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Did Kira Fail by Punishing not Preventing Crime? Leila Lawliet M Thinks Not

25/2/2016

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Opinion piece written by Leila Lawliet M for Month of Light Yagami on Death Note News.  The rest of this post is given over to and penned by her.
Not long ago, I watched a video by YouTuber Onision. In this video, Onision basically says that Light Yagami's mistake is not considering PREVENTING crime, as opposed to punishing criminals who've ALREADY done bad things.

And by preventing crime, I mean writing for example, "Anyone who THINKS of committing a crime will be killed by the power of this notebook, before they get to actually fulfil their intentions."

I disagree, because preventing crimes by killing anyone who intends to commit them makes deaths looks like coincidences or normal deaths. In other words, if you were to hear of the death of a certain person of which no one knows the intentions, it would've NEVER occurred to you there's someone out there "passing righteous judgement", which we all know is one of Light's ultimate goals, to make Kira famous and worshipped.
On the other hand, Light's method made people aware of Kira's existence, the existence of an entity playing the role of God, or a really powerful judge, now that the deceased are known to the public as criminals, therefore changing their mentalities and making them think twice before trying to kill/steel/rape...

Another valid argument,is the following: imagine if someone thought really hard about killing another person, even prepared for it and intended it deeply. But, this person has a final wake up from his conscience five seconds before stabbing the victim-to-be, and ends up not killing anyone.

Would Onision's method work here? Wouldn't this method have killed the future-criminal before his conscience stepped in?
Kira - Somebody passing righteous judgement - Death Note manga
I think yes, because all that sentence written in Death Note needs in order to be applied is a strong willingness to kill, which is present in the example.

But then again, that's just my wicked over-analysis and my own point-of-view to which you are free to reply.
Kira's Mistake Opinion piece by Leila Lawliet M

Posted as part of

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Shared Birth Date Phenomenon of Death Note Kira Actors - Mathematician Richard Mak Explains How Such a Thing is not Only Possible, but Inevitable

23/2/2016

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Six of the twenty-two actors who have played Light Yagami share their birthday with another in their rarefied group.  Had the Death Note anime's German dub Kira Kim Hasper been born a day later, he would have made it a triple whammy for one date.

To the untutored mind it seems like magic, or the greatest, weirdest coincidence imaginable.  But it isn't magic, it's mathematics according to Richard Mak, and he's a bit like Near when it comes to the old calculations.

Death Note Light Yagami Actors' Shared Birthday Phenomenon

Take a look at this list of birthdays for Death Note actors in the role of Kira across various adaptations.  Something remarkable soon comes to light:
  1. Unknown - Louie Paraboles - Philippines
  2. Unknown 1977 - José Leonardo - Brazil
  3. March 2nd 1977 - Leung Wai Tak - China
  4. March 20th 1975 - Manuel Campuzano - Mexico
  5. April 6th 1982 - Kwang-Ho Hong - Korea
  6. April 25th - - Andy Kelso, USA
  7. May 2nd 1964 - Sergio Zamora - Spain
  8. May 15th 1977 - Krisztián Kolovratnik - Hungary
  9. May 15th 1982 - Tatsuya Fujiwara - Japan
  10. February 21st 1990 - Flavio Aquilone - Italy
  11. June 8th 1983 - Mamoru Miyano - Japan
  12. July 13th 1979 - Alexis Tomassian - France
  13. August 5th 1975 - Kim Hasper - Germany
  14. August 6th 1981 - Kenji Urai - Japan
  15. August 6th 1988 - Masataka Kubota - Japan
  16. August 13th 1974 - Vadim V Prokhorov - Russia
  17. October 12th 1987 - Hayato Kakizawa - Japan
  18. November 30th 1965 - Li Tang Jing - Taiwan
  19. December 7th 1970 - Radoslav Poplonkowski - Poland
  20. December 17th 1968 - Yeong-Seon Kim - Korea
  21. December 17th 1994 - Nat Wolff - USA
  22. December 26th 1976 - Brad Swaile - Canada
To see where and how each played Light, consult:
Casting Kira: Light Yagami Actors Across the Globe
Krisztián Kolovratnik Hungarian Light Yagami dub actor
Tatsuya Fujiwara Light Yagami movie actor
Krisztián Kolovratnik and Tatsuya Fujiwara share a birthday on May 15th
Kenji Urai Light Yagami musical actor
Masataka Kubota Light Yagami TV actor
Kenji Urai and Masataka Kubota share a birthday on August 6th
Yeong-Seon Kim Korean Light Yagami dub actor
Nat Wolff US Light Yagami movie actor
Yeong-Seon Kim and Nat Wolff share a birthday on December 17th
So what you've got here is a well-known 'birthday problem'. If you're in a room with significantly less than 366 people, it turns out it's already very likely to have two people with the same birthday.

For the sake of simplicity let's assume that February 29th doesn't exist, which shouldn't affect calculations too much, but also that somebody is equally likely to be born on every day of the year. The latter is obviously not true because there are certain times of year where more babies are born than others for various reasons, but it still shouldn't take away the basic argument here.

Let's first think about the probability that *nobody* shares a birthday - after all, if you know the probability that nobody shares a birthday, you know the probability that at least two people share a birthday! Consider this:
  • Person 1 doesn't have anybody to share a birthday with yet.
  • Person 2 has a 364/365 chance to not be born on the same day as person 1.
  • Person 3 has a 363/365 chance to not be born on the same day as person 1 and 2.
and so on.  Following this and calculating it out, it turns out that you only need 23 people in a room to have a 50% chance of two sharing a birthday, and 70 people for a 99.9% chance!
Another way of looking at it which may be easier to understand is this:

Suppose you have a room filled with N people [Matti helpfully supplies image to illustrate point - see right], where N is any whole number (because you can't have half a person, unless it is a corpse...).  
  • Person 1 has N-1 people to check his birthday with.
  • Person 2 has N-2 people to check his birthday with (because we don't want to check person 1 again).
  • Person 3 has N-3 people to check his birthday with.
and so on.

That means that in a room of 23 people, or N=23, then person 1 (23-1) has 22 people to check his birthday with, person 2 (23-2) has 21 people to check his birthday with, and so on... You end up having 253 possible combinations of people, and so 253 possible birthday checks, which is a lot!

By these maths, it's actually pretty unexpected that the twenty-two aforementioned Light Yagami actors have three pairs of people sharing a birthday. 
Death Note Maths: A room filled with N

Supposed room filled with N
There is one important thing to consider here: it is probably fair to assume that these people are fairly unrelated. Because of this, one pair of birthdays doesn't make another pair more or less likely. Considering there are 7 billion people in the world and these actors were picked from that number, there is nothing to connect their birthdays unless their parents knew each other and agreed to have a baby on the same date (which would be impressive in and of itself!)

