News about Death Note

First Time Ever I Saw Your Face... Death Note Blogger Collates Initial Manga Appearance for Each Major Character

20/11/2015

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

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

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

For us prospective Death Note know-it-alls, Japanese blogger Kyoko Kikuchi has painstakingly trawled through the manga and sifted out all those first appearances for every main Death Note character.

It's actually more fascinating than it initially sounds. I thought it would be a thing of passing interest, but I'm struck by how many times we meet individuals without ever seeing their face. Takeshi Obata has his readership creep up on characters, like stalkers or shinigami.

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

First appearance of Misa Amane in the Death Note manga

Misa Amane's first Death Note appearance

Death Note L's first appearance in the manga

How the Death Note world first met L

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

Death Note manga Light's first appearance mirrored by Soichiro's first appearance

Like father, like son - our first sight of the Yagami men in Death Note manga panels

Even the shapes of things on their tables mirror, in polar opposite colours, objects on the surface before the other.

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

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

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

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

And today I learned that artists are just as bad.

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

We could be here for hours.

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

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

Did Nat Wolff Just Indirectly Confirm Involvement in the US Live Action Death Note Movie?

19/11/2015

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It's possible to read too much into things, when you're starved of information and the snippets are too few and far between.

However, when strongly rumoured US Death Note movie casting for Light Yagami actor Nat Wolff has kept a resolute silence on the subject, then suddenly tweets a story linking himself and Margaret Qualley both with the project...

Well I'm sure I'm not the only one drawing conclusions in the sand.

Nat Wolff retweet about Death Note Nov 12th 2015

Nat & Alex Wolff retweet of Variety article re Margaret
Qualley cast in Death Note (Twitter, November 12th 2015)

The Variety magazine Tweet that Nat Wolff - or possibly brother Alex - shared with his followers linked to its news report entitled ‘The Leftovers’ Star Margaret Qualley Joins Nat Wolff in ‘Death Note’ (by Justin Kroll, Nov 12th 2015).

Assuming that Nat knows things that we don't know (i.e. the reality and status of those 'final negotiations' concerning his casting as Light Yagami); also that he knows the truth at the heart of all those news articles citing his own girlfriend as the 'leading lady' in Death Note's US live action movie adaption; and furthermore that Nat Wolff wouldn't want to spread disinformation amongst his fans on Twitter.

I conclude that everything written in the Variety piece about the Death Note movie is true insofar as Nat Wolff knows. Fair enough with everyone else?

So what do we know from it about this American Death Note film remake?

Margaret Qualley is still 'in negotiations' to be Nat Wolff's Death Note co-star. (Wouldn't it be wonderful if it turns out that she's L?
Nowhere does it say, nor intimate, that he hasn't secured the part of Light Yagami. In short, let's assume that Nat Wolff IS Kira now (for that version at least).
Adam Wingard is directing; Roy Lee, Dan Lin, Jason Hoffs and Masi Oka are producing; Jeremy Slater wrote the script's most recent draft; Doug Davison and Brian Witten are executive producers (what do these things actually mean? I can't help but imagine that they are just mates of someone with the money, so have to be chucked in somewhere for doing nothing, with titles like 'executive producer' - am I just being cynical and naive?); and Niija Kuykendall and Nik Mavinkurve are hanging about on behalf of Warner Bros.
Death Note starts filming in Spring 2016.

Therefore nothing that we didn't already know, but this time we know it with a touch more certainty.

US Death Note movie Nat Wolff as Light Yagami

Preview of Nat Wolff as Light Yagami in the live action Death Note US film

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Christmas Death Note Ladies Appreciation Weeks on Tumblr

19/11/2015

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Some of the women of Death Note - how many can you name?

Can't get enough Hal Lidner? Sick of hunting in vain for some Misa/Takada yuri? Wish you saw more fan love for Shoko Himura? Your time has come.

For the second year running, Death Note Ladies Appreciation Weeks will be hosted on Tumblr over the Christmas period. It aims to throw a spotlight on those under-rated female characters from Death Note.

Death Note Ladies Appreciation Weeks 2015 on Tumblr

Under the heading Expect the Unpredictable!, Tumblr user ComplicatedMerary announced the site wide event, and highlighted the guidelines for those who wish to participate.

Beginning on December 13th 2015 (Mello's birthday!), Death Note Ladies Appreciation Weeks spans the holiday period to end on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. Until then, the Tumblr event will be divided into distinct halves.

Week One (Dec 13th-19th) is given over to Death Note yuri. Each day is devoted to two bespoke pairings, with the final one a yuri wild card for the female Death Note couple of your choice. Week Two (Dec 20th-26th) similarly features a daily focus. This time the limelight falls upon individual Death Note women. Two named in any given day, before that too ends with a wild card.

Dec 26th is the day for highlighting your favourite female Death Note character.

Hop on over to Tumblr to learn more about it. Contribute, or merely sit back and watch the ladies of Death Note fill the website in glorious array.

Answers to the collage quiz for Death Note's female characters:
Clockwise (l-r from top):
Kiyomi Takada; Hal Lidner; Naomi Misora (central); Wedy; Misa Amane; Maki; Linda; Eriko Aizawa; and Sachiko Yagami.

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Margaret Qualley - White American Misa Found for US Live Action Death Note Movie (and She's Nat Wolff's IRL Girlfriend)

13/11/2015

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The internet is currently abuzz with news that the Adam Wingard directed US Death Note live action movie is about to cast its Misa Amane.

Margaret Qualley (Jill Garvey in HBO's The Leftovers) is apparently in final talks to play the 'female lead' - according to an article in The Hollywood Reporter ('Leftovers' Actress Margaret Qualley in Talks to Join Adam Wingard's 'Death Note' (Exclusive) by Borys Kit, November 12th 2015) - though presumably that is Misa.

Could Margaret Qualley be Misa Amane in the new Death Note film?

Margaret Qualley and Nat Wolff - Real Life Couple to Play American Death Note's Misa and Light?

This relatively unknown US actress also played Raquel in the 2013 drama movie Palo Alto, wherein she co-starred with Nat Wolff - the actor strongly believed to have been cast as US Death Note's Light Yagami.

However, it's a little bit more than that. Margaret and Nat have been dating since 2012.

If both of these 'final negotiations' rumours are true, then we will be seeing an established long-term real life couple playing Misa and Light in the live action US Death Note movie.

Death Note couple - Misa Amane and Light Yagami

Death Note couple? Margaret Qualley and Nat Wolff

Real life couple - Margaret Qualley and Nat Wolff

Who is Potential Misa Actress Margaret Qualley?

Born in Asheville, North Carolina, on October 23rd 1994, her full name is Susan Margaret Qualley,

The mooted Death Note actress has even more famous familial credentials. Her mother is A-list Hollywood actress Andie MacDowell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Green Card, Sex, Lies and Videotapes, Multiplicity) from her first marriage with male model Paul Qualley.

Her sister Rainey Qualley is also an actress - recently seen in Falcon Song, Pink & Baby Blue and the TV series Mad Men - as well as a touring musician. Rainey opened for Loretta Lynn earlier this year, while her debut single Me and Johnny Cash is currently making waves in Country circuits.

Margaret Qualley originally trained as a ballerina, performing at the American Ballet Theatre and joining the North Carolina Dance Company. She was apprenticed at the French Academy in New York, before moving to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Naturally the latter signalled a shift in outlook, whereby Margaret now sought to follow in her mother's footsteps as an actress.

Here she is in her most famous role to date, as Jill Garvey in The Leftovers.

Whitewashing Death Note Again? White American Actress in Misa Amane Role

If true, the casting of Margaret Qualley as Misa is bound to cause controversy, just as did the role of Light Yagami linked with Nat Wolff.

Neither American actors are ethnically Japanese, though they will be portraying Japanese characters. While Hollywood is long past getting away with blackening white actors faces to play other races, the industry stands accused of employing its modern equivalent to endemic proportions.

In short, ethnically Asian actors need not apply for leading roles in Hollywood pictures, not even when the parts up for grabs are Asian characters. As North American actor Edward Zo discovered, when he sought to audition for Light Yagami.

The furore here is already raging, as regards Death Note's US live action film. Margaret Qualley's casting in the role of Misa Amane is unlikely to help matters there.

Though in fairness, Misa looks less Asian than Margaret.

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Misa Misa Voice Actress in Tonsil Operation - Aya Hirano Feared for her Career if her Tones were Damaged

7/11/2015

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Death Note Misa Amane Voice Actress Aya Hirano

Misa Amane actress Aya Hirano

Death Note actress Aya Hirano has left hospital after a successful operation to remove her tonsils.

This following a year in which engagements have been missed due to frequent hospital stays due to chronic tonsillitis, including a recent live performance of the anime White Album.

Best known to fans here as the voice of Misa Amane in the Japanese Death Note anime, Aya Hirano worried in her blog that illness and/or the procedure might irrevocably damage her voice.

Later she reassured readers that removing her troublesome tonsils can only improve it.

She seems now to be home and well, ready to pick up her career, starting with another live appearance at the Dai AQUAPLUS Matsuri event, on November 28th 2015, at Tokyo's Ryōgoku Kokugikan.

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Viz at Hyderabad Comic Con: Hindi Death Note Paved the Way for More Manga into India

18/9/2015

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More manga will be coming to India, Viz Media top exec. Kevin Hamric confirmed during his recent talk at Hyderabad Comic Con.

Anime like Death Note has made it possible, simply by proving to be so popular.

Death Note Misa Cosplayer at Comic Con Hyderabad 2015

Death Note Misa cosplay at Comic Con Hyderabad September 2015
(Courtesy of MKM Communications/Comic Con India)

Japanese manga and anime has struggled to make much headway into the vast Indian market. Despite a growing number of aficionados, like those packing out Hitex Exhibiton, September 12-13, for Comic Con Hyderabad 2015.

Not to mention those thronging into Bangalore Comic Con last April, or the hordes expected to descend upon Mumbai Film & Comics Convention and Comic Con Delhi, both in December 2015.

The fact that so many events are now teeming with Indian fans of anime and manga is only the visual face of how the genre is gathering pace in the country. But it's been slow going.

Two factors have been credited with making such headway as exists.

The first being first day guest speaker at the Hyderabad gathering - Kevin Hamric, Senior Director of Sales and Marketing at Viz Media. He might be merely the human face for a company increasingly making manga available in India, but he's quite a active one.

Returning time and time again to the sub-continent determined to make manga appear approachable to Indian readers.

<br>Viz's Kevin Hamric Hyderabad Comic Con 2015 talk

Viz Media Kevin Hamric as Hyderabad Comic Con guest speaker

His session at Comic Con Hyderabad was described in the schedule as 'get a behind the scenes look in to your favourite anime & manga series', then went on to name-check Death Note, amongst the other usual suspects - Naruto, Bleach and Dragon Ball Z.

These are the fore-runners forging a route into the Indian entertainment industry on behalf of all other Japanese manga to follow.

Hamric himself highlighted the second major factor, in an interview with Hans India newspaper (We are Bringing More of Manga to India: Kevin Hamric, Sept 14th 2015).

“One of the reasons why there are more takers to manga is because, most of the time when these animes were screened on TV, it was dubbed in Hindi and even Telugu. This helped a lot.”

In short, more manga is now being introduced to the country - plus being printed there, as demand grows to justify it - because Hindi dubbed Death Note et al made the genre popular enough. Through the anime laying the groundwork, Hamric was able to build a market for manga too.

Thus does the Death Note fandom grow, and all others too, eventually.

Subbed Hindi: Death Note Opening Theme

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TV Death Note Episode 8: Chess Games, Watchfulness and Villainy in Yellow Pt 1

12/9/2015

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Yes, I know I'm lagging behind the whole world here. I'm on it. I'm on it.

We're up to episode eight of the Death Note live-action television adaptation, wherein Light has his memories back; Kira has his Death Note in his Golem-esque clutches; and the Wammys are pursuing new leads, whilst telling everyone to witness, watch and don't avert their eyes.

Don't blink. Whatever you do. Don't blink. And now, how about a nice game of chess? White moves first...

Great Acting in Death Note TV Drama

Teru Mikami in
Death Note (2015)

I know I've said it before, but I think it's worth the reiteration. There are some truly wonderful performances from the actors in Death Note (2015).

