News about Death Note

L Theme Park Attraction! Universal Studios Japan Join with Weekly Shonen Jump to Bring Death Note to the Tourists

10/5/2016

A theme park in Osaka will be taking day-trippers into the Death Note universe with L right alongside to ensure no-one gets themselves killed.

Because he was always so good at that...

Universal Jump Summer marks a collaboration between Weekly Shonen Jump and Universal Studios Japan. Running throughout the summer months of 2016 at the latter's tourist attraction, the event will bring to life major characters from manga and anime.

That includes Death Note detective L, who'll be recruiting rookie investigators (that'll be you) to accompany him through a role-playing, puzzle-solving, live action game entitled Death Note: The Escape. It will be built on the back of other Death Note themed Real Escape games, that have been running in cities around the world to mark the manga's 10th anniversary.

Additionally, the theme park will regularly host theatrical performances featuring another stalwart of the genre. One Piece Premier Show 2016 tells a story especially written for the event.

Unfortunately, visitors to Universal Studios Japan will have to pay extra to enjoy either of these anime-based attractions. However, their general admission price allows for free access to the third one - Dragon Ball Z: The Real 4-D. Not too much further information there, other than our hero Goku will be fighting the evil Frieza.

Yeah, whatever. Our lot will be with L, taking on the truly nefarious designs inherent in a locked door. And if you don't think that's dangerous, then you seriously never read Another Note. Hold on. Ok, so our guide looks like L. Fine. But someone must have double-checked his jam eating propensity.

Haven't they?

Enjoy going beyond in the Universal Jump Summer 2016 Death Note Real Escape event.

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Death Note News Editor Feedback on our Reader Survey and Other Updates

9/5/2016

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Many thanks to all who took the time to voice their thoughts on Death Note News' Month of... feature. In addition to airing viewpoints on various items relating to the running of the site, and how we deliver content to you, via the completion of last month's reader survey.

All comments have now been read. Some whilst blushing and feeling suddenly very coy; others forming a cringing addendum to our discussion agenda and/or directly onto a lengthening To Do list. All were very helpful and wonderfully appreciated upon receipt.

There were a few pointers requiring acknowledgement, answers, action or announcements, including the results of who will be featured at the centre of future Death Note Month of... events. I'm here to bring you fully into the loop.

Known Issues, Omissions and Pointers for the Death Note News Website

First the problematic parts, or things to be actioned here, to get them out the way:

Feedly RSS reader isn't picking up news articles very well - Matti to look into it;
Death Note TV drama analyses were never finished - another one for Matti;
Articles on Death Note News should clearly differentiate between canon fact/fanon speculation, particularly those submitted for Month of... features, which tend towards the theoretical - added to agenda for editorial meeting;
Comment on the Matsuda theory article proved canonically impossible the one re Near controlling Mello via a Death Note. The article should be altered, or a note added within the write-up, to reflect this - Orangepunch to do;
Not clear in the FAQ how one might join the Death Note News team - answer below, plus Matti to add to the FAQ.

Hopefully we didn't miss any and you're happy with the actions! Please do leave a comment below, if you have views to add to anything highlighted above, or spot something which didn't make the list.

How to Join the Death Note News Team

Contact the Death Note News Team

Ask. We're always good for welcoming new writers, or other talented folk, into our team. If it's a regular column that you wish to pursue, then hunt down Matti to discuss what you have in mind. Either way, our contact page has a plethora of ways to contact us. In this instance, an email (via the form) is probably best.

Whatever Happened to Those Voice Actor Interviews We Were Promised?

Everything has been collated, tidied up, formatted and emailed to the requisite Death Note actors. Each acknowledged receipt of the questions and indicated their intent to answer as many as possible.

Brad Swaile has since sent his apologies for the delay. Life has suddenly become very busy for him, and there ARE rather a lot of questions that were asked. He does still plan to return his answers eventually. Until then it's a patience Padawain moment.
Sergio Zamora was full of enthusiasm and beginning to work through them last we checked. We're slightly afraid that we've overwhelmed him along the way. No reason to believe that we won't get his responses back sooner or later.
Kim Hasper is currently exchanging emails with our German language translator, Jo Coburn. Unfortunately he MAY have to drop out.
Vincent Tong is a complete sweetheart, who gave up an hour of his life to answer questions asked by us on your behalf. We have it in the bag. Well, hard-drive. It could go up right now, if only the sole Death Note News team-member with any skill in video editing would stop getting ill and edit the video instead. We hold out hope that it will happen sometime this week. Poor love recorded it weeks ago, while the monthly focus was still upon his character Touta Matsuda! Sorry, Vincent.

Vincent Tong interview for Death Note News

The lovely smile of Vincent Tong, all unknowing that he'd be waiting over a month for Death Note News to actually feature his interview!

In short, we're confident that all (but possibly one) remain winging their respective ways to us and will be made public quickly thereon.

Results of the Reader Survey Regarding the Month of... Feature

We're already three days late with Month of Misa. Nine, if you count the original intention for it to begin on the first of May and continue through to its end.

However, it appears from the responses given in the reader survey that none of you are too worried about things like that.

You'd rather have well-written articles with every contributor's work included, than any strict adherence to the dates.

You also almost unanimously fed back that one topic per month is perfect; running them bimonthly not at all a welcome suggestion (mostly because momentum would be lost); and you're happy with how we're choosing the subject of each focus thus far.

That said, there were some great ideas thrown into the mix too. One person thought it might be nice to choose the topics a month or two in advance via readers' poll.

Another individual thought having a 'what if' month would be interesting, as in 'what would have happened to the characters if Light Yagami hadn't received his Death Note, thus the Kira case never occurred?' I have to say that my imagination has been running overtime in pondering, since reading it posed there. But could we pull off a whole month of it? Probably. Maybe another format would work better. It's one of those added to the staff agenda for mulling over.

Nearly all of you indicated that yes, you would like to see a Month of... focus being the forthcoming Death Note movie, released at the end of October 2016. Of those, one person voted for November to be the ideal month. The rest of you didn't mind, as long as it happens.

All excepting the single respondent who said no full stop to that and indeed everything about the Month of... events. He/she really didn't like it and wished it would go away. Your views have been read and noted. Thank you for them. Unfortunately, you were outvoted by your peers.

Everything in, it was overwhelmingly positive and extremely helpful. Even the person who hated the feature told us nicely! And we were really pleased with the wide array of places where people are finding Death Note News. Particularly as one source was apparently the Archangel Mello pointing this way with his fiery sword.

As for the one who asked if being in the Mello/Matt fandom counts - YES! Yes, it does. Most important part of the whole Death Note fandom Mello and Matt. Though I might be biased, given what I write.

Forthcoming Characters to be Featured in Death Note News Month of... Focus

Lots of fabulous suggestions here. We had Mello, Beyond Birthday, Mikami, Sayu, ALL live-action tellings together, L, Shingami (collectively), Naomi Misora, the LABB murders, and the movie thumbs up for a month closer to the release date.

We've decided to start with the one garnering the most votes in that survey. Admittedly to the mild surprise of all here, though we're game for everything. Bring it on! Therefore I can announce that June and July look like this, with more made public when we've finished tatting with the list:

Month of Naomi Misora on Death Note News

Coming June 2016

Ms Misora not only received the most votes overall, but she also managed to beat Beyond Birthday by a single point. Hence the surprise. Then again she does make quite a habit of thwarting of poor BB at the last minute!
Go Naomi! You won your month, fair and square.

Coming July 2016

Mr Mikami's high rating in the straw poll of suggestions was less surprising. We already hold in waiting two pieces of content about him, submitted by different readers, both long before he'd even been considered for a Month of... feature!

By tomorrow, we should have their submission and questionnaire pages up and ready. In the meantime, do feel free to send in things using generic tools for contributing content, or mentally amending questions pertaining to another character asked of Death Note fans writing, creating art or donning cosplay.

Also by tomorrow, we should actually start Death Note News' Month of Misa Amane. Three items in already. Get a head start on the crowds by chucking in any relevant content now.

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Watari Letters: Death Note Canon Alphabet of Wammy Kids: L-Z

5/5/2016

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"Watari, from now on you must safeguard the world with the other Letters."
~ L, L: Change the World, p 17

Welcome back to our ABC list of known canon Wammy kids alongside the letter to which they were (or most probably were) assigned.

The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans is the intriguing institution which features so prominently in Death Note, or at least its alumni form the centrepiece of the war against Kira.

Each genius child raised there is afforded a bespoke education, side-stepping the normal system of classrooms, with professors, researchers and other experts in their field brought in for one-to-one demonstrations and tutorials.

Graduates get to enter The Wammy Foundation, a shadowy organisation founded by the man who raised them - their childhood benefactor and adulthood allocator of a single Letter which meant so much - Quillsh Wammy, aka Watari.

This alphabet of Letters from Wammy's House investigates the ethos and histories of each recipient for clues as to the character and motives of Wammy himself.

Death Note The Wammy's House gatepost sign

Death Note Wammy Letters' Alphabet Pt 2 - L-Z

Read the first part: Wammy Alphabet A-K

Watari, also known as Quillsh Wammy, had used the enormous earnings from the patents of his many inventions to establish the Wammy Foundation, an organization dedicated to building orphanages around the world.

Among them, one orphanage took in highly intelligent children from around the world without regard to nationality, race or gender and provided them with a specialized education. The orphanage was called Wammy's House.

There was no formal school or academic departments at Wammy's. Instead university professors, researchers and top specialists in their fields from around the world were invited to give individual instruction to the children according to their abilities and potential.
~ L: Change the World, p13

Near in the library Wammy's House Death Note

Death Note Mello and other Wammy House kids dining

L - Wammy Kid The Last One, or The Lost One - True Name L Lawliet*

* This is the name that features upon a collectors' card fitted as a bonus gift inside the back fly-page of manga manual Death Note 13: How to Read. It's also the name recorded in a Death Note, as seen in the Japanese live-action films.

However, in the novel Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases, narrator Mello wrote that L was in possession of well over 3,500 names and pseudonyms to hide his personal identity. Mello postulated the theory that even L didn't know his own true name any longer.

... the name L was, for him, just one of many. He never had any direct connection to that identity, he never thought of himself as L... L had a real name that nobody knew, and nobody will ever know, but a name which only he knew never defined him. I sometimes wonder if L himself ever knew exactly which name was written in the Death Note, which name it was that killed him.
~ Another Note, p43-44

Though M (presumably Mello again) subsequently contradicted himself one book on - in the novelization of the movie L: Change the World - when he casually informed the reader that only L and Watari knew his real name. Thus able to facilitate the key plot-line underpinning this variant of the story, wherein L won his war against Kira effectively by committing suicide via Death Note.

However, this was an alternate universe to that recounted in the manga and anime, wherein M as Mihael Keehl's Mello never existed, begging the question as to who is writing this novel now. Unless it's Maki, grown a little older and brought furthermore into the Wammy House loop. The fourth generation Wammy to be assigned that code-letter M, in lieu of poor, lost Mello, omitted unmade and erased from the record for this telling.

Anyway, onto the plot.

He wielded incredible power, was able to mobilize every investigative bureau in the entire world, and was applauded generously for his efforts.
~ Another Note, p10.

L is the one about whom the whole of Wammy's House, its founder, staff and children, plus its attendant Foundation revolves. He was the first of those genius orphans afforded special attention, a tailored education and a letter to use as his name and his calling code.

By accident, precedent or design, he set the standard whereby all other Wammy kids are measured. They are supposed to be precisely him and if they best him, they get his code.

But that's highly unlikely to occur.

As Beyond Birthday found out, beating him is one thing; it's quite another to persuade Wammy to relinquish his obvious favourite, so to divert resources and his personal support towards a more worthily ranked ward.

That was a pattern which began on day one, when Wammy brought the tiny orphan L into Wammy's House and left him with his peers in the ornately stained glass windowed main hall.

The other children rushed to give him a hug - cute, new, big-eyed boy and all - but that panicked L. He was only about eight years old, but managed anyway to beat up and floor boys and girls much bigger than himself.

Instead of reprimanding him and ensuring that he apologized to the kids and teens groaning against the floorboards all around, Mr Wammy thought this rather fabulous. Presumably the other orphans were shortly deprived of familiarity, friends and home by being relocated to sister establishments in the chain of Wammy Orphanages. Meanwhile, L got his own room, a computer and plenty of cooing fuss.

L managed to redeem his anti-social behaviour - if such was needed in Wammy's eyes - by perusing stock markets and advising the old man on what to buy and when to sell. In that way, the profits poured right in. That was the year that the eight year old took on the Winchester Mad Bomber and averted World War III.

Marking the moment when Wammy vowed to accept L's every decision and support him wherever possible.

From now on, the child, not the adult was ostensibly calling the shots; Watari would make good each hefty choice and passing whim spoken aloud by the eight year old.

Nor apparently was there any disapproval expressed for the dodgier demands, let alone censure or out and out refusal to comply. Watari just did it, trusting that L was clever and would be right. (Giving him just enough rope hang himself? Or truly in perfect trust of the child's truth and sense in all things?)

Therefore leading to a situation - so a canon Omake tells us, authored by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata - wherein the adult L cannot dress himself, or attend to his own ablutions, without Wammy assisting with the fundamentals. L seen now as so intelligent that he's become downright infantile.

An absent-minded genius trope too far, or some manner of control/avenging the loss thereof/kicking back against too much of the same, or someone severely upon the autistic spectrum? Frankly it's way too tempting to assume the former, though the other options have their resonance in all other of L's famous ticks, quirks, eccentricities and prolific sweet consumption.

The latter also keenly enabled by Quillsh Wammy in butler (more like carer at this point) mode. Along with a pop, pseudo-scientific rationale that such quantities of sugary things are needful in order to keep L's brain whizzing along.

Being handed such freedom on a plate, with adults to order about too, would be heady stuff for any child. Pair it with extreme wealth and the ear of world leaders and suddenly even societal boundaries are non-existent. The possibilities are limitless, with even torture, killing and the ordering of a condemned man onto live television for his execution are not only on the table, but Watari's logistical and sniping skills will ensure all continues quite smoothly.

With a seeming lack of constriction akin to a juvenile Roman Emperor, it's little wonder that L emerges into the Death Note story with a personality self-confessedly childish, but also spoiled and cruel.

Death Note L and the Kira Task Force meet

However, a thick layer of covert constrictions hide just beneath the surface for the detective. He's been told from childhood two things - there are those in the world out to kill him; and world peace hinges upon his living in a state of constant, active and demonstrable investigations.

While the world leaders should make efforts to ensure the safety of all the finest minds... the current societal systems do not allow for this, and L believed he had no choice but to protect his mind under his own power... For a detective of L's ability, self-preservation and the preservation of world peace were one and the same.
~ Another Note, p 69

Ergo, his life is in danger, but he can't stop to save himself without imperilling the world. Not that most of the potential killers with him in their sights are that far from home.

Depending upon whether Beyond Birthday ever met L or not, it was either now or five years later - when L was thirteen - that The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans was established with Roger Ruvie at the helm. Employed by Wammy not as warden per se, but as a trained psychiatrist there to gather parentless, genius kids from around the globe, and to reshape them - body, personality and mind; self-identity changed as standard - into clones of L.

In a rare moment of introspection, L saw clearly what manner of man he considered himself to be - both inspiring and imbibing the Wammy ethos, as the one most influenced by its engineer. Amongst them all, L had the most direct, one-to-one contact with Quillsh Wammy, who set up the system and let it evolve that way. The current crop of Wammy orphans gathered together to learn what their privileged, pressurized upbringing was urging them to become.

L laid it on the line in his famous 'monster' speech. To be L was to embrace the monstrous. Just like him.

There are many types of monsters in this world, monsters who will not show themselves and who cause trouble. Monsters who abduct children, monsters who devour dreams, monsters who suck blood, and monsters who always tell lies. Lying monsters are a real nuisance. They are much more cunning than other monsters. They pose as humans, even though they have no understanding of the human heart. They eat, even though they've never experienced hunger. They study even though they have no interest in academics. They seek friendship even though they do not know how to love. If I were to encounter such a monster, I would likely be eaten by it because, in truth, I am that monster.
~ L, Death Note Relight: L's Successors

Driven home in the hearts and minds of his back-up foster siblings, over whose lives L is able to exert absolute control. Wammy, L and Ruvie colluding with potentially sociopathic abandon, in what can only be deemed 'experimental' upbringings for those children subjected in generational waves to that institution. No soaring IQ necessary to foresee tragic results in such child-raising methodologies, centring around rehumanisation at its core.