Actually working out specific numbers is quite difficult. I took a quick look at my university's digital library and couldn't find any research papers on anything beyond the canonical birthday problem (i.e. purely looking at the probability of two people sharing a birthday).

Nevertheless, the Kira Actors Birthday Phenomenon pings against a known mathematical problem, and the probability pans out.

Posted as part of

Month of Light Yagami
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What If Light Yagami Wasn't Japanese? What Would Death Note Look Like Then?

22/2/2016

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Would Kira have been Kira if he wasn't Japanese?  What if he'd been Welsh? Or Somali? From Uzbekistan or France?  Would an American Light Yagami have targeted criminals with such gusto? Would a Tibetan Kira's motivation have been the same?

Death Note is a Japanese story, whatever its global appeal, and much of what occurs within it is infused with Japanese culture, morality and mores. Certain stances of etiquette, expectation and projected outcomes could only have happened in Japan.

Would an Icelandic parent have stood by and let their home and family be subject to such surveillance? Could a Briton have been persuaded to volunteer themselves for torturous weeks of detention without charge? And would the perpetrators have been allowed to get away with it, if their victim actually agreed?  My cynical self says yes. But that's by the by.
Death Notes dropping globally

The Death Note really could have fallen anywhere in the world
It's wrong to generalize based on national stereotypes, but intriguing to surmise the outcome had the Death Note fallen anywhere else in the world. Or how much Light Yagami's inherent Japaneseness affected the manner in which it was used; the motivation, thought processes and justifications that he passed through along the way; and the profile of those he killed, however vague their points of commonality may be.

What if the shinigami's notebook of death had landed in Syria?  Would war crimes have factored much sooner in the programme than it occurred to Light to do so?  Would Mexicans have taken on drug barons? Or those in the Niger Delta started on the profit-ridden oil polluters of fresh water -  environmental evils trumping thuggish anti-social behaviour in the street?  Callous corporations and white collar criminality could well come first in many an Industrialised, Capitalist nation.  While localised gangs and small-time, blue collar crime would occupy erstwhile Kiras from other lands.

How about your own?   If the Death Note had dropped into your neighbourhood, how might Kira look then?  And would (s)he act anything like Light Yagami? 

The discussion is open.

Posted as part of

Death Note News Kira Month
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The Unattainable Perfect World - Excerpt from an Essay about Kantian Ethics and Kira by Andrew Capuano

19/2/2016

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Reproduced with permission from an essay originally, and fully, published at DEATH NOTES: an online source for Death Note Analysis and Discussion
(links at the end)

by Andrew Capuano


If someone intentionally carries out a horrendous deed in an attempt to create a beneficial result, does that make it right?

It's one of those questions that people have pondered over for ages. Some say that it would depend on what the action and result were, though others would argue the means can not simply be forgotten because of the way things happened to turn out. If the goal was the ultimate good imaginable, would it matter what was done to obtain it?

This question is deeply examined in the manga, Death Note, which is written by Tsugumi Ohba, and illustrated by Takeshi Obata.
Kira and Kant

Light Yagami and Immanuel Kant
The character of Light Yagami tries to create a perfect world free from crime by cleansing the world of evil. He plans to use the Death Note, a book owned by a god of death, to murder criminals and other people he deems as evil by writing their names into the Death Note. Light might have had good intentions, especially at first, but a utopian society founded on homicide is unattainable. Regardless of the good that he intended to do, the unthinkable acts that Light commits eradicate the possibility of a perfect world, or any positive outcome for that matter. In other words, it is impossible to meet a noble end by employing such horrific means.

Light's actions are considered immoral by the standards of deontological ethics, namely Kantian ethics. Immanuel Kant believed that a person's duty was central to morality, and was more important than simply cultivating pleasure. Kant's main idea was his 'Categorical Imperative,' which states: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." 1 In layman's terms, Kant is saying you should only do something if you would want everybody else to start doing it too. More accurately, you should not act on a general rule (maxim) you would not want everyone else to follow as if it were a law of nature (universal law).  The Categorical Imperative can be employed with ease to prove that Light's conduct is deplorable.


If everybody acted on the general rule that Light is acting on, (If someone judges a person as evil, it is all right to kill that person) the world would not be able to function for very long, and even if it did last, it is exceedingly unlikely that someone could ever want to live in such a world. If everyone acted on the maxim stated above, then all the people would start killing each other and the world would become a bloodbath. People would start killing others that they considered to be evil, and then others still would kill the previously mentioned murderers, since most people believe murder to be wrong. It would proceed in this fashion, until no one was left alive.


The problem with human judgement is that a person may not know all the facts. If someone deems a person to be evil, but that person was framed or the information was false or otherwise incomplete, then an innocent person would be killed, simply because he was incorrectly deemed evil by someone else. Since it is inconceivable to will the world to be that way, judging people as Light does is immoral.


Kant's Categorical imperative can be reworded in order for it to apply to more situations. The second formulation states that we are to "[a]ct in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end." 2 Basically, Kant is saying that people should never be used or manipulated by others. It is morally unacceptable to exploit other people, no matter what ends you are attempting to achieve. Light does this frequently in his doomed quest for a perfect world...


  1. Kant, Immanuel; translated by James W. Ellington [1785] (1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals 3rd ed.. Hackett, p30.
  2. Kant, Immanuel; translated by James W. Ellington [1785] (1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals 3rd ed.. Hackett, p36.

To read more, please visit DEATH NOTES and Andrew Capuano's original posting of his Light Yagami essay: The Unattainable Perfect World.

DEATH NOTES is an invaluable resource for those who like a bit of academia in their reading of the Death Note manga.  Largely inactive now,  its archives nevertheless contain a rich bounty of timeless essays written during the period when Death Note was first coming to the attention of international audiences and readers.  The site's essayists emanate from varying disciplines within the academe, with less formal - sometimes downright flippant - pieces interspersed for flavour.

The excerpt above was republished here with permission from DEATH NOTES' editor Jennifer Fu.

Reproduced as part of

Death Note Month of Kira
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Is Kira a Serial Killer?  Defining Death Note's Light Yagami as a Murderer

18/2/2016

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It might sound obvious to conclude that Death Note's Light Yagami is a serial killer, but the definition of such might not so easily collude.

However there are also sub-categories of serial killer which may fit more precisely.  Not to mention other classifications of murderer, which approach the sheer scale of slaughter committed by Light Yagami through his Death Note and might even address it.

Near denounced Kira as 'just a murderer'.  Fine.  But would the FBI concur?  Or might a more distinct label apply in its casebook?  Time to find out if, as most readily assume, the designation serial killer actually does check out when held up against Light.

What is a Serial Killer?

