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Rough Intro P5R video
🕑 Added 2025-07-03 15:02:20 +0000 UTCHi everyone,
Sorry I wasn't able to update you regularly, but it's been a busy time. I've been doing a lot of projects at once. I wanted to update you on a rough introduction I've been working on for the P5R video, which is probably going to come out after the Stevie Suan video.
Here it is, I still need to hammer it out:
Intro
If you’re into anime and manga - which odds are for this channel, you probably are - you might have some familiarity with one of the west’s most popular entries: Death Note. It’s a series concerning a young man, Light Yagami, who finds a mysterious artifact that lets him kill anyone he wants, albeit with a set of specific rules on how it actually happens.
Okay, so Light decides he’s going to kill people he deems to be undesirables; criminals. This catches the attention of Interpol, and among them genius detective L. Death Note is a cat and mouse game between two young people who believe that what they’re doing are for the right reasons, even if that righteousness’ existence is somewhat…convenient.
And it gets talked about a lot. It’s partly an examination of power and morality, of ethics and justice and what precisely can or must be done to preserve what someone deems to be a proper, lawful society.
But at the end of the manga, there’s a really interesting bunch of panels. People are huddled on top of a mountain, under pale moonlight, and they’re wishing for Kira’s return. On one hand this is the desire for a return of someone to enact justice, to bring punishment. But there’s another message that is interesting: see, in Japanese discourse, Death Note has another meaning that gets peddled around: it’s partly a discussion of survivalist tactics between young people pitted in a neoliberal society.
Light and L’s cat and mouse aren’t just declarations of one’s sense of justice against another, but also the pitting of two young people’s understanding of the world, of society, and how privilege, hard work, and talent are intricate components. In other words, Death Note’s examination of the ethical murderfest can also be seen as a metaphor for neoliberalism and accumulation. In this lens, the position of people like Light Yagami can be seen in class dimensions - he has access to the police, to information, and a lot of insider knowledge on the Death Note, and a lot of that starts to feel like the power of people born into wealth. L, on the other hand, is an orphan - he is the self-made person idolized by greater society.
I’m not saying that ethical or judicial readings of Death Note - of which there are many - aren’t wrong. Hell, even the two producing it don’t shy away from it. What I am saying is that Death Note is a really useful example of how even nonphysical elements of a text can itself be metaphor, and that’s really interesting. We tend to think of works on the level of direct or outright engagement, and then there’s a metaphorical component beneath that. This literal thing happens, but beneath it is a metaphor. But we tend to spend a lot less time and effort thinking about metaphysical and nonphysical subjects as a metaphor for another metaphysical or nonphysical subject.
We can look at a text and discuss its treatment of existentialism, subjectivity, and worlding - but what if existentialism, subjectivity, and worlding is itself opening the doors to another topic?
In this light, if Death Note can be seen as a discussion on the struggles of class in neoliberal Japan, then the last few panels can be seen as a warning of the return of authoritarianism. The loss of Kira - as a seeming revolutionary force birthed in the carriage of privilege - alongside the eventual return to chaos in Death Note reveals a different kind of thematic logic; that if the contractions of an economically unjust society isn’t addressed, then another will surely emerge, or at least, the people will yearn for another.
The metaphor has become a metaphor.
Let’s keep that in mind for Persona 5 Royal, and its fairly metaphorical examination of mental health, class, the body, and what struggle entails in Japan.