From suicide to serial killing through to the attempted pathogenic extinction of the human race, via joining the Mafia and martyrdom, Wammy kids answered their psyche's refashioning en masse.

... just as the greatest of detectives makes the greatest of criminals, a specialist in investigation is also a specialist in murder. From this perspective, this was nothing but a detective war. Beyond Birthday challenged L. And L accepted the challenge.

To put it bluntly, the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases were nothing but an internal struggle, a civil war within hour home, sweet home - Wammy's House.
~ Another Note, p106

Even Naomi Misora knew what had happened to detectives falsely identifying themselves as L, and B was from Wammy's House, so he knew better than anyone - so this choice suggests the strength of his decision. He never once intended to survive.
~ Another Note, p160

... it would certainly seem odd if (K), who was threatening the President posing as L, asked him why the US hadn't moved to kill L.
~ L: Change the World (novel), p140

In the end, it didn't matter how many Wammy kids strove to murder L. He beat them there too. No matter which version of Death Note is consulted, L kills himself. His suicide is either openly stated, as per the live-action movies, with him writing his own name in a shinigami's notebook to beat Kira; or else it's so subtle as to be barely acknowledged, hidden beneath an overlong stare at Light Yagami, circa Kira's 'just as planned' exclamation of victory.

That L had worked it out is confirmed conversely by his statement of the precise opposite. He dully enunciates that Light is not Kira, and should in fact be the next L. The mystery was solved; the game was over. Though to admit so was to lose the fun. The clash of minds that had begun with a challenge to Light Yagami, which was answered in kind. Without it, L could foresee the futile vastness of his life without that battle enriching all.

Already depressed, L said nothing, just concurred with the sentiment of Light's innocence.

It prolonged their cerebral sparring a little while longer, but it would kill L soon, as he well knew. It seemed worth the cost in the banishment of tedium and onset of fascination alone. Just to see what Light would do next, and to end the life that kept L trapped - 'a reclusive sociopath' - in Wammy's world of responsibility, self-protection and unceasing investigations. Now doomed to tedium post-Kira, plus the unsolvable crime because he would never catch Kira. He'd already let him go.

L's manga suicide was his silence. A final act of justice (belatedly) for his Wammy House brethren was in taking Quillsh Wammy with him.

M - Wammy Kid Mello - Mihael Keehl

I'm always number two… no matter how hard I try…
Mello, Death Note manga, chapter 61 (Number Two)

It's not just the notebook I'm after. I wanna eliminate my competition. I will be the best. I don't care what it takes. I'll beat Near by any means necessary.
~ Mello, Death Note anime, episode 27

In Another Note, Mello calls Wammy's House 'home, sweet home' and describes it as the place 'which raised me until I was fifteen'. (p11)

Between real time scenes from the manga (Zero) and anime (Renewal), plus flashback scenes from Near's memory in Death Note Relight: L's Successor's (and the one-shot manga), we have a fair bit insight into Mello's experience and behaviour during that time at Wammy's House.

Just as you'd except from a teenager who left the institution to join the Mafia, young Mello is shown to be a bully at while he was still there.

We see him kicking a football into another child's face. On another occasion, he's clutching another boy's hair and pulling his head down, whilst walking up the corridor.

He even attacks Roger, bunching fistfuls of the warden's lapels and half dragging him across a desk, in response to news of L's death.

None of this is reprimanded. There's no adult response at all from the first incident. In the second, Roger merely captures Mello's hand and holds it whilst untangling his victim's hair. No words are spoken about it.

During his lunge at Roger, all the older man can summon up is a vague, world-weary 'Mello', uttered like a sigh. Imagine behaving like that with your own parent or guardian, would you have received the same lack of passion in their reaction?

But apparently this is the Wammy's way and Mello is perfectly at liberty to use violence, intimidation and fear as part of his life strategy.

It's also semi-rewarded, insofar as the goals of the institution are concerned. L names Mello as one of his chief candidates for succession due to 'a nasty look in his eyes' rather than anything related to grades. While Roger follows up both latter acts of aggression with encouragement and/or expectation that the fourteen year old before him take the deceased L's position in the world, at least jointly with Near (a twelve year old).

Can we say child soldiers?

The bullying isn't all. We also view Mello as a Wammy boy apparently isolated amidst his peers. During L's 'monster' speech, Mello stands alone, away from the children excitedly grouped before the laptop through which L chats with them.

When he hears about L's death, Mello's mind flashes back to a moment in receipt of grades (pictured right). All of the other kids are flocking to read Near's paper and see his mark. Mello is left lonely and anxious reading his own. He also apparently studied alone, as the following panel demonstrates.

Probably because he's the Wammy House bully and this is the best that his foster siblings can do in their own defence and/or revenge.

Not all of them though. Near was quite happy to work with Mello, when their warden Roger suggested it, regardless of the look of utter horror twisting Mello's expression at the same time. Later on, Matt appeared from the peer-group at the Wammy House to partner Mello in the final hunt for Kira. So two people at least could have been, or were, Mello's friends there. That said, even bullies have confederates and/or a gang.

Mello goes for the biggest and the best (or worst, depending on how we're phrasing it) gang after leaving Wammy's - the Mafia. Wherein his admittance was assured despite his lack of Sicilian ethnicity (which kept Al Capone out); his posh Winchester/English accent; his youth; and his effeminate attire. All this was over-ridden by his demonstrable intelligence and the fact that he brought, as an entrance present, the head of a Mafia Don whom even Kira couldn't touch.

How literally should we take that 'bringing the head' tidbit? Are we actually talking the decapitated article in a box? Or information thereon? An alternative translation states it in the plural - 'the heads of Mafia dons, who even Kira couldn't touch'. Maybe this is the source of those skulls, with which the teenage Mafia era Mello likes to surround himself.

Nor is this the worst that Mello feels justified in ordering during those days. He arranges for the abduction of Japanese police chief Takimura, followed by the same for Sayu Yagami, both as bargaining chips to be exchanged for the Death Note in Japanese police custody. Takimura is killed by Kira in a pre-emptive move; Sayu is left catatonic with trauma.

No end of Mafia associates are killed, or pressured into giving up half of their lives to acquire shinigami eyes. Drug routes established. The President of the United States of American coerced into suicide in order to prevent Mello using the Death Note to force his hand. Like making him launch nuclear bombs around the world, thus causing World War Three. The theft of a missile. All but three of the SPK massacred as a test of the Death Note, falling around Near, probably as a show of strength for his benefit.

Therein lies the rub. It's all about Near, ergo all about Wammy's House, not really about Kira or Rod Ross's prestige and profits at all. When the pair finally confront each other face to face, the background fades to exhibit instead the stained glass windows from the institution which raised them, and continues to cast its pall over their lives right now.

Near and Mello Wammy House stained glass Death Note

For Near and Mello, the battle to become L is all. Both are willing to pull out extremities in action, thought and deed to secure the prize Wammy and Roger left dangling for them. Ultimately, Mello will give up his life simply to make it onto the final score-sheet as joint first, once he realizes that the end is nigh and he'll be second in perpetuity.

N - Wammy Kid Near - Nate River

I've wanted to make him taste his own pathetic failure with all my heart.
~ Near, Death Note manga, chapter 90

Don't worry, Commander Rester, making assumptions is part of any investigation. If we're wrong, all it'll cost is an apology.
~ Near, Death Note anime, episode 30

Giovanni: If there are shinigami, I might die, right?
Near: Yes.
Giovanni: ...
Near: If you are scared, I'll ask Lester to go.
Lester: ...
~ Death Note anime

Of all the Wammys - with the possible exception of Beyond Birthday and his peer, the institution's first child suicidee A - Near seems to have taken the directive to become L's clone most keenly to heart.

He never met his idol, so any physical emulation of his idol was accidental, or an inadvertent consequence of both boys being raised within the same system. This didn't matter. The purposes for which reprogramming children to match the prototype was deemed necessary didn't involve B-like cosplay antics. Before Kira, no-one outside the Wammy Foundation met with L face-to-face, therefore would be hard pushed to identify him in a line-up. There was a brief interlude with Naomi Misora, immediately prior to the Kira case, but L never actually introduced himself. Perceptive Naomi guessed anyway, but she had the huge clue before her of Beyond Birthday making an indelible impression whilst copying L in costume, aspect and stance.

Near's task was much more insidiously wrought than just dressing up would have been. He sought to think like L. Submerge his own personality beneath a persona modelled upon that of his predecessor, as Near believed him to be based on this own observations and insights gleaned from L's electronic address to the fourth generation Wammy wards en masse. Near didn't even ask him any questions. They never had a conversation.

Near, thinking of what L would do Death Note

Scant enough hints around which to mould a credible likeness in continuation of the L Code. Especially when it has to be enough to to fool world leaders, and high-ranking contacts - networked to no known degree in the past - drawn randomly world-wide from government, military, legal/law enforcement, intelligence, secret services and other offices. Plus those within the private sector, researchers, consultants and experts in fields raising across the academe.

With whom did L share a confidence? Who did he know? Detest? Exchange now impenetrable dialogue in language encroached in private in-jokes? All of which Near must know in order to pull this off, or else his failure is outright and absolute. 'Just a loser' in all he worked hard and aspired to be - surviving his nearest rivals; out-ranking the rest - the only source of meaning for his life. He was told. And equally raised to fear, as catastrophic on a global scale, being exposed as a fake L, alongside the real L's death now leaked.

World War III would start. Only the actual Lawliet held its inception in abeyance. Crimes rates everywhere would soar, in figures projected to make the upward surge post-Kira seem like an insignificant bump beside the inevitable spike post-L.

Near must have spent an inordinate amount of brainpower and time pondering all L was or seemed to be; imagining his world-view and thought processes; researching by whatever means may come every snippet of information truly known about his idol; deducing what triggered every known pattern in behaviour, decision-making and everything else besides.

Then Near would have to expend yet more energy, resources and concentration in seemingly endless hours perfecting his carbon copy role-playing of the same.

Allowing another man's self in totality to imprint as a mask over Near's psyche. To suppress his own as worth much less than this prototype soul; as he alone won the right to exhibit L in de facto possession.

Yet some part of Near's genius must be twitching rebellion in a dark, cerebral recess. As early as twelve months prior - to the day - Near espouses rhetoric about how he (in union with Mello) surpassed L. However, it's spoken hesitantly, with many pauses for reflection in its delivery during Near's final confrontation with Kira in the Yellow Box warehouse. Nor does his conclusion appear to have lodged inside his own mind, beyond a theoretical concept to mess with Light's mind.

A year later, Near's faded from his own world; withdrawing into isolation as a hermit obsessively constructing a whole city out of tarot cards, paranoid about the fragility of his finely balanced reality. One draught of wind or an unwary boot upon Rester's foot might bring whole sections of the edifice down. Near's obvious depression surely a consequence of his attempt to obliterate his distinct and natural self, in lieu of fulfilling his Wammy given destiny to become L. Lawliet.

All of this after several years in pursuit of Kira - as the L defined arena in which his prototype Code's pretenders must battle to the death for the right to claim it as their own. Not to mention that it followed on top of a childhood raised in the Wammy House, with its petty rivalries, academic expectations, competitive rankings and presumed early exposure to graphic evidence from crime scenes, as part of the endemic brainwashing forging a strong desire to become L, should a back-up be required.

It takes a retracing of his steps back to the start for Near to even grasp the issue. The return sparked by circumstance - a prospective new Kira appearing on the scene - coupled with the urgent messages forged in his own subconscious - Near's arranging for all previously present to reassemble in the Yellow Box warehouse on the first anniversary of Light Yagami's denunciation and death. Another confrontation in the offing, this time with a crime syndicate dealing in drugs.

That hardly seems worth the while of a Wammy kid, except that it puts altered realities in Near's frame of introspection.

Death Note's Hal Lidner tells Near he doesn't have to be L

In the midst of that mix, experienced after twelve months spent dissembling, something had to give. It seems to begin with the sequence shown in the panel above, whereby Hal Lidner affirms to Near that he doesn't need to become L. 'L is L, you are you,' Lidner tells him and Near is momentarily at a loss for words to say in response. He mentally assesses her wisdom in taking such a perspective and is forced to conclude that she is quite correct.

I wonder if it's deliberate or coincidental that Hal's further comment - 'we can handle it our own way' - apes Mello's upon leaving the Wammy House - 'I will find my own way'. Near would have heard such echoes of sentiment anyway.

Later in the conversation, Hal says quite pointed that Near is trying to think as L would think. Near, who had just accidentally knocked over a section of his tarot card city, asks the pair to leave. He telling adds that they shouldn't topple his towers on the way out. In tarot, The Tower is a card of necessary destruction in the major arcana. It wipes away the old that the new might flourish.

What we then see from Near is a breakthrough moment of self-awareness, in the most literal sense.

At first Near appears dwarfed by the spectre of L. We're still in the same location, but his own world torn down to facilitate a new configuration of tarot card towers.

Each one spells out the single initial L. Near's own figure is almost completely lost amongst them.

Meanwhile Rester speaks from a monitor above, peering down like God Himself, or an Orwellian 1984 style Big Brother. The message he has to convey could have been uttered by Wammy. It certainly encapsulates the Zeitgeist of Wammy's House - the methodology can be as awry as it needs to be in order to solve the puzzle. The method justifies the means.

Near meekly replies that he'll embody L, doing only what it would be natural for L to do.

He goes on to broadcast globally in L's name, with a speech that includes elements from the only one he ever personally heard L declaim. Near addresses the 'new Kira' situation with utter disdain, stating that he won't be getting involved, because it doesn't interest him. Just as L told the Wammy kids in Near's own hearing that he chose his cases solely if they piqued his interest.

Death Note manga Rest talks to Near over L towers in tarot cards

However, Near's concluding statement in the L speech was a denunciation that was never heard from Lawliet's mouth, nor anything akin to it. But it mirrored entirely that famously enunciated by Near to the first Kira - 'You abominable murderer'. It was Near's personality emerging in full strength t0 wipe away the vestiges of Lawliet.

This time, when Rester repeats Hal's assertion that Near is L, Near does not hesitate to concur. We get the wide view and see that the Towers of L aren't so much zones of intimidation. It's Near demonstrating full well his altered world view. He doesn't have to be Lawliet, because he's Near.

Near as L in the Death Note one shot manga

All of this is a far cry from the Death Note anime, which simply skips over the issues Near endures post-Kira. Or the Death Note movies, which only features Near in the third film (L: Change the World). There he's a very young child when L dies, delivered to Wammy's House as L's final act of salvation before the detective dies. It will be a long time, if ever, that Near will have to take on L's mantle in that alternative timeline.

Or you can opt for the timeline altered once more in the novelization of L: Change the World, which omits the Thai boy entirely, to reinstate a more commonly rendered Near in cameo as the end. Only this one doesn't have self-identity issues, nor any compulsion not to tell the US President that L is dead, and he is now L. This telling establishes L as a team effort rather than investigated in one figurehead, albeit one with the same initial as the overall group. Here Near comes across as Puckish, in fact almost angelic.

"Mr. President, this is L... The L organization has captured L-prime and recovered the Death Note. We will eliminate L-prime with the notebook. You can confirm the body in one hour at the Kira Headquarters in Japan."
~ Near, L: Change the World, p186

"By the way, Mr President, would you mind if also issued you a threat?... You will ensure a future where children can go on smiling. Will you promise us that? If you should break that promise, we will not hesitate to use the Death Note."
~ Near, L: Change the World, p187

Well, angelic only if we recall that Lucifer was also an archangel; that Gabriel's horn topples city walls; that Samael was an Angel of Death and Destruction; and that Michael wielded a fiery sword to wage war on God's behalf. Near stating that he'll murder a man, then destroy the Death Note in one breath, followed by a threat to kill the President via it, sometime in perpetuity, seems nothing next to all that. Even if he did get caught in a lie from his own tongue within seconds of stating it.