According to Segen's Medical Dictionary (2012), a serial killer is usually - but not exclusively - an individual who:
  1. kills three or more people;
  2. over a period of thirty days plus;
  3. with an inactive (or cooling off) period between each murder;
  4. and whose motivation for killing is largely based on psychological gratification.

The FBI's Behavorial Science Unit (BSU) identifies a proto-typical serial killer (in the US) as:
  1. Caucasian;
  2. Around thirty years old;
  3. Male;
  4. Lower to middle class;
  5. Sociopathic.

That latter grouping is easily dispensed with.  So let's quickly get it out of the way first.

Is Light Yagami a Serial Killer?

Comparing the Typical Attributes of a Serial Killer to Light Yagami

There's an issue with the data concerning serial killer attributes.  Unlike much of the other information provided by the BSU, this chart doesn't cover international cases. Its criteria solely relates to US citizens.  (Read the PDF.) Nevertheless, we'll give it a go.
Near: 'Just a murderer' Kira - Death Note manga panel
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.
Light Yagami learning about his Death Note (anime)

Light Yagami contemplates his options for mass murder by Shinigami notebook
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.
Light Yagami victims in the Death Note anime
Anime Death Note Light Yagami's murders in five days
Criteria of a Serial Killer in Relation to Kira

By writing the names of his victims into a shinigami's Death Note, Kira certainly kills more than three people over the course of much longer than thirty days.  He has access to at least one notebook of death from 2003-2010, a period of seven years.

Within hours of picking up that initial notebook, Light Yagami has written his first victim's name inside the covers.

By the time he's dealing with Ryuk's sudden visibility - five days later - Light has filled whole pages of his Death Note with neatly written rows. Four abreast, each name denotes another slaughter; creating columns stretching down over 40-50 lines.

At the most conservative estimate, a single page holds around 160 murder victims - revealing their identities, as well as representing the mode of their demise.

We will never know precisely how many individuals were killed by Kira, but we can be very sure that it was more than three.

Moreover the time-scale stretches out over that entire seven year period. One of Light's very last acts was the attempted murder of Near.  Just two days previously, he'd also written Kiyomi Takada's name onto a scrap of paper ripped from his Death Note.

His killing never stopped.
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:
There are serial killers who live only one identity - that of killer. They seem to have no cooling-off period; they do not return to a normal routine, but remain focused on evading capture and perpetuating their compulsion to kill.
Peter Vronsky, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (2004), p 223

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. 

Why Did Light Yagami Kill in Death Note?

Masataka Kubota as Kira in Death Note TV drama 2015
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.
The Visionary

This serial killer is on a mission from God, or the Devil, or any other supernatural and/or divine entity.  They haven't merely an urge to kill, but a mandate to do it.  A duty; responsibility; instructions from something beyond speaking solely to them.

Or else they are the Devil.  Possessed and given the right to murder all in their vision, as per ancient entitlement.

Or else they are God of this new world.

Then nothing must be countenanced to stand in their way.  They have deified judgement to be exerted as mercy, punishment or whim.

A rationale punctuated with psychotic episodes divorced from reality.
Anime Death Note Light Yagami - the god of this new world

The Visionary Light Yagami was a simple schoolboy less than a week ago,
now he's a serial killer and God
The Mission Orientated Saviours of Society

The world is rotten and the only way to save it from itself is to commit murder over and over again.  Weeding out undesirables that society might heal itself and civilisation thrive.

Kill the baddies, so that decent people feel safe to walk the streets without finding themselves beset by murderers, assailants and thieves.  Cleanse humanity by sending those deemed sub-human to their deaths.

Improve the world; make it a Utopia without evil.
Death Note Kira sets out his mission: 'Change this world into a Utopia without evil'.

Mission orientated Light Yagami had psychologically
gratifying motives for serial killing

Strangely these serial killers aren't generally psychotic (unless they have Visionary episodes). They genuinely believe their actions are just, and may even agree that the slaughter is unsavoury.  It's a means to an end, that's all.

They have the strength to see their mission to conclusion; mentally prepared to kill everyone on the planet to save it from itself.

I think it goes without saying that we have a winner there.  Two in fact, with an option on a third, though overlapping between categories of psychological gratification is usual in the motivation of serial killers.
Serial killer Kira on a mission in Death Note

BSU Serial Killer Background Check and Light Yagami's Life History

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?

Posted as part of

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Are You Enjoying This Month of Kira on Death Note News?

16/2/2016

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It's been an exciting month so far, with much more to follow.  Let's recap!

Light Yagami - The God of the New World cosplay by FaustotheEndless

Fausto the Endless cosplays Kira: The God of the New World
(Reproduced with permission - FaustoTheEndless at WorldCosplay)

Kira Seiyū Interviewed by You!

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.
Sergio Zamora interview Death Note News
Preguntar en Español
Brad Swaile interview Death Note News
Ask in English
Kim Hasper interview Death Note News
Fragen in Deutsch

All about Raito: Kira Profiles, Light Yagami Analyses, Papers, Discussions & More

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)
Then Death Note News columnist Lucas King was here to discuss and play us his piano version of Light's Theme from the anime. Whilst also ninja-ing in an appeal on behalf of a friend.

Meanwhile, an old friend of all who once haunted MangaBullet - the very epitome there of a Light Yagami fan - took centre-stage in a (not coincidentally) very relevant Focus on a Fan for this Month of Kira. 

Who better than Maru-Light for that?

Got anything more to add?  A paper, insight, opinion, commentary, review or general Thing About Raito to Share lying about your hard-drive or bouncing about your mind?  Then let us have it!
Kira Month Submissions

Where the Kira Fans Meet

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!

Light Yagami Cosplayers Unite!

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.
Kira Cosplayer Questionnaire

Paging the Writers of Light Yagami Fan-Fiction

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?
Kira Fan-Fiction Writers Questionnaire

Drawing in the Kira Fan Artists

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!
Kira Artist Questionnaire

Did We Miss Anything?

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?

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The Concept of Kira: Can you Really say Light Yagami is the God of the New World? (Guest Post by Lua)

11/2/2016

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Any given name, considered as an abstraction, is a concept. Understanding it in a Fregean sense, a reference isn’t required to give the name – the concept - a meaning. You can think of Medusa and you understand the name has meaning despite being unable to point to the actual being you understand as Medusa. You can also have the same sense applied to different names because their reference is the same; that’s the case of Light Yagami and Kira. As anyone familiar with Death Note will notice, the sense attached to each of those names is completely different and so it’s their importance.

