This is a quick question emerging from out in the wild. A Death Note News reader wishes to pick your collective brains and whistle down your networks with this query - has Death Note ever been translated into Irish Gaelic?

I know it's never been done officially, but there may be fan-made dubs of the anime or scanlations of the manga by Irish Death Note fans somewhere.  We've both had a look on-line (she much more thoroughly than I), yet to no avail.

Does such a thing as Death Note Irish versions exist?  If so, could you please point her in the right direction.

Thanks in advance!  My apologies...

Go raibh míle maith agat roimh ré, mo bhráithre álainn na hÉireann.

Since the late 18th century - when racial science first reared its ugly head - there have been a dozen or more definitions of the Caucasian taxon, and which ethnicities it covers.  But as our goal is to assess the tag 'serial killer', the only one which matters here is what the FBI meant by Caucasian, when the Bureau made it a point of serial killing criterion.

Ethnologically Japanese, Light Yagami dodges a bullet in the FBI's definition of Caucasian - or 'white' as its literature elsewhere puts it - encompassing those races natively derived from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.  Kira doesn't count.

However, the notion that most serial killers are Caucasian is subject to fierce debate.  Even the FBI's own statistics show Caucasians account for only just over half - 52.1% - of serial killers. The prevailing argument amongst academics is that such murderers, who otherwise fit the profile, may be found throughout all racial classifications. But non-Caucasian serial killers are unlikely to be the focus of blanket media coverage; much less central to several books, biographies, dramatized TV documentaries and finally a major motion picture release. In fact, most are lucky if they're even tagged 'serial killer' by the under-reporting press.

The rule of thumb seeming to be that, in the media, Caucasians may be serial killers, but non-Caucasians are always 'just a murderer'.  It's less glamorous.

In short, Light Yagami may be a serial killer - albeit unlikely, as Asians made up just 0.7% of those profiled - but the US press is unlikely to bother with him. Ordinarily anyway.  As Kira, he made quite a splash in the world's media. But by the time he got there, Light was deemed Saviour and Messiah, rather than any negative type of mass murderer.

Less open to question are the next two items.  Serial killers tend to be aged late twenties to early thirties, and 92.3% of them were male.  When he first used the Death Note, Light was seventeen.  By the time he was forcibly made to finish killing, he was twenty-four.  Atypical then.  Nevertheless, he was indeed male.

Without knowing much about Japanese social hierarchies in comparison to what 'lower to middle class' might mean in American society, it's difficult to call the next criterion.  Would anyone else like to jump in here?  While the final one - was Kira Sociopathic? - is well beyond the scope of this analysis.  Hopefully it will be addressed in another article at a later date.

As for the rest of the data, eighty-eight of the serial killers profiled by the FBI came from Japan.  We can only assume that once of them was Light Yagami, while the other 87 were despatched by him via his Death Note by and by.  Unless, of course, we conclude that Kira wasn't a serial killer.  In which case, the latter figure leaps by one and all unanimously become victims of Kira's regime.

This section of classification seemed doomed to be unhelpful from the start.  Nor did it disappoint in that.  To my mind, the result remains inconclusive in assessment of Death Note's protagonist and his murderous tendencies, though more discussion may pay dividends as regards the last two points.

Nevertheless, we can trust the BSU's serial killer demographics to be internationally pertinent from now on, thus relevant in examining Light Yagami.

But to qualify as a serial killer, Kira needs to have incorporated cooling off periods between his killing sprees.  There is one very notable time of inactivity, when he was held under L's detention in a prison cell. However, that counts more as enforced abstinence from slaughter. Though voluntarily there, Light felt the caged, 24/7 surveillance to be fundamental to his own survival and continuance as Kira.  It was inactivity to ensure future activity.  That was all.