Then you get the Near characterisation - the latest incarnation at the time of writing - wherein the Puckishness and violence have come utterly to the fore. Though in this case it's stated that Near has dual personalities and it's the Mello persona sharing their body who has the capacity to kill.

None of which strays too far from previous canon, nor the attributes with which Near was originally created by Tsugumi Ohba.

Even in the manga, Near has no problem causing the death of others - or else placing them in potentially fatal peril - if it assists him in solving the puzzle. Thus Kira is led to Mello's Mafia family hide-out; dollar notes worth $10m are dropped on a square in Manhattan causing a stampede; Gevanni is despatched to recover a Death Note's pages, despite instant death if Near's deduction is wrong; and Near psychologically shifts Ryuk into a position whereby the shinigami is keen to kill Light Yagami ASAP.

If Matsuda's theory is correct, then Near went much further than what was less than subtly implied in the pages of the manga. The new L was a serial killer, whose victims could well have included Mello, and whose continued possession of the Death Note AND the L Code makes him a dangerously all-powerful influence upon the modern world's movers and shakers.

Just as he learned at Wammy's House.

O - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

We don't currently have a canon assignation for the Wammy group letter O, just the usual known candidates: Matt and Linda, plus Wammy House created and raised L clone Ryūzaki (from Death Note: Light Up the New World).

P - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

Wammy letter P is known in canon only through being shown on L's call/mailing list in the movie L: Change the World.

These are the individuals who make up the Wammy Members' Group to whom L breaks the bad news via email that Watari is dead. The Wammy House crest, their knowledge of Mr Wammy (and the fact that they'd care about his death) and that they are all designated with single initials renders it certain that they are active members of the Wammy Foundation.

Though we know nothing about P, it can be guessed through the precedent of the rest that he/she is probably a detective, scientist or excelling in the arts. Aizawa and Matsuda reported in the manga that most Wammy alumni fit into those three categories, and the known alumni have followed suit so far.

Of course, there's nothing stopping these letters also possibilities for being assigned to the like of Matt and Linda, though the timeline makes it unlikely to be Ryūzaki's letter.

L Change the World Wammy letters on L's screen

Q - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; Unless Strong Probability: Q - Wammy Kid Matt - True Name Mail Jeevas

The hacking defence system, developed by Wammy's House's Q and given to him by his personal friend Watari, had identified the perpetrator who had cleverly routed through several servers all over the world on its way into the lab's system. "Accessed from inside the lab..."
~ L: Change the World, p31

After sending one email, he deleted all his files using the emergency system created by Q.
~ L: Change the World, p32

Wammy Letter Q mentioned in L Change the World

Q's letter is seen in the call list of Wammy's kids glimpsed briefly upon L's screen during the movie L: Change the World (see P).

Unlike most on the list, this individual is also mentioned in the novelization of the same, where it's revealed that (s)he is some kind of computing genius.

For this reason, Wammy's Q is most likely the letter assigned to Matt, aka Mail Jeevas, named in canon as the third ranked Wammy kid of the fourth generation (i.e. next in line for L's succession after Near and Mello).

It is a truth universally known and recognized throughout the Death Note fandom that Matt is good with computers. On his Death Note Wiki page, where cited facts tend to be cross-referenced back to source, we're told '(Matt's) specialty is technology, and he is tasked by Mello to monitor the activities of Misa, Mogi and Aizawa.' The information is devoid of citation.

Matt's geek prowess in computing and 1337 cyber skills are implied in canon. Nevertheless it may surprise most to realise nothing in manga, manual, anime or elsewhere explicitly states anything of the sort. Unless we're missing some reference somewhere, Matt's technological genius is pure fanon.

What we are told - or shown - by Death Note's creators Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata is that Matt likes video games. He's rarely seen without a PSP or Nintendo DS in hand, and/or other consoles trailing in the background, unless he's driving a car, wielding a gun, watching Kira over the road through a camera or chatting to Mello over his phone about Misa, boredom and the unchanging nature of brick walls.

However, there are quite often computers in the vicinity too. Multiples thereof. Whole reasons in fact why fanon latches onto this notion that Matt is Wammy's technological genius, not least because of the sheer amount that surrounds him at every (woefully scant) view we get.

It may have seemed that all (Matt) did was play video games, but his existence itself was important (laughs).
~ Tsugumi Ohba, How to Read: Death Note 13 p 69

His character concept was a young man who loves video games and doesn't really care much about the world.
~ Takeshi Obata, How to Read: Death Note 13, p136

Death Note Matt inspecting computer as a child

Monitoring multiple screens, (Matt's) cockiness leads him to make a few mistakes.
~ How to Read: Death Note 13, p27

Whether the case is made for Matt being Q or not, he's likely to be the figure behind a Wammy letter. This correlation between implied official/widely accepted fanon facets of Matt with those known about Q is as close as canon has come to assigning him a letter thus far.

A major insight into the mores of Watari is afforded us through the added information about Q . The Wammy House computing adept has created at least two highly useful programs. They belong to him/her - unless the geek's own Hacker Ethic has seen them released as freeware online - and could be patented for personal profit outside the Wammy Foundation orbit.

Yet they have not. Moreover, Watari feels warranted passing those scripts onto a personal friend as a gift.

There could be quite innocent and laudable reasons for this, or it could be that all those high flying skills possessed by Wammy letters are never quite their own to utilize. Their gained wealth and honours fly straight into the Wammy coffers to be used as a common treasury for all within the House and its Foundation. Fuel for fan-fiction writers anyway.

As for Matt himself, he's yet another letter coming from the Wammy House into that deathly battle against Kira. After assisting Mello in some surveillance work in the USA, Matt flew with him to Japan. There he further helped out, this time firing a CS gun from the driver's seat of a red muscle car, creating a smokescreen to facilitate the abduction of Kiyomi Takada.

Matt was killed shortly afterwards, when cornered by Kira supporters and shot dead. He was nineteen years old.

R - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

Wammy Letters R, I, E, K, V, T on L's screen in L Change the World

R is amongst those Wammy Letters known only from a glimpse of L's computer monitor in the movie L: Change the World.

Those listed there were on the Wammy Members' Group. Each identified by just a single initial, alongside the Wammy House crest. Most were e-mailed by L that he might alert them to the death of Watari.

Only there's something different about B, R, V and T to all those mentioned from this source previously. They weren't in receipt of the missive, and their letters were blocked out grey with a line voiding the box to select them.

The implication is that these are Wammy kids who are no longer alive. A kind of confirmation coming in the inclusion of B there, assuming that this movie exists in the same timeline as the novel Another Note: The Los Angeles Murder Cases.

Beyond Birthday would indeed be dead this close to the end of Kira's reign. He was killed on January 21st 2004 of a heart-attack probably during one of Kira's purges of international prison populations.

S - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

To date, there is no known Wammy Letter S in canon, which isn't to say that one doesn't exist. The usual candidates apply here too.

T - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

T is known only from his/her entry on L's call/mailing list in L: Change the World live-action movie. However the initial is faded out to grey, implying that T is dead (see R.)

U - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

There is no Wammy U letter assigned in any canon source to date.

V - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

Another included on L's Wammy Members' Group mailing list in the film L: Change the World. V's initial is greyed out, it's owner presumed dead.

W - Wammy Letter for Watari - Quillsh Wammy Himself

It's difficult to know the motive for Quillsh Wammy in creating The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans in Winchester. Mostly in manga, anime, novels and live-action adaptations of Death Note, the altruism is played up in the persona of L's handler (as Tsugumi Ohba described him).

But the Death Note author also stated that Wammy cultivated those kids as detectives 'for fun'.

Even if Wammy's orphanage and the lettered foundation to follow were established for the best of reasons, gathering genius children from across the globe - for the most part relocating them to another country - then stripping them of their names and other indicators of self-identity robs all concerned of their birthright. Held up to the light of the UN's Rights of the Child (international law) and Wammy's House is shown sadly lacking for all its wonderful provision.

That document was certainly ratified in England, where Winchester is situated. Some government officials, and those in the local authority too, must be turning quite a large blind eye, or else Hampshire Social Services would be traipsing all over the premises. Closing it down too because, for all its bright and glorious intentions, Wammy's House is an illegal concern by universally declared human rights laws.

Obviously those politicians in Winchester, Westminster and in the offices of other world leaders too consider it expedient to let the institution continue existing - taking the Stalinesque position that the ends justify the means - but that's by the by. The question here is what Wammy himself thinks he's up to, and how he's squared it with his conscience (if, of course, he knows his operation to be criminally negligent and cares about that).

The hints from the manga are inconclusive to bordering upon the disturbing.

We never hear Wammy's own thoughts on what he's established, just catch an undercurrent of Aizawa's unease, as he reports back to Light what he find in Winchester.

Plus How to Read: Death Note 13's note on Roger Ruvie, that he was employed to collect children internationally and bring them to Wammy's House to train as L's successor. Watari employed him to do that. He pays his wages too.

The anime continues on along the same theme, adding nothing directly from Wammy's mouth, but providing us with snap-shot flashes of the orphanage with sobbing infants and bullying in the corridors.

Not to mention the strange spectacle of Roger telling Mello and Near (aged 14 and 12 respectively) that they now have to take L's place in the struggle against a mass murderer of global proportions.

Aizawa and Matsuda report back to Light about Wammy's House

And incidentally, their guardian is dead, along with their idol. The one they were raised to emulate to the point of becoming in a very literal sense.

Its director's cut movie length double bill - Relight - adds the darkest element yet in L's 'monster' speech, as recalled by Near. Whatever else anyone thought the Wammy Foundation to be, L was in it for the lulz. Apparently. Then Mello, as narrator in Another Note, takes the matter of Watari's motives and the institution's reality plummeting to whole new levels of criminal insanity and horror. Herein, Quillsh Wammy emerges as a mad inventor, dehumanising children to the level of machines, psychologically repackaging them as carbon copies of his prototype child. Then placing them on a conveyor belt onto martyrdom or becoming L mark 2.

Thereafter, things lighten up considerably. Wammy suddenly transforms into a kindly benefactor, personally concerned in realising the potential in each of his wards, coupled with a genuine zest to save the world - or change it, as the movies and their novelisation strangely phrases it.

Death Note L Change the World L and Watari

Though this overtly compassionate soul doesn't stop L, to all extents and purposes, committing suicide by writing his own name in a Death Note; F dying with a smile on his face in Thailand; and K building a biological contagion to wipe out all humanity. All directly or by proxy sent into the situations that killed or unhinged them by Wammy himself or one of his assistants at Wammy HQ.

Not one of them elicited a word of censure or damage limitation from their guardian either; nothing of consolation nor urging them to put their own safety and well-being above the perils of the case.

F's death 'couldn't be helped' (L: Change the World movie). K was never approached with the key information that she'd been assigned and kept not only her letter, but Watari's own esteem (L: Change the World novel, p 176-177). While sight of L's name in that Death Note almost prompted words in reaction from the man who'd raised him and continued to be a constant presence catering to his every whim. But Wammy stopped himself speaking 'and closed his eyes to contain his feelings' (ibid, p 16).

For that matter, though L was on the trail of Beyond Birthday enough to contact and advise Naomi Misora, Watari did not take the first available flight to Los Angeles in an attempt to calm his wayward, suicidal ward. With all L's considerable sway upon the movers and shakers of most nations - the USA topmost on the list - no apparent intervention was made on behalf of the badly burned Beyond Birthday. He was left to languish in a LA prison, until Kira killed him. (Nor then had the Wammy Foundation ensured his anonymity regarding face and name, as Near did for Mello. B lost and thus was excluded from the fold.

It's unlikely to be an appalled father figure washing his hands of the 'back-up'. Watari covers up or fixes the carnage from no end of criminal acts, up to and including murder, as enacted by his other wards. Like Near/Mello, in the Death Note TV drama (2015), phoning to announce that he's just killed Yudagawa. Wammy's reaction being to retrieve Near from the scene, arrange the clear up and cake. Near's favourite at that.

Death Note television drama. Watari brings cake for Near and L

Finally back to the manga's original story and timeline, wherein Watari, firmly entrenched in the perils at the front line of the Kira case, never once thought to phone home to tell Roger, "You know, this might be too dangerous for the kids. Plus they've got the onset of puberty looming on the horizon, which is going to play havoc with their thought processes and deductive reasoning. If anything happens to me and L, be sure and keep Near and Mello safe indoors, eh?"

Instead, he doesn't even deign to indicate a name for L's successor - news which every child there spends every second of their existence in conditioned striving to become - partially because he knew L had already named Light (more important information for the cohort in Winchester, perchance?), and also because Wammy's own death was so sudden.

Yet surely this ultra-efficient man had made provision? Given his wealth, responsibilities and current condition in risk of sudden death by Kira, it seems the most obvious rolling course of action for the Wammy House founder and father figure.

The only insight we get to the mindset of Quillsh Wammy, in regard to the ridiculously short life expectancy of those in his care, comes from his musing in response to the fait accompli of L's suicide - deferred by twenty-three days as per the extremities of the Death Note's limitations. In the knowledge that L would have contemplated every move available to himself before acting thus to checkmate Kira, a conclusion is reached - 'this was the choice L had made. How could Watari object?' (L: Change the World (novel), p17)

How could he not? When each tragic loss to the Wammy House cohort, met without comment, reaffirms the normality/inevitability/expectancy of such choices made, his objections should be paramount. Especially as L - with his own demise fixed and irreversible - instantly acted as though a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. A burden that the novel later articulates as,

... L did not and could not forget the face of thousands of victims... The chronically rounded shoulders, the inevitable dark circles, the eccentric tastes - L suppressed the pain of being a champion of justice, but the evidence of the pain was molded into his very body. L tore out his hair and howled at the sky, unleashing the agony inside his soul.
~ L: Change the World (novel), p151

It's a life that Watari chose for his favourite ward to live, when the boy was way too young to know what it could possibly entail. A whole Foundation was constructed around facilitating and perpetuating it, complete with staff-members tasked with replicating L upon the raw matter and vulnerable psyche of a steady procession of living children. The majority of whom L, at just twenty-seven years old, has already out-lived.

His guardian, mentor and carer Wammy hasn't left his side in over twenty-one years. Two decades of reaffirming to L that what he's doing is necessary and the only thing he could be doing. Acting like this is normal and right. Intimating that L perhaps owes him something for this relentless support and companionship, with so much time, wealth and world peace tied up in the detective going on as before; his burden bending his shoulders and adding dark pits around his eyes.

L looked up suddenly... with the worried expression of a child. "Watari, have I fulfilled you expectations?" Watari answered with his usual serene smile and uttered one simple unerring word: "Fully."
- L: Change the World, p188

X - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; Y - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; and Z - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

... I heard from L: the story of the detective war between the three greatest detectives, all solving that infamous bio-terror case, with guest appearances from the last of the alphabet, the first X to the first Z from Wammy's House.
~ Another Note, p170

X, Y and Z were all Wammy House children who assisted L, as he battled for supremacy over the original Eraldo Coil and Danuve.

Emerging victorious, L wasn't content to merely take the top spot in investigative global ranking. He took their detective codes too, hereafter able to call himself by their names; as evidenced in the battle against Kira, when he announced to the task force that he was in fact all three detectives now. Aiber was able to pose as Coil, in L's stead, when the Yotsuba Group hired the supposed 2nd placed detective in order to investigate the first.

Yet none of this explains what happened to X, Y and Z afterwards. Mello never tells us in Another Note; nothing more beyond that snippet quoted above. Nor do they turn up in the B case, or the fight against Kira which follows on.

Then again, that quotation can be read another way and perhaps they weren't assisting L at all, despite their Wammy House credentials. It seems unlikely that one or two WERE the original Coil and Danuve, challenging L for the chance not to be his backup nor copy. That would place them centre-stage, not cameos.

But nothing there says that they weren't the instigators of the bio-terror case under investigation. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that something like that was spawned from the dark corridors of the Wammy House to be unleashed upon the world.