Light Yagami, as a concept, comprehends the exemplar student who wants to follow his father’s footsteps into law enforcement, who helps his younger sister, who dates remarkable girls, who excels at school. A good son, a good student, a good person. That is Light Yagami’s definitional structure, the conditions that need to be sufficed for one to be identified as Light. On the other hand, the necessary conditions for one to be identified as Kira are another set of requirements that does not consider Light’s definition in order to exist. The sense conveyed by Light Yagami and the sense conveyed by Kira can and are understood as different sense with the same referent.

Kira, as an abstraction, means a person with unknown supernatural powers and whose goals, motivations, methods and descriptions may vary. Kira is introduced as a vigilante killer but his definition isn’t restricted to it because the simpler concepts that characterize the abstraction of Kira are not specific enough; the set of characteristics applied to Kira could be those applied to any other name. If we have no concept, what can be said of its use? It’s from this vague definition that the power of being Kira comes from.

What is Kira? What makes one Kira? Could Kira have godly powers? That knowledge is restricted to very few people. There is nothing in the concept of Kira that contradicts most interpretations of to what the name Kira could be applied to.
Death Note anime - I am Kira
Death Note anime - I'm the God of the New World
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.

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What's in a Name? The Reason Why Light Yagami is Called Kira in Death Note

10/2/2016

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What's in a name? Different cultures say different things.

In Western society, names are generally chosen from the Bible. Parents name their children after angels, after Jesus himself, or they look to the Latin roots in order to choose a name fitting for their child.

Sometimes, a name is simpler than people believe.

Kira.

Kira is the name assigned to Light Yagami by the public, when criminals mysteriously began to die of heart-attacks.  But what does Kira mean?

The pseudonym Kira is written in Katakana, one of the three writing systems of Japan. Katakana is generally used when words are from a different language – whether that language be Spanish or English.
The Legend of the Savior Kira Death Note manga
Kira from Death Note anime
Kira is a Japanese Romanization of the English word ‘Killer’. When said with a Japanese accent, out-loud, the word sounds like ‘Killer’.

But why use that instead of ‘Murderer’, or the actual Japanese word for a killer? The answer?

Because it’s cooler.

In Japan, Katakana is widely regarded as “cooler” than Hiragana, the main writing system for Japanese words. Katakana originally came about when a large group of people looked at Kanji and decided that it was difficult and took a very long time to write. Katakana was largely derived off of bits and pieces of different Chinese characters. Katakana tends to look sharper and thinner than Hiragana, which tends to be bubblier.
 
In my opinion, the name Kira was given by a younger generation of Japanese people. This explains the Katakana, and explains the use of English instead of Japanese.

It is short, cool, and extremely catchy.

(Article by Renchan)
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Why is Light Yagami's Name Read as Yagami Tsuki? (Guest Post by Amaryllis)

7/2/2016

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Start of Death Note Chapter 1 Ryuk and moon

Ryuk, clouds and full moon at the
start of Death Note
So the funny thing about Japanese is that it uses three different systems of writing: kanji, hiragana, and katakana.

Kanji was borrowed from China a long time ago and applied to Japanese words (although the sounds it represented had to be tweaked along the way) and is now used in combination with hiragana for native Japanese words. Since kanji had to be tweaked and adapted for convenient use, several different readings (or pronunciations) exist for each one.

Japanese names in modern times are typically written in kanji, though there are exceptions.  Light’s name is written using these kanji: 夜神月 (ya gami raito).
Kanji Yagami Tsuki - Light Yagami kanji Raito Yagami
Each of the kanji in his name have different possible pronunciations and common meanings, with “Yagami” using the kanji for “night” and “god”, and “Raito” using “moon/month”.

Interestingly there are no readings for 月 that sound anything like “raito”. The existing readings are “tsuki” (moon) and “getsu/gatsu” (month).
End of Death Note - Kira worshippers with moon
End of Death Note Kira worshippers and the moon

Kira worshippers and moon at the
end of Death Note
So why is a kanji, that is usually read as “tsuki” on its own, pronounced with a very English sounding “raito”, or “Light”? Simple answer: because Ohba-sensei told us that’s how it’s to be pronounced.

Complex answer: a naming phenomenon exists in Japan, utilising kanji that looks cool, in order to write names that would typically be written a different, more common way.

It is not so strange for parents to want their children to have unique names, nor for manga authors to name their characters using these conventions. It enables them to give their main characters names that are not used in other manga. Ohba-sensei chose the kanji that means moon to represent a new meaning of “light”, stretching the meaning of the original just enough to still be understood.

Why Light Continues to be Called Tsuki Yagami or Raito Yagami by Fans Today

This explains why Light Yagami's name is sometimes read as Tsuki Yagami and/or Raito Yagami too.  After all, we're being asked to render a common word in kanji in an uncommon way.

Then - back when Death Note was first released - and now - with each new person picking up the tale - every Japanese reader would assume that Ohba-sensei intended his protagonist to be called Yagami Tsuki. They have no reason not to, until Light himself explains in the manga how to pronounce his name.  That doesn't happen until, I believe, chapter twelve.

During his encounter with Naomi Misora, Light goes to great lengths to spell out precisely how his kanji is meant to be read.  It seems a little strange in context; too long-winded an explanation over a simple name pronunciation.  Particularly in conversation with a lady whom Light is about to kill, concerning kanji that she can't even see written down.
Yagami Raito kanji explanation between Light Yagami and Naomi Misora
But this was the way that Ohba-sensei got to tell his manga's readers too how to say his main character's name. En masse the whole fledging Death Note fandom suddenly had to teach themselves not to say Yagami Tsuki (or Yagami Raito) as assumed, but the now familiar Yagami Light.  Some still got it wrong - misunderstanding the correction as being from Tsuki to Raito - like in the panels above, produced by an unofficial early translator of Death Note manga chapters into English.

All proving how unusual it is for a Japanese schoolboy to be called Light, spelled as tsuki kanji and pronounced raito.  So uncommon and strange that some readers still opt for what the kanji is more obviously telling them, hence all three names continue to be prevalent throughout the fandom and even the rarest of them - Tsuki Yagami - may still be heard.

It may be that Ohba-sensei waited so long before (literally) spelling out how he wanted Light's name to be known, because the author hadn't quite decided the issue for himself.

Not until Death Note 13: How to Read was more insight divulged on the subject.  In the interview with Tsugumi Ohba, it's stated that he struggled with Light's name, unable to settle upon the right one.  Then his editor suggested 'Yagami' and it sparked enough inspiration in the writer that he went on a quest to find the kanji.
When I looked through the Japanese name registry, I found the Kanji for 'star' and 'light'.  At first, I wasn't too concerned about it. But the final scene in the manga gave his name deeper significance. I liked that.
- Tsugumi Ohba, Death Note author, How to Read: Death Note 13, p 61.
Reading between the lines, it's quite possible to imagine Ohba-sensei merely enjoying the duality of 'star', 'moon' and 'light' inherent in his protagonist's Kanji.  Then, as the story grew and the characterisation became more fixed, future scenes might flash eradescent through a storyteller's mind.  As yet unformed, but filling him with glee enough to shift away from that lack of concern into a sudden conviction that it should be Light, not Raito, nor Tsuki, that readers saw in that Kanji.