After this episode, we were discussing Shugo Oshinari's portrayal of Teru Mikami. He seems born to play him!

Fitting the role so perfectly that I can't imagine anyone else doing so.

Even physically, there's a resemblance between the actor and the manga/anime depiction of Mikami. It makes you wonder if the cast were chosen as much for their looks in comparison to the characters, as anything else. Or if the actors are just so good, that they draw that likeness down onto themselves.

Then there's Matsuda. Anyone else feel like Gouki Maeda has brought our bubbly hero Tota to life so completely, that it appears nothing short of preternatural?

I could highlight several more fabulous actors from this series, but those pair are the current stand-outs from Death Note episode eight.

Light Up Kira in his Shinigami Gaze

Talking about great Death Note actors, some are perennial and none more so than Masataka Kubota as Kira. He can eject Light with a look; bring Kira slithering in on a glance.

Light Yagami quite notably never got the shinigami eyes. But that isn't to say that the Death God can't been seen in his gaze.

As Light, he can seem quite wide-eyed and innocent, self-effacing even, nevertheless able to focus straight on. Head high, facing the world, though internally he may be scheming.

Light Yagami in Death Note TV live action drama 2015

Then see him turn to Kira in a sudden sidewards shifting of his vision. Like the killer stands alongside him, stepping in.

From now on, that stare will rarely meet any sight head on. Kira's gaze slides like a snake has control of each orb, weaving, winding, coiling in their sockets, taking his head on a nodding, sinking, roller-coaster orbit too.

Just as it always will, when Kira presence is known.

Kira in Death Note 2015 television live action

In the sequence above, Light - as Kira - is captured in stills taken from the midst of a sweeping gaze. The second part with L following hard on the first in his room, as a continuation of the same internal dialogue.

His sidewards glance from the initial couplet carrying straight into that smug perusal of L. Then onwards; his vision moving across the floor, defocusing upon a spot beside him and up finally in smirking contemplation.

Shifting, sliding, crooked; just like Light's suddenly hooked index finger in the second of the four images, snapped at the instant that Kira fully comes to the fore.

Or Light Yagami gets a plan worked out to fruition. Which is pretty much the same thing.

But there's much more to see here, and I'm having fun revisiting my Uni housemate's Film Studies degree (which I might as well have added to my own CV, the amount of times I was in the actual study part of it...).

So let's head on into the nitty-gritty.

TV Death Note's Kira on the Left Hand Path

Look again at those four screenshot images and note how often Light and/or his Kira persona are filmed on the left hand side of the frame. Even in close up, you get a lot of background scenery seen on the right.

In fact, his Kira gaze first looks left, then settles into whichever way it'll slither.

All over the world, the left has historically been denigrated as a cultural no-no. Some societies reserve the left hand for unsavoury necessities, like using it for cleaning oneself after using the toilet. Others have considered left handed folk to be luckless, awkward, stupid or downright criminal.

Language too, on a global scale, routinely disdains the left - 'the left hand path' is used in Abrahamic religions (and some Pagan ones) to describe selfish, sinful or destructive practices in worship and/or magic; from ancient Mesopotamia, through the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, and into modern times, 'left' has been inserted into phrases meaning evil, wrong or otherwise not quite what should be done.

Nor is Japan exempt from this left disdaining social etiquette.

It's considered impolite - and bad luck - to eat with your chopsticks in your left hand there. The majority of left-handed children are still forced to use their right hands to write.

However, given the prevalence of Christian imagery in this adaptation of Death Note (and indeed the original too), it's worth noting that the Archangel Gabriel sat at God's left hand. And he was the Angel of Judgement.

Judgement Incarnate or possibly Satanic (in the traditional modern sense) evil doer? You decide.

Though I will say that imagery in previous episodes has suggested Light aligning more with Lucifer the Light Bringer, than Gabriel the Bringer of Life from the baby spirit banks of Sheol. I haven't seen Kira raise a trumpet to his lips once.

'We All Fall Down Like Toy Soldiers'

Noticing what's in the background is generally quite worthwhile in Death Note's television adaptation. There's no exception here.

While Light ponders strategy, we clearly see his troops lined up against the wall behind him. Symbolically, at least, in the form of toy soldiers.

We're meant to spot them. They fill half of the screen, in perfect clarity, vividly green against a white background. Apparently green means 'freshness; eternal life; youthfulness' in Japan's colour coding. Innocent then, in the prime of their lives, individually placed so each stands out.

Yet overlooked, thus dominated by the antlered head of a Japanese Kirin - as already discussed in my review of episode two - positioned like Light to the left.
This mythological being is representative of vengeful judgement and justice. Its placement making it almost seem like a sheepdog herding those toy soldiers into their orderly rows. Like sheep corralled into the fold.

And below there is a human skeleton, not unlike Rem in aspect, standing slightly off the ground, aping Misa's stance whilst captured by L and the Japanese police. It's flanked by the skeletal reproductions of two dinosaurs - both extinct.

Does anyone know what purple creature features prominently in that bottom corner? It's staring straight at Light.

Possibly a mythological Japanese totem for luck or protection? Most of those pertaining to Light generally fall into that category, unless they're representing Kira in murderous reckoning. It looks like a horse to me. Please do shout up, if you can identify it.

Now keep your attention on Light's carefully placed pawns - those plastic troops - as he switches persona more noticeably into Kira.

He fades in. They fade out. Still commanding half of the screen, but utterly out of focus. Kira's looking away and our eyes naturally follows his direction.

No-one cares now what happens to the once vivid and innocent, penned and ignored toy soldiers. Losing their individuality as they fade from view. Just pieces to be played on Kira's personal battlefield. Deployed in dialogue, and already moving out of sight. Out of mind to follow suit quite swiftly.

Like any other war really.

White Knight L Upon a Death Note Chessboard

Of course, if you're going to create a combat driven gaming board of your surroundings, then nobody does it better than L.

His entire inner sanctum seems fashioned upon a gigantic Wammy House chessboard - a game which was invented to equate a theatre of war, requiring tactical moves not unlike those found upon real life battle-fields.

L and Light chessboard imagery in Death Note 2015

I know it's been highlighted before, but look at that colour scheme and ceiling squares. Everything square or rectangular really, even the paper that L is holding up. The whole theme suggestive of a chequered board in chess.

Kira's biggest problem being the white knight sitting one step before him and two beside. That's an L shape and knight can own any piece from there, not least the black king currently held in check.

And is that a giant white king chess-piece looming alongside Light? Bit dangerous. It can only move one square, but that's enough to take him completely should he get too close.

Luckily it's only a pillar. Randomly ornate in a room full of squares, mostly in black and white with a nice blue border. (Cloudlike patterns for blue sky thinking.)

See the double row of identical shirts, white pawns awaiting play upon their white squares. With an option on snakes and ladders, as an option at the back.

No, no, I'm sorry, I'm a noob. Double row, stacked squares - bricks in a castle, spiral staircase leading up into the tower. Besieged by a darker ladder with the potential to breach. Sky above. Placed in a corner of the chessboard, precisely where one would expect to find a white side's rook.

(Black rook sits opposite. The entrance way into the room, all dark steel cages and stairs to descend within.)

The pawns are the white computer chairs standing all in a row. Presumably that's a bishop disguised as a triangle shaped meditation tent over to the side. Spiritual and triangular to imply diagonal.

Ignore the flowing curves of L's desk. A little fancy, but still L shaped. Positioning the White Knight, who has so often got his feet up; astride his table - equine in its stead - as befits a rider.

That L is the White Knight in a giant chessboard also accounts for his choice of lucky ring. The horseshoe signet which had me so befuddled back at the beginning of Death Note's television series run, when I thought it was actually a crescent moon.

Perhaps this explains too the purple horselike creature surveying Kira in that last picture from his own room. Black gets a knight too, though I'm not sure purple counts as black.

Nevertheless, Light's better off now than he was two episodes back, when white captured the black queen and took her clean off the table. A move which forced black king Kira to play repeatedly in check, relying upon stalemate to remain in the game.

White Knight takes Black Queen

CHECK!

CHECK!

A desperate recourse to hope that he lasted long enough to win freedom by default. But it all worked out as planned.

At least he's got a queen. Stop looking at Near, no white queen there despite the actress playing them. Weren't you paying attention last week with the Tower of Babel and all? Or the week before that, with Near positioned up above in surveillance from a camera? Or a few weeks back with that big, red monument beckoning them on to the field of play.

Dude's playing rook right now.

Meanwhile L's having to pretend white has a queen too. Played psychologically - to be subtly intimidating, standing right alongside him - and introduced by dint of installing a suitably regal chess-piece pillar halfway across the board.

L's white queen pillar in Death Note 2015

The white queen was a pillar of strength for L, and difficult to remove from play

Divergent Plotline for Death Note (2015)

Just when I thought that television's Death Note plot was firmly back in the canon groove, it goes and changes things around again.

The glee in this household was palpable. After years of knowing the same old story inside and out, it's wonderfully exciting to have something new to enjoy within the same broad contours of this fascinating, familiar tale.

So Misa goes into the forest to collect her Death Note, finds it, digs it up and reads the title. All in red, like a woman on the brink of powerful ascension, as per long established colour coding in imagery for this Death Note television adaptation. Power right there in her grasp, with all due regard to those scarlet fingernails, which with she raked a manicured touch right across the cellophane.

Then in lieu of regaining her memories, she gets smacked around the head with a spade instead.

Talk about shock! And good fight with this show's propensity to surprise. Now us old timers can watch without knowing what is about to happen next.

And It was All Yellow - Colour Coding Villainy & Violence in Death Note Television Show

Meet Mikami's new friend Hiroki Yudagawa. Misa's assailant in the woods; temporary conveyor of the Death Note; quickly sought and identified by L; and an unwelcome distraction for Light.

Yudagawa was brought to us today by the colour yellow.

I'm not kidding. Look, it follows him around.

Mikami and Yudagawa in tv's Death Note 2015

Death Note Light and Matsuda in Yudagawa's house

He was yellow, Light. Everything about him yellow, from the random hook on his front door to the children's slide outside his house and about a trillion other things besides.

Including the fact that Near is part way through completion of a plain yellow jigsaw (in place of the usual white one), whilst discussing Yudagawa with L.

You'd think it was just his colour, but then yellow crops up again and again. Like in the childhood bullying scene reminisced by Mikami, wherein a much more junior thug was indeed wearing yellow.

Hence yellow is slowly being introduced as the Death Note TV series hue of violence. It's the colour associated with villainy of a much more bog standard level than hitherto encountered in murderous notebook owners, or authority figures advocating torture, and proclaimed geniuses applying the same in blatant disregard of its ineffectiveness as a vehicle for truth.

Yellow applies to the kind of physical violence you'd find in any dodgy pub on a Friday night. Plus the sort of villains who might live in your street.

Like Near.

They Call Me Mello Yellow (Quite Rightly)

Soft glow illuminating from Wammy's desk, drawing the eye at the centre of the screen. Casting yellow shadows that bounce from the white and fade into black, showing us Near, sitting there staring back.

Except its not Near, is it? And I think we all know whose persona watches from the sidelines there.

Lamp like a spotlight, picking out just one figure to be fully lit in this scene: the Mello marionette. Glow bouncing blond like a halo around the top of its head; its shadow reaching out in the pool of yellow light before it.

Near hasn't twirled a single lock in ages. The same lamplight shades that white hair in hues of blond and grey. The puppet lies abandoned a few feet away. To my mind, that's already Mello staring back at us.

So does yellow also mean Mello in this show's internal colour coding? He'd certainly factor into the Man of Violence designation, vis-a-vis the Mafia.

Not to mention the more obvious link with the colour of his hair.

Except when he's Mello

So We're Going to Ignore Murder in Death Note Then?

We've already had a definite glimpse of Mello in episode eight of Death Note (2015) and there was certainly much violence involved, and a profusion of the colour yellow.

It makes the scene above downright weird.

Basically we have to accept that Wammy and L are blithely welcoming Near into their midst - introducing them to high-ranking police officers as L's highly intelligent 'right hand man' (despite looking like a child) - and calmly hanging out playing jigsaws.

