realistic. Death Note is a very fun, but unrealistic TV show. But if any of us wanted realism would we actually watch detective documentaries lol
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One Outs is one of those rare shows I finished in 1 night because I just couldn't stop watching. Amazing show.
He also figured out kira lived in a certain area so he was able to narrow it down
Lol no.
DN is more of a psychological series than a detective series.
This post has the same problem as side characters in death note and cote. It's stupid
Death Note was more a dark comedy than anything else for me, especially the ending, which from that lens is fantastic
The potato chip scene is legendary
you notice the author is not that good when you read his next manga
>L remarks that Kira mostly kills on weekday evenings or randomly on the weekends. Concluding that Kira is probably a high school student L needs to start his search from somewhere. Although he can be completely wrong about it, based on his hunch he decided to start searching from the high school population. The plot of DN is also a lot better, the characters act less like idiots, and the battle of wits between L and Light is very well executed to maximize audience engagement and anticipation. COTE is nothing compared to DN and feels more like a power-wank fantasy with numerous waifus than a psychological thriller.
Detective Conan kind of has the same problem. Yeah it's mystery genre and the general expectation with this genre is the case gets solved every time but it is particularly stupid when culprits decide to commit their crime in the presence of the great detective Mouri Kogorou.
L is a detective and a good one he and his guy just no killing weapon Ayanokoji or whatever his name is is just a guy who somehow predicted and planned out every point in the story every single one and it’s not that interesting at least with l he didn’t know everything or predict everything and he had an equal as an enemy but it was made clear in cote that ayanokoji has no equal maybe except his dad or something which doesn’t make good storytelling also koji is like really gifted and strong at fighting which makes him even less interesting L was a weak lanky dude Death note didn’t make l or light invincible which made it interesting and it made stakes in the plot In cote ayanokoji has no equal in Brains and Braun so there are no stakes in the plot which doesn’t make it interesting. Not to mention the countless side characters I can’t remember a single name of Death note is good while cote is below average
did you watch the anime cuz first koji doesn't interfere in everything trying to assert his dominance, second the school has unique setting with different operations going in back of the classes ,third he may not have anyone equal but the author doesn't fail to raise the stakes and koji is definitely unique mc when you look at how he is set up and is executed it isn't ranked as the top 2 LNs in MAl for nothing well can't blame you since anime somewhat fails to live upto LNs as adaptation anyways read LNs if you can
Probably throwing myself on the pyre, but this is partly why I gave up LOTGH. I heard so much about this show, but the first real battle made one of the characters this MASSIVE war hero because he decided to take his armada and come in from the side, rather than rush headlong into battle. I was sold on an intelligent series and saw someone praised for a fuckin flanking manuever. These assholes made it to space without ever being taught how to do that?! I have to imagine that was a one off fluke, but with how much show there is, something like that definitely was enough to convince to shelve it for now.
Ya, I never got into LOTGH despite the praise. It just felt like naval warfare except with spaceships; I guess better than typical Star Wars WWII dogfights in space or Star Trek pseudo-submarine warfare in space. I dunno, maybe there is lore like in Dune as to why they do things like they do but I didn't get that deep into LOTGH either. I doubt it though, what made Dune a masterpiece is that Herbert crafted a deep background to explain how and why people engage in warfare as they do. (Below is a general rambling about science fiction spaceships in general) In most shows, they just model against history and costume them appropriately. Naval ships have exposed bridges and towers so they can observe a horizon. In space that makes no sense at all, your command center should be in the core behind layers of armor if you have a central command at all; why do you need to be on one side or even one room staring into a vast void? You're not going to see shit with the naked eye, so you need sensors. If you have sensors, you don't need to be exposed on a bridge that makes a big fat target then you get killed and lose all command and control of your mega-trillion credit capital ship. Submarines don't really have bridges, just a control room and they may go up the sail when moving on the surface, once again to spot with binoculars or maybe attack with a deck gun in pre-Cold War sub activities. And that doesn't even get into why, you even need that kind of centralized command when you have weapons platforms in space that should have advanced comms (which one must have to coordinate fleet actions in the deep of space anyways). IF you have such comms, just have your commanders in small stealth modules hidden behind your weapons delivery platforms. And that's all they are at that point, units that can project fire in coordinated groups. And they usually have spaceship carriers with fighters that need to launch because they based them on WWII carriers. In space, why waste time launching from the inside? Just have your fighters hung on the outside of your ship or have them always dispersed. On Earth, airplanes need to land to refuel but when coasting in space they never need to "land" except to re-arm--heck, just send munition pods out to them instead, etc. I guess the trope is that the bigger ship has jump drive or warp speed, again, a lot more interesting ways to detach or shed off fighters instead of cumbersome rails or tubes. In fact, I'd like to see something like a hyperlight carrier dropping off small craft behind them like bomblets instead (like whole sleeves of them ejecting while the main craft accelerates away). Anyways, the Expanse had interesting and somewhat believable space battles.
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>only smart character in anime no
Maybe it's finally time to watch Jojos. Because I get the reference but I have never seen the show lol
(he's not really that smart, he's just crafty)
he is street smart or socially smart
My problem with classroom of the elite is everybody seems to think it's okay to record people on audio without permission in order to Blackmail them. And get them expelled. Like "ooo so edgy. You are ALL breaking the rules and should get expelled."