Was there any other occasion when Light Yagami paused his usage of the Death Note?  Without first setting up a series of secondary Kiras to do his killing by proxy?  I'm struggling to identify one.  Misa Amane; the Yotsuba Group; Teru Mikami; and Kiyomi Takada; all assisted in maintaining those relentless murders reaching across the globe, at Light's direct or indirect instigation, throughout the entirety of that seven year reign of terror.

It's difficult to see where any cooling off breaks occurred in their midst, let alone those regular enough for Kira to be considered a serial killer.

That would appear to be that. Kira cannot be a serial killer, if he doesn't fit all of the criteria.  However, he isn't the first to fail at this part of the classification. It's occurred in reality too - notably with Andrew Cunanan - leading criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky to suggest a hybrid tag of 'spree serial killer' or 'serial rampage killer' could be usefully employed.

And look how he describes this sub-section of serial killing:

Over the next pages, he goes on to say how spree serial killers suffer some kind of nervous breakdown which traps them in this predatory persona. They cannot stop, hence the lack of a cooling off period.  Nor can they retreat - 'they can never return back to their previous lives' (p 224) - they become the serial killer in all regards but inactivity.  They become it 24/7.

I think Kira fits the bill right there, completely.  Death Note's spree serial killer.

Finally, there's the fourth criterion - did Light Yagami kill for psychological gratification?  By which is meant that the motive wasn't material nor honour based (such as robbery, profit, revenge etc), but something much more internally self-fulfilling. 

A serial killer's motive for murder is typically slotted into four categories, subject to considerable over-lap.  Two of which are instantly game over, when we apply them to Death Note to see if psychological gratification was a motive in Kira's compulsion to kill.  In order from least relevance, they are:

The Power Controller

Doing it all to feel powerful; subjugating their victims in any way possible, just to have that rush of absolute domination.  Light touched here when he had prisoners across the world do strange things before their deaths.  But that wasn't really about power and control. It was merely testing his Death Note's capabilities.

The Hedonist

Thrill-seeking; pleasure pandering; killing because they can, and people are expendable.  Forensic psychologists further split this group into three sub-sections:  comfort, thrill and lust. Comfort hedonists are the closest serial killers get to robbery-based murders.  It's all about getting hold of the material possessions of their victims, or eliminating an obstacle to personal power.  Thrill hedonist serial killers want the adrenaline rush of causing terror and pain, whilst exerting absolute control over their victims.  Lust hedonists are your Jack the Ripper types, getting their kicks from mutilation, torture, dominance et al, but mostly what's implied on the label.

Light Yagami wasn't beyond this category.  His elimination of Lind L. Taylor, twelve FBI agents and Naomi Misora established that within the opening chapters of Death Note.  But it wasn't his main raison d'être.

In the USA, the BSU studied life histories of known serial killers. Though researchers warned that serial killers could very easily hold down steady jobs, raise families and otherwise seem like fine upstanding members of society, some less savoury factors commonly and frequently arose.

In all likelihood, the background information in a serial killer's profile will include elements from this list:

1. Alcoholism;
2. Animal cruelty;
3. Arsonist/Pyromaniac;
4. Biochemical/genetic abnormalities;
5. Bullied in childhood or adolescence by their peers;
6. Childhood abuse victim;
7. Compulsive behaviour;
8. Drug abuse;
9. Drug addicted or alcoholic parents;
10. Engaged in petty crimes (like shoplifting or vandalism) for the thrill or because they could, rather than any material need nor as action under peer pressure;
11. Isolated socially as children or adolescents;
12. Low self-esteem;
13. Pathological lying;
14. Perinatal head injury;
15. Powerlessness in the face of their own urges to kill/unable to prevent or stop actually killing;
16. Propensity to retreat into habitual daydreams or a rich fantasy world, as an escape from reality;
17. Ritualistic behaviour;
18. Severe memory disorders;
19. Sexual assault - perpetrator and/or victim in the past;
20. Sexual deviancy;
21. Suicidal thoughts/attempts at suicide;
22. Unhappy childhood, or periods of profoundly interrupted happiness in childhood;
23. Unstable family life during childhood - broken home; divorced parents; separation from family; or some other breach in the parent/child relationship - commonly seen.  Some studies suggest it's all about an absent father and domineering mother.

