Any last tips for anyone reading, who wishes to start creating Kira artwork?
Draw what moves you. If it's a certain scene, emotion or you have a feeling to just draw Light...than draw him. When that creative mood hits act upon it. If you don't...it'll nag you until you do. Also you don't have to draw exactly how Light looks in the anime. As long you have his details right, you can do your own style of Light. That would make your artwork stand out more, because it’ll have your own personal touch to it.

Creating something is better than creating nothing.

Anything missed?  Any great ideas sizzling away on a back-burner, in danger of becoming charcoal, because no-one's checked that list since we wrote it?  (Being too busy organizing, liaising, coding, formatting, chasing and all other manner of orchestrating e-mails zooming back and forth, coz folk beautifully, fabulously and brilliantly did join in.  In absolute droves.)

Finds a whole article written in advance, and promptly forgotten about; has a frightened little gasp over the short list pertaining to Light Yagami's birthday on the 28th.

Never did source an astrologer to tell us about the propensity of Pisceans to become Kira; nor anyone to explain why it matters that his Light Yagami's blood group is A; nor whether the Fire Tiger of the Death Note manga birth year for Kira, or Earth Snake of the anime, best suits Light's personality as described in the Chinese Zodiac.  If anyone actually knows any of this stuff - or related charts, no-one mentioned Indian astrology yet! - then you have two days to jot your knowledge down and rush it to us in time for Kira's birthday on February 28th.

Pretty much guaranteed to ninja yourself into our already chock-a-block publishing grid for Light Yagami month though!

Then there it was, a faded, pencilled little note - create a gift store for Kira on Death Note News.  It would tie in nicely and we have a freaking website to pay for!  If we could just start remembering to populate (and promote) our Death Note Gifts area (tick), we might get a dribble of commission in to put aside towards hosting costs (He Moves Me Differently, not really here); domain name retention (here); Kira crossword prizes etc.

So when things get tough, we wouldn't have to resort to desperate measures, like launching an appeal replete with photographs of the wide-eyed, cute, beseeching faces of our two kittens and boa constrictor.

(Incidentally, and remarkably, that worked!  Yow and Jiji are currently nowhere to be seen, out playing without risk of our kittens creating more kittens; plus they got their travel home, all their inoculations and insurance to cover them at their friendly, lovely vet. Tinkerbell is having a vivarium built especially for her. Until about two days ago, I'd have said she's the happiest boa constrictor alive. Then she got mites.  This is not a great learning curve, but we're winning nontheless. No infestation of snake eating mini-spiders noms Tink on OUR watch. And yes, Anonysnake did raise Anonymous to help haX0r said mites.  Two Anons anyway.  No more about that here.  This is a Death Note news site!  If you want to keep up with kitten/boa gossip, follow them on Twitter like normal people.)

Not long ago, I watched a video by YouTuber Onision. In this video, Onision basically says that Light Yagami's mistake is not considering PREVENTING crime, as opposed to punishing criminals who've ALREADY done bad things.

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

I disagree, because preventing crimes by killing anyone who intends to commit them makes deaths looks like coincidences or normal deaths. In other words, if you were to hear of the death of a certain person of which no one knows the intentions, it would've NEVER occurred to you there's someone out there "passing righteous judgement", which we all know is one of Light's ultimate goals, to make Kira famous and worshipped.

I think yes, because all that sentence written in Death Note needs in order to be applied is a strong willingness to kill, which is present in the example.

But then again, that's just my wicked over-analysis and my own point-of-view to which you are free to reply.

Any last tips for anyone reading, who wishes to create their Kira cosplay from scratch?
MAKE-UP. Really, don't neglect your face! All the clothes and wigs in the world won't seal the final touch like make-up.

In the end, I was using tape to change the shape of my facial features, I used female-to-male make-up techniques, I used eye-liner to make my eyes pop. Make-up is very important. Don't neglect it.

I personally did bind as well. I won't advise binding for health reasons, but I didn't cosplay without strapping down my D-cups. Just make sure if you bind, bind carefully and be mindful of technique. It's easy to cause serious injury if you don't bind correctly.

There's less than 24 hours left!  Have you got your questions in yet for our three Kira voice actors?

Brad Swaile, Sergio Zamora and Kim Hasper are waiting to receive them, so get in quick!

Deadline is midnight today, though that's been set right over on the Pacific coast timeline, so Europeans and those over in the East, you have slightly extra time.  Use it wisely.

Once the countdown clock - on the right hand sidebar - hits zero, the question forms will close. The Spanish and German translators will rush into action; and three Death Note anime seiyuu will hear a ping from their inbox.