In which case, all precedent says they're now tucked up safely inside their laboratories within the confines of the orphanage, welcomed home with an attitude akin to respect and a jolly well done. But for the fact that none of the trio factor upon L's calling screen in L: Change the World - plus Mello refers to all as 'the first' of their names in Another Note.

The implication being that these three Wammy kids no longer exist, even within the institution out of public view. Moreover, those who supplanted them in their allocated initials potentially were lost too. That is if we're taking all Death Note stories as one amalgamated canon, even where their time-lines clash.

The Wammy Alphabet of Death Note Letters

Entire list of Wammy letters colour coded according to status

Those names greyed out are already dead by the end of all iterations of the Death Note canon. Those inverted represent Letters whose allocation is currently unknown. Leaving just D, E, G, H, K, N and P still alive.

However, this is just one run through from all known canon data. We have indubitably got a mix-match of generations here. A, B, X, Y and Z are known to have been amongst the first. M and N were definitely fourth. L, H and W held their letters throughout. K's letter survived at least two generations in its allocation. It has to be assumed that for a letter to be reassigned (four times for four generation of alphabets filled and started again), the previous recipient is dead.

How many Wammy kids must have died then, for the latest as semblance of Wammy Letters to exist? A vague straw-poll based on the configuration seen above suggests that, of the overall proportion, 73.1% are dead.

It may be presumed that Ryūzaki, Linda and those nameless Wammy kids in the background of flashback scenes all bore an initial apiece. A single letter displayed upon a white screen when they called - stark black in an Old English font, in lieu of a real name.

And where were J, X, Y and Z on L's calling screen in L: Change the World? A possible 4-7 more dead or disappeared. J to a burning ship in the middle of a pixel ocean; the latter three implied dead by Mello's comment 'the first to hold those letters'.

And of the remainder, one planned to destroy all humanity but was brought back into the Wammy fold. Not before K had already killed thousands, obliterating whole villages along the way. While, if Matsuda's theory was right, another is a secret serial killer in possession of a Death Note's great power, in addition to holding the L title that every one of Wammy's children coveted.

As L's successor, N beat them all to what amounts - in practicality, wealth and influence alike - to world domination.

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Watari's Indoctrination of Wammy Kids in Death Note (Analysis by Lua Cruz)

4/5/2016

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

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

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

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

Here is at least one house for gifted children, assumed to be orphans, who are raised in an unfriendly and competitive environment for no other reason other than Quillsh Wammy thought this was an important thing to do. Those children are taught their skills should be directed to a very specific goal: becoming L. L is a detective so the point of collecting those children is to groom them into becoming detectives. More than that, they are trained to be confident in their own reasoning, their own methods of doing what they enjoy.

If the children are taught to find a hobby and to find their own way of achieving the goals of said hobby, can we talk about indoctrination in Wammy’s House? Considering John White’s definition that indoctrination takes place if the intention of the teacher is to make it so that “(t)he child should believe that ‘p’ is true, in a such way that nothing will shake this belief” (White 1972a, 119 and 1973, 179), it could be said the point behind Wammy’s is to make sure the children believe their goal is worth everything.

If they want to solve a case, anything they do to accomplish that (be it breaking the law or putting themselves at risk or indirectly getting people killed or cheating) is worth it. Their conclusion is absolute to the point their actions are justified as if they are justice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mello joins the Mafia, K joins a bio-terrorist group, B becomes a serial killer, L himself admits to being a criminal by current laws and is willing to use torture against Misa. Letting them do as they pleased, confident on their own skills and conclusions, seemed to be a pretty chaotic project.

As it is, Watari died before his experiment was complete and we only have bits and pieces of it to try and make sense of his project. But why was it important to Watari to create a group of people with that level of confidence in their own reasoning? Why was it important to let them loose in the world with no guidance or direction?

Article by Lua Cruz

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Watari Letters: Death Note Canon Alphabet of Wammy Kids: A-K

28/4/2016

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Quillsh Wammy, the genius inventor who founded Wammy's House... looking at L's incredible talents from
the perspective of an inventor - of course he wanted to make a copy, of course he wanted to create a backup.
Anyone would feel the same.
~ Mello, Another Note, p104

Little is known about Quillsh Wammy the man, nor what he truly intended for the children in his care. Though intriguing clues litter the canon sources with enough material to keep the fan-fiction writers going for an age. Often, if you can't see the thing itself, then observing the ripple effect provides a proxy view enough to hazard a guess at what lies beyond.

What remains mysterious about the benefactor of that strange chain of orphanages established in Death Note manga, anime, novels, movies, TV drama and games, might just show in the Fate of orphans raised within their alpha home - The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans.

Wammy takes L to Wammy's House, Winchester

Each child within the Wammy system assigned a single letter. A calling code. Something by which they could identify each other, if no other code-name was available.

Genius minds afforded specialised training; then sent out into the world, apparently to change it. Though what precisely that means never is quite explained, beyond a vague pandering to the word justice.

As defined by the Wammys, especially L.

More often leaving the House to engage in petty rivalry and combat with each other; and woe betide any who get in their way - for to destroy the world is just another way to change it.

... what if they could copy (L)? What if they could make a backup?
That was us.
L's children, gathered from all corners of the world.
Children gathered together, never told each other's names....
~ Another Note, p105

List of Wammy House Letters Discussed in General Terms

We cannot reconstruct the whole canon alphabet of Death Note letters, even via our current ploy below of amalgamating disparate versions as if they were one cohesive and extant source. However, it's not bad how few Wammy letters exist without a known correspondence or link in any canon Death Note universe.

There's just a handful assigned without furnishing the fandom with clues pertaining to the person here represented. Even then they may be discussed in general terms, applicable across the board. Not least the assumption might be made that someone raised or based at Wammy's House in Winchester was, is or will be in possession of the code required to utilize all that this letter represents.

Not anonymity in public communication - no matter how much it's used for that, such usage is just a bonus - but access to The Wammy Foundation, its administration, resources and infrastructure.

Doors don't open because someone sat in GIMP messing around with Cloister fonts and single letters centred in Old English. If they did then I'd be L by now. Government offices allow access to restricted lines; military manoeuvres are initiated by request; Interpol meetings are infiltrated; and intelligence agencies are directed or else willing to share classified information, because that Wammy letter alphabet gets used set within a certain context.

Further codewords or numbers may allow verification of its user's authenticity.

B infiltrates Yotsuba corporation; N elicits the US President's help; F directs a child into calling Watari to get lifted from Thailand.

A call from a Death Note Letter to Wammy Headquarters (i.e. the Winchester orphanage in which they were raised) could summon the word spoken into an ear, heavies, intel or finance to oil passage into a myriad of locations, ways, clubs or meetings, as necessary to solve the mystery at hand.

It could rescue that clever detective from dangerous places, or let him/her secure whatever was uncovered that now needs safeguarding. Sensitivity in no questions asked, efficient fixing; unlimited funds able to be wired wherever a masked voice asks for such to be. Plus so much more besides.

It's not each iconic initial that's key in those calls. It's the apparently boundless support and open doors that such icons represent.

Wammy's Foundation has an incredible reach throughout the planet and into the hidden powerhouses unknown to most. Where global movers and shakers meet with their identities gleaned incrementally on a need to know basis. Where influence is strong and disagreements could potentially cause or avert World War III. Yet none more able to direct the flow of world affairs than Quillsh Wammy himself.

The many powerful faces of Wammy

Death of Quillsh Wammy reported in Death Note

Then if all else fails, those clever and dangerous Wammy Letters - living so far beyond any laws to proscribe their actions - probably know where to find and press the requisite levers to get blockages removed.

No doubt such reminders prompt the machinery of co-operation into instant, unfettered movement by any given government and their agencies, accompanied by renewed guarantees that this status quo will remain so indefinitely. Uttered upon expensive, elite lips belonging to those who know they can keep their promises.

Just as Mello did in the Death Note manga, compelling an American President into acting in accordance with that Mafioso Wammy's will. Threatening to use a Death Note to gain US compliance anyway, with its President's actions subject to unstoppable remote control, until his inevitable death a few days on.

That wasn't the Mafia man talking, however close the sentiment might seem. It was the Wammy speaking as Mello this time. Another day it could have been L or Near, as also happened in canon, outlined as dialogue in the novel L: Change the World. And THAT has to be how they were raised for President Hoope seemed to expect it. Evidently he's dealt with Mr Wammy and his alumni many times before.

Death Note US President David Hoope suicide manga chapter 70 Tremble

Wammy Letters seemingly above the law: (Clockwise l-r) Televised death of Lind L Taylor (L); NYC stampede for $10m (N); Misa Amane tortured (L); US President David Hoope driven to suicide (M); NPA President Takimura abducted and tortured (M); lethal pathogen unleashed onto colleague, then the world (K).

Which makes you wonder what else we can see in the stories of the rest; to illuminate the inner workings of Quillsh Wammy's mind and the processes underpinning the ways in which his Winchester institution is run.

A great man, as Matsuda once said, or the monstrous child-thief - as he's intimated to be by L, Mello, B and Near's testimonies? Hinted in separate instances, dotted about various canon sources - Watari brainwashing proto-detectives, from kids raised in his care, to enter into deadly games of rivalry and puzzle-solving, all for fun.

More of those children's stories might provide some insight into the manner of this man, whom even Tsugumi Ohba his creator called 'terrible'.

Death Note Wammy Letters Alphabet

Death Note Mello and Near wait to see who will be L

The designation of a letter in Wammy's alphabet held a special significance for those who graduated Wammy's House. It signified that they were charged with changing the world. There were only twenty-six letters to exist every generation, and these young people were part of an illustrious list of past letters who had time and again been instrumental in saving the world from catastrophe. Above all, the designation signified Watari's trust.
~ L: Change the World (novel), p 176-177

Watari's Character? He's a guy who cultivates detectives for fun. That's kind of terrible, isn't it? (laughs)
~ Tsugumi Ohba, Death Note author, How to Read: Death Note 13 p 60

A - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

... even for a genius like Watari, creating a fake L was easier said than done... I hardly need to tell you what it was like when Wammy's House was first founded, when he was still experimenting. The first child, A, was unable to handle the pressure of living up to L and took his own life...
~ Another Note, p105

When Quillsh Wammy determined that he needed to 'copy' or 'back up' L, he chose a live child to mould into aping his prototype model.

Imagine that for just a moment - someone, anyone, being taken into strange premises and told that all you are and were no longer matters. You have no name, or purpose beyond becoming somebody else. Not in the military we-will-make-you-action-man sense, nor in any manner of self-improvement, like going off to university, or training to run a marathon. This isn't even the refining of a Swiss finishing school.

This is taking a presumably orphan child and stripping him of all form of self-identity. Not a name to call himself, just a letter. No personality traits that can't also be found in L. No lesser intelligence than what that incredibly once-in-a-lifetime type genius mind than attain. Telling a boy that everything about himself is so worthless that nothing will do but to reject it all and become the clone of another boy deemed more valuable.

And they wonder why he committed suicide.

B - Wammy Kid Beyond Birthday - True Name Unknown

... the second child, Beyond Birthday, was brilliant and deviant. B stood for Backup...
As long as there was L, B would never be L. As
long as the original existed, the copy was always a copy.
~ Another Note, p105

That B had been a candidate to succeed L, and that the pressure of that had driven him off track... Beyond Birthday's quest to surpass L. It mattered more to him than his own life. Perhaps he was less intent than desperate. Nobody could have stopped him.
~ Another Note, p171

After attempting to imprint L's whole being cookie cutter style upon poor A's flayed psyche, Quillsh Wammy then turned his attention onto a second child for experimentation. He was seeking the same result. He got it.

By which is meant that Watari's zest to 'copy' L drove another orphan in his care to conclude that the only way out was suicide.

Only Beyond Birthday didn't attempt his own end with the supposed quiet lack of drama that beset the tragedy of A. (At least Mello didn't deem it worth gossiping about the fine detail later.) B opted for self-slaughter in perhaps the most dramatic, loud and all encompassing manner he could stage manage. Downright theatrical in fact, in that he performed it in costume, caked in thick make-up, complete with props. Assuming a role in scenes orchestrated and arranged by himself.

The part that Wammy had always wanted him to play. Indivisible from L; a carbon copy. Albeit with a few heart-breaking, pointed and rather grisly differences in the reality that played out. Not least that Beyond knew that L could count on the support of Wammy's House, and he could not.

... he had always disguised himself with heavy make-up while he was with Misora, and he had never left a picture behind.
~ Another Note, p162

He knew that the moment he took action Wammy's House and Watari would alert L, so he did not even bother trying to stop them.
~ Another Note, p159

Our mental image of B - repeated endlessly in fan-art and fiction - depicts him fixed in cosplaying L. Cosmetics to recreate the sleep deprived pallor, hunched over in walking and folded, knees up in sitting.

There's no telling whether the crawling on all fours isn't just a parody of L's burden bent back, nor if the jam eaten with his fingers straight from the jar might not be a clown-like standing for L's endless array of sweet confectionery. He even quotes L's habitual lines, about how hot beverages brimmed into slush with sugar boost his energy and awaken his brain, while sitting in that famous stance raises his mental faculties by 40%.

Beyond Birthday copies L, just as Mr Wammy demanded of him, but only to break him in a desperate challenge - choosing death in order to commit an unsolvable crime. Viewing serial killing and his own horrifically agonizing mode of ending himself as reasonable prices to pay if he ultimately got to beat L. It didn't matter that B wouldn't be there to see it happen. The victory was all.

Well, in theory, give or take Naomi Misora being more intelligent than any Wammy credited those outside the institution as having any right to be.

Hence B ended up terribly mutilated, surviving in the knowledge that L's proxy - a civilian! - had bested him even when he threw in such extremes. Serving a life sentence inside an LA prison for the murders of three people pretty much used as props to destroy L's mind, pride and reputation. Until Kira killed Beyond randomly (so it's implied) during one of his Death Note purges of evil-doers inside.

Nor do we see any evidence that Watari intervened, though with his connections it's probable that Beyond could have been released into Wammy's House custody. There's not even a hint that those who drove B into such desperation and madness so much as visited him behind bars. Then he was dead before Mello moved into the same city.

Wammy's experimentation went on.

Beyond Birthday and L: L is After Beyond Birthday

C - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

Although nothing is known about this individual at the present time, it doesn't necessarily follow that we do not know them. Some characters associated with Wammy's House never had their call code letters made public. This covers Matt, Linda and Ryūzaki from the forthcoming movie too.

D - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

L's Wammy Group mail from L Change the World

D is known only from an entry within the Wammy Members' Group Mail, glimpsed upon L's computer screen in the live-action movie L: Change the World.

However, it might be surmised that D has been in possession of his or her letter for quite some time, as those listed aren't alphabetical and D is at the top.

That may be a false premise nevertheless, as L himself only appears halfway down the list and he was the first Wammy in possession of a letter.

L doesn't hesitate in sending the communication to D, nor indeed anyone else on the list, with the exception of K who gives him pause. For all else, its implied that they are trusted, worthy recipients with no bad blood between themselves and the Watari Foundation, as represented here by L.

Beyond that, nothing else is known. Nor is every letter displayed, as the scrollbar alongside the list of Wammy letters hints at more unseen before the camera drifts away to focus upon the e-mail's sender instead.

E - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

E is another Wammy letter assignation known only from L's mailing group in L: Change the World. (See above)

F - Wammy Kid F1225 - True Name Unknown

Wammy letter F is known to us entirely from the movie L: Change the World. He doesn't even turn up in the book of the same name. In the movie, he is portrayed by actor Kakuzi Namioka. Wammy F's character name in the credits is displayed as エフ Romanised as Efu.

We first see F peering through the slats into a rural home in Bangnum Village, Thailand. He is observing a whole population stricken by some unknown pathogen, all dying horribly and in agony with sores, blisters and frothing mouths. It appears to have been quite a sudden onset with a 100% mortality rate, and the scientists have just turned up to investigate.

They are exempt in theory from contagion, clad from head to foot in bright yellow protective clothing. They speak with American accents and seem unsympathetic to the suffering of victims all around them. Moreover, brutal in their dehumanising pronouns - 'deal with that', one says, indicating a man nearby. Another pushes a mother surrounded by four dead children roughly away from him.

