Don’t forget that 方が does not have to be followed by いい, it can be followed by any property. It just bears the meaning of “more” or “rather”. Putting this together with 世の中の為になる, we still end up naturally at your conclusion of “guys who had better be killed for the good of society” 
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Ah, thanks for this. I vaguely knew it, but the way grammar is presented as a collection of set phrases/grammar points makes me sometimes forget that there is more flexibility in the language.
That’s exactly how I interpreted ばかり when I first read the sentence. Now that I was trying to break it down though, I wondered about that に, and looking it up, ばかりに seems to be its own grammar point giving a negative reason (however, as I said above, so-called grammar points can sometimes be misleading). Since 見える can stand just fine on its own, I thought maybe the に belonged to ばかり instead. Not sure about any of this, mind you.
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Maybe we shouldn’t go on about this too long 
, but I just don’t understand what that means (“giving a negative reason”) what is giving a negative reason for what in this sentence?
Edit: looking at those grammar points, the pattern seems to be AばかりにB where B is something bad that happened as a result of A. If you apply that to this sentence, then 「見えてくる」 would have to be a bad thing that happened (because of all those 奴). I don’t really understand how that fits.
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I tend to agree that it’s plain old ばかり. As I said, the existence of the grammar point tripped me up. I thought it might be a negative consequence left unsaid (I see that I’ll have to kill them all or something), but it requires many more mental acrobatics to make it fit, whereas ばかり alone just clicks.
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Thank you all for the explanation of the page 26.
It illustrates the challenge to correctly translate the sentence that looks easy because all components look very familiar which gives the wrong comfort impression.
In this particular case it is the set expressions 為になる and 見えくる that set me off.
I am pretty sure that I get things wrong all the time without realising. I guess the only way to fix this - not to expect that grammar can be learned from emerging alone. Do you agree?
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Okay, got my book. I’ll try to catch up. Not sure how difficult this one is, but I’ve seen the anime so hopefully memory will help out.
I’m not sure. Probably a combination of both is best (as always ).
I haven’t studied grammar in a very structural manner (I dislike the JLPT grammar lessons because they present grammar too much as something for which there is an ‘exact’ translation - whereas so much depends on context) and I think I picked up quite a lot through emergence (but maybe I don’t actually know as much as I think I do 
).
Everyone learns in different ways, so you should discover what works best for you. Perseverance is the most important, I think 
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I’ve finished Chapter 1. Few things:
Page 50
国際刑事警察機構会議
Nice to see 10 kanji in a row, when in English it’s simply Interpol meeting 
Page 52
Here is the rule #3 and translation printed in manga:
名前の後に人間界単位で４０秒以内に死因を書くと、その通りになる。
If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the person’s name, it will happen.
English version is totally missing the part of 人間界単位! (Sort of: …within the human realm unit of time equa to 40 seconds)
Page 52, Rule 5 - is this a logical error??
Rule 5: After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
Logical contradiction
This rule means that the Death Note system should have a waiting period of 6m40s after the cause of death is written, so that the user can add details. When dealing with the biker, Light had written 事故死 for all names, and I do not think there was a time skip of 6m40s before car accident has happened.
Love to hear your thoughts on the matter!
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On logical contradiction
I did wonder about that too, but looking back I think it’s entirely possible that it’s nearly 7 minutes from writing to accident. Light doesn’t know how the name is spelled, so he tries out several variations. However, it’s his first try that is the correct one, so the countdown starts from there. He writes 6 more variations, and pauses to think whether there are any more. He likely also paused to think before writing each new variation. He then looks at his watch, we don’t know for how long. It’s after this that things start to happen, with the girl escaping and the man rushing after her. A bit of a stretch, but it could have been 6m40s. There could have been more frames to show time passing, but they wouldn’t really serve much purpose.
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I wondered about a different thing.
Can a customer really write something while 立ち読み (nonetheless, inside an unsold comic book)?
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I should hope not! He does it as surreptitiously as possible, and he’s hidden from anyone in the shop by the shelf behind him. I would think it is very much frowned upon. Reading without paying is one thing, keeping notes in the margins quite another.
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Logical Contradiction
assuming this is not a story and it’s reality…there are no clocks telling us how long this took…most people could write a few names in their native language in 40 seconds…once you start writing the details the clock extends?..seems like not a big deal
then reality…seems like I have this conversation with my other half once a week…wait that doesn’t make sense some far reaching oversimplified explanation for something in anime or whatnot that’s not accurate but overly simplified…
my usual response goes like this…so you don’t have a problem with the magic, monsters, flying buildings?!..but you have a problem with this one thing? Happens with K-dramas too…my mantra has just become…“K-drama/Anime Go With IT” (which half the time means be quiet so I can hear the Japanese speech )
Slice of Life doesn’t seem to have this problem (not being fantasy)…Death Note is not (hopefully not?) slice of life
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Probably already not of much interest anymore but I remembered this while reading:
So just had the same thing while reading Slam Dunk. The manager of the basketball club 彩子 makes fun of a player which 晴子 likes and 晴子 then says: いくら彩子さんでも許せない !
So it seems to be a pretty set phrase meaning what you speculated with “even (to the extend of) NAME”
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More on 6m40s
I just don’t believe that the gang would harass the girl for so long without reaching some gruesome conclusion. Also my timing for the scene is influenced by anime where it went really quick, in about 40 seconds, plus his writing was super fast. Oh well…
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6m40s
always the case with television/movie time… 20 seconds left to cut the red of blue wire… 5 mins of discussion…btw you already failed…oh wait time must have stopped exactly 1 sec left haha
what I would love to know (if anyone knows)… why 6/40…why these nos? feels arbitrary…maybe its 42 but so much of this story is really well thought out…
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That’s probably because 6m40s is exactly 400 seconds. Guess the author wanted it to be a multiple of 40 and it has 4 in the name.
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I think the 見えてくる part here doesn’t have anything to do with “to help”. I’ve also translated this in jisho and DeepL and you can get it translated as, “in sight”.
I had to look up a lot of words to piece this sentence together, but here goes my breakdown:
こうなると- “It’s gotten to the point of” (something like, “It’s come to this”)
どいつもこいつも- Everyone/All of them
殺した方が世の中ためになる奴- People whose deaths would benefit society (this one is pretty tricky but I treat it all as one long noun modification string, “People whose deaths would be beneficial for society”)
ばかり- only (here being referred to as “Only people whose deaths would be good for society”
見えてくる- I also want to automatically translate this as 見てくる “to do the favor of looking” from all my textbooks, but its not 見て, it’s 見えて as I said above, I saw this translated as, “in sight”.
So ultimately he seems to be saying something along the lines of , “It’s gotten to the point where no matter where you look only people whose deaths would be beneficial to society in sight.”
I think Lights just looking around him and only seeing people he deems as “bad people who either are harming others or have no benefit to society” surrounding him. It’s consistent with his philosophy on how the world has become “rotten”. It’s always his justification for becoming Kira.
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Yeah, all the 4 relations, and their connection to death for being sound alike =)
Later in the end of Chapter 3, it said the time can be manipulated.
Also, I think no one dies before Light finish writing.
I’d say that’s something that could happen. The time limit is 6 minutes and 40 seconds to write out the details about someone’s death. Whether you’re finished or not as that time limit passes, what you have managed to write will take effect. 
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