Just eighteen hours and 42 mins remaining, at the time of writing.

To read profiles on each Light Yagami anime voice actor and find the form to ask a question (or ten), check out the links below.  Every question form is identical, and posts to the same place.  It's just that the one on Kim's page has been translated into German; on Sergio's, the form is in Spanish; and on Brad's, it's in English.  Just like the Death Note dubs that each man did.

So go ask Kira!   18 hours and 38 mins now...

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

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

Take a look at this list of birthdays for Death Note actors in the role of Kira across various adaptations.  Something remarkable soon comes to light:

So what you've got here is a well-known 'birthday problem'. If you're in a room with significantly less than 366 people, it turns out it's already very likely to have two people with the same birthday.

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

Let's first think about the probability that *nobody* shares a birthday - after all, if you know the probability that nobody shares a birthday, you know the probability that at least two people share a birthday! Consider this:

• Person 1 doesn't have anybody to share a birthday with yet.
• Person 2 has a 364/365 chance to not be born on the same day as person 1.
• Person 3 has a 363/365 chance to not be born on the same day as person 1 and 2.

and so on.  Following this and calculating it out, it turns out that you only need 23 people in a room to have a 50% chance of two sharing a birthday, and 70 people for a 99.9% chance!

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

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

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

The difficulty level on this Month of Kira crossword puzzle might be called cruel; bordering upon impossible.  Hence we're offering a cash prize of ten whole pounds.  That's probably a barrel full of dollars at today's inflation costs.  At the very least, it's the price of a carefully bought, shiny, new manga. Which isn't a prize to be written off lightly.

See what we did there?   Soon as you've stopped chuckling to yourself, get solving your Kira crossword clues.

You'll need to print off the grid, or copy it into GIMP or your own image manipulation software of choice. Photograph/screenshot the completed puzzle and send it to us via our Month of... content submission page - drop the file into the FileDrop or email us with a link to where it's lodged elsewhere on the world wide web.  Hell, send it by carrier pigeon if you must!  

You have until this time next month, and the publication of our Touta Matsuda crossword, as your deadline. Then we'll whisk all correct entries around a hat and pull out the overall winner.  Their tenner will wing its way to them forthwith via bank transfer or PayPal.

Remember to include your email for riches notification, should you be our lucky winner.  Everyone else, merely enjoy.

UPDATE:  Finally, here they are - the answers to the Death Note Kira crossword puzzle posted above.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The discussion is open.

Have you created Kira art now or in the past?
Yes - in the past.

Any anecdotes about your experiences as a Light Yagami artist?
I used a reference of a guy I found attractive back in the day for the piece, he stumbled upon it and now we are good friends! Going to massacre his sassy ass in Smash Bros this Sunday. :D

How would you go about creating a Kira drawing?
Find references, get a basic sketch for composition and values, then render out!

What attributes, clothing and/or scenarios, do you feel are essential to include in Light Yagami artwork?
The K-pop boy band member hair and the red eyes are a must.

Is there more to recreating Kira visually than the outfit?
(Expression/stance/slogan etc.)
His personality has to come across, so get a pose / body language that fits it!

What, in your professional opinion, are fundamental tips/advice in producing art that's recognisably Kira?
Using references is an absolute must in order not to get lost.

What are the common noob errors made in drawing Light Yagami?
Not using references! :'D  The general public tend to think anything that comes from your head has more value than anything you copy, and they are right to an extent. But if you are in your early stages as an artist, your mission is to be able to get your fundamentals right before jumping into relying entirely on the contents of your mind.

Professional artists usually do a mixture of both: they look for references and they change them in their head to come up with their own creations.

Any last tips for anyone reading, who wishes to start creating Kira artwork?
Nowadays there are tutorials for everything (what a beautiful time to be alive!), you just need to put the hours of work. So get yourself into training everyday and you will eventually be able to create anything you imagine!

Since the late 18th century - when racial science first reared its ugly head - there have been a dozen or more definitions of the Caucasian taxon, and which ethnicities it covers.  But as our goal is to assess the tag 'serial killer', the only one which matters here is what the FBI meant by Caucasian, when the Bureau made it a point of serial killing criterion.

Ethnologically Japanese, Light Yagami dodges a bullet in the FBI's definition of Caucasian - or 'white' as its literature elsewhere puts it - encompassing those races natively derived from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.  Kira doesn't count.

