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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can we say child soldiers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just as he learned at Wammy's House.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ten years was such a long time to be blinked into passing, while Matsuda was distracted by the close-up minutiae of life. Time enough for academic papers to be produced; published across a range of disciplines in peer-reviewed journals and books; the occasional thesis cropping up amidst an avalanche of dissertations; private reports for classified viewing (some only leaked, glimpsed upon Aizawa's desk, or divulged as a result of his quiet, semi-depressed venting with someone who was there; worse still, stumbled upon online due to a hackers' craft in cyber-theft and sharing). Dry facts delivered with seeming objectivity. The endless debates and analyses so complex as to render distant that whole Kira case. Polarizing conclusions losing something in translation from the academe into common sense.

Like emotion. Empathy. Reality.

It was as if Kira and all he embodied has been set behind glass. Immutable. Divorced from true experience. In the process of becoming severed from that through which Matsuda had lived. And Mogi. Aizawa. Casting them all surreptitiously adrift from involvement in that thing that changed, traumatized in subtle ways, still loomed large over everything, all society, the whole world.

Funny the things that got left in or lost; errors perpetuated into pseudo-fact, until reality shifted and tipped them off its plate. Those Who Were There. The steady drip-drip of Kira becoming a legend through credible channels. He'd long since been legendary among the digital, popular and/or vulgar culture moguls, and masses.  Bellwethers of fashion bringing him in and out of consideration according to their whim. Sometimes it was good to approve of his methods, that strange phantom God who came and went and never came back. Sometimes Kira was to be condemned, the papers said, and all their readers spurted rhetoric stating the same.

And Matsuda felt cold. And contemplated that scar raw ancient moral dilemma for the latest in uncountable time. Boring himself with the stab of angst and indecision before any conclusions ever seemed reached. Just his conscience rocking back and forth on the winds of wondering what was right. Honourable. What Soichiro would have done. Said. Ultimately sided with.

The officer shook off a poised lingering now. This moment was already too laden with potential pathos. Tedious the things that unsettled him so far down the road. More distractions. Distraction aplenty. That's what he needed. Him and the world.

And where was Near?

Matsuda's hand stilled en route to lifting his bottle of beer to his lips. The chill coming white-hot this time. That modern L was the aspect in all of this upon which terror or fury could dwell, not at all muted by time. Made worse by the waiting for his greatest fears in context of that strange Wammy to metamorphose into real life. But either Matsuda was wrong - which was great - or Near's silent psychopathy in secret possession of multiple shinigami notebooks, and all the unfathomable power they afforded him, hadn't yet surfaced in the public sphere. Maybe Near was too clever for them all - which was probable - and they would never know what he did with that divine gift in vault, nor how he managed the death gods loitering in his vicinity 24/7. How he kept them from boredom. Enough to explode an imagination and jolt a mind into terrible places.

The young man continued to engineer reasons for some kind of reunion, usually in Japan, often en situ, on the anniversaries of Light Yagami's death.  Matsuda had only managed to avoid three throughout the decade.

Near liked the Yellow Box Warehouse. He knew it. It was a good place for confrontations.  "Lucky?" Matsuda had asked him once, and Near had sneered. Pure evil, Matsuda thought, surveying the foreigner's features. But Mogi had chuckled at the description, shared later, and Aizawa had merely looked grimly on and said nothing. Well, they could belittle him. They'd earned the right. Near had not. Or had. And Matsuda wished he knew which.

He occasionally saw Sachiko Yagami. She was keeping well. Sayu with her. She was not. It used to sadden him for all that lost innocence and glee. You got used to the most messed up situations given time. That they'd had. Yet Soichiro would have wanted him to ensure they were alright. Keep his eye on them. Of course they were alright. Sachiko was steel beneath the mumsy face and apron. What would dare not be alright with her to face it down?

And he hated that she remained not knowing what happened to Light. That she'd never know what her boy became. Nor yet his true Fate. It wasn't her fault. Kira. Bloody Kira.

Had it really been ten years ago?  When the sudden cessation of Kira's regime caused a momentary global hush; as if the whole planet in chaos and ransom awaited with bated breath developments from its tyrant. Then exhaled as one and forgot about him. Overwhelming the void with pretty much a return to everything that had governed before. The Kira case reinterpreted; encased in ways more palatable to the new-old Powers That Be. Plastering over cracks each time the ripple effect marked the smoothness of their political surfaces.

Cementing it in studies too. Kira re-affixed as yesterday's fad; not so much out of vogue now as refashioned into old news - a failed endeavour; a detached legend; a tired topic eased off most fora. Slowly consigned by populists and professors into nothing much at all.