All without mentioning this:

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that my parents would have freaked. I think I would have at least been grounded.

What I'm 100% certain about is that my Mum and Dad would not have plonked me in front of the Meditation Tent equivalent of a naughty step, then not mentioned the sodding great corpse I created with my own bare hands, while helping me complete pretty puzzles and complimenting me in front of their friends.

But then again, my parents aren't child traffickers in pursuit of detective dollars (unlike Watari) nor enthusiastic torturers (like, say, L). So perhaps this behaviour is normal in Wammy circles. The evidence seems to point towards as much (yes, we're all looking at you, Beyond Birthday).

Nevertheless, let's just review what the Wammy House massive are overlooking in their child today:

First their little cherub broke into the home of a known violent assailant.

With inevitable results, when their ward was violently assaulted. Thus accounting for the split lip sported in later scenes. (Then mysteriously healing in order to disappear for scenes set just hours later.)

However, this triggered some kind of honour code within the mindset of the emerging Mello persona. No longer smirking from a puppet's face, Mello sneered, "You've done it now."

And whatever showed upon his expression - turned away from the camera, thus hidden to us - was enough to cause panic to pass across a grown thug's face.

Mello continued, "Remember, you're the one who laid a hand on me first." Thus proving that he was raised right, in the correct and sane values that it's ok to commit cold-blooded murder, as long as they hit you first.

Death Note live action Mello fighting back

Mello and/or Near - in the pursuit of evidence to support their theory that viciously killed Kudagawa was in receipt of the missing Death Note - then completely trashed the place.

Before calling home to report upon their investigative breaking, entering and criminal damage;' 'fess up to murder; and get invited around for a nice evening eating cake and doing jigsaws.

Kids today, eh?!

Near had read about remorse once in a book, but didn't see
how it pertained to the situation in hand.

Shedding Light on Community Policing in Death Note's Japan

Imagine the scene. A young lady has been viciously attacked. A police officer arrives in her hospital room to take her statement.

Just on it, her boyfriend turns up. He gabbles stuff about them being friends and asks the constable to go away, so that the couple could talk.

The officer does not know if this is actually the assailant, as he has no verification nor yet a statement. But he is aware that there's a dangerous woman battering thug out there in his city today. He needs information fast, so the next female digging in woods might do so without a spade across the head.

So the policeman says, "Yes, no trouble. I'll just leave you to it and take yet more time out of my busy schedule to come back at a time more convenient you to, Mr Random Stranger." Or words to that effect.

Actually, you don't need to imagine it. That's precisely what happened in Death Note this week, and the police officer wasn't even being sarcastic in his polite agreement before leaving.

Bizarre.

Death Note TV drama Misa, Light and police officer

"Sorry, Ms Amane, I know you're concussed and confused, but I'm going to leave you to this
strange man for the asking. I'm sure he won't turn out to be a homicidal maniac. "
"That's quite alright, officer."

Dodgy Scriptwriting and Police Procedure in Death Note Television Drama (2015)

Yet not even close to being the most bizarre moment.

That's when the Kira Countermeasures task force hears about the attack upon Misa, and L basically hacks the city's CCTV cameras to find out who did it.

Armed with a name and address, the assembled police officers pretty much discuss whether they can be bothered to investigate further. The conclusion being that they're too busy with the (largely stagnant) Kira case to nip over and arrest the spade-wielding psycho.

Not even with all that circumstantial evidence linking Kudagawa WITH the Kira case. Nor does anybody check with head office that Misa's assault is on somebody's else's desk as a case file.

After all the police officer originally tasked with collecting her statement was too busy being polite to actually do his job. (See above.)

New Death Note episode 8 Misa, Light and police officer

So far, so sadly indicative of many police force attitudes around the world.

Though perhaps not the message that Death Note's scriptwriter and director intended to convey in this scene. That would have been - show the caring, supportive presence of nice law enforcement agencies, then get him the Hell out of here ASAP, so we can move the plot along with an anxious exchange of words between Misa and Light.

THEN the bizarrest moment of all kicks in.

Matsuda decides that actually, he CAN be moved to check out the assailant. But he would like to take his boss's son along with him, perhaps for work experience or something.

Moreover, Mogi supports Matsuda's suggestion. Telling their gaffer that Matsuda is so crap at his job that he can only be trusted to investigate if Light is with him.

Death Note Matsuda taking Light on work experience

In lieu of, say, any trained police officer, who's sworn an oath to uphold the law and thus given a mandate by the people of Japan, to act on their behalf in the protection of civilians, pursuit of criminals and preservation of the peace.

After all, the victim was Light's girlfriend, so taking him into the home of her supposed assailant is fine. I mean, what could possibly go wrong there? It's not like there's any potential for an emotional reaction, like avenging his missus with swift and bloody retribution, and/or leaving something nasty inside Kudagawa's home.

Plus you know, getting a warrant to search the property is too much paperwork. So Matsuda will just call the suspect's landlady instead and get her to open his front door.

Death Note's Matsuda, Light and landlady in Death Note television show 2015

... surely a consideration before they entered a citizen's home?

Anyhow, much waffling done and much more to continue, so I'm going to call this another two parter. Be back soon with the other half.

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Taylor Swift's Blank Space Death Note Reference in Both Video and Lyrics?

8/9/2015

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Death Note's Kira with apple

The theory definitely gains credence, when you consider the accompanying music video. It depicts Swift holding aloft an apple whilst singing that chorus.

Not to mention that the book in which she writes said names is revealed to look not unlike a Death Note.

But to what extent is all this conjecture concerning Taylor Swift's Death Note credentials true?

There have been rumours circulating that Taylor Swift is a Death Note fan, since she released her 1989 album in October 2014.

In particular, since a certain lyric turned up in Blank Space - her first single issued from the album:

'I've got a blank space baby,
and I'll write your name...'

Sounds a bit Kira to you?

Taylor Swift's Blank Space

What is Taylor Swift's Blank Space About?

It seems that the media were giving Taylor Swift a hard time. Scathing journalists wrote nasty editorials warning would-be lovers to keep well away.

As one reviewer put it, these stories framed her as 'an overly attached man-eater who dates for songwriting material' (Sam Lansky, 1989 Marks a Paradigm Swift, Time Magazine, October 23rd 2014)

So the singer had a bit of fun with that.

Blank Space is all about her hunt for a new boyfriend, whom she'll date in a highly possessive manner, then turn psycho upon. In the meantime, his name will be added to her notebook entitled My True Loves.

Taylor Swift's Death Note... sorry, My True Loves notebook

Anti-Hero Taylor Swift as Blank Space Villain

Much of the fun in the video for Blank Space by Taylor Swift comes after she catches her partner (Sean O'Pry) texting other women. That's when our heroine's romantic inclinations turn psychotically sour.

And some Death Note fans start to see Misa Amane in her overly-possessive retribution for the slight.

Misa-Misa

Taylor-Taylor

We can confirm the 'crazy villain' part with a quotation from her director:

Director Joseph Kahn said that Swift came to him with the idea for the treatment, saying she was all too aware of the jokes made about all of her ex boyfriends and how she likes to include them in her songwriting. Taylor said she wanted to address the general thought of her in the clip in a fun way by playing a crazy villain.

“When I heard this concept, I thought ‘This is amazing!’” Kahn said. “This is a deconstructivist version of Taylor Swift!”
- Hugh McIntyre, Yahoo Accidentally Leaks Taylor Swift's New Music Video For 'Blank Space', Forbes, November 14th 2015

Kahn was also at pains to create a film set feel to the music video, borrowing from many different styles of cinematography in a technique which he calls Spielbergian. This allowed one story to be told, while also making it seem like a compendium of separate tales stuck together.

The notion of Taylor Swift as anti-hero or villain was helped along by Kahn taking much inspiration from Kubrick's classic A Clockwork Orange.

But what other popular cultural references were pinged in Swift's Blank Space music video? Some fans and other commentators think they know.

I've never realized @taylorswift13 is a fan of #DeathNote More apples for you @dude_mysterious pic.twitter.com/iRB3KV1rGF
— Melissa Dickinson (@BlazingRoselia) August 11, 2015

Socio-Cultural References in Taylor Swift's Blank Space Video

Far from Misa Amane, Elle Magazine saw a Law & Order: SUV shout out in the scene with the birthday cake and the cat. Not least because the cat is called Olivia Benson after a character in that show.

They also highlighted The Great Gatsby and Titanic. Plus poses from an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue.

KQED Arts spotted the nod to Katy Perry's Mean Girls in the way Swift cuts holes in her man's shift. Also included in Bustle's purportly definitive list of all Swift's Blank Space cultural references:

Ghost Rider;
Partition - Beyoncé;
Twilight;
Shake It Off - Taylor's earlier music video;
Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood;
Mean Girls - Katy Perry;
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte;
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde;
The Parent Trap;
Once Upon a Time/Beauty and the Beast;
Romeo and Juliet.

Yet no Great Gatsby there - which seemed quite blatant to my mind - nor 10 Things That I Hate About You, which my partner was quite certain about seeing there.

And not one of them mentioning Death Note.

Twilight or Death Note: Taylor Swift's Apple

Taylor Swift's Blank Space apple sequence

What do you see in the gif sequence above? Most seem view a blatant homage to Stephanie Meyer's Twilight saga in all those apple-based shenanigans.

Unless they are Death Note fans, then Taylor becomes a Death God a la Ryuk - loving apples enough for a celebratory spin, before taking a hearty bite.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

Death Note Ryuk action figure

NB Here she sings that she has a blank space (baby) to write your name.

Are Twilight's vampires known for writing names in notebooks? Because Death Note's shinigami and their notebooks' human owners sure are!

Taylor Swift Admits Being a Death Note Fan?

Naturally, there's nothing like hearing the truth from the horse's mouth to clear things up like the confusion above. So I went on a search to see if Taylor Swift had ever admitted to being a Death Note fan.

I instantly thought I'd hit pay-dirt, when I found this:

Taylor Swift Blank Space inspired by Death Note

However, that appears merely to be a mock-up created by a contributor to FunnyJunk.com, as I can't find the interview itself in (cyber) real life.

Though Mikikazu Komatsu is indeed a prolific contributing writer for Crunchyroll. There was nothing of the sort posted on February 6th 2015, as the archives for that date reveal.

So what do you think? Is Taylor Swift alluding to Death Note in Blank Space? Have you heard/read her say as much? Or just noted it yourself in watching its music video?

Here it is again for your viewing pleasure:

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Much Cuteness as Final Curtain Closes on Korea's Death Note Musical Stageshow

4/9/2015

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The Korean cast of Death Note the Musical were clearly having a fabulous time performing the show. In fact, as the last curtain fell, a handful of actors didn't want to go.

Led by Kwang-Ho Hong, the group didn't exit stage left, as they were supposed to do, once the final bows had been given on August 15th 2015.

Kwang-Ho Hong reaching for Sun-ah Jung in Death Note Musical Korean curtain call

The Kira actor raced to catch up with Sun-ah Jung (Misa), reaching out to pull her back into the limelight.

She'd already left the stage by the time he was able to grab her. Undaunted Hong dragged her back from the wings; grasping the arm of Hong-suk Kang (Ryuk) for good measure too.

Korean Kira drags Misa and Ryuk back on stage (Death Note Musical)

Shinigami and Second Kira secured, Hong then called out across the stage to forestall another actor's exit over there.

Cast of Korean Death Note the Musical at final curtain call

Death Note Musical cast final curtain call

Attention caught, kisses were blown in the direction of Jun-su Kim (aka Xia Junsu, JYJ KPop idol now playing L) - who was taking his own sweet time in leaving the stage; too busy waving to the audience to have yet disappeared into the wings.

Kim Junsu Death Note Musical in Korea final curtain

Naturally his colleagues' kisses were reciprocated...

Xia Junsu kisses at Death Note Musical final curtain

... prompting a fair amount of bouncing and applause from Jung and Hong, as Kang looked on. Kim answered with a much more cursory wave back, albeit grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

Korean Death Note cast members applaud each other at final curtain

Jun-Su Kim waves to fellow Death Note Musical cast members

Jung now patently considered all extra-curricula shenanigans to be over, as she made her way back towards the wings.