The writer had found the right name for Death Note's central character. Now he just needed the manga reading public to switch tracks with him, and that last scene would be beautifully full of symbolism.

Yet he kept the moon there too - in the first pages and penultimate ones too, as evidenced by the twin images shown at the top of this article; in situ bookmarking hundreds of pages across 108 chapters.  The Yagami Tsuki people were able to feel validated in stubbornly retaining that original presumed moniker for their character.

But then turn the page and that light upon the worshipper's face could just as easily be cast from a star.  At least metaphorically, with the star of hope. There's a nod to the editor's name registry book and the dual meaning of the star-light Kanji found inside.  The moment when Ohba-sensei could breathe life into his creation; for no persona lives on the page, until its name is known.

And again, turn a page to the manga's final word - a simple candle and its glow burning bright.  No celestial being this, nothing so divine.  Just Light, casting shadows, and the nothingness beyond.  Great final scene.  Good name.
Death Note Kira worshippers

Tsuki? Moon glow in the background; seemingly stars bright in their hands
Kira-sama Worshipper Death Note

Turning away from stars and the moon to a candle's small 'light' - this is Kira-sama
Final page of Death Note manga

Just a Light - the final word in
Death Note from its creators
See also:
Death Note Names: The Kanji of Light Yagami (Guest Post by Renchan)


Amaryllis's analysis of why Light Yagami may be called Tsuki Yagami by some fandom members, was posted as part of Death Note Month of Kira. 

Running throughout February 2016, anyone may contribute Kira related content for this event.  That includes you, and your mate.

To find out more about it, visit Death Note Month of... Home; to send in articles, art, recipes, queries, fan-fiction, tutorials, opinion pieces or any other wonders you're moved to share, please visit our sparkly new Month of... Reader Submission Page.

Cosplayers, you now have your very own Death Note costumers' questionnaire, as another option for inclusion in the Month of... focus.  Other groups, you'll get one soon, if you're an artist, writer and - if there's demand enough for it - role-player. Nudge us to request more community surveys for any other category of Death Note fan expression not yet counted.

Just want to read more on Death Note's Light Yagami?  Lay on, MacDuff.


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Nathaniel Overthinks Death Note #04: The Utilitarianism of Light Yagami

3/2/2016

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Philosophical Death Note News column - Nathaniel overthinks Death Note



What School of Thought produces Kira?

Taking a philosophical look
at the world of Death Note
is our deep thinking columnist
Nathaniel Brown

The curious thing about the ideology of Light Yagami is that while he shares his father’s passion for justice he seems to be a fundamentally utilitarian thinker.

Utilitarianism revolves around the idea that the worth of an action is the sum of the aggregate pleasure it creates for people. If an actions creates more good for society than it does bad, than it is a decent action. Under this line of thinking the means can justify the ends! During his insane soliloquy at the end of the series Light concedes that 'that killing people in itself is a crime', but that it had to be done.
For him, murdering people was a necessary crime to fix this 'rotten world'.

What strikes me about Light’s character is actually how perversely noble he is (that is not to say I agree with what he did). Of the five people who obtain and use the Death Note in the series: Higuchi, Light, Misa, Jack and Mikami (and possibly Near if Matsuda is to be believed) only Light and Mikami (under Light’s guide) used it for selfless purposes.

Higuchi used it to advance his career and Misa used the Death Note first to get close to Light, then later to impress him.  While Jack Neylon utilized it for purposes of organised crime. Light on the other hand used the Death Note purely to improve the world; and never for personal gain.

It’s hard to overstate just how few people in the World would ever do this. The Death Note represents the perfect opportunity to get away with anything you want for no cost.

Getting back to Light’s particular philosophy, it’s interesting to note that is his conception of using the death penalty as a deterrent is actually extremely successful (its success in reality is dubious at best). Crime rates drop drastically, organised crime and all that entails (slavery and the drug and sex trade) have almost completely ceased to exist and war is a thing of the past. This clearly provides a very real good for society.

This world is rotten - Death Note manga Boredom
While I wouldn’t argue Ohba is arguing that the death penalty is an effective deterrent, he is arguing humans have an innate fear of spirituality and the unknown, and perhaps an intuitive belief in God (hence why people are so willing to accept Kira as God). The reason why Light’s plan is so efficacious is because people perceive a God as infallible, but police officers regularly make mistakes. Hence why people were less likely to commit crimes when Kira was active.

In Yagami’s mind, the pain felt by criminals is nothing compared to the new found safety of innocent men, women and children and therefore his otherwise cruel actions are excusable.

Yagami’s beliefs come in the context of the Japanese legal system. Prosecutors often won’t take on criminals who haven’t confessed or there isn’t overwhelming evidence against in order to maintain a 100% conviction rate. Because of this many criminals walk free in Japanese society. The Japanese films make this element even more explicit than the anime with some of Light Yagami’s fury being actively caused by this absence of justice for the victims after he hacked into police computers and was horrified by the number of people who simply walked free.

Personally, I can’t help but wonder if Light Yagami’s utilitarianism might actually have been prudent within the context of his Universe. One could argue that it was a society based around fear, not justice, and while criminals certainly have a lot to be afraid of, for the common working man or woman I don’t think this holds true. Light Yagami is brilliant, and is unlikely to make errors when it comes to killing criminals, and so won’t kill innocents by mistake. While it’s likely some innocent people who have been arrested for crimes they didn’t commit are killed erroneously, I don’t think this would have been common. Light Yagami being too self-righteous to kill people whose guilt is uncertain. Furthermore, most people (from what we see) actively support Kira which would seem to imply that very few innocent people have been murdered by Kira (with the obvious exceptions of Raye, Naomi and other police officers who attempted to apprehend him).
 
With war and crime being a thing of the past, it’s fair to argue less people die by Light’s metaphorical hand than would have from crime in normal circumstances.

In 2012, the second last year of Light Yagami’s reign in the anime (and the only year I could find data for) over 437,000 people (approximately) were murdered.  In the universe of Death Note, Light says, “Global crime rates have been reduced by over 70%.” So lets apply this number to how many people were murdered under his rule that year, and 437,000 in that one year becomes 131,000; a difference of 306,000. This means 306,000 people were saved from murder in that one, hypothetical year. This number, if you assume it holds true to the four years Light rules after the death of L, becomes 1,024,000.