It was in hours like this that Matsuda felt himself falling. Not physically. But inwardly ajar. Survivors' guilt, somebody once said and he'd thought it must be, after a greater period considering it just guilt. Gullible; ineffectual; Matsuda knew he could have done more.

He did all he could. Heroic.

A message from Mogi beeped onto his device. Startling Matsuda into jerking, swept from his darkening reverie into reading it. "Watch that?" Mogi had asked.

Matsuda replied simply, "Yes."

No response to that forthcoming for a good fifteen minutes. Matsuda picked it up halfway to the pub. "Just ignore," Mogi's legend read. It seemed to sum up more. Matsuda didn't answer immediately, stomping bowed and way too serious through night dreary streets that turned suddenly into an onslaught of neon, as he entered the main strip close to his home.  

Bright lights that initially repulsed, then seduced and lifted his spirits tremendously.  He was hailing friends and laughing by the time he crossed the bar to get his drink. Only then he replied to Mogi, "Already have. So should you. Two for one cocktails on special and karaoke being set up. Coming?"

Mogi must have been secretly morose and musing, because his answer came so quick. Less than a minute. Perhaps a mere forty seconds. "Yeah ok. Get them in."

And just like that, Kira was gone; ghost and decades and all.

Just a reminder about a Death Note event on Tumblr, which began yesterday and continues over the Christmas period to finish on December 26th 2015.

Death Note Ladies Appreciation Weeks looks to redress the balance in focus given to Death Note's women and girl characters.  Let's face it, the fandom really does relish its male personae over the female cohort.  Yet there are some extremely kick-ass and/or fascinating ladies in this universe.  Explore their stories in canon pics; elaborate upon them in fan-fiction and fan-art; discover that they even exist, if you blinked and missed their cameo.

This is the second year running for the Tumblr event for Death Note fans.  Anyone can join in. You just tag your update with #dn ladies appreciation and post away, preferably on the day scheduled for your yuri pairing and/or each individual female Death Note character's bespoke date:

For more details, check out our original head's up about the event; where you'll also find a slightly easier collage of Death Note women to test your knowledge of characters in the Death Note universe.  For answers to the much more difficult one posted at the top here, see below:

And if you're looking for inspiration and/or something to post on each day, then our sidebar has all of these ladies listed under Death Note News Categories - archives full of things about them!  Feel free to post links to what you will.

It's quite sobering to stop and consider the situations met head on by Death Note's grand matriarch, Sachiko Yagami.

What was great drama for us was fundamentally the story of her entire family's destruction.  Yet she is last seen standing strong, mothering in the ruins of shinigami boredom and all it wrought upon her home, kith and kin.  Pushing her traumatized daughter Sayu in her wheelchair through a park.

Seen from above, like a Death God watching; sharing its view with us - the voyeurs in a series of personal tragedies. Should the sympathetic perspective ever switch to that of Sachiko. But we were rapt.

We too watched only until we were bored. Or the instalments ended and there was no protagonist left to kill. Then like shinigami ourselves, we flew away to manga and anime pastures new.  Finding other sources of entertainment, leaving the character to continue on with her strolls in the park.  Caring, because what else was there for her to do?  Scream?  Sob?  Collapse under the grief and sorrow for the cards that life dealt her?

Frankly, she doesn't seem the sort.

Now we are told that Sachiko 'is Light's mother and as the wife of a policeman, she has been quietly supportive of Soichiro. Despite being an ordinary housewife, she fiercely upholds her trust in Soichiro and kept the family together during the most troubled times of the Kira case.'   Because you know, 'ordinary housewives' are generally distrustful of their husbands and live to scatter the family in times of trouble.  But at least she's not 'dutiful' anymore, a word which doesn't sit well in the Western mind, whatever the etymology.

The panel caption is now worded, 'when Soichiro had his doubts about his decisions in the Kira's case (sic), Sachiko was at his side, urging him to see it to the end.'  Which makes her sound a bit bad-ass and the rock in the family.   Until you put the panel into context, then you have to wonder if there was a touch of psychopathy there for Light to inherit.  Soichiro has, after all, just announced to his family that he's prepared to die to bring this evil to justice.

Which is all very well and noble for society at large, but not much good to her.  Nevertheless, Sachiko pretty much says, 'Yeah, go on, martyr yourself for the cause then.  I support your decision to die a hero.'   Like one of those fabled wives of Sparta, who purportedly told their spouses to return with their shield (victorious) or upon it (dead). 

Supportive, dutiful or 'as long as you get from under my feet and stop whining, dear'.  Apparently the former, given the emphasis placed upon her support of husband Soichiro Yagami in both translations of the original Japanese penned by Death Note author Tsugumi Ohba.