Korean Misa Amane Death Note Musical Sun-ah Jung

Before Hong's reaching cry brought her to a jolting stop, half in the wings on tip-toe, her arms flying into the air. She turned quickly about, hand out-stretched towards her on-stage beau.

The Light Yagami actor had already grasped the forearm of his shinigami pal, lest Kang also entertain ideas about bringing this curtain call to a premature end.

Korea Death Note Musical Misa returns for curtain call

0815 데스노트 총막 홍라이토가 퇴장하려는 미사랑 류크 잡아끌어서 같이 인사 #홍광호 #정선아 #강홍석 pic.twitter.com/ZB4oaypWxS
— 딩봇 (@DINGbot227) August 15, 2015

After all, Junsu was still on-stage, blowing kisses and waving to fans in the audience, who loudly replied with rapturous accolades...

Xiah Junsu as L at Death Note the Musical last curtain call

... growing yet more in volume, as Junsu tearfully took a long, long bow. His actions emulated on the other side of the stage by Jung, Kang and Hong.

Korean Musical Misa, Ryuk and Light bow to Death Note audience

Junsu Kim bows to Death Note Musical audience

All four eventually standing to issue one last laughing wave at the theatre crowd, before leaving the stage for the last time.

Korean Death Note the Musical Final Curtain

There was more than one fan in the audience with a camera. They captured footage of that prolonged curtain call for Death Note the Musical's final performance in Seoul, with others additionally filming the official ending - and speeches - which preceded it.

Seoul Musical Death Note After-show Party

The celebrations didn't end there. After fifty-seven performances, it was only right to wind things down with a post-show Death Note party for the cast and their guests.

Pictures have flown around Twitter to give you a taste of how that played out.

At closing party last night with other actors #KwangHoHong #deathnote pic.twitter.com/Wk85leK3cI
— Kwang-Ho Hong Fan (@hkhmusical) August 16, 2015

광호형! 형과 함께여서 정말 행복했습니다. 같이 서로를 바라보며 호흡하고 노래하며 느꼈던 짜릿함과 전율들..평생 잊지못할거예요 우리 또 함께 무대에 설 날을 기약하며..데스노트의 마지막날 pic.twitter.com/L7l9oablXr
— 김준수 (@1215thexiahtic) August 15, 2015

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Pseudomiracle Focus Upon Misa-Misa the Mass Murderer - and Why the Fandom Forgets

3/9/2015

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Have you ever stopped to truly consider the character of Misa Amane?

I don't mean as a cute celebrity or loud-mouthed pea-brain. Those things are merely distractions. But as a serial killer in her own right.

One who fundamentally gets away with it, walking free by the end of Death Note.

Writing in her journal Pseudomiracle, Teruzuki has more than contemplated the disconnect between fan perception of Misa-Misa and the reality as presented in the Death Note universe. She also notes how that 'innocent but wronged by Light' attitude has echoes in canon itself. Particularly in how Misa is never brought to task for her own murderous rampages.

By Teruzuki's reckoning, Misa kills over 100,000 people, as chronicled within the pages of the Death Note manga. Maybe even double that amount.

Misa redefines fatal
attraction in Death Note

Yet all we ever focus upon is her childish personality, as noisily expressed in all its banal, shallow conversation; her strange, but stylish fashion sense; and her tragic relationship with Light (plus exploitation by the same).

None of us quite registering that Misa killed people long before Light came onto the scene.

The Murderess Misa Amane in Death Note (2015)

Murderess Misa Amane (Hinako Sano) as a spectator at her own victim's crime scene

Nor did she have any compulsion to target only those deemed 'guilty' by any moral code - be it societal consensus, state law or personal judgement. She used her Death Note to murder anyone who it occurred to her to do at the time.

Including those pretty much used as leverage in a terror campaign.

If you do not try to capture me, no innocent people will die.
- Misa Amane, holding police and the press to ransom in Death Note

All this and more is highlighted and picked over by Pseudomiracle's Teruzuki -
who also reaches some conclusions as to why we're all so willing to ignore Misa's darker predilections as second Kira.

Can we say gender bias and sloppy story-telling?

Fully illustrated, with every point raised supported by Misa images from the manga - demonstrating quite clearly where we're missing a trick or ten (or several trillion), blind-sided by banal chatter and romantic sentiments - it's very much worth the read.

Check out Teruzuki's take on the matter on Tumblr, in her Pseudomiracle journal entry entitled: Some thoughts on Misa’s presumed victim status and the strange absolution of all her crimes for no apparent reason.

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TV Death Note Episode 6: Torture and the Switch of a Personality Split - Pt 2

22/8/2015

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I waffled quite a lot concerning Near's possible split personality, hence split the blog entry too.

Part 1 of my Death Note (2015) analysis and review may be found over here. Now here's more about split personalities in the show, before I SERIOUSLY go off on one about torture.

Death Note (2015): Personality Shifts and Kira

Will these hands ne'er be clean?
Kira in Macbeth mode

The Wammys aren't the only ones subject to plural personalities inhabiting the same body.

Episode 6 in the Death Note television drama bore witness to both Kiras (Light and Misa) losing their memories concerning their murderous notebook usage. Less a split personality than a shifting of their own.

This deliberate amnesia wiped away all considerations of guilt and presumably layers of other emotion too. The TV adaptation of Death Note has flirted with a Tolkeinesque element of dread upon their artefact. Like wearing Bilbo's ring, writing in a shinigami's Death Note induces feelings of angst, pain and paranoia.

The accumulated effect of which must weigh heavily upon a psyche. Serial users experience the anguish verily ladled upon their minds and emotions, twisting their personalities beneath it as a coping mechanism.

Add too the stressful reality in which both have been living - Death Notes aside - with Misa's parental past rearing its ugly head, and L pursuing Light with a doggedness skittering into criminal obsession.

All this is what gets lifted from them, along with their memories, shinigami eyes and ability to see Death Gods loitering in their cells. Though they do then have to contend with being incarcerated and tortured without any context to explain their victimization.

Misa-Misa and the Light Lost to Kira

Misa's personality barely seems altered for the supposed loss of her preternatural dread. She simply switches focus in her verbal bids for freedom, assuming now that her captor is a stalker rather than an investigator in the Kira case.

For Light, the change in personality is much more dramatic.

It's testimony to the talent of actor Masataka Kubota that we can view, as a physical shifting, the stripping of Kira from Light. More impressive still, when you realise that most of it occurred with the camera in extreme close up, showing just his facial expressions and drooping/lifting head.

Kira	Still Kira

Kira's memories are wiped from Light Yagami in Death Note 2015

Head bowed as his memories are wiped

Light

Not any more - Light seems visibly
stunned by L's question

Light's been referring to Kira in the third person since the earliest episodes. Seeing the change in his visage and eyes, shorn of Death Note related memories, perhaps he was onto something after all.

Then again, dehumanizing or treating the killer within as a separate entity is what allows terrible things to be enacted upon a person without much protest from onlookers.

A much more subtle series of split personalities were on show in TV live-action Death Note episode 6 - the horrifically realistic vision of ordinarily upstanding people turning a blind eye to torture.

Fear, peer pressure, anxiety about appearing stupid or an unwillingness to stick one's head over the parapet regularly combine to create a kind of mass personality splintering. Individuals, communities or whole populations can be persuaded to set aside otherwise extant morality and common sense, as long as the victim and/or their circumstances can be presented as an exception to the norm.

Hence Holocausts occur; or other genocides, wars, lynching, the vilification of individuals and groups, and any other occasion when the loudest voice is saying words like 'subhuman' and suggesting a relaxing of rights, laws and rules as the only way forward.

In the torturing of Misa and Light, Death Note describes this phenomenon with aplomb. It's one of the aspects which first drew me to the story.

Did Somebody Call Amnesty International?

Death Note Ryuk and Kira discuss torture in Japan

Sorry, Light, your assumptions are naive. According to AI and other human rights groups, torture under interrogation by police is endemic in Japan.

Fair warning: I'm an Amnesty International Urgent Cases activist (hence the Amnesty banner on my Death Note fan-fiction website). I was also an organizer for Holocaust Memorial Day events for years, after gaining my Honours Degree as a Historian specializing in the Porajmos.

Let's just say that I know a thing or two about how human rights and torture work in real situations. It colours somewhat my perception of these scenes in Death Note.

Realism in Death Note's Torture Scenes

Misa bound and illegally detained in Death Note

Illegally detained Misa bound and tortured in TV's Death Note (2015)

Death Note pulled no punches in its scenes of torture during the interrogations of Misa and Light. We'd seen such things in the manga and anime, but there's something more immediate a little more disturbing when it's live action drama.

Nor did it seem particularly gratuitous to me. Though I did note that it was only the female Kira (Misa) who ended up scantily clad and arrayed in tight bodily restraints. Male Kira Light Yagami was allowed to keep most of his clothes on, while held in 'only' handcuffs.

Not that such physical restrictions, worn day in day out for over two weeks, would be particularly pleasant to endure.

The prolonged use of restraints causes extreme discomfort, pain, and in some cases lasting damage... Furthermore, because prisoners in Japan are kept in restraints for prolonged periods of time, they are forced to eat and use the toilet while restrained. These functions cannot be done in a dignified fashion in the restraints. This amounts to degrading treatment, also prohibited under Article 7 of the ICCPR.
- Prison Conditions in Japan (PDF) pp 80-81, Human Rights Watch Asia (1995)

... his hands were bound with leather handcuffs... He sat all day long in the cross-legged position. The "protection cell" had no windows, and it had fluorescent lights... He ate his food in what he described as "dog" fashion, lying on the floor and picking it up off the plate with his mouth... The former prisoner reported that he suffers from back pain to this day, the fact he attributes to the month spent in restraints.
- Ibid p 36

Image: Light Yagami tortured in a Japanese police cell

Aizawa with Light's meal - Torture scenes in Death Note

I've been impressed by the reasonably realistic elements on display in Death Note's depiction of judicial torture in Japan. You just don't expect that with manga, anime nor the live-action versions bouncing off them.

The quotations above described real life complaints from prisoners tortured in Japanese detention facilities. Yet they could equally have pertained to scenes in episode six of Death Note's television adaptation.

Nor were these the only bits which echoed the true life experiences of Japan's tortured detainees.

... prison officials have been known to use physical and psychological intimidation to enforce discipline or elicit confessions. The government sometimes restricts human rights groups’ access to prisons...

The National Police Agency is under civilian control and is highly disciplined, though reports of human rights abuses committed by police persist. While arbitrary arrest and imprisonment are not practiced, there is potential for abuse due to a law that allows the police to detain suspects for up to 23 days without charge in order to extract confessions.
- Japan - Freedom in the World, Freedom House Report 2009

Daiyo Kangoku in Death Note: Japanese Police Extracting Confessions by Torture

Death Note (2015) Chief Superintendent Goda

Chief Superintendent Goda sanctions the torture of Misa Amane in Death Note

It feels like fiction how Misa and Light are dramatically detained in Death Note's episode six. Indeed it should be fictitious.

But we have to wonder to what extent Ohba and/or Obata were making a point in the way that their story aped the truth of what is permissible for Japan's police-force. After all, the television version of Death Note merely followed the canon telling of torture by Japanese law enforcement officers.

And that canon story - or something similar - could be occurring in a Japanese interrogation cell right now.

The daiyo kangoku system, which allows police to detain suspects for up to 23 days prior to charge, continued to facilitate torture and other ill-treatment to extract confessions during interrogation. Despite recommendations from international bodies, no steps were taken to abolish or reform the system in line with international standards.
- Amnesty International Annual Report 2014/15 - Japan

Far from being fiction, Death Note's telling didn't go far enough in showing the degradation potentially awaiting detainees arrested by police in Japan. A real world Misa and Light could be kept:

in solitary confinement;
handcuffed or subjected to other body restraints;
without access to legal counsel (attorney/lawyer);
without access to family, friends, witnesses etc;
ignorant of information/evidence/developments regarding their case;
under constant surveillance;
forced to go to the toilet restrained, watched and unable to wipe/clean themselves;
eating their meals from bowls on the floor;
deprived of sleep;
verbally and physically intimidated;
in receipt of death threats;
told constantly to confess;
for days/weeks on end;

Just as depicted in Death Note - but with viewer sensibilities spared the spectacle of Light eating meals with his hands still cuffed, or the humiliation of Misa made to publicly pass water - and all in contravention of international human rights laws.