This naturally excludes lives indirectly saved such as those would no longer die from the drug trade in the absence of major cartels. It also doesn’t factor in the great reductions in other horrific crimes and the beneficial impact that will have on many innocent people’s lives. Light Yagami was in many ways therefore justified, though he killed many, less people died on the whole and so it can be successfully argued that the means justify the ends.
 
 One thing is certain though, even if you don’t agree with what I’ve written, Light Yagami is definitely a supporter of capital punishment.

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Death Note and Holocaust Memorial Day: What if Kira Killed Hitler, or Would They be Hypothetically Akin?

27/1/2016

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Holocaust Memorial Day 2016
All over the world today, people are marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

Set on January 27th because that was the date, in 1945, which saw the liberation of Auschwitz.  It's not just an historical 'woe, woe, that was bad' endeavour - though of course it was - but an awareness raising, bridge building day with one key message and goal. 

Never again.


It will happen again.  No historian, nor human rights campaigner, let alone sociologist or political commentator, is naive enough to think it won't.  All of the elements which gave rise to the Third Reich in the first place, and its horrific Final Solution of death camps, execution squads and gas chambers, exist right now. They swim endlessly in our society, often in the background, with a quite worrying frequency coming back to the fore.
Right now, religious leaders in France are warning Jews to not wear their skullcaps, as it renders them too visible a target.  French Jews are beginning to flee their country - as yet a trickle, in danger of becoming an exodus. All across Europe, borders are being closed to those fleeing war and arbitrary cruelties in Syria.

In Britain, asylum seekers were made to don - and keep on 24/7 - distinctive wristbands in Cardiff, thus ensuring that they were publicly identifiable at a glance. While in the north-east of England, refugees housed by the Home Office found that their front doors had been painted bright red. All the better for local thugs and hoodlums to know were they lived.

Everywhere the Far Right is gaining more ground politically than at any other time since the Holocaust.

The USA has a concentration camp, which its citizens apparently don't deem worth rising in enough numbers to pressure their government to close. Because they haven't. While momentum is gathering beyond presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose views wouldn't have been out of step with Hitler's Nazi Regime, including conceptual support for race based internment camps.
Kira Worshippers

In a culture of supposed danger and fear, people will support anything which makes them feel safe.

Meanwhile, Australia is condemning thousands of people to unaccountable 'detention facilities' on islands off their shores.  Human Rights inspectors have been banned from entering.  Legal processes are done in utmost secrecy (with no evidence that they're being done at all). The reports coming out of places like Manus Island and Nauru are unsettling to say the least.  North Korea undoubtedly has death camps. About which much lip service in shaking head disapproval has been afforded by the outside world. But not enough to do anything about it.

All this makes 'never again' seem like a joke.  'Not on my watch' is about the best we can do, and even then it's a terribly uphill struggle.

We have Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th, not because people forget, but because they forget the specifics and that's what allows the memory to metamorphose into lived experience.

Never again indeed, and certainly not on my watch.

Kira and the Nazi Party: Would our Saviour be Light Yagami in the Holocaust?

Manga Death Note Kira righteous judgment
However, while these sentiments might be very noble and all, it begs the question - why is Holocaust Memorial Day on Death Note News' watch?  It's a little off-topic for a manga (and derivatives) set half a century on from said Auschwitz liberation. 

You got me. Guilty as charged.  Holocaust historian here, ninja-ing an important date in my calendar into the remit of Death Note.

But because it's an important date, and my thoughts are otherwise largely swirling around content for articles here, the two merged in a musing during my commute this morning:  what if Kira had come a couple of generations before?  What if Light Yagami's statement that 'the world is rotten' had taken place against a global back-drop of World War II, the rise of Hitler and the actuality of the Holocaust?

Would the names written in his Death Note have included Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann, Josef Mengele, Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels and the rest of their ilk?  What would have happened historically, if Kira took out Rudolf Höss before he'd perfected killing on an industrial scale with Zyklon B and cremations?

An intriguing 'what if' in history, but not one which could be answered easily and definitely not within the scope of this article.

Is Justice Served by Kira if his Death Note Ends Genocide?

What concerned me more was the logical query following on - if Kira single-handedly averted the Holocaust through mass murder, does that make him the good guy?  Or just as bad as those he sought to destroy?

The human rights activist in me wants to say the latter.  The historian is wide-eyed and tight lipped with quivering self-horror at my sensibility's tacit assent for the former.

The philosopher of my first degree mutters on about two wrongs not making a right.

The literary critic snaps that this is precisely the sort of dilemma encountered by all within the canon Death Note universe, during the ascendancy of Kira's New World.

I'm sure we can all very keenly picture Near's sneering reaction in disdain of the question.  For him, Kira is a serial killer no matter what the underlying cause.  There is no justification.  Not even the millions consigned to the gas chambers, starved, exposed to epidemics, subjected to scientific/medical experimentation or shot into mass graves.  Even then, Light Yagami is just a murderer.

Where do you stand on the issue?

Imagining a Nazi Kira and the Death Note's Final Solution

Of course, this is all assuming that Light Yagami morally and actively opposed the Holocaust.  It must be remembered that Japan allied WITH Nazi Germany during the period when the Final Solution was being enacted.

Our sense of right and wrong, just or unfair, moral or corrupt, is shaped by our upbringing, societal pressures and the drip-drop of propaganda as fed by every nation's media on any given day.  More so than any of us would like to admit.  Hence it's reasonable to assume that Light Yagami's chief exposure to the Holocaust would be within a generally supportive cultural back-drop.  His information and resultant position could well be akin to Hitler and his government.

Which leads us to another proposal ranked with horrors:  what if Light's Death Note was used for the Nazis?  How even more widespread might be the Final Solution with the Death Note involved?  (Political dissidents, or fleeing refugees known by name and photograph, reached without resource to a death camp.)
Or more pertinently put, what if the Death Note fell into the hands of Nazis?  Then and now.

How much more terrifying might our watch be?  And would we ever get the chance to say 'never again'?

Or could collusion create yet more greatly amassed clues to Yagami's own identity? To play out with deductive precision in a Wammy House mind, thus rendering Kira's capture a swifter endeavour?

Or don't you think Light Yagami would have involved himself in the Holocaust at all?  Ignoring its reality, just as so many of us continue on apathetically when faced with elements today similar to those once staged by a burgeoning Nazi regime. 

A pointless musing perhaps, but one which pays dividends in awareness on a day like this.

Over to  you.
Death Note shinigami realm Ryuk
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Nathaniel Overthinks Death Note #03: L's Philosophical Materialist Thinking

13/1/2016

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Nathaniel Brown Philosophical Death Note column on Death Note News




If even L can be met in his Philosophy, then
resident Death Note News columnist, our
over-thinking Nathaniel Brown
is the man for the job.

