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.

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.

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.

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:

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!

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.”

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.