If the presence of a defense counsel were to be required for an interrogation, it would be difficult to perform the interrogation promptly and sufficiently within the limit ed period of custody.
- Government of Japan, official response to issues raised by the UN Committee Against Torture p9, July 2011

In addition to a fairly realistic portrayal of how daiyo kangoku may be abused, Death Note also highlights facets of torture which may only be fully understood within the context of Japanese culture.

Like why police officers are pressured to gain a signature upon a prisoner's statement, even if the result is forced confessions - fabricated or otherwise - signed simply to make the torturous interrogation stop.

The Importance of Confession in Japan

Death Note's Light Yagami in solitary confinement

Day Five for Light Yagami at the mercy of Japanese interrogators in Death Note

When arrested, aged just 20, (Sakurai) was treated like a guilty criminal, he says. "They interrogated me day and night, telling me to confess. After five days, I had no mental strength left so I gave up and confessed."

"It may be difficult for people to understand, but being denounced repeatedly - it is harder than you think."

- Shoji Sakurai, acquitted after serving 29 years in prison for a murder to which he confessed but didn't commit

Certain restrictions upon the police, imposed by the Japanese people after World War Two, has unforetold expression in the modern day. Not least in the huge emphasis placed upon confession, as a sure-fire way to secure a conviction in a court of law.

That historical abuse of police power in wartime saw the agency stripped of the right to legally investigate or interrogate, using methods taken for granted globally by other police forces. For a start, Japanese officers may not listen in on private 'phone calls or stake out properties undercover.

(This may be why it's American FBI agents who L drafted in to follow Light and other Kira suspects. Soichiro and his squad aren't permitted to do the same.)

By limiting police intrusiveness, even in the pursuit of evidence, Japan's post-war civilian population unwittingly paved the way for an undue emphasis placed upon confessions. A statement of guilt is often all that investigators may legally present to a judge.

The importance of confession being that the vast majority of Japanese convictions rests upon one.

In fact, for the two and a half centuries of Japan's Tokugawa era (1600-1868), a confession had to be extracted before any alleged criminal could be found guilty. It was seen as the most reliable evidence around, a notion still firmly imprinted upon the general Japanese mindset.

Light Yagami looks at his father pre-detention in Death Note

Committing himself to voluntary detention, Light looks to his father

Others have pointed to traditional elements in Japanese culture to account for the value placed upon confessions.

Practically enshrined in the national psyche is the vilification of personal shame above all else; whilst truth, respect for authority figures and diffidence to one's family - particularly parents and other elders - are elevated as fundamental to the Japanese character.

Confessing to crimes avoids the shame inherent of denying them, only to be found out later. Historically, people really did spill their every misdemeanour for the asking, though we only have the testimony of those doing the asking - and punishing - here.

Which is why Death Note sees L, in constant repetition, challenging Light to confess that he is Kira.

Truth will out and, if not, then its not just the individual shamed. Everyone will be blaming the parents, who couldn't possibly have raised their child with correct and proper values.

A facet which has been blamed for the phenomenon of false confessions willingly produced by those unable to prove their innocence.

Parental Shame and Japan's Judicial Torture

Mogi expresses an attitude which would be all too prevalent
in Japanese society - and which drives Light's actions here, not to
mention those detaining him

Human rights campaigners have pointed to consideration of parents as a key component in the extraction of false confessions.

It's something which police interrogators can use against those being reticent in signing a document bound to be central in their own conviction.

Individuals are prompted to think about their families, and the deep shame felt by Mum and Dad, as their off-spring repeatedly denies culpability in criminal behaviour. How the family name is being brought further into disrepute the longer this drags on.

It is too much to bear when I think about what went through his mind [when he confessed] - how he was longing for evidence of his innocence but he had to give up.

The saddest thing is I as a parent even doubted his innocence.

- Father of a 19 year old Meiji University student, whose son was compelled to make a false confession out of parental consideration

Naturally, as detainees may be held for weeks incommunicado, it's easy for interrogators to withhold information. Particularly that pertaining to evidence that points towards their subject's innocence.

The prevailing ethos is that its better to tell prisoners nothing, lest the 'lesser' proof of innocence be superseded by better evidence. Like a confession.

We see this too in episode six of Death Note's TV drama. Wherein Light crawls on his cell floor begging to know if Kira has killed again during his own incarceration. L's intractability in refusing to impart such knowledge moves Aizawa to compassion.

The police officer's whisper that 'it's alright' is instantly deemed detrimental to L's tactics. The overt torture of Light - isolated; bound; scrutinized 24/7; his sense of time forcibly confused; kept ignorant of news in his case, and without counsel but for that telling him that he's guilty, confess and be done - was over at that moment.

It's no accident that what followed involved Light's father and the belief that he would confess to Soichiro alone, if imminent death - murder to assuage parental shame - threatened that truth would be taken to the grave.

Soichiro Yagami threats to shoot Light in Death Note

Shamed Soichiro would rather his son be dead than he sully the Yagami family name

What may be less obvious, to many watching the show, is why an upstanding citizen like Soichiro Yagami would countenance the torture of anyone, let alone his own son?

Indeed, how the rest of his team could continue to comply with L's edicts.

Complicity in the Torture of Death Note's Kira

Aizawa challenges L re Torture in Death Note

Protestations were issued by most members of the Kira Countermeasures squad - well versed in human rights principles and able to spot when interrogations had gone too far - but each quickly backed down again.

The entire squad conveying tacit approval, even when the majority couldn't watch the torture in action. All but Aizawa left Light alone with L, no longer witnesses to his plight.

That's how most remain complicit in on-going human rights abuses in reality around the world - by their silence, looking the other way, keeping themselves ignorant and generally acting in denial of their own ability to intervene. Aped powerlessness and not getting involved are the most subtle forms of approval.

Also the most prevalent way in which people demonstrate complicity in torture.

After all, you know that torture exists in the world. What have you done about it? Today? Yesterday? At any time in your life? If something, then thank you so much. If nothing, then what excuses do you give yourself?

Those are likely to be akin to the kind of excuses within the minds of the Japanese police officers watching Misa, then Light, tortured in Death Note. Though they scream, shout, stamp around and shake their heads going, 'No, this is wrong' (then finally half of them walk out), they don't actually DO anything about it.

Even Aizawa's quiet rebellion, regarding the embargo on information for Light, doesn't precisely constitute stopping it. Though that was coincidentally the end result.

Any one of those present could have physically over-powered L. Instead they attempted to reason with him, then backed down at the first counterpoint raised by the Wammy detective. Like he had the right to do what he did, even as a foreigner torturing Japanese citizens upon Japanese ground.

But people can be talked into complying with anything, if no-one else joins in the stand, and a clever speaker reassures them that everything is alright.

L appears to be enjoying torturing Light...

If all else fails, then torturers like L can always fall back upon that old fail-safe - fear. Governments do it all the time, as do newspaper editors, civic leaders, parents, whole religions are founded upon it. Fear remains the best way to control individuals, groups, communities and populations alike.

Terry Pratchett observed, in one of his DiscWorld books, that the fundamental question plaguing humanity most of the time is, 'Am I going to get in trouble for this?'

Rather tongue in cheek, but it lies at the heart of why so many - knowing torture to be wrong - fail to act when faced with even the threat of danger to their own self. Or the notion that someone somewhere will tell them off for acting rationally and morally.

Mogi demands L stop torturing Misa. L responds, "Would you prefer to conduct the interrogation yourself, in the same room?" And Mogi's reservations are instantly silenced.

L's threat doesn't even make sense. Why should him desisting his torture equate a police officer thrown alone into a room with the scary Kira suspect?

But it sounded like danger, delivered in a reasonable tone which implied that was the only way it could be. Thus fear did the rest.

Did L Have the Right to Torture Light and Misa?

No. He didn't.

Not by Japanese law - he's not a Japanese police officer, nor has he taken an oath of legal service under any Japanese code of practice. In short, the government and people of Japan had not handed him a mandate to act, and even if they had, a new law would have needed to be passed to allow him to behave quite like this.

Not under international law - Light and Misa were born with certain rights, immutable and without exception. That includes the right not to be tortured.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 5:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Not even Kira.

Why Can't Death Note Kira Suspects Be Judged Under the Law?

They can and should be.

When early protests are sounded, amongst officers seeing how Misa is being held - full body restraints and a blindfold, whilst forced to stand throughout her incarceration; under 24/7 surveillance (without even the uncertain dignity afforded by a female guard doing the watching); subject to verbal intimidation; without counsel nor formal charges levied against - L is unsympathetic.

He disdains all suggestion that Misa is bereft of her human rights, seeming almost bored as he irritably explains the situation to those witnessing it.

Death Note's L denies Misa her human rights

"The ability to kill people just by looking at their face cannot be judged under the law," L tells the law-enforcers, apparently quite convincingly too, as all of their complaints simply melt away.

Do you agree with his standpoint? Actually it doesn't matter whether you do or don't, nor if the the Kira Countermeasures squad are persuaded to this point of view as they seem.

(Though they, at least, were in an immediate position to assess the situation and intervene. You'd have to discover it was a thing, then start bombarding influential people with letters, including Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, Minister for Justice Yoko Kamikawa, National Police Agency Commissioner-General Tsuyoshi Yoneda and - fictional - Chief Superintendent Goda, plus your ambassador to Japan and the Japanese ambassador to your country. Those are the ones with the clout to save Misa, and the regard for public and/or international opinion, which means they can be pressured into doing so.)

Regardless of L's persuasive qualities, your opinion, the Kira team's cowardice or the (usually secret) commands coming down the hierarchy from the highest levels, a fundamental fact remains the same:

Misa retains the right to be judged under law, shinigami eyes or not.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

- The birthright of all human beings born on the planet, hence the word 'universal' in the title. Enshrined by Japan's government, publicized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and here's a version in Japanese.

Article 6:

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7:

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8:

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Light suffers 14 days arbitrary incarceration, isolated, cuffed and without charge

Article 10:

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11:

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

In short, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - and its counterparts found in the Japanese Constitution and other laws - exist to protect people like Misa and Light from the likes of L.

Unfortunately, there were no police officers around courageous enough to enforce it. A state which undoubtedly has its echoes in real life Japanese interrogation cells.

L disappointed that Light's torture will cease

I really have gone on enough in this blog entry. That's what happens when two passions collide in circumstances of great scrutiny, and I know way too much about both.

I hope it was informative, and/or entertaining, at least.

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It Surely Must Happen to Mello Too - Death Note Secrets Gleaned from Cosplay

21/8/2015

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Squad Six Cosplayer Lara Sizemore Death Note Misa

Misa Death Note cosplayer
Lara Sizemore at Ichibancon 7

Nowhere is this more true than in anime related cosplay, wherein its much more than a mile spent traipsing in another's footwear. It's probably several, and not just the shoes either.

All day spent in character at conventions, or clambering into awkward places to position oneself for photographs - after minutely studying the manga or anime for clues on how to appear recognizably convincing - can certainly provide insights into the persona being aped.

So much so that you have to ask yourself - if it happens to me, then it certainly has to have been experienced by the original character too.

The old adage states that none may be understood, until a mile has been walked in their shoes.

Ryuk Cosplayer in Pittsburg Comicon 2008

Ryuk Death Note cosplayer at
Pittsburgh Comicon 2008.
Photograph by Jim Reynolds

Blinding Detail in Death Note Matt Cosplay

blAIRbender cosplays Matt

Like the anecdote shared by a friend, blAIRbender, following her quest to create a cosplay for Death Note's Matt that was exact in every detail.

Many hours were spent scrutinizing images from the manga; sourcing and moulding materials; then engaged in painstaking assembly. Finally she held a perfect replica of Matt's goggles. It was only when she came to wear them - particularly over several hours - that she realized Matt must spend a lot of time demisting said goggles. The slightest hint of perspiration saw the lenses fogged from edge to edge.