F flees. There is no explanation as to why he was there. Nor why he's so certain of his immunity from contracting the unspecified pathogen, that he's willing to risk exposure to it.

The only clues come from a future scene, wherein we're told he was working undercover for the Watari Foundation near Bangnum Village, and that the biometers aren't responding. Though whether that fact pertains to F's presence isn't clear from the context. He was certainly there 'in the line of duty'.

However, he's presumably on some kind of Wammy House directed rescue mission, as the child waiting at the location F flees to - in the ruins of ancient architecture just beyond the village - is Near. Though evidently Thai, Near does not appear native to Bangum. "This village is over for us." F tells the child, interrupting him mid-mathematical flow, with formulae chalked all over the mossy stone walls.

They have perhaps gained sanctuary there with Near seemingly unperturbed by events. Abandoning his calculus without fear nor apparent regard for the destruction down below, in order to join F in flight via the older Wammy's Land Rover.

The instructions F gives to the boy focus upon how to contact Watari. This transpires into a moment of sheer delight and wonder for Team Wammy Death Note fans everywhere - F gives us the Watari phone number: 0105928147218. Whereupon we are directed to tell them F1225 told us to ring it.

So, has anyone done so yet? To whom does it connect? Are they very sick of random people calling from all over the world, demanding to speak with Watari?

"Watari will protect you," F informs his young charge, wearing an ethereal kind of smile as he says so. The future Near, it has to be said, surveys him right back with the world's most dubious expression over a long, drawn out stare. Already too clever for his own good, that one.

But a look which surely seems like presentiment when, in the next instant, an American military helicopter arises from the bushland track behind them and starts shooting holes from the road in front.

F steps on the accelerator of the Land Rover he has weaving all over this Thai dustroad-turned-Formula-1-racetrack. Yet a close look at him reveals the sudden appearance of lesions on the side of this face. Not so immune to disease after all, though Near is in the clear and remains so. F knows that he's personally not going to survive this flight through the bushes, thus in a poignant moment takes the necklace bearing his Watari letter F from around his neck and places it around Near's instead.

F bequeaths his necklace to Near - L Change the World

L Change the World Wammy F wishing Near luck

Back behind the wheel, with an expression of sheer determination, F hurtles along the road in his Land Rover, leading the military away from the spot where he abandoned Near. But he knows he can't out-drive them. He has to have known he was due to die as soon as he couldn't shake them off before.

This race away from Near is deliberate though. Himself less important than the child left behind, despite F's presumably high intelligence and top class education rendering him a supposed benefit to the whole world as a Wammy letter. Surely more so in that horrible choice between himself and an untutored youngster with much potential. Because whatever Near is, or may become, right now the boy is an unknown quantity.

Yet somebody somewhere within the Watari Foundation judged it worth risking F's life to send him into that dangerous situation in order to extract the kid. By his actions, F certainly concurs.

The helicopter descends before the Land Rover, blocking all egress. F stops the vehicle and surveys in horror what waits ahead. There's momentary horror and fright for F. Not ready to die. Then he is, eyes closing and a tiny smile touching the corner of his lips. Like this is acceptable.

We watch the Watari prodigy F die by proxy - a close up on the missile emerging from the helicopter's launcher, then a long shot of Near witnessing the blast from around the corner, expressionless and wearing F's letter necklace. Another Wammy kid dead. Another left knowing from the onset what the far future has in store for him, though also still lost in the immediate sense.

What's interesting about F's reaction to all of this is that undying faith in Wammy and the Watari Foundation. Adamant to the end that Watari protects his wards, a sentiment spoken even as the patently unprotected F remains trapped in an environment rife with pestilence and bombs.

He's not going to survive this, yet surely it was Watari - or a representative thereof - who sent him there. Nevertheless, F will ensure another child follows in his footsteps and smiles as he dies. Some inner conviction sated in the certainty that his premature demise was worth it.

Perhaps the ethos wherein this genius Wammy House orphan was raised. One we'll return to time and again in the biographies of Wammy kids. Dulce et decorum est pro Watari mori...

G - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

The Wammy letter G is another whose canon existence consists solely of an entry on L's email list in the movie L: Change the World. (See D.)

H - Wammy Headquarters Letters - Roger Ruvie (presumed)

Wammy Letter H may be seen representing Wammy Headquarters in a scene from the live-action movie L: Change the World.

That this is also The Wammy's House may be determined by comparing the avatar crest accompanying the moniker Wammy Headquarters with the same already displayed on Watari's desktop underneath the call alert.

As warden of Wammy's House, it must be assumed that Roger Ruvie is the individual in receipt of this letter. The H reflecting that element of his job description that involves liaison between Watari and the rest of his wards - HQ rather than headmaster.

This would explain why Roger Ruvie sticks around as overseer of an orphanage, when his pet hate (according to How to Read: Death Note 13) is 'children'.

It also chimes nicely with the warden's role within the original manga and anime Death Note stories. He was the recipient of L's alert pertaining to the detective's own death.

Moreover, Roger was the one to inform Near and Mello of the same, and would have been the one told if Watari/L had chosen which of them was to succeed their idol. Roger also felt able to make a suggestion regarding the succession himself - the futile interjection that the pair should work together.

In short, Roger had long since been the nexus for internal Watari Foundation communication. The manga has him eventually becoming Watari, when Near takes the Letter to continue as that detective code.

Death Note's H calls W: Wammy HQ (Roger Ruvie) mails Watari

We see more of what Roger's position at The Wammy's House - Wammy Headquarters - constitutes in this same scene. Following immediately on from the death of F, Roger calls Wammy to inform him of their ward's death. Though cut off, his text communication is curt, emotionless and to the point.

This isn't a telegram, yet it seems like Roger goes out of his way to conserve characters in his abrasive wording. F's death is afforded equal precedence to HQ's report about the biometers being out of commission. His main concern seems to be who to send out there next. No waxing lyrical in commiseration and regard for a young man killed, whom both must have known intimately, as a boy raised by themselves and for whom responsibility did not stop in adulthood, as he remained one of their lettered agents.

It's a similar pattern of feeling - or lack thereof - as seen in the manga, whereby Roger's first act upon hearing the news of L and Wammy's demise is to call in Mello and Near, thus to settle the succession. No question that such a continuation must occur.

Nor apparently did he race after Mello, when the boy announced his attention to leave home and work alone in catching Kira. This is a fourteen year old stepping out into a frigid December night, in a barely adequate jacket, yet his guardian did not shift in his recall.

Back to F and the news of his death. It's never clarified who alerted Roger to that particular tragedy, though we do get to see Wammy and L react to the same. Wammy's look of sadness and shock tips off L, who gently enquires if it is bad news? His guardian answers in hushed tones that F was killed in Thailand. There follows a pensive moment, wherein the old man sadly states, 'It was in the line of duty, so it couldn't be helped but...'

But what? The sentiment is never answered verbally, nor addressed by the creator of this system at all. The contemplative silence draws out for both with the sentence never actually finished. Left lingering in the air as simply that - something which couldn't be helped - while H's missive remains on the screen focused upon who to send in next.

The answer to F's death comes in reality from L's actions. This is the final piece of information to push the detective into writing his own name into Misa's Death Note, thus effectively committing suicide. Why? 'To take control over my own Fate is the only way to outwit Death.'

Roger tells Mello and Near about L's death

A reaction echoed in part by Mello's own reaction to the compulsion to take L's place jointly with Near, as Roger's major consideration upon the loss of L. No doubt feeling similar pressure to surrender all say in his future to those willing to sacrifice it, Mello - like L - had the knee-jerk reaction of yanking control of his own destiny back from Wammy HQ.

"I'll do it my own way!" He bellowed in retort, a fourteen year old leaving the sanctuary of his childhood home in the dead of winter.

The only facet not being questioned by anyone was why two boys (Near not even a teenager) suddenly had the burden of stopping a global killer. Children asked to assume such responsibility as duty, in lieu of, say, any of the world's governments, military, secret services, not to mention their associated law enforcement or intelligence agencies.

Neither did L feel able to just walk away. At least in the minds of themselves, as nurtured in Wammy's home by Watari and Ruvie, this was their inevitable duty. As unfortunate as any death might be in the line of such duty, it couldn't be helped. An ethos surely carried by the warden, as Roger swapped his letter H (Wammy Headquarters) for a W (Watari in his turn).

I - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

Though again there are candidates, as Matt and Linda remain unassigned letters in canon too. Ditto Ryūzaki, who will appear in Death Note: Light Up the New World in October 2016, and has already been named an alumni of Wammy's House.

J - Wammy Kid Pseudonym Unknown - True Name Jeffrey Miller

The Wammy kid known as J is an elusive quantity.

In fact, we're not even 100% certain that he was Watari raised, trained and assigned a letter. The only clue to that is his name - the letter J - as given in the only canon source in which he turns up.

J is a character in the Konami DS game L: The Prologue to Death Note: Spiralling Trap, which was released in Japan on February 8th 2007. It's never been translated into any other languages nor made available anywhere else across the globe.

Game-play is text based problem solving, wherein you are a rookie FBI agent knocked unconscious to awaken in a locked room. Your environment is booby-trapped with explosives, with antagonists presumably out there primed to set them off.

However help is at hand in the shape of a communication device and L at the other end. The detective will advise on solving puzzles to open the doors, as long as he's adequately provided with sweets, cakes and other confectionery. You will eventually traverse all of those dangerous rooms in order to encounter the baddies.

Enter J. Apparently another Wammy kid turned murderous in pursuit of L. Now ready to engage you in a boss fight.

Antagonists in L: Prologue to Death Note

Screenshot from L The Prologue to Death Note featuring J

The image (left) is a screenshot from the trailer for L: The Prologue to Death Note (above), which features around the 1 minute 46 mark.

As the game was only issued in Japanese, with no English transcript to be found on-line, it's difficult to analyse the dialogue for further clues to J's identity, motivation or the influence upon him from his supposed Wammy House education. Beyond what might be surmised by the fact that he's attempting to blow L up.

Though he is wearing a lab coat, hence probably falls within the science spectrum of Wammy alumni specialities.

All that can be said additionally (until our Japanese translators turn up and, of course, assuming any of them have actually played this game) is that our last glimpse of J seems to be aboard a stricken cruise ship, which L has just caused to explode extensively right across its middle section. Presumably then J is now lost, presumed drowned or else caught in the ensuing inferno.

About par for the course for a Wammy kid.

K - Wammy Kid Keep Your Way - Dr Kimiko Kujo

"Please understand, Watari. This is the only way I believe I can change the world," she said, as much to convince herself.
L: Change the World, p 121

On the subject of serial killing Wammy kids, they don't get more potentially destructive than Watari's own destroyer of worlds - K.

Perhaps Kali might have been a better pseudonym for this lady, rather than the poignant sobriquet Keep Your Way afforded to her by Mr Wammy himself.

She certainly seemed convinced that the only way to change the world was to wipe the human race from the face of the planet.

In true mad scientist mode, when we first caught up with K - real name Dr Kimiko Kujo - she was busy cultivating a swift-acting, 100% fatal pathogen in readiness to unleash upon all hated humanity.

Her story forms the central backdrop of L: Change the World - movie and book both - with L spending his last twenty days on Earth in a bid to halt her crazy antics in a laboratory.

The premature release of her deadly virus upon test subjects in Thailand had already led directly to the demise of another Wammy letter - F. She would have taken out Near too, before he even made it to Wammy's House, had the wonder-boy's natural immunity not kept him safe from contagion.

"Dr Kujo, is your time at Wammy's House perhaps a cause of your despair toward mankind?"
"You knew?"
"One can always tell a Wammy's student, even if they do change their face and hide their past," L said.
L and K, L: Change the World, p175-176

So what went so badly wrong with this one that global genocide seemed the only answer?

Surely even Roger couldn't have been so tactless that her natural response was to sequence a virus to push her own species into extinction. Though granted, it would have constituted one method of stopping Kira, which was what most of her peers were concerning themselves with at the time.

It transpires that K's role within the Wammy Foundation had been to '(mobilize) the law enforcement agencies of the world'. During an operation, she had successfully rescued a child held hostage by terrorists, only to discover that had been her adversary's plan all along. The kid was a suicide bomber, who detonated the charges as soon as they were in the other camp.

After witnessing the 'many casualties', K ran from the scene never to return. It wasn't the failure of the operation per se that was the problem, but the notion that she had betrayed Watari's trust in her capabilities as a Wammy letter.

Nothing to do with the power and influence that comes with that designation either. It was the personal censure invested within Wammy the man that she most feared evoking. He'd brought her out of herself and believed in her abilities following the death of her parents. He'd been kind and caring, with a warm smile and sage advice, making K feel like she counted, even amongst all the rest of the clever, little Wammys around her.

She couldn't stand to see his face again, knowing that she'd let him down. That he'd be disappointed in her. It was that personal for the Wammy kids raised to become Letters within the Wammy Foundation. Away from Wammy's House and the man at its helm, K's 'soul had grown darker than the world around it'.

A darkness that she couldn't hope to assuage without the total destruction of humankind, wiped from the Earth in order to save the planet.

Not that K had any cause to worry. As L informed the dangerous Dr Kujo - once he'd located her at the centre of the pathogen outbreak - blowing up her team wasn't any deterrent for her beloved Mr Wammy. He'd assigned his letter K to her anyway, coded with the last message he'd conveyed to Kimiko Kujo before her flight from the Wammy fold - Keep Your Way.

Astute words in retrospect, though perhaps Watari should have clarified a 'way' amongst the sane options open to her.

Moreover, L continued - breaking her heart in knowing this only now - "Even after you left Wammy's, Watari refused to give that designation to anyone else." Awwww! If only she'd grasped that Wammy still loved her, K wouldn't have had to turn Thailand into the vast killing fields of her unleashing viral mass murder.

As it was, L promised that she could resume her place at Wammy's House, letter intact, even now, after whole populations lay dead. What was a little genocidal slaughter amongst Watari's kids? When they stood to ensure justice would prevail and the world could be changed. K vowed to do so, returning to Winchester just as soon as her life sentence was done in prison.

No doubt Watari - whomever that was likely to be forthwith - would soon intervene and get that time served down to, say, a week. After all, foiled architect of humanity's extinction aside, Kimiko remains a Wammy kid, in receipt of the letter K.

Read On: Alphabet of Wammy Letters L-Z

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Join a Pinterest Community Group for Wammy and Wammy's House!

15/4/2016

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Death Note Wammy Pinterest board run by Death Note News.

A whole group of us are already pinning our Wammy's House and Mr Wammy related items of interest over on Pinterest. You can too!

We have a community Pinterest Board for Death Note's Wammy cohort, which anyone may join and contribute what they will.

It's part of a whole collection of character or other subject specific boards created and maintained by Death Note News.

So click away on the follow button, wait for your invitation to be added to the board - prompt us with a comment here* containing your Pinterest name if you want to hurry us up with that, though we will try to be quick with the Wammy additions during this Month of event - then pin, pin, pin all you've got on Watari and his wards.

And once you're in, feel free too to invite your friends along. All our members can add other pinners to the group. That's what community is all about!

* If you wish to be added to other boards too, then list those in your comment as well. There are so many of you that these things otherwise go in bursts and starts!

Follow Death Note News's board Mr Wammy and Wammy's House on Pinterest.

Latest pins on our Watari Pinterest Community Board

Do you have a group, forum, community, fan-club or other website dedicated to Watari, Wammy's House or anything connected with the Wammys? Let us know via our submission page and we'll big it up for you during this Month of Watari on Death Note News. Help us get the community connected with like-minded members of the same fandom!

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Death Note Profile: Who is Quillsh Wammy?

8/4/2016

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Mr Wammy (Shunji Fujimura) - Death Note live-action movies (Japan)

Mr Wammy as played by Shunji Fujimura
in live-action Death Note films

Watari - aka Quillsh Wammy - is L's 'handler' in Death Note. He is also the founder of the Wammy chain of orphanages, including The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans.

Also known as Wammy's House, this was the institution which raised L, Near, Mello, Matt, Beyond Birthday, Linda et al. It is located in Winchester, England.

