We invite readers to take The Psychopath Test for Death Note's Misa Amane.  Collectively we might determine whether Second Kira was indeed suffering from psychopathy - and causing victims in their hundreds of thousands to suffer too.

This is the actual twenty-point test devised in 1975 by Bob Hare in consultation with eighty-five of the best psychopathy specialists across the world.  It's the checklist by which you - or anybody - would be subjected in the real world, if a professional had cause to believe that you were a psychopath.

Are you game to complete it on her behalf?

There's always been something a little off about events in the Yellow Box Warehouse, wherein was staged Death Note's climactic scenes.

It's all good drama nontheless.  We get Gevanni's sleight of hand with Death Notes performed like a stage magician's prestige; that breath-taking instant of Light's confession; the chaos and the shooting; a divine madman's soliloquy on the subject of justice; and Near's finest hour in the coldest put-down to ever deaden a burgeoning reality.

Not to mention the revelation of Mell0's final heroism, as martyr to the cause (inadvertently taking Matt with him), being more meaningful than hitherto suspected; and the crawling disbelief of Light, as the Kira veneer is stripped from him and we're all reminded that Ryuk was only ever here for the lulz.

Then death - a flashing ghost of glowing L, if this is the anime over manga - and everyone leaves to resume normality in a world, where the given order has long since been shaken to the core.  Global society now quickly recovering with a haste almost indecent enough to prove Kira right after all. 

And everyone lived happily ever after.

Except they didn't.  Do you know a single Death Note fan who hasn't at least questioned the unfolding narrative in that scene?

Attempting to follow Near's proof and logic from confrontation to conclusion; not only of the moment, but the whole story supposedly unravelling in evidence that leads directly to Light's undignified demise.

I think everyone read or watched it again at least twice.  I've lost count of forum posts with each new fandom victim meandering to say, 'Erm, sorry, but I don't quite get this.'

Thus follows the specific point where they tripped down yawning the plot-holes, now opening up like a minefield across the scene:   What did Mello do again?  How did Near know x, y, z?  Is he psychic or something?  And what the sweet proverbial was up with Mikami's bizarreness in behaviour generally and facial expressions definitely?

Everyone too busy worrying that they were the only one left confused to even touch upon the gore of that arterial blood-burst, so gloried in the anime as Mikami's dramatic turn at self-harm.

You know what I mean.  We've all been there.  Several detailed readings or stop-contemplate-start viewings on, some of us can even convince ourselves that the denunciation is sequential; all points supported with no great leaps of faith; and it all makes sense.  Otherwise we've sat though 37 episodes/108 chapters of story that doesn't deliver at the final crescendo of all that build-up.  Which can't be true, when the tale is widely deemed to be a - perhaps the - classic of the genre; wildly, unabashedly and unceasingly popular on a global scale.

So the doubt creeps in that it's us instead.  We weren't genius enough to fully 'get' it.  It's enough to pretend we did, then run with the points that were discerned and fitted perfectly in place.

The rest is simply fan-fiction.

The problem is our natural propensity to think of Death Note as Light's story.  It's not.  It's Ryuk's.  (Though Tarot Mikami is coming up shortly with an intriguing perspective on the manga also being Matsuda's tale.)    Nevertheless when the epic build up breaks upon Kira's death, and subsequent dissembling into nothingness, it can seem like we went with him.

What follows is way too often dismissed as superlative; an epilogue to bring us all back down to Earth. While mischievously inserting doubt over whether Light really lost, when Kira worshippers still ritually congregate and believe.

But this, not Kira's Curtain, was what it was all leading up to.  Tsugumi Ohba himself said, in How to Read - Death Note 13, that the vision of these scenes in Finis were what caused the spark of inspiration to flow through the rest of the Death Note narrative.  All else he wrote was working back from this, no tacked on arcs post-L, nor leaping into the grave with Light.  For all their game-changing grandeur, they were ultimately merely markers upon the narrative, pointing beyond themselves to now.

Pinging upon the sacred number of Defilements in Buddhism, Finis is chapter 108.  It always would be.  Ohba decided that one early on, and left the one-shot manga to follow unnumbered so not to alter the fact that Death Note has exactly 108 chapters.  You can count them on your Mala Beads, if you want.

So what great facet is revealed to us here?   That Light found divinity in the end?   That the world without him simply returns to previous form:  crime rate rising to pre-Kira levels; all else flowing back as if the last seven years had been erased, with even the same people in the streets, older, yet doing exactly the same things.

Light's endeavours, and even erstwhile existence, rendered meaningless in minute, subtle ways.  Like the return of Yamamoto, last seen in cameo within the earliest Death Note chapters as Light Yagami's friend; now greeting Matsuda as his BFF, and off they go to the pub.  Light's own mother never learning the truth of his loss.  Told lies to cover up the reality as seen and shaped by her son.  His place in the world, philosophy, perspective and pursuits all rendered Mu as his Kira ridden soul.  All else come full circle and moved on like he was never there.

Nor is this the point of Finis.  It just the fine detail in the background driving certain messages home; if we're charitable a coda of candles in the wind.

It's in the foreground that the big reveal is happening, hidden in plain sight through the chattering of a 'Fool' and already dismissed by Ide before we even make the mountain top.

Most readers agreeing, because we're too distracted by Light and all the lovely Easter eggs waving from the scenery.  Plus we already feel like idiots for not quite 'getting' the Near exposee of Light in the Yellow Box Warehouse, and we're damned if we're going to be drawn into another long explanation posited by a traumatized idiot.