As far as goggle fog goes, it takes about two to five minutes after putting them on initially, depending on how warm you are at the time and the room temperature. After that, they are constantly foggy on the inside. They will fog in all weather conditions. My dad recently mentioned that there is a spray that exists that would prevent fogging, but I haven't looked into it any further.
~ blAIRbender, Matt Cosplayer, in conversation with Death Note News

Also his peripheral vision was non-existent.

God knows why he favoured that sidewards look, while keeping Takada under surveillance. Misdirecting her gun-toting louts into thinking he could see them too?

Though it would explain how Matt was able to miss all of those wide escape routes in the spaces between encircling cars. For want of opaque side panels on fashionable googles, thus fatally assuming that he was surrounded.

Matt regretted choosing solid sides on goggles
that mist up at inconvenient times

Matt's side blinding googles meant he missed
escape routes opening up to his right

Mello Cosplayers Concentrate on Chocolate

There's also the friend cosplaying Mello, who emerged smug and filled with insights from a taxing day at an anime/manga convention.

Though it had been fun, the organizers hadn't quite got the hang of crowd control - bottlenecks formed wherever the flow beached (regularly); heavy-handed security unsympathetically carried out long-winded checks at every juncture; rooms not allocated with any apparent common sense - and the venue became increasingly hot and stuffy.

Moreover, food vendors were not spread out, resulting reputedly Hellish conditions, as people crammed into a single section of the arena looking to dine. Each of them subject to long waits in queues for food, tables or simply somewhere to sit. Over-heating, factitious, shouted at by security.

My Mello cosplayer informed me that she was the only person in her group not losing focus and fainting with hunger.

She was the one with a bar of chocolate to hand, which kept the energy levels raised nicely.

Maybe that's why Mello risks all to ensure he has his confectionery to hand (fifteen boxes at least)? Perhaps he's prone to bouts of low blood sugar. The Mafia would be terrible company within which to loose concentration, or collapse in a heap on the floor.

Or he's worked out the advantage in always having food to hand, when you never know what meals will be delayed and what leadership opportunities could arise on a bite of chocolate.

Chocolate helps you keep your head, while
all about you people are losing theirs

Risk Assessment for Rosaries in Mello Cosplay

Mello's rosary was caught on his handcuffs again

Best one I heard is a little too risque to share here. Let's just say the cosplay didn't end with bedtime, but did scream to a sudden halt shortly thereon.

Instead I'll mention the friend of a friend who ended up in an emergency room, due to the crucifix - on the end of her cosplay Mello rosary - swinging up to nearly take her eye out, after it got caught on the furry costume of a tall man in front. A strange combination of her shrieking, him stopping dead and a sudden crowd surge from behind did the rest.

Such things must occur to Mello too, though I can't help thinking that when they do, somebody could well end up dead.

You'd be amazed on what a rosary can get stuck on, trapped inside or otherwise threaten to garrotte its wearer in any number of inventive ways.

Unless you habitually cosplay Death Note's Mello, in which case none of the above even counts as news anymore. You've been there; not only got the t-shirt but also the thread burn scar on the back of your neck.

Nor do you have any patience with those who blithely state that the rosary should have snapped.

You also have snapping rosary stories. Plus a plentiful supply of 'nearly snapped Mello cosplay rosary' scares to add into the general mix.

Don't Misa-Misa the Sunscreen!

Misa Amane always looks stylish, with her fashionable togs revealing random bits of her body to the rays of the sun.

So what would happen if she'd forgotten to apply the sunscreen before she went out? Misa cosplayer Ayane Maro found out, when she did just that at Tokyo's Comic Market.

今日は暑い中ありがとうございました！あしたのミサミサナースも撮ってやってください♡ あと日焼け跡のやつRTやばすぎだから□□□□ まじ自分の名前デスノートに書きたい□□□□ pic.twitter.com/4AYkhrVrLC
— 麻呂あやね@サッカー至上主義 (@aru_nico) August 14, 2015

The full story (with pics) is told in Tweets above from the lady herself, or check out a version in English by Brian Ashcraft (Cosplayer Forgets Something Very Important (Kotaku, August 17th 2015)).

Got any Death Note cosplay tales of your own? Or facets unknown about your character until you donned their clothes?

Comment and let us know about them! Such things are the fodder of fan fiction, entertaining in their own right and might even tip off new cosplayers in the Death Note community, before they make the same errors common to all who preceded them.

In the meantime, there's a collection of cosplay Death Note items available on our website for those perfecting or putting their costume together.

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TV Death Note Episode 5: Symbolism, Style and Split Personalities - Plus Mello Nearly

16/8/2015

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Did I just see Mello in a live action Death Note drama? I think I just saw Mello!

I can't be sure, though you'd think you'd spot that smirk coming a mile off, or at least hear chocolate snapping with all the danger trigger signals more generally associated with a tiger prowling or a T-Rex taking out Tokyo.

Nevertheless, I think I just glimpsed Death Note's most dynamic character in shades a little lighter than his usual Mafioso black. Take a look for yourself.

Near and Mello in Death Note 2015 Episode 5

Is that you, Mello? Can you see him too?

No! I'm not talking about the puppet. That's patently a version of Mello, but not a human actor walking, talking, breathing life into Mello. I'm thinking less wooden here. I'm nodding meaningfully towards the individual who - I grant you - looks a lot like Near.

(S)he's going to turn out to be Mello in disguise over the next few episodes. You mark my words.

Notice how the Mello puppet was mute? Spot how Near was OUTSIDE without an escort? See the grey clothing settling over the spotless white. That's going to be significant. That's Near's 'innocent' morality turning murky with the influx of Mello. Because the great guess in our house is that Near and Mello are one and the same this time.

Potentially Pairing Mello & Near in Death Note

Image: Death Note 13: How to Read bookcover

Death Note 13: How to Read
full of loads of disturbing trivia

Death Note 13: How to Read revealed that Tsugumi Ohba contemplated making Mello and Near twins. Death Note's writer never said if they'd be identical or fraternal.

If the former, then Mello and Near would have looked the same.

Moreover, Takeshi Obata mentioned that his initial drawings of the pair got mixed up somewhere en route to Ohba. The image sketched as Mello actually began Near and vice versa.

It's a story which has had the fandom on both sides staring long and hard into space over many a year in the interim. Imagining a Mello that looked like Near; or a Near with Mello's features.

Now we don't have to picture how that would be. Because all indicators are pointing due Multiple Personality Disorder. Near has been the dominant persona until now, but the morphing into Mello has already begun.

And if I'm wrong, then I deserve all I get from the Near fandom, and the utter disdain of my very own Mello/Matt community. But I'm not wrong. I can practically hear the chocolate snap just beneath the surface, (re)drawing Near.

Let's follow this one through.

What's the Significance of Near Going Outside?

I'm can't imagine any circumstance in childhood, wherein my brother would look quite so startled as L, if informed by our Dad that I'd left the house. (He'd more likely be shocked now. After all, my computer is indoors.)

Yet when Near goes out to play in the park, the very fact of it seriously disturbs the folk back home. Just look how Mr Wammy breaks the news and L's silently fearful expression in reaction.

Death Note (2015) L hears 'Near has left the house'

L (Death Note TV drama) wary hearing Near has left the house

L doesn't say a word. It's Wammy speaking throughout. Starting with a huge sigh close to the door, striding across the room with shoulders stooped and head bent, the very aspect of one readily to impart something unsavoury.

"L." He curtly begins. "Unpleasant news." Then the barest pause before, "Near has left the house."

Immediately, L's head shoots up, his eyes already swivelling sidewards to stare at Watari while the words are still spilling out. Is he scared or is that disdain? Whatever we're seeing, that look lasts for long seconds in mute regard, until the end of the scene.

The whole exchange couldn't be more laden with significance, if someone stuck a neon light above L's head flashing on and off pink with the word 'SIGNIFICANT'. What is less explicit is why.

It could be L's inconsistent horror of the dangerously dirty outside.

This is a man who lives in a place so sterile that all who visit have to suffer disinfection at the gate.

Yet L played tennis last week and attended a concert in this episode without any apparent trauma at all. Strange, and a little jarring.

Personally I think there's significance because Near never goes outside, but Mello does. Wammy is basically telling L that Mello is the dominant personality now.

Disinfecting Kira at L's entrance

Message from a Split Identity in Death Note

Death Note television drama episode 5 is heavier than usual on the symbolism - as we'll come back to later on - and none more so than Near's parkland scene.

Unless, of course, I'm reading way too much into it. See what you think.

The sequence opens upon a huge screen bearing the legends: 'New revelation - there are two Kiras!' and 'A message from the second Kira to the real Kira'.

Image: Death Note (2015) Two Kiras breaking news bulletin

Then that breaking news story becomes pretty much incidental. We know about it already, but its a feight in misdirection, cluing us in to a similar tale hidden in plain view.

For as the message from the second to the first begins, the camera pans from the back of puppet Mello's head to the figure holding it. This 'second' (according to the Wammy House rankings) is mute, not even its limited body language to convey. The puppet's face is turned away. It does not move, utterly inanimate.

Instead its Near's voice which drowns out the newscaster's speech. Or at least the individual who looks like Near and is holding the toy.

Yet not playing with it, as Near is wont to do, hence the seeming emptiness of the previously highly animate doll. Nor is this person twirling a lock of hair, wearing all white or anything else that's previously been a quirk or hallmark of the Wammy House number one.

And this is the person who speaks over the second's message to the first. Because, to my mind, he IS the second (Wammy, persona, whichever you want to call) with his own message to express.

You can practically see the handover taking place between two personae in one form. Though if this is a split personality, as I highly suspect, then the switch seems more like a slow merging from one to the other, than an instant transformation.

It's not a conversation between Near and Mello, as the people of the world think. It's more a struggle for dominance between their twin personalities, currently running parallel - neither quite one nor the other - though I believe that Mello has a slight advantage.

The camera pans in closer and closer, as the commentary plays out. Making it clear that we should be paying attention to what's being said. Closer still, focusing upon the head or mind, like we're poised to enter inside.

Then this Near does what the earlier incarnations rarely did - looks directly at the puppet, whilst addressing it. Quite fondly in fact, aping that Christian scene so beloved by Near above the Wammy House stairs, complete with clusters of people congregating close by, and a foreground grouping of three children.

Though this particular dummy Messiah sits listlessly still.

Unnamed and unmoved until that second. Only belatedly given clunky expression in the eyes, that suddenly turn upwards to the left.

If this was Wammy's House, then the puppet would be looking directly at that painting, as Near so often ended each scene doing.

For the first time ever, the puppet's operation can be clumsily discerned. Near usually makes it seem so effortless. This seems like a parody to me.

But the puppet is empty. Mello is inside the body and Near is simply fading from view.

Wammy's House Stained Glass window from Death Note episode 1

Near's stained glass window at Wammy's House
from the end of Death Note episode 1

Three in One? Multiple People Grouping Near

Three children in Death Note Episode 5 (2015)

Before any of that, there was a long shot and childish dialogue, which yet may hold some especial significance.

All those people watching the exchange between two Kiras on the screen seem themselves uncommonly grouped. Each gathered into sets of three. Except Near, who seemingly sits alone. Even the trees in the background were planted in a clump.

Visually, its just another clue to complement the two Kiras broadcast heard over the top. We are being nudged to note that all present belong to a collective. Thus - I'm certain will transpire - Near too constitutes a group, albeit one wherein its harder to count heads than the rest.

Three perchance? I cut one lady off with my screen-shot, but there are three to the side. Three behind. Three in front.

Nor can I help but see Matt, Near and Mello respectively alluded to in the three children at the fore there. But that might just be me.

Anyone else see what I'm seeing? Symbolically, not actually. Nope, just me then.

It's these three who discuss what they're seeing, as an introductory commentary over our first proper view of Mello(?) arrving. Or Near on the brink of departure. The grey suitcase prop works as a visual clue for both.

"Who's Kira?" asks the boy I'm calling Matt. The girlish Near counterpart replies, "Dunno." Because identities are difficult to perceive, when not all might be as it seems. Then we hear the news anchor for a final time reading the words of the second, "Therefore, I will cancel L's press conference."

In short, nobody knows who Kira is these days, nor how many Kiras there might turn out to be. And L is no longer required to appear in public. All anyone grasps for certain is that the second is speaking.

