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.

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.

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. 

While we're all familiar with the movie L Change the World - even those who wish they weren't - even long-standing Death Note fans might have missed the fact that Matsuda got his own short film in relation to it.  As these stills from the ten minute movie attest:

Broadcast on Japanese television, initially on February 8th 2008, Spin-Off Matsuda was basically made up of scenes deleted from the movie itself.  It followed the fortunes of Touta Matsuda in a story which ran concurrently with those seen with L, Maki and Near.

It starred Sōta Aoyama as Matsuda, reprising his role from the other live-action movies in the trilogy (soon to be quartet).

As with the main movie L Change the World, Kiyomi Fujii wrote the screenplay. The spin-off covers Matsuda's issues with filing a final Kira case report, and a poignant meeting with L a fortnight before the latter's known and inevitable death.

Though I suppose it all depends who for you wears the face of Near, and which source you favour above all the rest as canon.  It strikes me that stories can fix a character in space and time, stranding them in a certain aspect and at an unchanging age.

Forever eight, thirteen, or sixteen, seventeen or twenty-one.

As today is Near's birthday, here's a run through the different portrayals of him and how old they pertain to be today.

Which is the definitive Near for you?  And will you be doing/producing anything to mark the day?  Comment and let us know with links, if relevant, so that we may share in the glory.

Admit it, you've never watched beyond the final credits in L: Change the World. I'll admit it.  It never occurred to me to continue on.

For some, it's painful enough to get to the credits, let alone sit through them. Particularly when they're not subject to subtitles translating the beautiful kanji sailing past.

Which means that we all missed the semi-secret poignant scene sneaked in there - beyond all acknowledgements, but one.

It depicts L sitting before a desk, upon which lies a lever arch folder, closed over a pile of tidy case-notes.  L stares at a photograph of Mr Wammy for long seconds, before stepping from his crouch upon the chair and walking off camera.  The scene ends with a black screen, upon which white words form: L Lawliet, Rest in Peace.

He's gone back to Watari. At least that's the only interpretation which salves the heart of onlookers.

So what's this got to do with Mello?   For a start, those case-notes. We're not told which ones they pertain to, but my imagination tells me that there are three cases in there and they'll be referenced or retold in the novel Another Note.  But that's conjecture.

More blatant is the fact that the sequence begins with a loud snapping of chocolate.

We hear it before we see Lawliet perched in situ. For a instant, we suspect we're about to see a blond Mafioso smirking from the shadows. And perhaps we do, at least in nodding acknowledgement towards those who died in the cause of Kira.

Just look at L in this scene.  And smile through your pathos.  It was a hint, but we caught it.

It's reminiscent of our final glimpse of Near, in the manga, nomming chocolate out of respect for Mello. That acknowledgement was admitted by Ohba in How To Read - the official guide to Death Note. However, we haven't finished with Mello and this movie yet.

There was another obscure Mello hint in the previous final scene of L: Change the World. By that, I mean the last one before the credits, wherein L takes the tiny Thai child to Wammy's House and names him Near.

In Lawliet's little speech to his young mathematical genius companion, he advises him, 'There is one thing I want you to remember, no matter how gifted, you alone cannot change the world.'

Is that not a nod towards Near's own Yellow Box denouncement of Light in the manga?  When he said that he alone couldn't surpass L. But with Mello alongside him, they could collectively succeed where L had failed.

The whole scene is reproduced below, though no-one on YouTube - insofar as I can find - has captured that final part beyond the credits with the chocolate.

Is all of this just the rabid ravings of an obsessed fan-girl?  You tell me!