Do you support Kira in his mission??

I immensely enjoy the show as a source of entertainment, but I can't say I agree with Kira's methods or his way of thinking, even though I sympathize with his view that the world is rotten as it currently is and something needs to be done to change it. I sympathize with his disgust for the way things are and with his idealism, but not his outlook or methods.

He's right that the world is currently rotten, but he's wrong about where the rot is. The rot isn't in people's inherent nature; you can't just kill all the "bad people" and have a nice world. Crime is caused by social and economic conditions. People are shaped by the conditions they live in. People who enjoy security and opportunities are less likely to turn to crime. Without addressing the conditions that deprive people of stability, security, prosperity and opportunities, crime is just a swamp that endlessly refills no matter how many times you try to drain it by wiping out criminals. It's caused by inequality, hunger, poverty, desperation, hatred, bitterness, the cannibalistic rat race that is capitalist society. No matter how many people you kill, it's not going to change the fundamental problem if you don't address the underlying conditions.

Lacking this structural understanding, Kira essentially opted for the fascist solution, trying to suppress the contradictions of class society by force, and bludgeon a better world (or his version of it) into existence by eliminating the "undesirables" and compelling everyone else to operate according to a certain standard. I don't very well remember the later part of the show, but it seems to me that later on he starts talking about eliminating lazy people in addition to criminals, doesn't he? I might be wrong about this, because I always stop watching at the part where L dies (I don't like the show as much after that), but it seems to me that's the way he went. That's straight down the fascist course.

Kira came from the petit-bourgeoisie, born into a privileged middle-class family with a police chief for a father, possessing both the talents and the means to move into the social, economic and political elite (which he would certainly have done if he'd never found the Death Note; given his trajectory, he would never have had to work a low-paying manual-labor job in his life, would never have known want or hardship, but would have become a middle-class or upper-class professional, part of the elite). As such, despite how well-educated he was, his class perspective prevented him from understanding the structural reality of society. He had an individualistic outlook that caused him to see the world as divided between good and bad individual people, rather than between social and economic classes, between the haves and have-nots, between those who succeed and prosper and those who are left behind or destroyed. He saw the world from the perspective of the upper classes, who benefit from the existing organization of society (even if they think certain aspects of it are problematic), and to whom the poor simply need to be controlled and forced to accept bourgeois morals and bourgeois norms in order to have an ideal, peaceful society. As such, he couldn't understand or identify with the social causes of crime.

However, even if he had understood these structural realities and adopted a revolutionary worldview, targeting the source of the problem rather than the symptoms of it, the Death Note still wouldn't have helped. An individual going around assassinating top political and economic figures wouldn't have changed the world any more than assassinating low-level criminals would do the same. Because again, the social, economic and political structures would remain intact. At best he might be able to deter some of the worst infractions by the ruling elite for a while. That's the best-case scenario. Worst-case scenario, the world would break down into chaos. For a picture of what the entire world might look like, see the Middle East right now where wars, government overthrows and economic devastation have caused chaos and a breakdown of virtually all order, allowing the emergence of fascistic and cult-like groups. Think of Iraq after Saddam Hussein. The one leader, monstrous though he was, was overthrown and murdered and no new structure was put in place to replace him. As such, Iraq descended into anarchy. It's been 13 years and the Iraqi people are still struggling to get their country back to normal. Daesh has ruled half the country for the last two years. Power vacuums combined with the already-existing problems of poverty, hardship, bitterness and social, ethnic and religious tensions are the perfect breeding grounds for such chaotic forces as Daesh. If Kira just started using the Death Note to assassinate world leaders like Saddam Hussein, the whole world would have been at risk of breaking down into chaos. Political order would have crumbled, public morale would collapse, death cults and extremist groups would have arisen, crime would have become worse than ever (thus defeating the point of using the Death Note in the first place), wars and rebellions could break out, perhaps something catastrophic like the use of WMDs by governments or extremist groups would have taken place (in the real world, Daesh and other takfiri groups have already been using chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria; there was just a poison gas attack in Aleppo the other day from some rebel group). In short, it could become an apocalyptic scenario.

A single person can't change the world alone, even with the Death Note. It neither works as a tool for suppressing crime and establishing bourgeois "order" within the existing framework, or as a tool for making revolution and replacing the existing framework with a new one. If there isn't mass organization, education and understanding, collective action against the socioeconomic structures of society, and a revolutionary program to create a new, sustainable socioeconomic system in place of the current one, nothing can change. Kira wanted to change the world, in his way, but neither his solutions nor his methods worked for that purpose, not in any permanent sense. At best he could reduce the problem and impose by force and fear an artificial "harmony" to some extent during his brief "reign", but although he fancied himself a god, he was still mortal and, once he died, the same problems he had set out to resolve in the first place would reemerge in full.

There's also the problem of him being corrupted by his unlimited, unchecked individual power. He already had the god pretension at the beginning, but I do think he genuinely believed in making a better world at the start. But over time, his god complex overcame his ideals. This is another problem of him acting alone. Lacking an ideology (he had vague ideals but not a concrete ideology) and a political program, having only himself and his notebook, he lost his perspective and, unable to fully and sustainably resolve the contradictions of society, his mission ultimately become more about himself than his ideals.

In the end, the Death Note, if it can be useful for a human at all in any way (good or bad), is only good for settling personal quarrels and facilitating personal quests for wealth and power. People like the Yotsuba corporation and Higuchi (even that proved unsustainable though, for various reasons). It's useless for solutions to problems of society as a whole, any way you look at it. You can't just kill your way to social harmony and world peace. Violence always accompanies political change, no great social, economic and political progress has ever been achieved without any violence at all, but the key thing is that it's subordinate to politics itself. Using the Death Note to make social change is just trying to change the world by yourself through individual terrorism, an unsustainable project doomed to fail. Kira could never have won; he was doomed from the minute he picked up the Death Note off the ground, regardless of what he tried to do with it. By using the Death Note, he ultimately destroyed himself in addition to everyone else.

At first I did kind of support him, but he went off the deep end completely (and pretty quickly, I might add) so I quickly began to hope he would get caught. Also, his death was perfect, all ego and wickedness, like it should have been.

Anyone who supports Kira should try living in countries like North Korea or Syria. Sure, there's technically very little crime on the streets (well, Syria might be a bad example at the moment, because of the war), but it's not real peace, just everyone trembling in terror.