So how does the profile of a standard serial killer compare to Kira?  I have my thoughts, but I'll leave this one open to discussion.  Comment if you recognize anything from Light Yagami's past in there; or if you see nothing to fit him there at all.  Let's hash it out between us.

But for now, I think it's fairly determined that Kira IS a serial killer, only he's one of the emerging sub-section suggested by Peter Vronsky labelled 'serial rampage killer'.  Do you concur?

We've had a great deal of wonderful contributions to Death Note News during our Kira-centric inaugural Month of... event.  So many people have jumped on board, leaving us quite stunned and extraordinarily delighted back here.

From the least to the highest effort - in terms of talent, research or sheer hard work - there's nothing to choose between them all. We have no favouritism. They are equally amazing; on a par in eliciting thankfulness from all writers, translators and organisers here.

However, I have to admit that it was truly exciting to receive content from this latest participant in Month of Light Yagami. Thrilling to behold the process unravelling.

For no better reason than was there, peeping in over his cyber shoulder from the sidelines of Skype, as he researched, recorded, edited and mixed.

Yesterday, Lawliet director Ricardo Arechiga heard about our event for the first time. He was happy for us and wandered away to look at the archived collection of articles so far.  Heads up given, job done, I returned to work preparing for publication the next raft of content coming your way, thinking nothing more about it.  But then Rico was back. He was inspired. Really inspired. He was going to join in.

Through occasional comments passed back and forth via Skype, I witnessed that spark turn into ideas; whittled down into a plan. Then stayed on throughout a (coincidentally) joint all-nighter, wherein his Light Yagami: Hero or Villain vlog gradually came together.  A truly fascinating thing to watch appear piecemeal in cryptic messages - 'just laying down the audio', 'doing the visuals', 'rendering' - when its not a process with which I'm familiar.

The buzz was infectious. When the link came in, I settled back with snacks and deep anticipation to play it.  Like my computer chair and desk were transformed now into front row seats at a theatrical première.  It was indeed fabulous to view completed; one long night after first hearing a musing notion that it might come.

I do hope I haven't over-hyped it.  But I doubt that.   If you haven't already seen it, above is Riconius's opinion driven vlog - analysing Kira's culpability, morality and how we might perceive his actions overall.  Enjoy it.  I did immensely.

Anime actors Brad Swaile, Sergio Zamora and Kim Hasper are answering your questions backstage as we speak.  They ALL played Light Yagami, providing the voice for him in the English, Spanish (European) and German dubs of the Death Note anime respectively.

Each actor has a new profile page - which will later transform into their individual interviews conducted by all who sent in queries to be asked.  The buttons beneath their pictures below will take you to that seiyū's profile too.

To make life easier on all, we even translated the question form into English, Spanish and German.  Though any of those languages may be used to ask what you will of all three Light Yagami voice actors.

Death Note News writers and readers alike have been sharing their thoughts and research expertise on all things Yagami. Thus far, we've read profiles penned by us:

• Death Note Profile: Who is Light Yagami?
• Casting Kira: Light Yagami Actors Across the Globe

Philosophy:

• Nathaniel Overthinks Death Note #04: The Utilitarianism of Light Yagami
• The Concept of Kira: Can you Really say Light Yagami is the God of the New World? (Guest Post by Lua)

and Linguistics:

• Why is Light Yagami's Name Read as Yagami Tsuki? (Guest Post by Amaryllis)
  
• What's in a Name? The Reason Why Light Yagami is Called Kira in Death Note (Guest Post by Renchan)

In our aim to uncover the communities, forums, groups and other places where Light Yagami fans hang out - and to give such areas a little boost of publicity too - we had ComicVine's Light Yagami Forum respond, while also bigging up our own Pinterest Community Board for Kira fans.