Near (no pun intended) the beginning of Death Note, L famously proclaims “I am justice”, which is funny because he has no such interest in justice.

It’s always been an amusing quirk that the character who heads the task force wasn’t pursing the world’s most prolific serial killer for moral reasons, but rather for his own amusement. In fact, there seems to be a massive juxtaposition between the L at the start of Death Note, and the L we see when the task force finally meets him in person.

Partially I think this is because Ohba didn’t fully know what he wanted to do with the character at the start of the series. The early L looks composed, almost handsome when we see his face. He talks about how Kira is evil to the International Criminal Police Organization with deep passion and seems to truly believe it. However, in the Death Note One Shot L tells the children of Wammy House, “It’s not a sense of justice. Figuring out cases is my hobby. If you measured good and evil by current laws, I would be responsible for many crimes.”

L Describes his Morality in the Death Note One Shot

L's Morality in Death Note
Death Note One Shot - L isn't justice
This is true - very early on into the series, an L who views Kira as evil is clearly a hypocrite. He lets Lind. L Tailor die to prove Kira can kill without being there in person. He attempts to let the Yotsuba Group kill criminals in order to prove their guilt and is willing to let a criminal possibly die to test the '13 day Rule'.

Whether or not you agree with these actions is moot, he’s prepared to kill criminals to catch a man who kills criminals. This is morally self-defeating in the worst way possible. The most consistent look at L (at least from the manga and anime) is one who, while not completely without redeeming features, isn’t concerned with higher values.
Death Note L with Skull

Alas poor Yagami, I knew him...
L. Lawliet in Hamlet mode
L, is in many ways the antithesis to Light. Whereas Light is handsome and meticulously dressed, L is dishevelled. Light is charming; L is almost autistic. Light is extremely moral; L doesn’t seem to believe in morals.

The only traits they do seem to share is that they’re both chronic liars and are extremely brilliant.
 
I doubt L ever thought about his Philosophy in these terms; but he is fundamentally a materialist thinker. Materialists believe that there is no objective morality and good and evil are entirely human concepts (think of Hamlet’s famous proclamation, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”) and that existence is entirely physical.

It’s not hard to view L in such terms.
Read More Philosophical Death Note Articles
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On his 26th Birthday, We Ask Where was Mello Born?

14/12/2015

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Dear Mello - Death Note anime Mello receives his childhood picture
It's Mello's 26th birthday today
Death Note fans know when Mello was born - December 13th 1989.  Today, had the larger than life, Mafioso character lived, he would have been celebrating his twenty-sixth birthday.

Instead he died at the wheel of a stolen lorry, clutching his rosary and taking Takada with him, their bodies consumed by the inferno (metaphorically as much as literally) and his fractured reputation consolidated as a Wammy House hero.  Illuminating so many clues with his  purpose driven suicidal stunt, that Near could denounce Kira on behalf of them all.  Mello died in Tokyo on January 26th 2010.  He'd just turned twenty-one.

All this we know about Mello's death. But where was Mihael Keehl born?

In Death Note Canon, Where Did Mello Come From?

Author Tsugumi Ohba never said where Mello's birth actually occurred, just when it did.  The earliest location for the Mafia boy was Winchester, England.  Mello was an orphan raised as L's successor at the Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans.  Dodgy place that it was.  But those children were rounded up from across the globe.  Mello doesn't necessary need to be English to wind up in Winchester.

In short, the field is wide open for head canons galore and fan-fiction writers to run rampant in answering the question of Mello's birthplace for themselves.  Me included, though there was method and research behind my own designation of Yugoslavia for Mello's country of origin in the It Matters series.
Yugoslavian Mello banner from defunct Guns & Games Mangabullet article.

Banner originally created for a guest writer on MangaBullet's
Guns & Games. Probably put together by Spoiled-Kitten

Why my Canon Stated Mello Came from Yugoslavia

When I'm not here blathering on about Death Note, I'm a historian.  (To be fair, I'm still a historian here too, just not so obviously.)   Which means that I have research means, programs and the such like to provide me with data to play with during historical query. Or more pertinently here, genealogy.

I strive for  realism in my fan fiction, insofar as it's possible with killer notebooks, shinigami and genius orphan trafficking rings going on in the actual canon background.  So when it became imperative to reveal Mello's nationality, I took the clues at hand and interrogated them to see if clues to Mello's country of birth could be discerned.

Item one was to look at Mello's real name.  Historically, were there any Mihael Keehls anywhere in the world, as discerned via my genealogical databases?  YES!  And he lived in California.  True story.  Travelled there from New York, which he entered in 1870 by ship, then continued on west.  Not quite our Mihael Keehl, but a real one in existence once, and spookily in the right place.

Oh!  And a century earlier, there was another Mihael Keehl holed out in Sacramento, California.
Mihael Keehl Sacramento CA 1740-1782
However, US data isn't fabulous for working out surname (and first name) origins, particularly geographically, unless they happen to be First Natives of the Americas.  The USA is a nation of 'huddled masses', which fundamentally came from elsewhere.  Unfortunately no-one noted where Kern, California's Mihael Keehl came from, just where he caught the ship.  Britain.  But Mihael Keehl is not a natively British name.  Nor was he the only Keehl ever to emigrate to America.  The New York port records can give us a run down.
US Keehl surname place of origin
But they are just the Keehls who went to the USA.  Not those staying put wherever they were around the world.  Though before we leave the States, it was amusing to spot Mello in the phone book.  Kira and Near should have just looked there.
M Keehl California
Next up was to see where lots of Keehls congregated throughout history.  I had several choices there - Prussia, modern Germany (where it became Kohl),  the Netherlands, Hungary, Slovakia and the former Yugoslavia.  Blond hair and blue eyes points to a Germanic ethnicity for Mello, so the first three were strong contenders.  But where in the world is Michael most usually rendered Mihael?

One quick internet search later and my list is getting narrower - Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, but mostly from countries which formed part of the former Yugoslavia.  Which also featured on my surname list.

So could a native Yugoslav look like Mello?  I searched digital images with the tag 'blond' + 'male' + 'Yugoslav' and somewhere in the mix, I discovered Andrej Pejic (now Andreja Pejic, but still physically male at the time of my search).
Thereon, it was just a case of working out which former Yugoslavian country was the birthplace of Mello in my fan-fiction stories.  I checked out them all on Wikipedia and landed upon Croatia, because it has a sizeable Catholic population.  With all those rosaries, Mother Mary portraits, icons and the such, there's a case to be made for Mello's Catholicism.

And there you go, a credible place of origin for Death Note's Mello.   So where would you have had him born, in your head canon, on December 13th 1989, 26 years ago today?
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First Time Ever I Saw Your Face... Death Note Blogger Collates Initial Manga Appearance for Each Major Character

20/11/2015

 
You think you'd know how L looked in his first Death Note panel, or Light, or Ryuk.