There are also some small differences in the personal data between my own copy of How to Read, and that found elsewhere on-line.

Sachiko's birthday - October 10th 1962 - and the blankness of her death day (because she didn't die; she survived Death Note) remain the same.  As does her blood type, liking for TV drama (the reproduction adds 'serials') and dislike of salesmen.   Perhaps some hint of a story lies in that last entry.  It does to any self-respecting fan-fiction writer anyway.  Leave it with me.

My version says that she's 5' 2" in height and weighs 110lbs.  The other 158cm/50kg. Same thing, different units of measurement.  (And for the benefit of any British reading, that's 7 stone 86lbs, on the off-chance that anyone cares for such things.)  So far so pretty standard, but then we get to the personality chart and the wording changes significantly.

Both are agreed on 'intelligence' and 'creativity'.  The above version's 'willingness to act' aligns with mine own 'initiative'.  Then this alternative translation has 'motivation', where my copy of How to Read states 'emotional strength'.  Two rather different concepts. In all so far, Sachiko ranks rather low.  She does just a little better in the next point charted. 'Social life' says that recreated above.  My book goes for 'social skills'.  Same ball-park, different sport.  Finally there's the section in which Sachiko Yagami actually excels.  Above it lists 'housewifeness'.  Whatever that is.  In my Shonen Jump Advanced published edition, that reads 'verbosity'.

Verbosity.  An excess of words; long-windedness; the propensity to never shut up.  Describing the Queen of Understatement in Death Note.

Maybe something got lost in translation - twice - because nothing thus told matches the personality exhibited in the manga panels (nor anime scenes) themselves.  Therein a very underrated, quietly fabulous Sachiko Yagami emerges.

Go to Part Two:  Meeting the Subtly Stated Sachiko Yagami

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

After all the early exposure to TV Death Note's reviews, I didn't expect to be telling you now that I loved it.

It took me a while to actually get there (life keeps happening), but I'm so glad that I did. It's not the Death Note that we've all come to life, breathe and quote excessively at each other. It's fascinating for all that.

I started watching it in the early hours of the morning. I was already yawning, ready for bed. My vow to myself was simple - I'd watch until the moment I said, 'WTF?!' or got bored, whichever happened first. I was there until the end, staring stunned at the screen. Then lay awake for a while later, pondering certain scenes that I'd seen.

Particularly the ending, when our missing Mello turned up.

My advice?  Go in with an open mind, forgetting all that you know of the manga, anime or live action movie versions. Treat it as a brand, new story. You won't be disappointed.

The fact is that we're engaging with a a different story entirely. Not merely a different version of the same old tale.  To my mind, the realism just edged up a gear or three.

Light is an Everyman kind of person. He's the bloke you meet on the street. He's not the top student in all of Japan, but a young man with hang-ups and a life not without its problems.  He's us from the get-go and that changes everything.  He's not there to be the God of this New World Order, but to change the world.

He's a nice person. Sympathetic. Without the hubris and arrogance of the original character upon which he's based. 

That alters irreparably the dynamic between himself and L - the latter displaying all the arrogance that his manga source did too, only much more noticeably here without Light's megalomania to over-shadow it. 

At first, I thought L's characterisation had shifted too. It took a second watching to discern that wasn't true. He's wearing shoes and devoid of endless strawberries and cup-cakes, but everything else pings off lesser played aspects of the canon character.

It's only Light who's shifted so much. As any Physicist may tell you, when the source of illumination alters, shadows and hues cast upon others changes utterly too. Hence Soichiro seems grave without gravitas, and Sayu appears whiny without reason.

Then you get to Near.  Oh wow!  Do we get to Near!  He was never so interesting to me in the original. Only a brief scene shows him/her at the end and it raises far more questions than it answers.  Wammy's House was always sinister (which is why I focus so much of my fan-fiction upon it), but this telling makes that abundantly clear.

And there, right alongside Near, is Mello.  We didn't think he'd been so much as acknowledged. But he's there.

Let me put the rest beneath a Read More break, so those not wishing to be spoiled don't have to see.

Last night the television drama Death Note aired in Japan to much comment on Twitter.  First reactions are in from Japanese fans and they seem utterly underwhelmed.  Give or take the curtains.

Please note that I haven't seen this yet myself. Death Note's TV version won't show in my country until Wednesday.  No doubt I'll add my rants to the rest right about then. Until then I'm left haunting Tweets, looking for the word on the street.

So what's the deal?  Let's start with the positives.  All three of them.

Flooding Twitter were many, many people watching Death Note's première with excitement and glee. 