We first meet Mr Wammy under his guise as Watari, an anonymous figure clad from head to toe in a black leather trench coat complete with Fedora hat. He infiltrated a meeting of Interpol, wherein representatives of the world's law enforcement agencies had convened to discuss the Kira case. Watari was carrying a laptop from which emerged the electronic voice of L to address them all.

Later, as the Kira Task Force are invited to meet L and vetted by the same, Watari appears again, this time in the suited guise of his actual self - Quillsh Wammy, benefactor of the Wammy Group chain of orphanages and the man who trained L to become a detective.

He now facilitates his ward in his work solving crimes, acting as a handler, spokesperson or kind of butler. Noted mostly for organizing logistics of manoeuvres ordered by L; transferring the funds to pay for the same; and bringing copious amounts of cakes, sweets and other sugary things for L to consume whilst puzzling over his cases.

Elsewhere, it transpires that Wammy is a crack marksmanship, as well as highly skilled in espionage. He made his considerable wealth as an inventor.

Killed in the line of duty, during the fight against Kira, Quillsh Wammy is remembered as a 'great man' by members of the Task Force, lauded as the same by newspaper obituaries around the world.

Yet there is a darkness that hides beneath the surface of this seemingly amenable, altruistic man. As author Tsugumi Ohba put it, 'He's a guy who cultivates detectives for fun. That's kind of terrible, isn't it?' (How to Read: Death Note 13, pg 27). Well, in anybody's language, that's child trafficking and rendition, at the very least.

The Names of Quillsh Wammy

Death Note's Watari is alternatively known as:

キルシュ・ワイミー
Quillsh Wammy
Quillish Wammy
Kirushu Waimī
Kirsch-Waimi
Mr Wammy

ワタリ
Watari
W
渡
真名
Wye Me

Originally, Ohba meant to call this character Shadow, as in L's shadow - a moniker with more than one inferred meaning, which fan-fiction writers would have had great fun exploring. However Death Note's editor pooh-poohed the name, telling Ohba, 'No, no! Anything but that!' Hence the author coming up with Watari, which he explained meant 'handler' in Japanese.

Watari's Vital Statistics

Hair Colour:
Grey

Height:
5' 7" (170.18cm)

Eye Colour:
Blue

Weight:
8 stone (112lbs; 50.8kg)

Occupation:
Inventor; L spokesperson; benefactor of orphanages; collector of orphans; educator

Relationship Status:
Unknown, presumed single

Key Dates for Watari

May 1st 1933:

Quillsh Wammy born

Manga

May 1st 1936:

Quillsh Wammy born

Anime

November 5th 2004:

Quillsh Wammy killed

Manga

November 5th 2007:

Quillsh Wammy killed

Anime

The Auguries of Quillsh Wammy

Born on May 1st, astrologically Quillsh Wammy is Taurus

Wammy's birth date of May 1st 1933 (manga) also factors into Shēngxiào. He is a Rooster in the Chinese Zodiac

However, the time-slip of the anime would have him born in 1936 instead. That means that now in the Chinese Zodiac Watari is a Rat

How to Read: Death Note 13 reveals that Quillsh Wammy's blood group is B

A Versatile Fixer - The Personality of Quillsh Wammy

Death Note 13: How to Read gives us an insight into the character of Quillsh Wammy, at least insofar as his author saw him.

The older man scores highly for versatility, talent, initiative/willingness to act, motivation and emotional strength. Not far behind are his only slightly lesser scores for creativity, social skills and intelligence. That he doesn't reach the topmost figure for creativity is a little surprising, given that Wammy made his fortune as an inventor. The ultimate creator, one might think, this side of actual divinity.

We do get a hint of the kind of things that Wammy invented, when he turns up in the Death Note manga with belts containing panic buttons. Not exactly Bond's Q, but in the ballpark.

As befits a man whose wealth and life has become devoted to raising children, his pet hate is 'dirty rooms'. Presumably plenty of those at Wammy's House. I can't quite see the like of Beyond Birthday, Mello and Near running around with a duster.

This is an attribute taken to extreme levels in the Death Note TV drama, wherein guests are sprayed with disinfection at the door. The interior of L's headquarters is kept pristine in its cleanliness, with Watari hurrying in to exchange L's shirt should a mere splash of food stain hit upon it. In most tellings of the Death Note story, it's also inferred that Wammy is a fabulous cook. At least there doesn't seem to be any travelling caterer providing all that confectionery for L that his handler regularly delivers.

Though it's nowhere stated that Wammy is an Englishman, it's implied in the location of his main orphanage for the training of gifted and talented orphans - Winchester, in England. A further clue is given in his most favourite thing in the world - Earl Grey tea.

It's never truly explained how Watari managed to become such a crack marksman either. His sharp-shooting is such that, in the Death Note manga and anime alike, he's able to fire a bullet which blasts a gun from the hand of Yotsuba's Kyosuke Higuchi, far below him on the ground. Wammy himself hovering over the scene in a helicopter at the time.

Nor do we learn where Quillsh Wammy acquired such skill in espionage, though he puts that to good use in Death Note, infiltrating various organizations to gain or deliver information. Not least a gathering of Interpol.

Nevertheless he passed on all this knowledge, and the thinking/morality behind it, to the children in his care. Maybe more clues to Watari's character reside in those he raised - how they turned out and what became of them.

Complete List of Wammy Kids in Death Note Canon

Genius children taken from wherever they lived around the world and installed in Wammy's House, Winchester. Here their 'special talents' were cultivated with a top class education, whereupon they were sent back out into the world to put those skills into practice. All of these individuals were nurtured by Wammy - or at least had their upbringing and training overseen remotely by him, as warden Roger Ruvie took orders from above.

A
- Name Unknown
Committed suicide at Wammy's House
(Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Case)

E
- Name Unknown
Shown on L's call/mailing list
(L: Change the World)

J
- Name Unknown
Appears only as character in
a DS Death Note game.
(L: The Prologue to Death Note)

M
- Mello (Mihael Keehl)
Joined the Mafia in a bid to catch Kira and succeed to the L title before Near did. When unsuccessful, he gave his life to help Near defeat Kira.
(Death Note manga/anime)

Letter Unknown
- Matt (Mail Jeevas)
Third ranked Wammy kid at the time of L's death. Matt ultimately stepped into the Kira case at the behest of Mello. He was gunned down and killed by Kira supporters.
(Death Note manga/anime)

R
- Name Unknown
Shown on L's call/mailing list. However the name is faded out to grey, implying that R is dead. (B's is the same hue.)
(L: Change the World)

V
- Name Unknown
Shown on L's call/mailing list. However the name is faded out to grey, implying that V is dead. (B's is the same hue.)
(L: Change the World)

Z
- Name Unknown
Assisted L in the Detective Wars bio-terror case.
(Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases)

B
- Beyond Birthday
Tried to lure L out with a series of grisly murders in Los Angeles; impersonated L for Naomi Misora, before setting fire to himself in a failed suicide attempt; imprisoned in LA, where he suffered a heart-attack and died (presumably killed by Kira) on January 21st 2004.
(Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases)

F
- Name unknown
Rescued Near from a remote village, where all were dying in a deliberate epidemic, and sent him to L. F was killed in Thailand when a US helicopter shoots down his trunk. However F was already infected with a deadly virus.
(L: Change the World)

K
- Kimiko Kujo
Scientist - unleashed a deadly virus in her own bid to 'change the world' by wiping out its human population.
(L: Change the World)

N
- Near (Nate River)
Mathematical genius, who de facto succeeded L at age twelve, when the latter was killed by Rem/Kira. With clues provided by Mello's martyrdom to the cause, Near was able to finally defeat Kira in the name of himself, Mello and L, ergo Wammy's House.
(Death Note manga/anime)

P
- Name Unknown
Shown on L's call/mailing list
(L: Change the World)

Letter Unknown
- Ryūzaki
Cloned from L's DNA and raised at Wammy's House as L's true successor.
(Death Note 2016)

X
- Name Unknown
Assisted L in the Detective Wars bio-terror case.
(Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases)

Random Wammy kids
as seen in Death Note: Relight (above)
and Death Note manga (left)

D
- Name Unknown
Shown on L's call/mailing list
(L: Change the World)

G
- Name Unknown
Shown on L's call/mailing list
(L: Change the World)

L
- L Lawliet
Apparently the prototype 'special talent' Wammy orphan, for whom all the rest were raised as back-ups or successors.

At eight years old, L could beat up the other orphans in Wammy's House. He also discovered the delight in solving true crime cases, and thwarted the Winchester Mad Bomber. Beyond that he made his name as not only the world's greatest detective but, under pseudonyms, the 2nd and 3rd ranked too.

He was killed during the Kira case.

Letter Unknown
- Linda
Became a successful artist. During the Kira case, she drew images of Near and Mello for the Japanese Task Force.
(Death Note manga/anime)

Q
- Name Unknown
Shown on L's call/mailing list
(L: Change the World)

T
- Name Unknown
Shown on L's call/mailing list. However the name is faded out to grey, implying that T is dead. (B's is the same hue.)
(L: Change the World)

Y
- Name Unknown
Assisted L in the Detective Wars bio-terror case.
(Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases)

Each skilled Wammy kid set loose on the world was assigned a letter by Watari. In L: Change the World, it's stated that this only occurs with the greatest, most intelligent of the Wammy's House outcrop. Kujo is according stunned to belatedly realise that she was afforded the letter K.

Dotted across various adaptations of canon, we've practically got the entire alphabet in Wammy Letters. With Watari himself indicated by the Letter W, only H, I, O, S and U are missing. However, some known Wammy alumni never divulge their letters. We don't, for example, know which Matt was assigned, despite him being third in the Wammy House rankings. Nor yet do we know which letter Ryūzaki will take in the forthcoming movie Death Note 2016, assuming that he takes one at all.

Meanwhile, by the end of the manga/anime Death Note stories, Near interchangeably uses both N and L. The latter earned post-Kira. Thus giving an insight into the fact that letters can be taken from their peers by successful rivals/successors from the same Institution. This is a system that Wammy himself must have set up.

Along with a code of ethics that apparently accounts for serial killers, abductors, biomedical scientists bent on mass destruction and the propensity of Wammy graduates to think it proper to die - or be killed - for want of a puzzle's solution.

The Faces of Watari

Quillsh Wammy Death Note manga

Quillsh Wammy Death Note anime

Quillsh Wammy Death Note Nintendo game

Quillsh Wammy Death Note: Relight

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Quillsh Wammy Death Note live-action movies

Quillsh Wammy Death Note TV drama

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Death Note 2016: New Pics of Ryūzaki Released from Live-Action Movie

1/4/2016

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Affording an intriguing glimpse into the persona of Ryūzaki (Sousuke Ikematsu), two more picture stills
have been made public from the filming of Japanese live-action movie Death Note 2016.

2016 Death Note Ryūzaki (Sousuke Ikematsu)

Sousuke Ikematsu as Ryūzaki in Death Note 2016 live action movie

We already knew that Sousuke Ikematsu's character Ryūzaki was created genetically from the DNA left behind by L for this purpose during his own lifetime. (The scientists here are straining at the bit to discuss that titbit in due course!) Today's information adds just that Ryūzaki was raised at Wammy's House.

It seems the regime there went a step further even than the scenario warned by Beyond Birthday (and Mello) in Another Note. The notion of a 'back-up' not so much a brainwashed boy, as an actual clone.

So did they keep DNA of them all? Will the next baby squalling from a test-tube be Mello or Matt?

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Aerial Sky Shares Advice on Cosplaying Matsuda from Death Note

14/3/2016

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Death Note News - Aerial Sky cosplaying Beyond Birthday

For Month of Matsuda on Death Note News, we've looked long and hard across cyber-space for cosplayers to share their tips on donning Touta Matuda costume.

Here to start us off is Aerial Sky!

There she is cosplaying Beyond Birthday from Death Note's Another Note, as seen in older pictures on her Instagram account: @dncosplayer25.

She's at pains to let us know that her cosplay has improved greatly since those days. And further adds,

"I've been into cosplaying for about two years now, and it's my favorite thing to do when I have spare time. Currently I am finishing up my Matt cosplay, and I've cosplayed L and Beyond Birthday, all from Death Note. I plan to cosplay more when I have more time and when my parents accept this habit of mine XD."

So what does she have to say about Matsuda cosplay? Read on!

How to Cosplay Death Note's Matsuda by Aerial Sky

Have you cosplayed Matsuda now or in the past?
No - never

Is there any reason that you haven't considered cosplay for Touta Matsuda?
I have considered it, mainly because he's the comic relief of the story, and because he's a precious little cinnamon roll XD I think I will stick with the characters I do best. Those being Matt, L, Beyond Birthday, Jeff the Killer, and maybe the occasional Kira/Light.

How would you go about creating a costume for Touta Matsuda?
I would go to Goodwill or some sort of thrift store and buy a suit. There's no need to spend a bunch of money for something you could find easily.

What clothing and/or props do you feel are essential Matsuda costume items?
A black or grey suit, and definitely a good sense of humor.

Is there more to cosplaying Matsuda than the outfit? (Look/behaviour etc.)
You have to have a good sense of humor, as well as a good personality. Don't be afraid to get really into character.

He acts like a goofball, and is about the average high schooler XD

What's your professional opinion about ready-made Touta Matsuda outfits, such as those in the Death Note News Cosplay Store? Any other pieces in there decent enough for a Matsuda cosplay? (Be honest!)
I would definitely go to a thrift shop first and see if I could get something cheaper. Custom made things are so much more expensive.

If not anything there, where would YOU source items to cosplay Matsuda?
Goodwill. And maybe your own closet if you have nice business clothes.

Any last tips for anyone reading, who wishes to create their Matsuda cosplay from scratch?
Get a good quality wig, and just be patient. Good things come to those who wait. :)

Aerial Sky rolls out her Ryuk

Cosplayers!

Would you like to have a go at answering these questions yourself?

A different Death Note character forms the focus each month.

If you cosplay Death Note - or indeed a cosplayer of any tale - and you're willing to share your tips, thoughts and advice with the fandom, then visit our cosplayer's questionnaire page to fill in the form.

Thank you in advance!

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What Happened to The Redeemer Series? (Guest Post by Maru-Light)

15/2/2016

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Redeemer Cover Art by Arrowchild (DeviantART)

The Redeemer Series was a nearly 5-book long, epic tome of a Death Note fanfic series written by Maru-Light and Andariel (under the combined avatar cocoacoveredgods).

It focused on the premise that the Yellowbox Warehouse was essentially the pinnacle of L's 6-year long offensive against Kira, who believed L to be dead, when he really wasn’t.

Over the course of thousands of pages, the drama of Death Note’s protagonists (including Mello and Matt, Misa, Near, etc.) post-canon rolled out in a sordid tale replete with angst, erotica, violence, and horror.

It spanned at least five years of solid writing and regular posting, from the first book Redeemer, through its sequels: To Be or Not to Be, Our Time is Running Out, Sins of the Father and I’m Not Okay.

It gained a loyal audience on Adult Fanfiction.net, and an equally loyal audience on DeviantArt where its authors also cosplayed and promoted it. It seemed to be endeavoring to continue through two more solidly planned novels: End of Days and Chasing the Dragon.

But then suddenly, there was a twist.

And now all the books of the series, save the first (Redeemer)—are gone.

So what happened?

As one of its two authors, please allow me to tell you the story of Redeemer’s creation and subsequent disappearance.

Image: Redeemer cover art by Arrowchild

Success of the Redeemer Series - Death Note Fan-Fic by Maru-Light & Andariel

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

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

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

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

So really, what happened?

Writing on The Redeemer Series Begins to Break Down

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

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

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

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

The Restrictions of Redeemer

As co-authors, our method of writing was to often volley paragraphs back and forth at each other to propel the story along, and then before upload, I would comb through chapters, as the principle editor, to make sure everything was fluid and had a cohesive voice.

I started noticing, that in scenes involving more canon contexts, the writing began to get painfully repetitive, plots were stalling, we were echoing literal sentences back and forth at each other. I remember distinctly, one sex scene we were working on sounded so painfully done before, that we literally tore it out and fought to write it with entirely new dynamics so it wasn’t boring.