Let us know if there are more out there!

We've had Kira cosplay galore!  In addition to the fabulous God of the New World above by Fausto the Endless (of whom more later in the month), the whole thing kicked off with Cayanna Carma as Light Yagami welcoming us to this event.

She returned later to answer questions about cosplaying Kira, as did Squad Six Cosplayers and Light Yagami.  We're still to hear from Maru-Light, whose insight is already in and queued waiting to be published.

There's been slightly less of a response from those penning Kira fan-fiction.  Matti gave it a go with Mu Amongst Fools; while the ubiquitous Maru-Light came clean on whatever happened to her co-authored Death Note novels The Redeemer Series.  Fascinating, even if you never read the books!

However, there may be more interest now that we've finally got our Death Note fan-fiction author questions up and running.  Will you be sharing your writing secrets there?

The lovely Tate Forkel started us off with the fan drawn Light Yagami artwork.  Arrowchild added her own to the Redeemer piece already mentioned above. But then nothing more.

Come on Kira artists!  We're all dying to see what you have created.  To a given value of 'dying' obviously; thought we'd better mention that, given the subject and circumstances.  You may be interested to note that you have also now got a series of questions aimed at uncovering your artistic know-how!

There's much more to come from whence all of this derived, so keep reading and don't forget that everything Light Yagami related this month is being archived for a permanent display: The C0llected Archives of Death Note News Month of Light Yagami.

And next month, Matsuda.  Are you ready?

The Redeemer Series began as a private passion project between myself and Andariel (Anda-Chan on DA) as we were entering into our own romantic relationship back in 2008. (We’re now engaged, living together and wedding planning).

We were cosplaying often as Light and Mello back then (and later L, B and Matt) and writing together became part of our raison d'etre. It was a full package deal, the writing feeding the cosplay and vise versa. We had a habit of telling our fellow DN friends about this huge fic we were working on, and they began asking us to read it, so after some thought we eventually relented and put Redeemer up on AFF.

From there the series seemed to generate an audience on its own. We rarely promoted The Redeemer Series much outside of our own DeviantArt accounts, and later, our own forum; but on the rare occasion I sought it out online to see if it had some presence, I often came across it on various Death Note fic rec lists, and even a listing on TV Tropes.com. (LOL)

It was fantastic to suddenly have an audience that didn’t just invest in reading our story, but reviewed and even joined our forum to chat all things Redeemer Series. We had fabulous artists doing fan art, we had an active Character Ask section, we were embroiled in discussion every day about the Death Note of our fic world, and we made some truly great and supportive friends (several of whom are still with us.)

So really, what happened?

Later on we had some of our nearest and dearest readers tell us that they could pinpoint just where the series started to fall apart. At some point in the fourth book, Sins of the Father, around the quarter mark, long after we reached what we felt was an apex in the finale of To Be or Not to Be and then cruised through a very alternative continuation supported largely by OCs in Our Time is Running Out, we started to lose momentum. 

We’d been writing about Death Note for five years. However, we were two writers (in my case a life-long writer) who sought to have real-world careers in writing, but were beginning to realize that we were spending all of our time writing about someone else’s work. It was fun, it was engaging, we loved it while it lasted, but we were beginning to long for something more and we weren’t getting any younger.

It wasn’t an immediate revelation. It came slowly as we pounded the keyboard to push through Sins of the Father. After all, we had two more huge books planned. We had enormous story arcs to cover! The nature of Kira’s God-ness was going to be explored in epic proportions! We were heading toward the End of Days!

Instead, what we were actually heading toward was the end of the Redeemer Series.

We were going to write a spinoff called I’m Not Okay (we were having a love affair with My Chemical Romance at the time). The spinoff centered on one of our OCs (his name was Adonais back then) with the Death Note characters as a peripheral presence. The idea was to tell Adonais’ origin story as a flashback novel, and lead into Sins, where he’d been coexisting as a Wammy’s student with the likes of L and Light. It was supposed to be a break for us, a way to get out and play with something new, and hopefully return to the Redeemer Series with renewed vigor. That was our plan.