However, the notion that most serial killers are Caucasian is subject to fierce debate.  Even the FBI's own statistics show Caucasians account for only just over half - 52.1% - of serial killers. The prevailing argument amongst academics is that such murderers, who otherwise fit the profile, may be found throughout all racial classifications. But non-Caucasian serial killers are unlikely to be the focus of blanket media coverage; much less central to several books, biographies, dramatized TV documentaries and finally a major motion picture release. In fact, most are lucky if they're even tagged 'serial killer' by the under-reporting press.

The rule of thumb seeming to be that, in the media, Caucasians may be serial killers, but non-Caucasians are always 'just a murderer'.  It's less glamorous.

In short, Light Yagami may be a serial killer - albeit unlikely, as Asians made up just 0.7% of those profiled - but the US press is unlikely to bother with him. Ordinarily anyway.  As Kira, he made quite a splash in the world's media. But by the time he got there, Light was deemed Saviour and Messiah, rather than any negative type of mass murderer.

Less open to question are the next two items.  Serial killers tend to be aged late twenties to early thirties, and 92.3% of them were male.  When he first used the Death Note, Light was seventeen.  By the time he was forcibly made to finish killing, he was twenty-four.  Atypical then.  Nevertheless, he was indeed male.

Without knowing much about Japanese social hierarchies in comparison to what 'lower to middle class' might mean in American society, it's difficult to call the next criterion.  Would anyone else like to jump in here?  While the final one - was Kira Sociopathic? - is well beyond the scope of this analysis.  Hopefully it will be addressed in another article at a later date.

As for the rest of the data, eighty-eight of the serial killers profiled by the FBI came from Japan.  We can only assume that once of them was Light Yagami, while the other 87 were despatched by him via his Death Note by and by.  Unless, of course, we conclude that Kira wasn't a serial killer.  In which case, the latter figure leaps by one and all unanimously become victims of Kira's regime.

This section of classification seemed doomed to be unhelpful from the start.  Nor did it disappoint in that.  To my mind, the result remains inconclusive in assessment of Death Note's protagonist and his murderous tendencies, though more discussion may pay dividends as regards the last two points.

Nevertheless, we can trust the BSU's serial killer demographics to be internationally pertinent from now on, thus relevant in examining Light Yagami.

But to qualify as a serial killer, Kira needs to have incorporated cooling off periods between his killing sprees.  There is one very notable time of inactivity, when he was held under L's detention in a prison cell. However, that counts more as enforced abstinence from slaughter. Though voluntarily there, Light felt the caged, 24/7 surveillance to be fundamental to his own survival and continuance as Kira.  It was inactivity to ensure future activity.  That was all.

Was there any other occasion when Light Yagami paused his usage of the Death Note?  Without first setting up a series of secondary Kiras to do his killing by proxy?  I'm struggling to identify one.  Misa Amane; the Yotsuba Group; Teru Mikami; and Kiyomi Takada; all assisted in maintaining those relentless murders reaching across the globe, at Light's direct or indirect instigation, throughout the entirety of that seven year reign of terror.

It's difficult to see where any cooling off breaks occurred in their midst, let alone those regular enough for Kira to be considered a serial killer.

That would appear to be that. Kira cannot be a serial killer, if he doesn't fit all of the criteria.  However, he isn't the first to fail at this part of the classification. It's occurred in reality too - notably with Andrew Cunanan - leading criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky to suggest a hybrid tag of 'spree serial killer' or 'serial rampage killer' could be usefully employed.

And look how he describes this sub-section of serial killing:

Over the next pages, he goes on to say how spree serial killers suffer some kind of nervous breakdown which traps them in this predatory persona. They cannot stop, hence the lack of a cooling off period.  Nor can they retreat - 'they can never return back to their previous lives' (p 224) - they become the serial killer in all regards but inactivity.  They become it 24/7.

I think Kira fits the bill right there, completely.  Death Note's spree serial killer.

Finally, there's the fourth criterion - did Light Yagami kill for psychological gratification?  By which is meant that the motive wasn't material nor honour based (such as robbery, profit, revenge etc), but something much more internally self-fulfilling. 

A serial killer's motive for murder is typically slotted into four categories, subject to considerable over-lap.  Two of which are instantly game over, when we apply them to Death Note to see if psychological gratification was a motive in Kira's compulsion to kill.  In order from least relevance, they are:

The Power Controller

Doing it all to feel powerful; subjugating their victims in any way possible, just to have that rush of absolute domination.  Light touched here when he had prisoners across the world do strange things before their deaths.  But that wasn't really about power and control. It was merely testing his Death Note's capabilities.