And that was it. We’d grown bored.

The only things that seemed to pique our interests were no longer the sex scenes, or the drama between the Death Note characters, but the original concepts we’d steadily been bringing in over time. Stories of madness and asylums and insane serial killers.

We whisked L off at one point and set him on a modern Sherlock Holmesian plotline by himself in Edinburgh, and it was the most enjoyable part of the book for me to write (and has since been reworked as the opening chapters of the original series.) I had inspiration again, I had drive, I didn’t want to return to the previous Death Note arcs.

I wanted to be free.

I wasn’t the only one. Anda had tired of everything. Getting her to pitch in on the books was like pulling teeth, when previously it had been so exciting and so fun.

It was time for a change.

But neither of us wanted to accept that the series had come to its natural end. Too much work had gone into it. Too much love and sweat and tears. Too many years and hours. Hours and hours and hours. So we came to a compromise.

Redeemer Fan Art: '...le beau petit garcon...' by Arrowchild (DeviantART)

'...le beau petit garcon...' Redeemer Series
fan-art by Arrowchild,
featuring Beyond Birthday and Mello

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

But what happened was not according to plan.

Backlash of Death Note Redeemer Series Readers

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

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

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

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

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

The Redeemer Series Transforms into The Breaking Across Devotion Series

Breaking Across Devotion - CocoaCoveredGods forum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death Note: Redeemer Kira cosplay by Maru-Light

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The Cosplayer Chronicles: Squad Six Cosplayers' Death Note Panel at Ichibancon

22/1/2016

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We've been following the fortunes of
Squad Six Cosplayers,
as they prepared to host
Resurrecting L: Death Note 10th Anniversary
panel at Ichibancon 7
in North Carolina.

Here is how they got on.

Squad Six Cosplayers Death Note panel Ichibancon 7

Resurrecting L: Death Note 10th Anniversary panel at Icibancon 7

Squad Six Cosplayers were at Ichibancon, one of the largest anime and manga conventions in North Carolina, USA. There, in Events 4 room, we held our Death Note review panel - Resurrecting L - to mark the 10th anniversary since the manga's first chapter was published in Weekly Shonen Jump.

Since then, Ohba and Obata's story has become an institution, we hope we did it justice.

Ichibancon's Resurrecting L: Death Note 10th Anniversary panel happened on January 1st 2016, at 11pm. We should have finished by midnight, but the buzz was awesome and we were having so much fun discussing the new media developments for Death Note. We almost ran well over time!

Here's how it all played out. But first the cosplay and, created from scratch, a dress for Misa Amane.

Lara Sizemore: Cosplay Misa Misa Suicide Dress

Squad Six Cosplayers: Matsuda and Misa at Ichibancon 7

Squad Six Cosplayers Justin as
Touta Matsuda and Lara as Misa Amane

Lara's Cosplay Misa Misa Suicide Dress

Death Note Cosplayers at Ichibancon 7: Misa and Light; Lara Sizemore and Cayanna Carma

Squad Six Cosplayers founder Lara with special guest Cayanna Carma as Light Yagami

Each of Squad Six Cosplayers' Death Note panel members arrived for the event in full Death Note cosplay. Every part of which had been created especially for Ichibancon during the run up to the convention.

Founder Lara Sizemore opted to cosplay Misa Amane. She explained, "I chose to do Misa's Last dress/suicide dress instead of her usual ensemble as sort of a nod to our title. It took me two weeks to complete the dress but I am very proud of it. The ribbons are all appliquéd on." She makes it sound so easy.

As for the rest, they were in Death Note costume too!

Death Note Cosplay for Squad Six Cosplayers at Ichibancon 7

Squad Six Cosplayers with Cayanna Carma at Ichibancon Death Note panel

From l-r you are seeing:

Justin as Touta Matsuda
Lara as Misa Amane
Cayanna Carma as Light Yagami
Sara as L
Lindz as Near
and on the floor,
Logan as Beyond Birthday

Kicking in the New Year with a Death Note Panel at Ichibancon January 1st 2016

The event was very well attended. Despite its late hour, three quarters of the venue was full.

It was great fun! With a tremendous amount of audience participation too.

We had five grand prize questions with the winners awarded a very L-inspired Death Note prize. It was a dessert glass with his iconic monograph printed on the side.

Inside was a pile of chocolate/apple flavoured candy, plus two bubblegums with wrappers sporting bright red eyes - shinigami eyes, if we ever saw them. In addition, those correctly guessing the answer received a packet of chips (crisps for our European readers) and an apple.

Nor were we the only ones in cosplay. There were several others in the audience, including a few in Death Note cosplay.

Christian morrison L Cosplay Ichibancon 7

Christian Morrison - L Cosplay at Ichibancon Death Note panel

Cayanna Carma Takes on Light Yagami for Ichibancon's Death Note Panel

One of our great coups was to have famed cosplayer Cayanna Carma as our special guest at the Death Note Ichibancon panel.

She is renowned throughout the North Carolinian cosplay circuit for the realism that she brings to her roles. Cayanna Carma didn't just dress as Light Yagami, she became him.

It was in the subtleties, of which no photograph will ever adequately convey, no matter how many taken of her in action.

It really felt like Kira sitting there, ramrod straight and charming. Watching everyone and reacting, as Light Yagami might believably react, to all that occurred. Serious, even in the face of Sara's shenanigans as L.

Her presence went down a storm with the crowd, just as we hoped it would. In fact, many of those there might have attended simply to watch Cayanna Carma cosplay Kira.

Sitting alongside her on the panel, interacting like we were with Light Yagami himself, was certainly a pleasure for Squad Six Cosplayers.

Once again, we thank Cayanna Carma for being our very special guest at Ichibancon 7's Resurrecting L: Death Note 10th Anniversary panel, and hope that these pictures provide some glimpse of what it was like watching our star cosplayer perform on the night.

They included the L cosplayer pictured left - our old friend Christian Morrison in costume and character - and another Misa Misa too.

Meanwhile, we technically had two L cosplayers on the stage with us.

After all, Logan was cosplaying as Beyond Birthday cosplaying L - Another Note does say that it took layers of cosmetics and a certain outfit before BB looked anything like the detective he was trying to emulate. That's cosplaying!

With Sara there too, as our group's actual L cosplayer, having lots of fun with Squad Six Cosplayers' special guest for the evening, Cayanna Carma as Light Yagami.

Squad Six Cosplayers: Logan as BB and Sara as L

Squad Six Cosplayer Sara as L; Cayanna Carma as Light Yagami

Light Yagami cosplay Cayanna Carma at Ichibancon 7 Death Note panel

That's it for Squad Six Cosplayers! I hope you've enjoyed our Cosplayer Chronicles on Death Note News.
Thank you for reading!

If you wish to catch up with us in all our other projects and endeavours, please do join us on Tumblr and Facebook.

Death Note L's 36th Birthday (In Memoriam) at Hallowe'en

31/10/2015

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Can you imagine Death Note's L at 36? That is the age the Wammy detective would have been today according to the dates given in the manga.

Of course, fiction's great shame is that he never made it. Nevertheless, his life was lived in our imagination. His death too. We can imagine him whole and living still.

So what would he have been by now? How might he have appeared? Tidied up and far less slovenly, or slumped further yet under the burden of a mind the size of several large planets? Etched permanently into the public spotlight of fame? Or yet more a hermit than he was at 25, when he shuffled off this mortal coil courtesy of the Shinigami Rem?

Come on - what does the head canon say?

Thoughts on an AU Death Note L
at 36 Years Old

A friend once famously said to me that your thirties are like your twenties again, but without the neurosis. I have to say that I concur. By your thirties, you're old enough that you don't secretly still think of yourself as a kid, but young enough that no-one expects you to grow up. Least of all yourself.

There's much more confidence and - circumstances notwithstanding - most folk have much more money than they had a decade ago. Probably more responsibility too, particularly in the realm of home-life - where there's an increased likelihood of running your own home, possibly with little lives reliant upon your good sense and kindness. All of which heightens the risk of having to hold down a proper job.

So how might all of this apply to L Lawliet on his 36th birthday?

I'm not entirely sure any of it would. He's already stinking rich by his early 20s, when he lived the events in Death Note. L didn't come out to solve cases for less than a million in reward money, according to Another Note. Plus he had staff who answered to his every whim and will. Adults who followed his directives, whilst simultaneously caring for the gifted and talented youngsters of Wammy's House.

Could he have had much more confidence in his own abilities? L would quite happily instruct world leaders, decision makers, law enforcement agencies and other powerful people the world over, and feel himself entitled through dint of superior intellect to do that.

It's often played bordering upon arrogance. Criminal arrogance at that, when we factor in his propensity to order the televised death of one prisoner (Lind L Taylor) and torture of others (Light Yagami and Misa Amane).

Also in Another Note, Mello implies that L was responsible for the demise of several private investigators - not only the trio named, but hundreds casually collated as a number - as he took their detective codes. Am I the only one who read that as physical killing? Or otherwise causing to stop breathing?

Add eleven years more to that mindset and I can see only one of two options - either L's confidence crumbled under the rigours of life and perspective, or it grew into yet more terrible proportions. There was always little difference between himself and Kira, with regard to their worldly outlook and serial killer tendencies, which is what made the battle between them so intriguing.

How Might L Look at 36 Years Old?

If your head canon allows for Kenichi Matsuyama to remain as L for the rest of his life, then we can imagine how the Death Note detective might age. At least until thirty years old, because that's how old Kenichi is now. Just watch the actor age, then extrapolate six years more.

What Might Be AU Death Note L's Life on his 36th Birthday?

Assuming that L's survival meant that he beat Kira, then the world would be his oyster - even more so than at 25, when he could command Interpol and Japanese police officers for the asking.

Yet success in that case couldn't have been easy. I'm not talking about the clash of minds itself, as L appeared to be thoroughly enjoying that, right up until Kira cheated via deployment of a suicidal shinigami. I'm talking about the terrible cost of succeeding in such circumstances.

L would have had a taste of meeting a mind akin to his own. Then losing it. What happens after that?

Light and L in 2015 Death Note TV adaptation

Victory might feel rather hollow without the thrill of psychological battle and a strange kind of kinship. It could leave him regretting emerging quite so triumphant, and that's a potential dent in his confidence. If nothing else came along quickly to fill the void, then life might seem to have lost its sparkle. Demotivating L to the point of potentially throwing in the towel on his detective career.

All kind of directions open up then. He might take refuge in simplicity. Becoming a doorman like Christopher Langan - US man estimated to have an IQ as high as 210, thus too clever to tie up his time doing a job that denied him time to think upon his own current interests.

L might sink under cynicism. Seeking something and finding nothing to the point when the pressure causes his psyche to collapse under its own negative perceptions. Whole plot bunnies here in L becoming a parody of Beyond Birthday's own dark parody of L himself.

Or he could strike off in another avenue of inquiry and become a brilliant scientist, theologian, philosopher or emulate Wammy as an inventor. Any number of possibilities here, limited only by his imagination, as delineated by the fan fiction writer.

But whichever way he turns, trouble is being stored up in the background.

Death Note's Wammy's House When L is Thirty-Six

It's one thing telling a bunch of 12-14 year olds that they're being trained and competing to become L's heir and successor, but what happens when they're 22-24?

Particularly when they have the intellect to potentially hold the L title in their own right.

We have a precedent in reaching adulthood as a Wammy kid, being told that your only reason to be is to wait in line as L's back up. Beyond Birthday turned serial killer in an attempt to lure L out. A took his own life.

So what of those remaining at Wammy's House in this alternative Death Note universe, wherein L didn't die and therefore Near, Mello and Matt emerged to take over the Kira case?

It ended badly for A and Beyond Birthday, but they were both working alone. Near and Mello have already shown that they can 'surpass L', if they join forces. They just have to mature enough to put aside their manufactured rivalry as a distraction from their own enforced position on the detective code conveyor belt. Mello and Matt have already proven that they can work together.

Whether singly, in pairs, groups or en masse, surely L is going to suffer an onslaught of grown up Wammy kids rebelling against their childhood rendition and expected adult position; stepping out of the fold, or else buying into it and seeking him out with the succession in mind. Regardless of whether their predecessor still occupies the position into which they've been raised to succeed.

After all, L's own benchmark was to take the code, no matter what and - if the implications in Another Note hold true - those Wammy heirs have been tutored from childhood to consider cheating and/or murder a valid avenue to winning. The back up(s) are coming to bite him in the precedent.

Those are my musings. What do you think L and his world would look like, if he had lived long enough to celebrate his 36th birthday today?

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TV Death Note Episode 7: Babble, Beyond & Paradise Lost - One Notebook to Bind Them All

26/8/2015

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Near Watch is pretty much concluded. After episode 7 of television's Death Note drama, it's undoubtedly proved to be Mello Watch too. Though the jury is still out on Matt there as well.

Finally! Death Note live action Mello on our screens! Man and puppet!

We so called it. Back in my review of the very first episode of Death Note's TV drama, I wrote:

Is Near hearing voices? Are we witnessing a schizophrenic future L? Or is (s)he merely dissociating him/herself from the dodgier thoughts passing through consideration?
- Death Note News: Review of TV Death Note Episode 1

Watching and piecing together the clues from week to week, my SO and I have increasingly been talking about Near with Multiple Personality Disorder (though I understand that psychologists would prefer us to discuss this as Near's Dissociative Identity Disorder, because they renamed it again).

By episode seven, all speculation was confirmed as fact. We saw Near's persona physically switch into Mello. We witnessed a re-emerging Near beg Mello, "Don't come out."

Death Note's Near begs Mello not to come out

Thus paving the way for a million future Death Note memes on the subject of Mello coming out.

Death Note's Babel in the Tower: Multiple Voices Seeking to be Heard at the Same Time

There was a hint, in the scenes immediately prior to the great reveal, that split identities - or the divisive babble of too many voices simultaneously sounding - was going to factor into this story.

Our clue was in the pseudonym taken by Near: Babel.

Yotsuba Group discuss Babel in Death Note 2015

With all the Judeo-Christian imagery surrounding Near in this series, it's not too difficult to guess from whence they lifted this new moniker. Genesis 11:1-9 tells - within a Biblical context- the story of the City of Babel.

Its people decided to build a tower, those top reaches would allow them to climb into Heaven itself. God wasn't best pleased about this imminent invasion of human beings, so set out to thwart them.

Until then, everyone on Earth had been united. They spoke just one language and all understood each other. God did a bit of smiting, or cursing, whatever you call it, whereby their mother tongue suddenly splintered into all the various languages heard around the globe, then and since.

Hence Babel being the root of babble. Multiple voices. No-one able to understand the other.

Additionally, God 'scattered them abroad', so that none were congregated in the city anymore, but its population exiled all over the planet. The people divided from one into many.

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language...
- Genesis 11:6

Oh look! Near and Mello are one! And possibly Matt makes three, though the evidence is tenuous and not yet confirmed by canon. But they can be - and are about to be - separate entities. Just like the people of Babel.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
- Genesis 11:7

Plus it doesn't hurt that Babel looks a bit like Babe L, as befits L's successor or, as Near is described in the TV adaptation of Death Note, 'consultant'.

Nor does the Babel imagery end there.

Kiras Meeting in the Yotsuba Tower of Babel

The whole Yotsuba group could be seen as acting akin to the citizens of that Biblical city. They band together at the top of a Tower and, as a kind of collective Kira, they seek to steal for themselves that which habitually belongs to deity. Be that access into Heaven, or writing in a Shinigami's notebook.

Yotsuba Group's website prominently features their tower

The Yotsuba arc continues running parallel to the Tower of Babel tale, insofar as God (well, Light Yagami shorn of his Kira memories) sets out to divide and conquer them, thus snatching back divine power as his sole preserve.

Light doesn't change the Yotsuba executives' language. Despite the nice touch in 'Babel' (aka Near/Mello) asking for 'hush money'.

However L and Babel succeed in causing divisions amongst the group's mindset. When they are no longer working in accord, nor even in the same room, its a simple matter to confound their pseudo-divine plan.

