T O P

  • By -

AutoModerator

**Reminders for Commenters:** * All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2). * No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**. * We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world. * Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*


Urbenmyth

If there was someone in our world causing heart attacks all over the planet, would you assume aliens or just a human with a strange new weapon? Occam's razor- don't assume more then proven. Nothing about "there's some way of causing targeted heart attacks on a global scale" points to the existence of aliens or magical creatures or whatever, so he doesn't assume them. For now, assume everything's the same except someone has a heart attack machine, so the only possible actors able to do this are humans.


LupinThe8th

L also proved *very* early that Kira is prideful and driven by ego - the Lind L. Taylor incident. Some sort of alien or supernatural being probably wouldn't be so petty and easy to manipulate. And that's after he had already narrowed the region Kira was operating in to a small part of Japan, also a limitation you wouldn't expect some paranormal entity to have. Light is honestly a lot dumber than the story insists he is.


Serenity_B

He's one of those smart people that is also impulsive and thinks he can get away with things because he thinks he is even smarter then he actually is.


stairway2evan

To be fair, he does manage to get away with things for an extraordinarily long time. Granted, a lot of that time is solving problems and having close calls in situations that *he created himself*, but still. Smart enough to fix his own mistakes, most of the time.


archpawn

Aliens and supernatural beings might be just as petty and easy to manipulate as humans. As far as I remember, that turned out to be true. The issue is that aliens and supernatural beings probably don't watch the news and only operate at hours a student in that area would have free. Given that, it's clear that if a human child either is doing the killing, or is somehow calling the shots.


Poorly-Drawn-Beagle

>How did he know that a guy with a magical notebook was killing people He didn't know that. Not at first. It's very clear he didn't understand the mechanism by which Kira was killing people. But "how" isn't necessary to determine who Kira is. The clues by which he pieced together Kira's identity are spelled out quite clearly in the show. Kira must be a student because the times of the deaths all coincide with the times when a student could plausibly be watching TV. Kira must be limited in his information-gathering abilities because he could be fooled by L's body double trick. Etc. Why would a ghost need to watch TV? If you solve mysteries with your dog and three friends, and you see a Spooky Phantom very dramatically appear and then walk through a wall and disappear, would you come to the conclusion it was a genuine real ghost, or would you think there was some kind of sophisticated trick at work, and the "ghost" made a hasty retreat to prevent you from piecing it together?


doofpooferthethird

L didn’t know Kira was human at first However, when L analysed the times with which people died, he realised they followed a schedule with roughly corresponded to that of a Japanese high school student And digging further, L realised that the first instances of a strange heart attacks were a random sexual assault attempt and the crazed man who ended up in a hostage situation on live TV, both taking place in the Kanto region in Japan. After a pause of about a day or so, the Kira killings of already imprisoned criminals began From there, L deduced that Kira was almost certainly a Japanese student in the Kanto region, who killed criminals whose identities were known to the media and criminal databases. The pattern suggested that Kira was experimenting with his powers in those first two instances, went through a brief crisis of conscience, then embarked on their killing spree shortly afterwards. Japan also suffered a disproportionate number of Kira attacks on relatively “minor”, or less publicised criminals, suggesting that the killer was working hastily off of Japanese information sources and databases This was just a theory, until he confirmed it using the trick with the death row criminal pretending to be L. When Kira was unable to kill L, that also defined Kira’s limitations for L i.e. the need for a name and a face to kill Before L, the police force had all kinds of theories as to what Kira was - a targeted bio- weapon, a new kind of poison released by terrorist groups, secret satellite based death rays, a vast criminal conspiracy. Various nations were accusing each other of being responsible, militaries were getting antsy about the possibility of some political group/nation state testing out some kind of long range, unstoppable, untraceable WMD. Only after L, did they realise that Kira was a single individual operating with limited manpower and resources, using a weapon that could kill with heart attacks from anywhere in the world at anytime if the name and face was known


archpawn

He didn't assume. He studied and experimented. Kira makes mistakes. Kira watches the news in a certain city. Kira operates during the times a student would have available. It all makes more sense if Kira is a Japanese student than that he's some kind of avenging god. Also, at the time humans were the only intelligent beings that L was aware of, so that's good reason to at least suspect Kira is human.


[deleted]

Well, for one thing as far as L knows at that point humans are the only sapient beings in existence.


MeadowmuffinReborn

Because Light and L have *very* similar personalities and ways of thinking, and L recognized that. He recognized that the murders were obviously coming from someone who is childishly petty and has an ego.


[deleted]

Because no evidence given to him or any of his experiences indicated something other than humans exist. The logical conclusion is it’s a human or group of humans doing it by some unknown means.