高校生か死神っぽい動機 meaning

Question

There's this scene in this LN where the main character unexpectedly accepted an invitation to a karaoke, and when questioned about it, the character responded by saying:

「やることもなかったし」

Then one character from the rest of the group responded by saying:

「うむ、退屈だったから。高校生か死神っぽい動機で大変よろしい」

I'm not sure as to what "高校生か死神っぽい動機" is supposed to mean

My first guess is that it is something like:

[ 高校生か死神 (か) ]っぽい動機

With the clause in the square brackets being applied to the っぽい.

As in a motive that can either be high school student-ish or grim reaper-ish. But it seems kind of like a stretch.

Answer 1

Your grammatical interpretation is fine. It's just "a (typical) high-school-student- or or grim-reaper-ish motive". This 死神っぽい動機 is almost certainly a reference to this famous 死神, who interfered with humans because he was "bored".

_{(Source: DEATH NOTE, 1st episode)}