The Hedonist

Thrill-seeking; pleasure pandering; killing because they can, and people are expendable.  Forensic psychologists further split this group into three sub-sections:  comfort, thrill and lust. Comfort hedonists are the closest serial killers get to robbery-based murders.  It's all about getting hold of the material possessions of their victims, or eliminating an obstacle to personal power.  Thrill hedonist serial killers want the adrenaline rush of causing terror and pain, whilst exerting absolute control over their victims.  Lust hedonists are your Jack the Ripper types, getting their kicks from mutilation, torture, dominance et al, but mostly what's implied on the label.

Light Yagami wasn't beyond this category.  His elimination of Lind L. Taylor, twelve FBI agents and Naomi Misora established that within the opening chapters of Death Note.  But it wasn't his main raison d'être.

In the USA, the BSU studied life histories of known serial killers. Though researchers warned that serial killers could very easily hold down steady jobs, raise families and otherwise seem like fine upstanding members of society, some less savoury factors commonly and frequently arose.

In all likelihood, the background information in a serial killer's profile will include elements from this list:

1. Alcoholism;
2. Animal cruelty;
3. Arsonist/Pyromaniac;
4. Biochemical/genetic abnormalities;
5. Bullied in childhood or adolescence by their peers;
6. Childhood abuse victim;
7. Compulsive behaviour;
8. Drug abuse;
9. Drug addicted or alcoholic parents;
10. Engaged in petty crimes (like shoplifting or vandalism) for the thrill or because they could, rather than any material need nor as action under peer pressure;
11. Isolated socially as children or adolescents;
12. Low self-esteem;
13. Pathological lying;
14. Perinatal head injury;
15. Powerlessness in the face of their own urges to kill/unable to prevent or stop actually killing;
16. Propensity to retreat into habitual daydreams or a rich fantasy world, as an escape from reality;
17. Ritualistic behaviour;
18. Severe memory disorders;
19. Sexual assault - perpetrator and/or victim in the past;
20. Sexual deviancy;
21. Suicidal thoughts/attempts at suicide;
22. Unhappy childhood, or periods of profoundly interrupted happiness in childhood;
23. Unstable family life during childhood - broken home; divorced parents; separation from family; or some other breach in the parent/child relationship - commonly seen.  Some studies suggest it's all about an absent father and domineering mother.

So how does the profile of a standard serial killer compare to Kira?  I have my thoughts, but I'll leave this one open to discussion.  Comment if you recognize anything from Light Yagami's past in there; or if you see nothing to fit him there at all.  Let's hash it out between us.

But for now, I think it's fairly determined that Kira IS a serial killer, only he's one of the emerging sub-section suggested by Peter Vronsky labelled 'serial rampage killer'.  Do you concur?

We've had a great deal of wonderful contributions to Death Note News during our Kira-centric inaugural Month of... event.  So many people have jumped on board, leaving us quite stunned and extraordinarily delighted back here.

From the least to the highest effort - in terms of talent, research or sheer hard work - there's nothing to choose between them all. We have no favouritism. They are equally amazing; on a par in eliciting thankfulness from all writers, translators and organisers here.

However, I have to admit that it was truly exciting to receive content from this latest participant in Month of Light Yagami. Thrilling to behold the process unravelling.

For no better reason than was there, peeping in over his cyber shoulder from the sidelines of Skype, as he researched, recorded, edited and mixed.

Yesterday, Lawliet director Ricardo Arechiga heard about our event for the first time. He was happy for us and wandered away to look at the archived collection of articles so far.  Heads up given, job done, I returned to work preparing for publication the next raft of content coming your way, thinking nothing more about it.  But then Rico was back. He was inspired. Really inspired. He was going to join in.

Through occasional comments passed back and forth via Skype, I witnessed that spark turn into ideas; whittled down into a plan. Then stayed on throughout a (coincidentally) joint all-nighter, wherein his Light Yagami: Hero or Villain vlog gradually came together.  A truly fascinating thing to watch appear piecemeal in cryptic messages - 'just laying down the audio', 'doing the visuals', 'rendering' - when its not a process with which I'm familiar.

The buzz was infectious. When the link came in, I settled back with snacks and deep anticipation to play it.  Like my computer chair and desk were transformed now into front row seats at a theatrical première.  It was indeed fabulous to view completed; one long night after first hearing a musing notion that it might come.

I do hope I haven't over-hyped it.  But I doubt that.   If you haven't already seen it, above is Riconius's opinion driven vlog - analysing Kira's culpability, morality and how we might perceive his actions overall.  Enjoy it.  I did immensely.