For the record I'm an Agnostic, but this baby has Lucifers fall from glory written all over it. First off most of symbolism is going to be just that. It symbolizes, represents another idea. It isn't a direct substitute. Anways, Light is symbolic of Lucifer. Lucifer is all so commonly referred to as the Angel of "Light" or simply translated as simply the ["Light" bearer.] The origin of sin also came from Lucifer: wanting to be God and creating his perfect society. Sound familiar? The apostle Paul tells us that Satan is able to transform himself into an angel of light when it best suits his purposes (see 2 Corinthians 11:14-15). And it is Satan's plan to make his work, along with the work of his agents, to appear like the work of God. Thus he can deceive more people. Likewise, Kira decieves the masses as well as the investigation when he became simply Light for deception. Arrogance, pride, and deception: all fundamental characteristics of Light and Lucifer.
Transgressing a bit here to the "Garden of Eden" apples are symbolic of the "forbidden fruit of knowledge." In both the intro and outro, Light and Ryuk are some how exchanging the apple. This "fruit" of power is the death note, as seen when the apple fades into the death note at the end of the intro. Since Light is just mortal, the power of the death note corrupts him.
Back to the characters... L symbolized Jesus [L-Lord?] He was selfless and, when traced, died for the sins of others. Kind of interesting to note that the only time he closed his eyes in the entire series is when he died. Which is also cool because Light died in the exact same fashion as L did. They were both killed by shinigami, and both had the same eye closing sequence, possibly due to the shared fates made with the handcuffs. Mello and Near resembled the Archangels Michael and Gabriel respectively. Michael was a soldier in God's army against Lucifer, giving Mello the more aggressive persona. Meanwhile Gabriel's attribute was awareness. I'm guessing to be aware of what's near, and analyzing the battlefield.
Well that was fun, probably not what was intended, but it ended up having a lot of relevence. Now, while the ending was pretty good, I think it could have been better if it followed the possible allegory it set up. God didn't destroy Satan because it wouldn't have answered the charges against God's intention. In the case of death note, it dealt with man's free will to choose to be good or evil. Anyways God merely cast him out of heaven to show the universe what his "better society" would ultimately evolve to. I feel that a better ending would have been if Kira ultimately ended up in some sort of hell. A place which everyone was evil and the option of killing the entire population would leave him alone. Alone to rule his perfect society with no one to rule over. I was hoping for a possibility of this when the second intro ends with his world shattering and Light appearing in a grey desolation, possibly the shinigami realm. I got my hopes up when Ryuk mentioned that those who use the Death Note go to neither heaven nor hell, but I guess in the last episode it was revealed that the path for all humans is nothingness. poop.