If you're anything like me - self-proclaimed obsessive in my attention to detail, coupled with a great memory, thus believing I knew it all - then you'd be wrong.

I even guessed Mello's introduction incorrectly.  Got the scene, just not the shot.  Mine was the next one on.

For us prospective Death Note know-it-alls, Japanese blogger Kyoko Kikuchi has painstakingly trawled through the manga and sifted out all those first appearances for every main Death Note character.
It's actually more fascinating than it initially sounds.  I thought it would be a thing of passing interest, but I'm struck by how many times we meet individuals without ever seeing their face.  Takeshi Obata has his readership creep up on characters, like stalkers or shinigami.

Ryuk, Misa, Mello and Near are all introduced to their soon-to-be fan-base with their backs to the 'camera' peering into the panel.  L is turned towards us, but the top of his head is missing.  Too tall for his own scene.  Our perspective comes from above and focuses upon his groin area, albeit strategically shielded from view by the droop off his hand resting on his knee.
First appearance of Misa Amane in the Death Note manga

Misa Amane's first Death Note appearance
Death Note L's first appearance in the manga

How the Death Note world first met L
Light  and Soichiro Yagami are both first viewed head on, but from a few feet away, framed by their environment and with the reader positioned above left. Father and son are each sitting behind desks - one at school, the other at Interpol - with their arms crossed before them.  They are in rows, surrounded by others all seated the same, facing towards a single frontal focus point.
Death Note manga Light's first appearance mirrored by Soichiro's first appearance

Like father, like son - our first sight of the Yagami men in Death Note manga panels
Even the shapes of things on their tables mirror, in polar opposite colours, objects on the surface before the other. 

A microphone bisects our view of Soichiro's  desk.  A pen apes its short straight line and direction on that of his son.  What is that black rectangle in front of Light Yagami?  Is it a pencil case with a white pattern upon it?   Its contours and colour is mimicked in the white name-plate identifying his father and colleague as representatives of Japan.  Complete with their nation's flag - seen without hues as fundamentally a white square with a black sun.

Practically Ying Yang - black with white for Light; white with black for Soirchiro.

See what I mean?  Much more to look into, while inspecting the first Death Note manga panels for major characters, than might be supposed.  Perhaps hidden bits of sub-plot in where Tsugumi Ohba directed, or Takeshi Obata just draw, correlations between certain individuals.

As Neil Gaiman wrote in Sandman (and I'm fond of repeating to readers of my fan fiction) - Always trust the story, never the storyteller.  There's always more to see in the subtleties and the little things, the links and what's left out. 

And today I learned that artists are just as bad.

Discover more first sightings in the manga of Death Note personae in Kyoko Kikuchi's Death Note blog. Then keep on reading, because also found and ready for the analysing are the panels wherein we see each character's face for the first time.  Plus, if they survived the time jump, then Kyoko also digs out the picture introducing us to that individual's older self in the second arc.

We could be here for hours.

However, the collection did miss out Matt's first Death Note manga appearance, in chapter 83, page 10.  Let me make good that omission.  And oh!  Look!  Just like Mello, Near, L, Ryuk and Misa, he's looking away with his face concealed.  Interesting.
First manga panel Matt Death Note

The fandom's first glimpse of Death Note's Matt

New Death Note Book Review: Death Note: Unofficial Guide by Brad A. Yamaguchi

18/11/2015

2 Comments

 
Brad A. Yamaguchi's Death Note: An Unofficial Guide
Death Note: Unofficial
Guide
by Brad A. Yamaguchi
A new Death Note reference book was issued by Shinigami Press on October 26th 2015.

Penned by Brad A. Yamaguchi, it's entitled Death Note: Unofficial Guide.

The clue being in the title, this isn't anything published by Tsugumi Ohba, Shueisha, Nippon, Viz Media nor any of the Death Note copyright holders. Nevertheless fair usage applies there - just as it does with our Death Note news site - and anyone can write about a subject.  It's all good.

Yamaguchi's guide to Death Note covers all media in which the story is told - including the 2015 Death Note television drama, hence very up-to-date.

Just about everything you ever wanted to know about Death Note is there.

What's in Brad A. Yamaguchi's Unofficial Death Note Guide?

Yamaguchi's Death Note guidebook contains 90 pages. Which are split between five sections, featuring information packed chapters - each with their own focus within the Death Note universe.  Delve even more deeply into the nitty-gritty of Death Note via all the sub-sections keeping things tidy.

The book's contents list is highly impressive.

Beginning with an introduction to Death Note, we get a summary of the story itself, plus much background and contextual information. Yamaguchi covers everything from conception to reception, then moves on to legacy too.

Each major character gets a chapter devoted to them in Part Two. For each one, we hear about how the individual was created; where they appeared in the story; how they were received by the readership/audience; and other links regarding them. References support every snippet told.

Another chapter highlights the supporting personae; further divided into those only known from one telling of the tale (for example, secondary characters seen only in a Death Note film). 

Part Three of Death Note: Unofficial Guide takes us through an in-depth examination of every manga chapter or anime episode.
Contents pages for Death Note: Unofficial Guide by Brad A. Yamaguichi:

Part Four does the same for each live action telling of the story - including the TV Death Note drama and all four Japanese movies - then moves onto associated novels, primarily Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Case, and Death Note original soundtracks too.

There's an especial chapter taking in New World - the Death Note finale - plus others dealing with real life murders associated with the show.  Part Four finishes with a close look at the story's author Tsugumi Ohba.

The final part of this guidebook for Death Note merely lists all references and sources for further information within the universe, franchise and genre.

All told, a fabulous resource and wonderful gift idea for Death Note fans, with an eye on Christmas just around the corner.   However, there is a strong reservation attached.

Death Note Guidebook Simply Reproduces Wikipedia Pages!

Death Note: Unofficial Guide by Brad Yamaguchi page one
Page Two of Brad Yamaguchi's Death Note: Unofficial Guide
It doesn't take long in sitting down to read this unofficial Death Note guide to realise that Brad A. Yamaguchi didn't actually write the content. He merely copied it wholesale from Wikipedia and formatted as a real world book.

That doesn't make it any less informative and fascinating to read, but you could do that for free on-line.

Perhaps handy as a reference book for Death Note to carry with you, when there is no access to the internet. Or as an archive edition to record the information on Wikipedia on the day he copied it.  Yet otherwise nothing new here as concerns the Death Note fandom, and nothing that cannot already be found digitally.

Check out Brad A. Yamaguchi's Death Note: Unofficial Guide to complete your collection, or see what other Death Note guides are available through our store.
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