It’s difficult to argue Quillsh Wammy isn’t morally questionable.

We know he is willing to assist with the imprisonment and torture of people that he, at that point of the story, has no evidence of being guilt (which still wouldn’t excuse things like torture but could explain his willingness to comply).

He has L’s word for their guilt and one could say he trusts L to be right. Even if that’s the case, Watari arranged for the death of a criminal to be on television so L could conduct a test.

Just through examples from the Kira case, one cannot say Watari only does what is right and good in the eyes of common sense morality.

Knowing Mr. Wammy established several orphanages, it’s easy to think, like Matsuda says, and say Watari was a great man.  Someone who is a brilliant inventor and who uses their wealth to house orphans around the globe doesn’t sound like a bad person.

Given how Watari acts in the Kira case, we know he has no issues with doing questionable things in order to accomplish a task.

In this case, could Watari be stealing geniuses for his project? The children at his institutions are supposed to be orphans but it’s clear he isn’t doing this out of kindness in an attempt to provide them a loving home.

If they are orphans, not only they have nowhere to go, no one to reach out to, and are forced to stay, but they have no ties holding them back.

The children are taught to look for what entertains them, but they are also given a fake choice as they grow up. They are raised to compete with each other in order to become L’s successor and, for that to happen, they have to learn to want to become L’s successors.

Blood types in Japan happen to be incredibly popular, to the extent to where in a character biography, the blood type of a character is often shown last in order to tease the fans.

Blood types are associated with numerous personality traits, often giving just as much information as Western horoscopes.

In many shows, characters are sometimes given personality traits due to their blood type before they are even given a character design.

It is entirely unsurprising that blood types are such a fascinating topic in a manga called Death Note, centering around quite a bit of forensics and police action.

In this case, however, the meaning is a bit less literal and more analytical.

As it turns out, it means quite a lot. Characters that have a B blood type tend to be the most practical of the blood types. This is certainly true in a character like Wammy who, though pragmatic, has shown to be quite practical in his execution of tasks.

B-type characters are also known to become specialists in whatever they become interested in, and a few examples of this include Wammy’s great skill with cooking and his perfect marksmanship.

An interesting piece of information is that B-type characters tend to follow their own rules and prefer to be their own bosses.  That most certainly sounds like Watari, as he basically formed his own empire and is his own boss.  He is a very independent man that basically does what he likes, including abducting children and turning them into terrifying detective geniuses (sorry, couldn’t help myself).

B-types tend to be the Genki-type characters, as already stated in the Matsuda article about blood types. For the sake of recap, a “genki” character is a cheerful, well-meaning character. Genki could be translated quite well as hyper, or impulsive, or even cheerful.

At first glance, this does not sound like a blood type that should house a character like Watari, but on the other side of the personality spectrum, B-types could also manifest as characters who are very thoughtful, to the extent to where they do not express emotion easily. Many people would describe them as ‘cold’, or ‘analytical’, which is an interpretation that suits quite a bit better.

I would argue that Wammy is a very impulsive man, as you do not entirely plan out a career as varied as his. You have to be somewhat impulsive to decide to run an Orphanage for Gifted Youth. They are also known as being unconventional to a degree that is not accepted widely by the public, and as stated, I believe that Wammy is unconventional in a way.  Because of this, the B-blood type suits him.

There is little to no question about the unethical basis of the system behind Wammy’s House.

We are shown a place with barely any adult supervision in which the children are allowed to be aggressive or behave however they please, with a warden who seems to care very little for the children under his care to the point of simply letting one of them walk out and expecting another to do the same.

Not only that but the house itself seems to have almost no furniture.

In the story, it may not seem so odd since, by the time we are introduced to Wammy’s House, we are aware it isn’t just a common orphanage housing children. But that only makes the existence of such place even more disturbing.

It’s important to point out that they are not acting for the sake of justice or in the name of justice. They act as if them themselves are the embodiment of justice.

In this sense, they can do no wrong because their actions are just, they are right because they are their actions.

For example, to sacrifice the Mafia in order to get a chance to capture Kira was a selfish action; Mello wasn’t acting in the name of justice. And it was because it was a selfish decision considering his own goals that he acts as if he is justice. Those lives are worth less than capturing this criminal.

This is an educational system Watari established for a reason canon doesn’t explore. Why would he want to indoctrinate children to believe their own conclusions and decisions, even when perceived as selfish ones, were right not only to themselves but to the world?

None of the Wammy’s kids wonder if Kira could possibly be right as we see Matsuda doing. They know he is a criminal; they know they have to stop him.

If we consider they are meant to solve crimes, it could be Watari actually had an altruistic goal in mind such as world peace. But there is no interference from him in the direction those children take, and, in fact, quite a few ex-Wammy’s kids are willing to become criminals in order to achieve a goal or prove a point.