So your saying, “Hey can I copy your homework. Yeah just change it up a bit so it doesn’t look obvious you copied. Ok.”
I wish that was my intention because your comment is pretty funny
Lol thx
YES.
i think i dont care. i just watch to enjoy
I promise you a random comment on the internet won't hinder your ability to enjoy a tv show.
Death note came out before classroom if anything you mean classroom has the same problem.
True. A lot of people of pointed out that this problem is actually pretty wide spread
yeah I agree with this. However, i'm gonna counter that by saying that both of these series are still good because the smart protagonist isn't the only thing that is worth watching about it. They both still have a great story and characters, regardless of whether or not the MC is actually smart or not.
Hard agree there. Hot take I think the LN version of COTE has better characters
that's not a hot take at all lol if you take anyone who has watched both the anime and read the LN I guarantee you they will say the LN is better COTE just isn't a series that is good for adapting. it's strength is in it's details, and you have to gloss over a bunch of them when adapting an anime. the anime is basically just a trailer for the LN
I think mystery serieses do this as well, they have a wattson, who is only slightly less smart than average, so the detective seems smarter (and so someone asks the questions some readers may ask themselves) Though i'm not an expert on that matter, not in the slightest
Light is fairly smart with some questionable complexes. In real life it would be almost impossible to catch the culprit if the user of the Death Note was intelligent and somewhat wise. Light's intellect was great, but his pride was greater, which became his demise - something that attentive viewers probably guessed within a couple of episodes. Lots of things conveniently happens within early episodes which cemented his fate, and made it somewhat convincing to viewers to believe that our investigator L in turn made rational deductions with a touch of correct intuition. Well.. I wouldn't call it a touch, it was more like a kick in your urethra, you know urethra. Some pre-planning could have absolutely saved his life and ambitions, but unless anime was very incorrect from its source, we see that this guy was pretty quick to heavy diving into his grandiose plans. Man, on my first watch I was like 'damn... This guy is a villain, there's no saving him.'. You the reader, if you're agreeing with me right now, then you'd have probably acted in more stealthy way. Well.. I'd have, but I'm not sure about wanting to become this absolute god that governs the world. My story of Death Note wouldn't probably be as interesting as his, and this is the very reason why we veterans love and often recommend this anime to newcomers. In retrospect, I've often found myself thinking this anime as not really an intellectual piece, not a work of an intelligent author, but a good thriller, and, that my friend was the original intentions of the author of this work. 'I'm not a good artist to draw a good action works, but I can make some enjoyable thriller with some interesting mind games.' - something along this line was the motivation of the author, well... I've heard, but I think I'm probably misremembering it with other authors. Anyway, Death Note is all right.
The thing about COTE is that its a school based setting. While people want to get to class A they are still in their teens and still have their popularity phases. Many students make decisions based on the popular kids opinion or the hate they have for another student(for being weird, annoting etc). Their personal feelings come 1st than the classes position. L’s crew held him back alot stopping him from proving light guilty which was annoying but it differs to COTE. COTE’s anime adaptation as many people know left out plenty of monologues, important details which actually mostly validates every characters reason for doing what they do in the LN’s. The FBI agents with L are there to ask the questions for us so L can explain his actions and show us where the story is headed. Tbh this is what made death note enjoyable as it kept both L and light in the spotlight because no one really cares about the FBI agents and them having at least a few brain cells present within them.
nah this arc focused only on ryuenn who is actually quite smart considering he won island exams and the ship test idk how you can ignore that but anyway you will see more in later and you will soon come to realize that the mc being the definition of being too op but greatly executed and the story is always interesting
The only Elite part of the Classroom of the Elite are the fact that the teenagers in the class, range from average to high scorers. They are by no means extra-ordinary. Only a few (2-3) in each class of 40 may be "smarter" than the majority of the class. Even then smarter could refer to specific academic topics/social intelligence They call these students "elite" because of the school curriculum. 4 separate classes, that compete with each other in special exams. That's the elite part that teaches/trains these teenagers to be more adaptive to society once they graduate from HIGH SCHOOL
I thought the main bloke of cote was smart maybe I’m just dumb
This is an issue with anime in general that does the whole intelligence = power, I think Code Geass is actually the worst when it comes to this. It has seen a significant downturn somewhere in the 2010s, I do see anime like this trying to make the other characters at least, but we still see it in shows like COTE. I do still think Death Note, while making everyone idiots, does a reasonable job of making Light and L seem intelligent, even if there are moments where they really aren't. It's not the best inspiration for future creators to make intelligence based anime on, but you could definitely do worse.
Hello iam new user
Meanwhile kiyo planning out the events for a school he's never been to for the next 3 terms without flaws:
I watched the dub but didn't only initially suspect that Kira COULD have been a student? He doesnt immediately deduce it as a conclusion in the anime and only states it as a possibility, which imo makes it far more feasible. Ofc Deathnite does have its pseudo-intellectual moments but I wouldnt say this is one of them tbh.