As does the person on the bench. With the symbolism of the scene stating - here are three personalities grouped as one, and it's the one ranked second now being so publicly heard.

Near walking away in 2015 Death Note drama

So Mello now that we've even lost the puppet.
White clad and walking towards the red - Death Note
colour code for ascendancy in the field of play

Colour Coding the Three in One and Death Note

Speak to me ordinarily about the Three-in-One and its not Death Note's Near and possible multiple personalities that comes to mind. I'm a Pagan and a Celt, my mind is with the Triple Goddess.

A relevance only in the fact that the Celtic Three-in-One can identified in the tales of bards by the colours worn in each aspect. White for the Maiden; red for the Mother; black for the Crone.

Not something I should comfortably be considering within the context of a Japanese television dramatization of Death Note. Japan is a long way from Western Europe, where those story-telling traditions hold sway.

Light, L and Soichiro in black, white and red

Black clad Kira, the master of his game; white L slipping back to first base; and Soichiro in red in the middle
keeping the peace. Each a point on the Wheel of Fortune still turning.

Yet it's patently there too. Not even subtly so. Downright laid on with a trowel, all those instances where white, red and black combine to indicate the undercurrents in a plot-line. In this episode, it was applied so ubiquitously and heavily that it sometimes seemed like style over substance.

Though such overplay did allow us to watch the shift in power between the two Kiras. Watch Misa slip from mistress of her scene through to the mirror image shot at the end, wherein Light has taken it all.

She shouldn't have gone from black to white. It's too late then to go back to red. Not when Light's completely in black.

Romance in Hues of Black, Red and White

I thought perhaps the director worried that the plot was skirting so close to canon, that we'd all be bored by the familiarity in episode five. Except for the Near segment, there were hardly any twists to stop us settling down secure in the knowledge that we know all that's coming next.

Someone warn Mikami! As he pledges his support on-line for both Kiras,
his black suit, white shirt and red tie bask in a rosy kind of quite literal foreshadowing.

So we got arty shots with aplomb, in shades of white, red and black. So many that I had to look it up, just to see if each colour had any special meaning in Japanese culture too.

Bizarrely enough, the symbolism behind each hue seems to follow fairly precisely that inherent in my own ancient British legends. Shades of the Three-in-One underwriting Kira and L's battles for sovereignty too.

Like Living in a Chessboard, L and Light Make Their Moves in Black and White

Japanese Symbolism in White, Red & Black

The television Death Note drama seems to rely quite consistently upon its stylistic colour coding, in order to depict the challenges between protagonists, antagonists and all respective hangers on.

However, those colours don't always mean the same thing. It all depends upon who is donning them, or otherwise saturated in the hue, and what's being linked with those around them.

As a rule of thumb, these are the colour meanings in Japan:

White: Intellect; cold calculation; rationality; divinity; sacred (angelic/Godliness); isolation; snow; impersonal; incorruptible; cleanliness; purity; sterile. However, it's also the colour worn by health professionals, so may simply be a uniform on some.

White and Red: Seen in Japan as the colours worn when one is in love. Or else celebrating in pure happiness. However, it may also have a religious connotation, implying a wish to reach to the Gods and/or dedicate your life to deity.

Red: As in so many cultures around the world, this is the shade of fire, passion, danger, losing oneself to powerful emotions, sensuality, vitality, activity, energy, zest or strength, violence, aggression and blood.

At home with Rem and Misa, in all the shades of red, white and black

Black: Mystery; power; 'evil'; emptiness; the void or abyss; madness; mourning; sexuality; depth; unhappiness; remorse; sadness; fury; fear. Unless worn as formal attire - as in a 'black tie' dinner - wherein it denotes sophistication, elegance and/or class; or as a fashionable item - as in a 'little black dress' - which might just mean stylish.

Black and White: Traditionally the colours worn to funerals and left as memento mori. Signifies loss. Unless they're worn as opposing colours - as in L in white and Light in black - in which case we're looking at challenge; battle; the yin-yang; a nice game of chess. Or in a temple, as some areas in the Shinto religion are set aside in black and white, dedicated to the kami - Gods or spirits come from Heaven or the sea.

Let's see how informative that is, as we continue on through the artistically shot future scenes in TV's Death Note. Shout up if you spot those colours being used symbolically.

And especially if 'Near' turns up in black or red, snatching a chocolate bar to prove me right. I'm going to look really daft after all that if I'm wrong.

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TV Death Note Episode 4: Manipulation, Paranoia and Compliance

15/8/2015

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As someone coming from the Mello fandom, there's only one thing to know about episode four of Death Note (2015) TV drama. This!

Death Note (2015) Near and Mello in Wammy's House

Wide shot of Wammy's House: No live action Mello in that big room!

Near and Mello in Death Note TV Drama 2015

For the past three episodes, we've been teased with the notion that a prone, or otherwise blind-to-the-puppet-of-himself, Mello has been out of shot in that room. I suspected he was sitting on one of those chairs.

Near always looks over the head of the puppet, whenever (s)he addresses Mello. His voice is heard, projected without so much as a twitch of Near's lips.

In the second episode it seemed that a shoulder could be glimpsed in the shadows of the fireplace chair alongside Near. Right at the spot where his/her eyes kept being drawn, roughly consistent with where a head might be on the individual seated there.

L addressed Mello directly, as someone external to Near in that same instalment. He subtly did it again just moments prior to the wide-shot scene above. Watari approached to say that Near was on the line. L answered, "I'll call them back." Implying that there was more than one person to be called back.

However L's delay wasn't being well received at the other end of that line. Focused fully upon Near and his Mello puppet, we were privy to a disturbing exchange.

Mello: He's disrespecting you!
Near: Calm down.
Mello: Hey, call Kira! We can work with Kira to erase L!
Near: We can't do that.
Mello: Help him out.
Near: No.

It's at this point that Near shifted to physically align position with the puppet.

Image: Near and Mello Puppet Death Note 2015

Before both voices sounded simultaneously seeming to confirm that Mello was indeed a separate entity.

Near and Mello: You're so stuck-up, Near.
Near: You talk too much Mello.
Near and Mello: Dummy! Dummy!

Image: Near and Puppet talking in unison

Near and the Mello puppet talk in unison

The laughter which sounds over the wide shot that follows could be either Near or Mello, or both become one again. We're expecting to see Mello as live action figure sitting in that seat, but the beautiful room is empty beyond Near, his Mello puppet and the Christian iconography in stained glass and huge artwork.

What Near was looking at - in lieu of referring to an actual Mello there - was the canvas depicting the Fall of the Rebel Angels.

Yet two voices were heard and they were both Near. So yep. That's the major gossip. Near is in fact Mello. And a whole section of the fandom freezes. While also admitting that it makes for an intriguing storyline.

I know that half of the Mello/Matt fandom are here. What do you make of it? Personally I'm quite fascinated. I'm sticking around to see where they go with this, whilst holding out for a real Mello to turn up later in the series.

After all, Near's puppet was based on someone in the manga. It might still be here too.

Elsewhere, there are more mind games being pursued throughout episode 4 of Death Note.

Item one is a wilful disregard for human life on the part of all three main protagonists. Four, if we include Near/Mello's avowed compulsion to kill L.

There's Light scribbling down names a week in advance, so Kira's body count may continue, even as Light himself is under surveillance. He contemplates the fact that he can only get five names onto his scrap of paper, not with any remorse for murder, nor any avowed sense of justice, but as a personal smoke screen. He's a very different young man from the sobbing one seen in the earlier episodes. Kira cold and plotting, already consumed by the need to succeed whatever the cost.

There's Misa blithely noting that a cameraman only has a year to live, even as she's smiling and posing for pictures. It doesn't seem to penetrate emotionally at all. She doesn't know him and he appears to be a bit of a creep. Nevertheless, you'd expect a flicker of human feeling at the realisation of his imminent demise.

Later, she's downright gleeful, as she joins spectators at the scene where two criminals lie dead. They've been killed by herself, with her own Death Note, at the urging of Rem. There's none of the angst that beset Light at his first Kira kills playing upon her face. She's even dressed appropriately as the Black Widow incarnate.

Mind Games in TV Death Note Episode Four

Image: Misa as Second Kira in Death Note 2015

Misa as the Second Kira dressed in black

Then there's L, dispassionately announcing that he used Mark Dwellton (Ray Penbar) as bait in order to catch Kira - effectively sending him to his death without any back up. He didn't seem to spot any incongruity in the fact that he 'didn't get around' to asking who Kira was, though Mark/Ray patently knew by now. Yet L did find time to plant a transmitter upon him.

It was more important for L to be the one to find Kira, than it was to catch Kira per se, or save a man's life.

Compliance and the Loss of Human Rights

L's mindset paved the way for one of the most thought-provoking sequences within Death Note television show episode four.

The phenomenon of compliance exists all too easily in real life too - which is how concentration camps are built and harsh laws enacted without much more than a murmur on the streets - and L knows very well how to invoke such behaviour.

Human beings basically want to follow the herd. No matter how heinous the action, most will first look around to see if anyone else is speaking out. We second guess ourselves, if all our peers appear readily accepting of the situation. If someone in authority assures us that it's alright, then it's pretty much game over. We're socially programmed to not only keep silent, but actually join in that which ordinarily we'd call an outrage.

Matsuda protests against L's deadly usage of Ray Penbar for bait. L sneeringly dismisses the condemnation, assured in his personal immunity because Matsuda can't file an official complaint without exposing his real name and face to Kira.

The police officer instantly backs down. Personal safety, the silence of his peers and L's scathing tone reduce his concerns to nothing, despite the clarity of his duty here.

Image: L and the Japanese Task Squad in Death Note 2015

Compliance stills the complaints of Matsuda and Mogi in the face of L's disdain

It's the introduction of security cameras, enacting secret surveillance within the homes of police officers which fires Mogi's indignation. "This is a human rights violation!" He rails at L, who merely smirks. It's the usually upright and morally exact Soichiro who loses sight of all ethical conduct here, reassuring Mogi and ordering his people to follow L's orders.

The compliance is complete, when all officers not only cease their protest, but join in with what they previously found so reprehensible. It's only several days hence that Mogi has an insight to level at L, "You're the same way (as Kira)!"

Then they're all sent home. L no longer needs to manipulate them into compliance, he was about to switch tactics anyway.

Manipulation Tactics in Death Note Episode 4

Image: Light Yagami 'Kira is Evil' scene from Death Note (2015) episode 4

Then again Soichiro Yagami himself was above similar guilt manipulation.

I refer to his whole speech partway through about evil being the ability to kill, and those with such power being truly cursed. His condemnation of 'Kira is evil' soon wiped the smirk from his son's face.

Strategies involving manipulation were also very much in evidence in this episode of the television live action Death Note drama.

Some were very subtle indeed, like Light Yagami reading girlie magazines in full view of cameras that he knew to be there. Moreover, he discerned that his father was watching. An obvious guilt trip to make it really awkward for Soichiro to be witnessing the scene before all of his staff.

Mind you, that's a philosophy soon twisted in Light's mind through a filter of Kira, until its finally subverted into, "I think Kira, who was born by acquiring this power, is the most blessed person on Earth."

Other techniques of manipulation were middling, such as Watari - acting upon L's orders - broadcasting fake news bulletins about 1500 FBI agents entering Japan to search for Kira.

More yet were downright blatant. Light came on like a bulldozer in manipulating Ryuk by force of apple abstinence into helping him find the surveillance devices in his bedroom.

.... yet.

While the heaviest of all came from Misa and her threatening letter, designed to manipulate Japan's government and its media. She didn't want much, just their open support and assistance for Kira, and L dragged onto television for a public execution.

Given that the police authorities had already 'lost their nerve', it's probably a blessing for L that its chiefs didn't know his location. Else Misa might have won that round.

Hidden Nod to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Incidentally, did you spot the hidden nod in that scene towards Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata?

The stricken Chief of Police was called Ogiso Takeshi. That he shared the same name as Death Note's canon artist was obvious. Less so was the link between Ohba and Ogiso.

We have to slip back a few centuries and relocate to Africa. There you'll find the biggest Benin dynasties. Firstly the Ogiso, which was succeeded by *drum roll* the Oba. Different spelling, same pronunciation. Tenuous? I think not.