But what happened was not according to plan.

Not long ago, we came across a blog post somewhere, belaboring our ‘underhandedness’ of ‘tricking’ our readers to read a book about an OC with promises of Death Note and then not delivering. “If they wanted to stop writing Death Note, just come clean and tell us, don’t trick us into reading about your OC.” That was the complaint, or something to that effect.

Let me say, it wasn’t that simple. If it was, we could have saved ourselves a lot of angst. After all, we weren’t lying to our readers; we were lying to ourselves.

Frankly, we weren’t ready to let go. It was a lesson we learned the hard way, writing I’m Not Okay. The more we wrote, the more that book began to do what it wanted apart from Death Note, but we kept trying to force the enduring intent that we were going to bring it all back around to the Redeemer Series. Slowly, our audience started to drop off, frustration began to show in reviews. The longer names like Kira and L and Mello were absent from the text, the less people stayed with us, and the more that happened, the more we began to wonder at what point did we have to accept the truth: that we’d moved on.

The readers that remained and invested honestly in our burgeoning original tale, weathered our indecisiveness, but started to agree that we needed to break it off. Not Okay was becoming its own thing, and to proceed without letting the book organically grow as itself, was proving a hindrance to the work and to our efforts. And clearly it was pissing off the people still holding out for L and Light to make an appearance.

So we decided to call it, and we removed I’m Not Okay from AFF and put the Redeemer Series on indefinite hiatus.

We squirrelled our new work off to our private forum where some of our long-term readers were keen to beta. From there, Pandora’s box syndrome kicked in and we realized there was a huge untapped OC cast with untapped potential just waiting to move in on our little story and blow it wide open.

Because all of this siphoned down from The Redeemer Series, there were initially some similarities between concepts we'd been exploring beyond canon when it came to characters like Beyond and L particularly. Those similarities eventually diluted until we can really just shout out to their original incarnates like a sentimental homage. 

However, as we planned the world of our new original universe, we realized there were still elements we'd incorporated in To Be and its compatriots that we wanted to explore and adapt. We began to pull some of these concepts back in, revisiting ideas we had for the Redeemer Series with new eyes as we constructed a world, while removed from Death Note, was not necessarily removed from our signature subjects.

Our explorations of madness and the asylum culture, our crazed characters who often speak in sing-song~ Our off-beat, anarchist, angst-ridden, pretty boys. That’s who we are as writers, and that’s what we have been building into our new work--The Breaking Across Devotion Series. Literally a tale about rock stars and serial killers. I’m not even kidding.

We made every attempt to spread the word about why the Redeemer books were coming down, but our reach is none too wide these days, and I know there are a great many readers out there who are angry and disappointed. Trust me, I get it and I’m sorry.

The Redeemer Series had a great long run. We had a lot of fun writing it, we had an amazing experience with the audience it garnered. We’re grateful and we thank you guys who latched on to it and enjoyed it so much. Redeemer itself is still public on AFF and won’t be going anywhere. It is undeniably, a Death Note fanfic.

However, I am going to echo what I’ve said repeatedly in statements about the series’ removal: that if you so happen to have downloaded copies of the novels, you are free to keep them for you own reading pleasure. Just please do not share them online, or post them for download, and please do not plagiarize them (have some humanity, I beg you).

Anda and I are hard at work on The Breaking Across Devotion Series (BAD for short) and are very active on our new forum, CocoaCoveredGods.

Anyone is free to join if they want to get in touch with us, want to ask us anything about Redeemer, or want to check out what still exists of the Redeemer Series content regarding the removed books, Character Asks, fan art, etc. And yes, there’s even a thread where we speak to the unsolved mysteries of the series and where future plans were heading, so what was left unfinished can at least have some closure. (Was Matt ever going to die as predicted? Short answer: no.)