Another Note: Beyond Birthday's Near Nod in Death Note (2015) Episode Seven

Of course, when we first saw that giant B appear upon the screen, none of us were thinking of Mello, Near, Babel nor anyone else inserted into the show.

In the Death Note universe, an Old English font letter B signifies L's original back-up: Beyond Birthday.

I thought we were jamming with L's second. We were, but not in the way that elicited so many gasps from those watching from my house.

Watari: There are three people known as the greatest detectives in the world. L, Eraldo Coil, and Marie Deneuve. Babel is ranked after the three of them.

Makimura: The fourth, then?

L: No, Coil and Deneuve are both me. So Babel is actually the second. Quite the troublesome one.
- Death Note Episode 7 (2015)

We were so being trolled by the writers of this television version of Death Note. Despite the fact that most of us, after our initial shock at seeing Beyond's B, had spent the rest of its occurrences assuming that Yotsuba's detective was Near.

The only major mystery being whether we were hearing Near or Mello, as the dominant personality at the time.

Yet when L introduced B as his second, Beyond's cameo suddenly felt like a distinct possibility again.

It was now common knowledge that the three great post war detectives, L, Eraldo Coil and Danuve were all actually the same person... L engaged in a war with the real Eraldo Coil, and the real Danuve, and emerged victorious, claiming their detective codes... in addition, L possessed many other detective codes... at least three digits worth.
- Mello, Another Note by Nisioisin, p43

He was B.
The second child in Wammy's House.
"If only I could see the death of the world," Beyond Birthday murmured, on August 19th at 6am, just as he woke up.
- Mello, Another Note by Nisioisin, p 95

NB This episode of television's Death Note drama was aired on August 16th 2015. The 19th was a Wednesday.

Beyond Birthday was L's
antagonist in the novel
Death Note: Another Note

He was B. B stood for Backup. For Babel - the second... OMG! Was Death Note's Beyond Birthday in this show after all?!!

I mean, how fabulous would that have been?!

The first child, A, was unable to handle the pressure of living up to L and took his own life, and the second child, Beyond Birthday, was brilliant and deviant.
B stood for Backup.
But B tried to surpass L, not become him.
Mello, Another Note by Nisiosin, p105

Alas, no. Near has not only merged with Mello, but absorbed Beyond Birthday's background too. It remains to be seen whether this includes his jam-loving, murderous self, as a separate persona.

However in that 'I know all about it. Deep down inside, you think you're better than L' line from episode two, we've already seen Mello accuse Near of something more commonly attributed to Beyond. Did 'deep down inside' hold a more significance than hitherto realised?

Dissociative Identity Disorder in Death Note

Ok, I'll call it - Near IS Beyond Birthday! And that's not all.

A could have been the original individual - the first child - whose personality fragmented into the rest, and is now lost beneath them all. Near is so named, as the persona most closely resembling A. Or its an acronym: Near Enough A's Replica.

I tell you, Matt's in there too. Probably Linda and all the Letters from L: Change the World as well. Given enough time, scope and energy, Near's going to turn out to be a walking Wammy's House; all Watari Letters contained within a single form.

Which probably accounts for the outstanding cleverness overall.

A Double Wammy in Death Note's Multiple Personality Plot Twists?

We should never forget the key point about Beyond Birthday - he looked like L. Enough to fool Naomi Misora into thinking she was dealing with the same man. Practically clones, L and Beyond, physically at least.

Beyond Birthday with Naomi Misora on the fly sheet of Another Note.
A version depicting Beyond Birthday close up adorns the German translation book-cover.

Have we yet discounted the hypothesis given in an earlier blog entry - that it's L with the multiple personalities? Near et al live solely within his head; with an option on Watari additionally being a dissociated fragment of L's own self.

It would explain why the detective's insistence upon a sterile home environment faded whenever he went outside to play tennis or watch Ichigo Berry in concert. That wasn't L. It was Mello or somebody wearing L's face.

Less L changing the world, than the world triggering a change in L.

Moreover, L's Dissociative Identity Disorder would fix an anomaly which has been niggling me since the very first episode. (I am a Death Note fan-fiction writer, finding plot-holes to credibly fill is what breathes life into our tales.) How could Wammy's House alter architecturally, depending upon whether L or Near sit on that staircase?

L and Watari at Wammy's House - Death Note Episode 1

Wammy's House: Watari opens the door, while L waits on the stairs

Wammy's House with Near and Mello in Death Note TV drama

Wammy's House: Near on the stairs, The Fall of the Rebel Angels replaces L's door

Maybe there is no Wammy's House in the physical world. It exists as a mind palace inside the psyche of a genius detective, acting as the gateway through which dissociated selves become dominant. No accident therefore why it appears as a hallway - the only room ever glimpsed in that house - devoid of creature comforts, stark and stripped, even when highly decorated. Its main purpose being as a place to leave or be received.

Its secondary purpose to be where personae stand by, acting as consultants in the near consciousness. Communicating fully with the self on public display, seeing upon their screens what that worldly self views with their own eyes.

L calls Near a bit of a personal consultant

L explains Near's relationship to himself. Watari had labelled them 'acquaintances'.

Which is why L and Near's respective monitors once displayed the same page of Kira suspects; why L was able to hear Mello speaking, though the camera showed that Near's lips were not moving. They were still in the House at that point. L discerned Mello coming to the fore within his own mind.

Hence the terrified look then, and the horror on L's face, when Watari informed him that Near had left the House.

Watari acts as a kind of internal gatekeeper, or an external carer, able to inform L when personae become dominant without his knowing that time had been missed.

Watari was telling him that he'd been usurped by Near. That Near had been dominant, while L unknowingly and unwittingly was shut down, losing time through being stashed somewhere within the unseen chambers of Wammy's House.

Worse still, that Near could act as a conduit, or else has a twin, a counterpoint to his own behaviour - so close in morality to L, that the latter doesn't always mind him coming to the fore - which can too easily flip to control them both. It might be Mello playing maverick with their case-load, and it's impossible to predict his moves or count on tracking them down later.

They couldn't even trust that he was always on their side, working with L and Near, rather than Kira.

Death Note's Near dismisses L's worries about Mello

Is that a Mafia-esque big, black chair, foreshadowing away, looming in the background? Last seen in the manga Rod Ross's LA penthouse suite.

They could lose the game simply because Mello played by different rules, or entered into another game entirely. And what would it cost, if Beyond Birthday was ever to wake to discern the death of the world from a Wammy House hallway window?

Oh! There's so much fun to be had speculating on the possibilities inherent in this new Death Note storyline! But I'd better return to what is, and not what might potentially be.

Creation of a Successor - L and Near's Michelangelo Moment in Death Note (2015)

As primary player in opposition to Kira, L demonstrated his ability to consider the whole team in episode seven of Death Note TV drama. If he was forced to forfeit his position, then it would be beneficial to assign a successor.

That way Kira wouldn't gain too much ground, while struggles for dominance divided and conquered those who might stand in his way.

L has already foreseen that his baton could soon need to be passed on. He cryptically tagged Near, placing him on stand-by as his choice for successor.

The way he did so owed a debt in imagery to Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Wherein God reaches out to touch Adam, gifting the spark of life to one made in His own image.

Death Note's Near takes L's jigsaw piece

Or, as L did it in Death Note (2015), gifting a jigsaw piece to the one who thinks most closely to himself.

All on the off-chance that L should (metaphorically of course) fatally place his own wrong piece in the battle against Kira. Then it would fall to his successor - 'It could be you, Near' - to finish the puzzle, and the war.

Near caught the implication loud and clear, with an expression further seeing significance in L leaving the scene, as soon as his piece was conveyed. It was a gesture laden with pathos. Inherently implying that L expected to die.

Though naturally Mello was looking in the opposite direction, when all consideration of L's successor pointed due Near.

He was probably too busy noticing that their surroundings still looked like a Mafia penthouse in Los Angeles.

Nor had it been explained, other than the room wasn't in Wammy's House ("You don't have to go back to the house?" L asked Near not two minutes previously). The furnishings weren't even remotely like those in the hotel, wherein we last saw Near lodged and within the depths of which L had his own hide-out.

Perhaps it would have been too blatant had they gone instead for the zebra striped suite from the other Mafia digs in the desert.

Though it begs the question that, if I'm right about where this scene takes place, then why are Near and L there?

Unless I'm also right in my wilder speculation that this room doesn't exist in the real world. It's L visiting a secondary self inside a place located inside his own psyche.

And that jigsaw piece passing hands is L acknowledging that he's losing his position as dominant personality amidst a multitude of others.

How this scene is more commonly seen

Light Changes L's Mind: Death Note Winners

Actually, we did watch L's mind wilfully changing, or at least his mindset concerning how winning and losing would be judged in this clash between himself and Kira.

In L's world-view, the challenge has been issued with Light as his opponent, regardless of how they spent episode seven double teaming against an external interloper. The Yotsuba group, headed by Higuchi as the current Death Note owning Kira, were never serious challengers in L's book. They existed as an opportunity to gather clues and ammunition for the proper battle of wills with Light.

But to play an effective game, both sides need to know the rules. Otherwise how could anyone be declared champion? It would be a hollow victory without the loser knowing themselves to be beaten.

Thus the conditions for winning were set out by Light and agreed by L.

Even if we learn how he kills people, if a comrade dies that's losing, in my opinion.
- Light Yagami, Death Note (2015), episode 7

A game-changing moment, which saw L immediately switching tactics to take down the Yotsuba group and its Kira with ease. But for him, this contained a fatal flaw.

A Fatal Flaw for L in new Death Note Drama

Death Note's L observing that Light thinks like Kira

Light couldn't have known that he spoke for Kira too.

But no matter that. L had already observed that Light and Kira's minds worked along the same lines. Light's thoughts would probably fit in with Kira's plans too. Their dual outlook aligning in this duel.

Nor was Light necessarily aware that his definition of winning was meaningful for L.

It was Kira who entered into the battle of wills with the detective, not Light. If he felt the challenge, then it was in reaction to L's actions now. His memories of the previous cerebral duelling had been wiped.

If L's pride hadn't been so intent upon recognition as the winner, then he wouldn't have altered his game-plan. Perhaps the outcome might have been different. As it was, allowing Light to influence strategy had immediate consequences.

He touched the Death Note. His memories flooded back. Himself as Kira returned. Just as planned.

Paradise Lost and Kira - Myself am Hell

There have always been shades of Milton's Paradise Lost running as an undercurrent through Death Note.

One day, I shall write a whole blog comparing the two, demonstrating how significantly Kira quotes Satan from Milton's epic verse.

To my mind, one of those moments comes in Light's classic line, 'I am Kira'. I can't help thinking of Satan in Paradise Lost screaming out, 'Myself am Hell!'

It's not word for word - nor even close - but their proclamations hold the same feeling for me. Not least because both are spoken as each anti-hero assumes their role by mentally and emotionally accepting its inevitability. Each against a background of isolation, as all relationships become merely instruments through which power may be gained or retained.

Light the bringer of L?

If this Death Note live action drama continues along tradition lines, then we can see another link between Milton's Satan and TV's Kira.

Each are now poised to duel with an avenging second. Be it Satan's clash with the Archangel Michael (Champion of El), or Kira's confrontation with Mello, aka Mihael Keehl (Champion of L).

The latter already long since viewed in kinship to St Michael. Ensured by Near's constant visual references to Giordano's The Fall of the Rebel Angels - showing Michael taking down Satan - whenever Mello's potential in play came to the fore.

Plus the obvious parallel in which Satan was Heaven's Light-Bringer, and Kira was Light. Ignorance is bliss they say. Light hated Kira. His own paradise lost in the knowledge that he is Kira.

The Return of the King: Kira Finds his Precious

However it wasn't Milton, but Tolkien brought to mind in Masataka Kubota's performance as a re-emerging Kira.

Watching this Kira clutch his Death Note prompted me to write 'Gollum' on my pad, then circle it several times as the sequence progressed. I really did expect him to start hissing, 'My Precious!'

Eat your heart out Andy Serkis! Kira has his Precious back!

The television adaptation of Death Note has pinged off Tolkien's Middle Earth saga several times already.

Not until Death Note 2015 have we heard that the notebook alters personalities to the bad. That using it invokes paranoia and feelings of dread, not to mention causing agony for those writing names. These are traits more commonly associated with the One Ring to Bind Them All in Tolkien's universe.

The emergence of a secondary personality - split from the owner's primary persona and seemingly built to serve the artefact - is another facet found in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Most notably in Gollum, whose conversations with his other self might have also inspired Mio Yuki's portrayal of Near and Mello in open discussion.

That Gollum with the Ring appears physically transformed is echoed in how TV Death Note's Kira can be discerned, distinct from Light, changed utterly.

In Death Note's Dark Prism Light Splits

Light Yagami denies being Kira

Light was actually being truthful then, when he emphatically told L that he wasn't Kira. At least in this version of Death Note.

There was none of that in the original manga Death Note, nor its anime, nor even the previous Japanese live-action adaptations. In all of those variants, Kira seemed less Light Yagami's split personality and more an alternative name for the same individual.

Light's nick-name, if you like.

Accepted and assumed during a period when Light's psyche stretched to embrace ownership of the Death Note. A label therefore for his supposed megalomania and increasingly apparent descent into madness. But still fundamentally a single self.

Only by integrating Tolkienesque themes, do we witness Light and Kira separated, as dissociated identities and possibly an emerging secondary self entirely.

By implication, the Death Note dividing his very soul.

Kira Identified in Split Personalities

Let's just say this: you will feel the fear and pain known only to humans who've used the notebook. And when it's your time to die, it will fall on me to write your name in my death note. Be warned any human who's used a death note can neither go to heaven nor hell for eternity... That's all.
- Ryuk, Death Note Anime, Episode 1

Maybe this soul-split is why those who use the Death Note are condemned to Mu when they die?

Complete souls are required to enter Heaven or Hell, at least as such things are understood by shinigami. Personae fragmenting from the same being dilutes the core identity enough that their passport into the afterlife is denied. With nowhere to go, they are lost to the void and formless. Nothingness ensues.

Moreover, this might explain why Death Note owners are identifiable by the lack of a name and date above their heads. It could be that shinigami eyes are confounded by the data being multiplied, as more than one person is present inside that head.

If so, then this has obvious implications for Near and Mello too.

How does one view the name and days of a puppet, or two in one personae?

Not least because shinigami eyes are twice used to read Mihael Keehl above Mello's head in the canon rendering. What will happen during those scenes in the story? Can Mello still be killed, as one self amongst multiples?

If so, how does that affect Near? Will he die too? Or will he seem to make like a gamer or a cat with apparently numerous lives to risk in battling Kira?

If not, then how might Kira react to the discovery that some - to all practical extent and purpose - possess immunity from the Death Note's deadly reach. And L's successors are amongst their number.

A new twist beckons, as the insertion of split personalities creates diverging plot-lines. It will be interesting to see how this pans out as the story progresses.

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Death Note Wammy Letters' Alphabet Pt 2 - L-Z

L - Wammy Kid The Last One, or The Lost One - True Name L Lawliet*

M - Wammy Kid Mello - Mihael Keehl

N - Wammy Kid Near - Nate River

O - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

P - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

Q - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; Unless Strong Probability: Q - Wammy Kid Matt - True Name Mail Jeevas

R - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

S - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

T - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

U - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

V - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

W - Wammy Letter for Watari - Quillsh Wammy Himself

X - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; Y - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; and Z - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

The Wammy Alphabet of Death Note Letters

Posted as Part of

Posted as Part of

List of Wammy House Letters Discussed in General Terms

Death Note Wammy Letters Alphabet

A - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

B - Wammy Kid Beyond Birthday - True Name Unknown

C - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

D - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

E - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

F - Wammy Kid F1225 - True Name Unknown

G - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown

H - Wammy Headquarters Letters - Roger Ruvie (presumed)

I - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon

J - Wammy Kid Pseudonym Unknown - True Name Jeffrey Miller

K - Wammy Kid Keep Your Way - Dr Kimiko Kujo

Posted as Part of

Posted as Part of

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Cosplayers!

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Kira Identified in Split Personalities

Death Note News Categories

Monthly Archives

Thoughts on an AU Death Note L
at 36 Years Old