No-one looks for meaning much in manga character names, at least insofar as they relate to foreigners. By long standing tradition, as long as it sounds about right, it'll do.  Which is why the Death Note universe brings us such corkers as Ill Ratt, Backyard Bottomslash and any number of others.

So looking for the meaning behind the name Quillsh Wammy, Watari or any other moniker linked with Death Note's L handler would, on the surface, seem futile. But maybe not, and since when has that ever stopped us anyway.

Let's start with the easy one - the name meaning of Watari.

Watari is a pseudonym taken by Mr Wammy whenever he represents L publicly: acting as his spokesperson or point of contact generally; else wise conveying a laptop in order that L might communicate with the rest of the world.

Watari is a Japanese word.  There's even a town called it (Watari-Cho), within a district of the same name (Watari-Gun) in Miyagi. Not to mention the phenomenon of omi-watari, breaking up and carrying sharp-edged ice floats across a nearby lake and away along its river.  Plus the Japanese bird Watari Dori, literally 'bird of passage' and the words for tight-rope walker - tsuna watari.

By now, a few common denominators should be presenting themselves.

Cherry blossom in Japan is called sakura.  A common enough name for Japanese women, and one about to take its place in the pantheon of Death Note owners and serial mass murderers in the persona of Sakura Aoi.

A character in the forthcoming movie Death Note: Light Up the New World (2016), Ms Aoi is advertised as being the most deranged and deadly Kira ever to have scribbled monikers in a shinigami's notebook.

She has no ideological standpoint, just to kill, kill, kill, which means that her victims can't even console themselves with the fact that they're improving a rotten world, as per Light Yagami's justice ridden Kira. Not that any of them were probably thinking that anyway. They were just getting on with the dying in agony of a sudden onset heart attack.

There's nothing romantic nor symbolic of the doomed lover/tragic hero killed too soon in Sakura Aoi's terror reign of indiscriminate slaughter.

Previously, the main showing for the name Sakura was the TV station of the same name, wherein support for Kira was swift from the start, and Kira's Kingdom was founded.

Moreover, Sakura TV's mob rallying nearly got Near killed and did indirectly cause the death of police officer Ukita.

Kirsch and Kirushu are easy to translate.  They both mean 'cherry', or more precisely the dark cherry brandy that you get from double distilling the Morello cherry. It turns up in Japan as Kirushu Sake.

Known throughout its homeland of Germany and Switzerland as Kirschwasser (Cherry Water), and often used in Swiss fondue or German Black Forest Gateaux to give them that tart cherry taste.

When we embarked upon our dead end quest to find the origin of Quillsh Wammy's name, the closest we came to the surname was its match for a family living in 19th century Prussia (modern day Germany).

With a fan-fiction writers penchant for free association, that pretty much confirms Quillsh Wammy's origin as German, or his ethnicity at least.

Which brings us to the other cherry blossom inured individuals out fighting a war to the death - just as the Wammy kids were raised to do - namely the kamikaze pilots of World War Two.

Japanese fighter planes often had cherry blossom painted on the outside, while setting off to sacrifice themselves in suicide missions sometimes carried cherry branches abloom in the cockpit with them.

n addition to evoking a sense of national spirit - cherry blossom as the kana of a nation - there was plenty of propaganda (political speeches; popular songs etc) which likened the valiant war dead to that intensely flowering, swiftly falling bloom.

An early sub-unit of kamikaze bombers was actually called Yamazakura - wild cherry blossom.

It could’ve been boredom. Watari is shown to be an old man; it’s possible he has seen what he wanted to see and has done what he wanted to do. He’s an inventor, a creative mind, and he could be following this unpredictable child to see what he would do. Surely, boredom could be a motivation.

But what does it say for his morality that he allowed a young child to go unpunished for beating up his house-mates and hoarding toys meant to be shared?

More than that, he actually rewarded L’s behavior, showing him attention and giving him whatever he asked for even when that meant taking a monetary risk. 

Although curiosity born out of boredom could be the reason Watari singles out L, it doesn’t explain the reasoning that created the circumstances that allowed him to find a child like L.

The idea behind his orphanages was grooming children who met a certain standard to become the moral compass of the world, and, by choosing this particular child to become the standard the other children should follow, Watari himself chose this child as the ideal one.

To make a choice like that, Quillsh Wammy had to be particularly confident on his own morality, his own sense of justice and his own intelligence. He had to be sure he was right, that was he was doing and the possible grief he would cause was worth it.

If Watari set out to find a child who could become Justice in the world, his resolve was not to raise children nor was it to provide them a loving home.

He established a system that allowed him to find someone he considered capable of being justice and provided this person with all resources required. He modified the system in place just enough to create another person based on the standard is first choice produced.

That being the case, we can say Watari considered the common good to be indubitably more important than personal well-being.