We’re also open to betas of the new series. Since we’re planning to publish, it’s not open membership, but if you're interested, come over and let us get to know you, get to know us, and we’ll be more than happy to consider you as a beta. Chances are, if you enjoyed the Redeemer Series, what we’re doing now will be right up your alley. It’s just as dark, and twisted and saturated in atmosphere as books like To Be, Our Time and Sins were.

I hope you enjoy my piano version of Light's Theme from Death Note.  Great theme for a great character. 

I loved Light as a character, but he was at such a huge advantage against L that it was nearly impossible for him to lose and yet he was still caught (he managed to get out of his capture but the rules were clearly written in the Death Note, anybody could've found a way out with help from such a powerful device). 

From what I saw, Light was an intelligent yet arrogant teenager, and his over-confidence was his downfall. I never considered L and Light to be intellectual equals.  I agree with what L said - Light's goals and views were childish, a black and white concept of right and wrong. Which was due to a lack of life experience.  That's how I saw it anyway.

Captain FriteNite is a wonderful human being and I’m lucky to have come across her.  She is a CreepyPasta narrator and writer on YouTube.  Please do go check  out her work.

However she has been diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Chronic Pain Syndrome. She is receiving Chemotherapy to try and treat it. She has fallen on hard times. She’s a wonderful human being and I’m lucky to have come across her.

On top of all this bad luck, her computer has broken.  There is a donation page for her. Anything you can give will help.  Even if it’s a small help, The Captain really needs a break.

I’ve started a blog where I will give tips on composition, piano playing, improvisation, playing by ear and setting up YouTube channels - Lucas King Piano Site.  I've also created a Wattpad where I upload stories. If you’re a writer yourself, it’ll be great to hear what you think!

Meanwhile, I’m taking commissions too. Head over to my website for details!!  Any donations would be really appreciated, any money donated will be used to get new instruments and other equipment to improve this channel. Here's my PayPal address - LucasKing1884@gmail.com.  Thank you so much for your support.

Finally I've created a new tutorial and MIDI download channel.  Do check it out.

All of this in addition to my usual haunts:

• Ask me a question on Ask.FM
• Like me on Facebook
• Follow me on Twitter
• Follow me On Soundcloud
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube

In fact, one could theorize that something is exactly the sort of thing Kira does due to the lack of a specific and necessary set of conditions that make up the concept of Kira. Kira, as a concept, is not required to necessarily be Light Yagami nor to satisfy the conditions of what one understand as Light Yagami even if Light himself can satisfy the conditions to being Kira.

Kira is allowed to become the God of the New World because there is nothing that disproves that equivalence. Not only that, the God of the New World in itself is a concept that requires a definition and that definition isn’t restricted to being Light Yagami. If its definition is that the God of the New World is the exact same being who behaves exactly like Kira does, to say Kira isn’t the God of the New World would be wrong. But Kira isn’t defined as being Light in the world of the series (we, as an audience, know but the characters are working with a broad concept that has little to no definition). The same issue arises from the equivalence Kira = Justice. If Kira is defined in terms of something or someone who punishes evildoers, one can argue that, in some sense, his actions are just without arguing Light Yagami himself is Justice.

What the detectives of the series do is to take away the vagueness of that definition in order to take away Kira’s power. The more they limit the definition of Kira (it’s a human, it’s a male, it’s a killer, it’s a Japanese person, it’s someone in the task force, it’s the second L), the more they limit the possible equivalences. If the God of the New World means Kira and Kira means a Japanese student who is nothing more than a vigilante killer, it’s quite unlikely there will be an equivalence with abstract ideas such as Justice because it would be to say Justice is a Japanese student who is a vigilante killer. All the Wammy’s detectives recognize the power of the usage of an undefined name and they not only humanize the idea of Kira and give it form but they strip him of his power with each characteristic added as a requirement to fulfil that concept.