Paranoia in the Watchers and the Watched

Misa learns all about paranoia
as a concept

Finally we get the most pervasive theme of all in this TV Death Note episode, that of paranoia.

Particularly in the sense of that old adage: 'just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not watching you'.

Light Yagami is downright paranoid from the off.

Though, to be fair, it's with good reason, what with FBI agents following him, Japanese agents watching his every move at home, Misa stalking him and L turning up at his school to challenge him in front of all his friends.

He begins the episode with statements like, 'if anything happens to me, Kira's judgements must still go on', thus implying that he believes something might happen to him. He then has a good long paranoid moment in class, trying to guess the identity of the second Kira - is it someone he knows? It is somebody famous? It could be anybody!

His paranoia also shows in his behaviour. Booby-trapping his bedroom door is a big one, though again that actually tipped him off that his room had been entered by professionals.

By partway through, his self-commentary is coming out with things like, "If I make one false move, (L will) find out." Not the musings of a sane boy, however correct his presumptions transpired to be.

Mind you, he did manage to traverse the potato chip scene without any of the iconic bellowing of his English dub anime counterpart.

Then you get Misa's big moment, wherein Rem warns her that using any Death Note causes its owner to become highly paranoid. (A new aspect created for this telling of the tale?) Until now, Misa has appeared relatively intelligent and capable. Suddenly she's beaming blankly at Rem, asking airily, "What does paranoid mean?"

Before setting out to manipulate Light by triggering his own Death Note incurred paranoia. It all felt a little jarring from where I was sitting.

Light xL Fanservice in Death Note TV Episode 4

Mostly though, Death Note (2015) episode 4 is going to be remembered for its blatant and gratuitous fan-service for the legions within the Light/L fandom.

Until now, Kento Yamazaki taking his shirt off every episode has been the biggest fare on offer for his fans. Now a good ten minutes was taken up with nothing much beyond Light and L flirting incessantly and posing with little to no clothes on. There was a whole scene in a communal shower for Kami's sake!

Let's just have a little picture show and let the images speak for themselves.

I rest my case.

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TV Death Note Episode 3: Deities, Dualism and Dreams with Light the Bringer of Kira

11/8/2015

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Death Note red apple -
why do we suddenly have
three scratch marks?

I've been a little late in catching up with the Death Note television drama. Life happened in stress inducing proportions, then I watched two episodes back to back last night.

The first was episode 3 of Death Note (2015) wherein we begin to see Light transforming into a very recognizable and familiar Kira.

During the opening scenes, Light is very frightened; devastated because L is getting too close and gleaning too much from very little information. There's the sense that Light knows he's in over his head, with the horror becoming even more real once it occurs to him that his own father would be the one to arrest him.

This is all juxtaposed against a flashback scene, wherein we see a very young Light playing at cops and robbers with his father. He obviously idolizes him and wishes to emulate his father further by becoming a police officer. Innocence, love and enjoyment are all there in the bonding, while Mrs Yagami (Light's mother) looks on, fondly, proudly, and an infant Sayu is brought into the game. They were a close-knit, loving family.

The first time Light used the Death Note with any understanding of the consequences, it was to save his father from a dangerous siege situation. His earliest justification for the notebook's continued use was that he could protect his family by creating a better world. Even so, he tore himself apart emotionally, analysing each murder, filling his self-reflections with seemingly endless angst.

Now there's the killer, like a split personality beneath the surface threatening to overwhelm the whole. Ready to kill his own father - at the barest suggestion from Ryuk that he should - in order to avoid exposing himself as Kira.

Nor does this fact even seem to penetrate. Light merely meditates upon the danger posed by L and strategizes how to defend himself from it.

He's no longer protecting his father, his family or society at large. He's losing all conscience in a bid solely to retain his freedom to act as Kira. Or, at least, protect Kira as a separate entity who just happens to share his own self.

Kira eyes in Death Note television drama

Light-bringer Kira burning plans for mass murder

We've had Light dissociating himself from Kira before. Now L is at it too. The detective speaks to Light over the telephone as part of a general trolling of police officers' family members. L tells Light that he will expose 'your, no *pauses* Kira's method of killing'. Like they are distinct personae.

Ryuk several times comments that he can perceive a 'Kira face' upon Light's features. The viewers can see it too, particularly as he constructed his secret cabinet inside a desk drawer and later as he came up with a plan to massacre all Kira assigned FBI agents.

It all puts me in mind of Milton's Paradise Lost and the original Light bearer - Lucifer - bellowing out, 'Evil be thou my good!', even as he is lost to the flames. Twice Light played with fire and both times concepts of good and evil were transplanted beneath the gaze of Kira.

This isn't merely a mental distinction. As Misa - now physically transformed herself with shinigami eyes - peered out across the audience at her concert, she spotted a deep significance in Light Yagami's aspect. He alone, amidst all the crowd, had no death date on display above his head.

He is now quite permanently Kira.

Split Identities in Death Note Episode 3

In my musing upon episode two of Death Note (2015), I discussed the dissociation and projecting going on amongst the characters here. Such things escalated to a downright schizophrenic level in this one, not to mention secrets and misdirection in personal identification aplenty.

We had things practically banal in comparison to the rest - like the Japanese task force all being given IDs with names akin to their own, but slightly misspelled or otherwise minutely changed. Each of their ranks were altered too.

Then there's the ordinary strangeness of this Death Note show's Naomi Misora substitution - Cathy Cambell (or Campbell, in the English subtitles) - choosing to write her full name on the back of a photograph for her fiancée. Considering they were poised to be married, you'd think that Raye Penbar would recognize the lady in his arms on the other side, and barely require her first name in the caption, let alone her surname too.

It just seemed a little like she was writing on behalf of someone else. (Or else it was an overly contrived plot line to facilitate Kira later.)

None of us yet know what's going on with Near and her Mello puppet. All points to Near projecting her darker musings upon a doll of her peer, but each time she addresses Mello personally, she looks above or beyond the toy.

Near and Mello Puppet in TV Death Note show

Follow Near's eyes, it's not the puppet she's addressing

Like that bit of the room we haven't yet seen has the actual Mello in it, delivering his lines, and somehow never mentioning the sodding great puppet in his image on Near's knee.

There's another very significant deviation from norm in the dynamic between Near and Mello. Now it's Mello wanting them work together, while Near is circumspect, as it won't make L happy.

My partner is convinced that Near and Mello both exist solely inside L's mind. That he's the one with multiple personalities and they are our hint towards it. Eventually we'll find out that L is Kira and no-one in this show existed, except Watari, who's L's carer in a psychiatric ward.

Whatever the reality of Near, we can know that she identifies firmly with Christ, as depicted in the stained glass above the landing of the stairs. I previously thought this was Mother Mary at the Nativity, but I've since watched the show in high definition. That's Jesus Christ in 'suffer little children to come unto me' mode.

It compares with Mello's Archangel Michael - Fall of the Rebel Angels - on the other side of the room.

Nor are Wammys the only ones linked with deities, there's someone divine standing right alongside Light too.

Framed Picture on Light Yagami's Wall

The artwork was prominently shown beside Light for a whole scene.

Who is the figure and what is he holding?

Light's bedroom is filled with interesting knick-knacks, ornaments and posters. Each episode thus far of Death Note (2015) television drama seems to focus upon another piece, that's usually pertinent to the plot at hand.

This time, the camera angle quite blatantly drew our attention to framed artwork on Light Yagami's bedroom wall. For a moment there, we seemed to be zooming in on it, but the close up shifted onto Light's face.

The art is some kind of small tapestry, or embroidery, with tassels at each edge. The figure within appears to be highly stylised and based upon an original woodcut. But who is it?

My mind, attuned as it is to Western mythology, immediately supplied the fact that I was looking at Satan. But why would a Japanese young man have the Christian anti-Christ on his bedroom wall?

Instead I'm assuming this depicts a Japanese deity, or mythological creature. However a long perusal through various image searches hasn't produced a contender.

Who is this being displayed so prominently alongside Light? Can you identify them and their context?

Japanese God Picture on Kira's wall in Death Note TV drama

Japanese God? Satan? Can you identify the figure framed on Light's bedroom wall?

My current best guess is that it's Bishamon (aka Bishamonten) - Japanese God of War and Punisher of Evil-Doers. Also considered the chief of Japan's Four Kingly deities.

He would fit in very nicely with Kira's self-perception and wouldn't appear out of place amongst the other pieces depicted in that bedroom. Moreover, Bishamon would be invoked to ward away invaders or personal enemies. The focus here occurs while Light is deeply upset because L is onto him. This is mere seconds before his father turns up with a police colleague to investigate Light's association with Misa's (deceased) stalker.

Both circumstances in which Bishamon's good fortune might usefully be evoked by a desperate Light Yagami.

Nightmare of the Dreamweaver in Death Note

In addition to a strategically placed item in Light's bedroom, I'm also coming to expect a philosophical soundbite - usually occurring around the first third mark of each episode - which sums up the whole theme.

This time it was our protagonist musing upon aspirations.

Dreams are just about self-satisfaction. Everyone has a mission in life.
~ Light Yagami

By the second third mark of the show, Light was suddenly wearing his Sandman t-shirt again. Contrasting his disdain of dreams with a celebration of Neil Gaiman's ultimate dreamweaver.

All this from the man who, in the first episode, stated that his ambition was to be nothing special. Just a public servant with no excitement in his life. Where did this 'mission' thing come from?

His morality seems changed utterly. But so does everybody else's too.

Everyone's a Potential Kira Now!

Raye Penbar with Death Note pages

A major hallmark of Death Note (2015) episode 3 is how readily murder was mooted as the solution to any given obstacle.

We're not just talking about Kira either. Half the people there appeared on the verge of killing, or actually going ahead and doing it. Particularly as concerned the preservation of self or family.

Kira (Light) would have murdered his own father to protect himself;
Raye Penbar was ready to kill Light to save his fiancée Cathy Cambell;
He actually murdered several colleagues with a Death Note in the same cause;
Misa did kill Raye with her Death Note to stop him pulling the trigger on Light;
L consistently sends his people out into potentially deadly situations, especially Raye;
Soichiro seems practically suicidal in his zest to enter the Kira case in the almost certain knowledge that he could be killed. All to protect society, justice and his family;
Near accuses Mello of wanting to kill Kira.

Then you had both Ryuk and Rem urging their respective humans (Light and Misa) to write in their Death Notes.

In fact, murder was downright normalized in this episode, like we were all transforming into mini-Kiras and losing bits of morality to justify the change.

Fifty Shades of Yagami Grey (Well... 3)

Grey plaid all round for the Yagamis

There's a length of chequered black and white fabric that's seriously serving the Yagami family well in episode three of Death Note's television adaptation.

Sayu's school uniform skirt, Light's shirt and (later on) a bag filled with a change of clothes for Soichiro all seem to have been cut from it.

Of course, black and white checks tend to produce an overall effect varying shades of grey. Pretty much like Light Yagami's moral outlook as he hurtles headlong into his Kira persona.

In the meantime, Misa marks her descent from subject of a Shinigami stalker to a Death Note wielding Kira by switching clothes. She's usually in red (just as L is in white and Light tends towards dark colours), but killing Raye saw her donning red and black chequered clothes.

Later on, she would be seen totally in black.

It's a little stylistic colour coding, which may have deep, profound meaning as the show goes on. Or might just look pretty.

Plot-hole Ahoy! Misa in the Warehouse

MIsa Amane and her Death Note

Talking about the newly murderous Misa, have we worked out how she just happened to be in the abandoned Araide Industries factory in order to commit said murder?

One second, she's receiving her Death Note, getting to know Rem and surrendering half of her remaining life span, so she might acquire shinigami eyes as this season's must have accessory. So far so perfectly normal within the Death Note universe.

Misa is able to identify Light as another Kira, as she can't read his death date with her preternatural vision. She could grab his name though, which she completely mispronounces in conversation with her Ichigo Berry pals.

Then nothing to explain how she went from that to being on site at the precise moment when Raye Penbar was about to kill Light.

Even if she'd tracked Light down via his name and some fan mailing list, there's no reason for her to know where he is at any given time. Nor for her to turn up on the off-chance that she might be able to save his life.

Did I miss something?

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