Nothing to do with the plot, acting nor even its actuality, but everything to do with the drapes seen in the background of an early scene.  They're apparently quite popular curtains to be purchased amongst the Japanese populace. 

Dozens of pictures ensued of televisions showing Death Note - and its floral drapes - alongside the exact same curtains in viewers' homes.

Apparently consumers and set designers alike visited one of the most ubiquitous Japanese home furnishing stores. Those particular drapes were perfect for purses on a budget. Colourful, economical and cheap. Hence so many people owning them.

There's one example above, as Tweeted by @ts1_ksdd. There are plenty more on Rocket News 24.

Anyone else concerned that the background curtains were what TV viewers most found to talk about? Doesn't bode well, does it?

Crunchyroll is reporting that Death Note aired with 16.9% of the Kanto population watching. That might sound a little low, but it's actually the highest rating for any new commercial TV drama launched in the country this year.

Then the site pretty much leapt straight into reminding folk that they're streaming the show world-wide on Wednesday. So, like, subscribe to them. kthxbai. 

Even those with a vested interest are struggling to support this one then. 

So what's gone so wrong?  Time to turn our attention to the negatives.

In truth, the highest number of comments translated were simply one word expletives, or a curt condemnation along the lines of 'They ****ed Death Note up'.

Few seemed prepared to follow their thumbs down with a detailed analysis of why they so disliked what they saw. Especially not in 140 characters.  Those who did tended to focus upon the characterisations, which differed hugely from those familiar personalities known from previous canon tellings.

For a start, L is 'too pretty' with none of the quirks and general weirdness known and loved by millions.

Kay, over on Rocket News 24, went much further than that. She disdained the 'newly arrogant personality' in Kento Yamazaki's portrayal of L, considering it close to actual narcissism. (Nor was she alone there. Elsewhere I saw Tweets about him being 'egotistical', or simply just 'boring'.)

Moreover, Sayu (Reiko Fujiwara) has descended into the realms of 'whiny brat'; Soichiro (Yutaka Matsushige) has lost his gravitas; and Light (Masataka Kubota) is simply too ordinary, a regular guy with none of the genius which fuelled the original plot-lines. His characterisation seemed 'under-developed' and his fan-boy antics over Misa's band Ichigo Berry bordered upon Otaku.

Plus the pace was rushed and the screenplay rubbish.

She went into more detail than is easily permissible on Twitter. Nevertheless the Twittosphere seemed in essence to agree with her observations.

Apparently I missed the furore last week, when trailers for the television Death Note reveal how much has altered from the original canon.  Not least some ominous implications for its ending.

Two of the earliest trailers (reproduced on Anime News Network) openly and repeatedly stated that we'll be 'surprised' by the 'final climax'. That there is a 'new resolution', 'new ending'.  None of that sardonic Near narrative in the Yellow Box then. (And still no sign of Mello either.)

Death Note's pilot episode on TV confirmed many of the direst speculations.

Light isn't an especially bright boy in this telling. He's a student of fairly average intelligence at the local university, whose greatest aspiration in life is to be a civil servant.  The main excitement in his life is following girl band Ichigo Berry, those main star is Misa Amane.

Her disparaging comments about Kira will wound Light's sensitive soul in later episodes. She is no Kira fan to start. We're yet to see whether she becomes one as time goes on, or even if she'll continue to be the second Kira as per the norm.

Incidentally, there are going to be new characters. Presumably not cameo ones, if the producers have felt the need to announce them.

All in all, this new Death Note appears to be touching the familiar tale, but only by the lightest fingertip grasp. How we'll ultimately receive it remains to be seen, but the initial reaction doesn't seem too good.

Sorry for the delay in major news here - house move pwnt productivity - so there's a lot to catch up on.  Today - July 5th 2015 - it can only be about the Death Note television drama which is shortly to air in Japan.

However, that won't be the only place where the series may be caught. A few days after being shown in its native nation, Crunchyroll will stream it to several countries around the world.

On July 8th 2015, at 7.30pm Pacific Time, the site will show Death Note's television adaptation in the following countries and regions:

I don't know why some are named by country and others implied by continent (nor what Italy did to upset everyone, give or take the Mafia, Mussolini and the Roman Empire, none of which appear to have an immediate bearing upon Death Note, Mihael Keehl aside). Unless that listing has something to do with Crunchyroll's subscription categories.

I do know that you'll have to subscribe to the site in order to watch Death Note live action TV drama. There is a free trial to be utilized though. That will get you the first two episodes, as long as you're savvy enough to sign up on July 8th 2015, probably around 7pm Pacific time.  Then it's $4.99 a month thereafter.

However, if you happen to live in South Korea, you can disdain all of this. The show will air there, on Channel J, about a week after its showing in Japan.