Matsuda's always been so easy to dismiss.  Particularly now, when we recently saw his gullibility writ large upon that shattering previous scene. His shock in the great Kira reveal caused such a meltdown that he's probably suffering PTSD or  something now.  Racked with guilt over Soichiro and so many dead; still obviously wrestling with the shock of knowing a third of his life was lived as a lie; his loyalty disabused in the most belittling, gut-wrenching way.

We don't need the ghost of L to whisper, 'Shut up, Matsuda! You idiot!'  Because we're hardly listening anyway.  It's just background noise finally shut down by Ide, tacitly approved by all lost in mourning for our mass murdering megalomaniac and his warped sense of justice.

Now echoed by Ide himself, as he decrees Kira's crimes terrible enough to warrant his summary execution - with an illegally wielded firearm (Matsuda was technically off-duty) and a Death God's intervention, in an out of the way warehouse, without charge, nor trial, judge and jury, and no right of appeal before instant death.  Based upon evidence constructed from a self-confessed SPK sting, plus Near sounding so sure as he blithely divulged bits of the known coupled with conjecture, like it was the only way things could have played out.

His speech, on behalf of the prosecution in this kangaroo court condemnation of Kira, seemed utterly watertight.  Yet Near was still able to reorder his version of events, to encompass the implications of Mello's intent in Takada's abduction, as Hal Lidner testified her impression of the same rather late in the day.  It was an interpretation which cast a different hue upon the timeline, but delivered in confidence nontheless and received likewise from all who heard.  Just as they'd accepted the prior telling too.

Maybe because they, like those bearing witness from our ringside seats in the fourth wall, couldn't truly follow it at the time.

But Near is a genius, so it must be true; and who cares why or how a Mafia man died? While Matt only turned up twelve panels ago, if he'd lived he probably wouldn't have amounted to much.  We hardly knew him, so let him go - collateral damage in a war against a man too rotten to live in this world of safety and security, and justice.

Around this time in proceedings, it's normally behoven for babes or Fools to call out to say that the Emperor wears no clothes; or that in this Orwellian warehouse scenario it's getting difficult to call the pigs from the humans, humans from the pigs, nor tell the rationale of Kira from those arrayed extra-judicially against him.

Unfortunately the Fool Matsuda was in meltdown at the time, being dragged away by his friends; while the only child present was made judge and chief prosecutor at the same time.  Needless to say, he won the day.  Then watched Light Yagami die as a result; howling, without advocacy, nor anyone to ask whether Light was even sane enough at this point to understand what was happening to him. Or take the opportunity to arrest Kira, hold him safe, and learn what he knew about the Afterlife and eternity, and all those other things that philosophers, priests and ordinary people have pondered to distraction over every millennia of human sentience.

Instead all watched too, accepting the sense of prevailing 'rightness' in the air around Near.  Who watched Kira die and kept the Death Notes.

Which was the actual point of the Yellow Box confrontation - to knock out the opposition and clear the decks ready to quietly seize power, when no-one else was looking.   At least it is, if we're running with the gut instinct of Matsuda and some really quite compelling end game theories for Near in Death Note.

One year to the day after the death of Light Yagami, Touta Matsuda still isn't convinced that they were on the right 'side' in the end.  He watches society sink back from fear of Kira into a resurgence of the usual mix of humanity for good or ill living as they will. With the inevitable wave of criminal behaviour surfing in ever higher numbers in their midst, Matsuda's depression deepens.

For those not actually targeted by Kira, these streets had been safer under his horrific regime.

It's an unsettling notion that maybe, after all, they did crucify their Saviour.  Yet sharing his concerns with Ide elicits a most telling reply:

Kira was wrong.  Because that's what they DECIDED by consensus was the case.   Kira has to be wrong, or else there was no purpose attached to the sacrifice of those serving on the anti-Kira Task Force, nor who lost their lives in other parties in his opposition.  

Condemn Light Yagami's worldview, and his prospective Godhood with it, and survivors like Matsuda, Ide, Aizawa, Mogi and Near with his group all become war heroes.  Able to feel pride in their past endeavours and self-respect for themselves.  Their fallen - Soichiro, Ukita, L, Watari, Raye Penbar, Mello, Matt et al - become martyrs in a noble cause.  The Glorious Dead of cenotaphs, remembered with honour and distinction.

Support Kira in memory and all that fails.  Each become betrayers, of a friend and comrade, perhaps of a Messiah.  Maybe even the destroyers of humanity itself; thieves of a genuine Utopian dream.

It was decided Kira was not right, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to grasp what they were fighting for in that bitter, seven year war.  And madness beckons that way.

For all that its generally ignored, or blatantly rejected within the panels of the Death Note manga, Matsuda's theory isn't that off the wall. It's nestling comfortably in the realms of actual possibility.

Whilst recalling that this was the chapter planned from the start - following  one that was almost called Black Curtain (a Japanese euphemism for someone orchestrating events behind the scenes) - and that Tsugumi Ohba blatantly said that 'Near cheats', let's recap.  These were the points of plot that Touta Matsuda was pondering:

However, we never do find out.  Matsuda manages to convince Ide to at least intimidate some parts of his theory have been heard, and taken seriously.  For a moment, the older man steps into Touta Matsuda's reality and that kind of affirmation was all the young officer needed for comfort in his unsolvable, unsettling theorizing.

A touch of grace and we see the old Fool back.  Matsuda grinning with a friend, too busy chatting, making plans to visit a bar tonight, to properly hear a word Near has to say anymore.  The final word in Death Note - before the ritual coda of Kira cultists - is Near's admonishment to Matsuda, "Listen carefully!"

Maybe because Near knows that he might need Matsuda one day to stop him too, if only the Fool would pay attention.   But for now he's distracted, laughing and moved on, Near got away with killing for personal gain.  But surely that's understandable?  Just ask Kira.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The discussion is open.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Power Controller

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

The Hedonist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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