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All the latest information about Death Note: reports, gossip, releases, analyses, speculation and discussion.

Death Note news articles

Feedback on the Matsuda's Theory Correction

27/5/2016

4 Comments

 
The reader survey held recently on Death Note News also pointed to another issue:  speculation and fact can get blurred when the theoretical is being reported alongside actual news stories.

An example was given regarding an article on Matsuda's Theory, wherein a reader had commented to state that the theory wasn't possible in one regard. Yet the piece itself was never updated to indicate this.  It has been now:
Death Note News amendment screenshot
Passage inserted into Death Note News article before Matsuda's Theory about Mello
The point in a more general sense has been taken on board and our writers are going to try to highlight precisely what is fact and what is musing personally upon a facet of Death Note canon and its wider universe.

Hopefully this satisfies the querent at this time.
4 Comments

Movie Matsuda is Back! Sota Aoyama to Reprise his Role as Tōta Matsuda in 2016 Death Note: Light Up the NEW World Live-Action Film

19/5/2016

8 Comments

 
Tōta Matsuda actor Sota Aoyama in Death Note: Light Up the NEW World
Warner Bros Japan has confirmed that Sota Aoyama will return to play Tōta Matsuda in the latest live-action Death Note movie, due for release in October 2016.

This will be considered fantastic news by many fans, for whom he IS Matsuda in any live-action capacity.

Aoyama last wore the face of that young, irrepressibly enthusiastic and famously foolish police officer ten years ago, featuring in the cast of Death Note (2006) and Death Note: The Last Name (2006). 

The role also earned him a place in the spotlight starring in Spin-Off Matsuda - a movie short, little known outside Japan, released in conjunction with L: Change the World (2008).

It seems that this live action Matsuda is a glutton for punishment, as a decade on from all that trauma, he's pictured apparently back on the Kira Task Force taking on another six Death Note owners scattered across the world.

Though his presence could also be in a mere advisory/consultancy role.  It's impossible to tell from a couple of still photographs, issued as teasers without context (see below).

The news that Sota Aoyama is reprising his Death Note acting role comes on the back of two other announcements, similarly regarding actors familiar from the first movies.  Erika Toda is also on her way back - signing up to return to her role as Misa Amane - while Shidou Nakamura will be voicing the newer, darker, scarier CGI shingami Ryuk. All in glorious continuity of those earlier, decade old Death Note films.

Death Gods aside, Matsuda constitutes the only remaining person privy to insider information about Kira the first time around and able to share it now. It can be presumed that Ryuk won't be taking sides, finding it more amusing (and diverting) to observe the action as entertainment from the sidelines.

While in the movie timeline, Misa's memories of the whole Kira case (give or take her love for Light Yagami) were wiped at the end of the last main instalment.

Sota Aoyama's Matsuda in Death Note (2016) Movie Stills

Death Note Counter Measure Headquarters Special Team Death Note Light Up the NEW World 2016
Sota Aoyama's Tōta Matsuda is seen amongst those watching Wammy detective Ryūzaki (Sousuke Ikematsu) highlight something seemingly perturbing on a computer screen.  Also looking on, wearing varying expressions of shock and concern, are police Kira archivist, investigator and expert Tsukuru Mishima (Masahiro Higashide) and his colleague within the Death Note Countermeasure Headquarters Special Team, Shō Nanase (Mina Fujii).  Plus two others - anybody recognize the gentlemen flanking this ensemble?
Death Note Counter Measure Headquarters Special Team
Mind you, the Japanese National Police Agency's Death Note Countermeasure Headquarters Special Team seems rather more populous than its counterpart from a decade earlier, the Kira Task Force.   The new base doesn't look too shabby either, as the two pictures below may attest.  Still in that Death Note de rigour colour scheme of monochrome with a touch of red, so beloved of every version ever.
Death Note Countermeasure Headquarters Special Team
Death Note 2016 Task Force HQ desk Tsukuru Mishima
Someone's desk.  In shades of black, white and just a hint of orangey-red.  Probably belonging to one of the pair here getting all testosterone-y with each other - Ryūzaki and Tsukuru Mishima.  Actually, undoubtedly so, as one of the pictures above shows Mishima standing behind that desk, as he almost is here too.
Ryūzaki and Tsukuru Mishima Death Note Light Up the NEW World 2016 movie still
These movies stills from Death Note: Light Up the NEW World were sanctioned by Warner Bros Japan, but made it into the public eye via an intrepid Death Note fan and writer for Natalie.mu, who 'sneaked' onto set - in an undisclosed Japanese location - on May 18th 2016 and witnessed the above scenes being filmed.  In addition to managing a quick interview about the movie and their roles from the two actors seen sizing each other up in character above, Sousuke Ikematsu and Masahiro Higashide. 

Read more about that here:  映画「デスノート」対策本部に潜入、東出昌大と池松壮亮がプレッシャー語る (Natalie, May 18th 2016)  If, of course, you read Japanese or can stand Google Translate's attempt at a native transcription.  Otherwise one of our Japanese translators will hopefully be along soon to tell us all about it.
8 Comments

Death Note Tarot Tales V: Kira's Magician Versus the Wammy's Magi - Divine Wisdom and Poetic Justice in Death Note

8/5/2016

1 Comment

 

Every epic journey must begin
with a step upon its routes, roads and Ryuk directed by-ways.

Every great destiny must have a destination.

Explored against
the back-drop of Death Note,
the Major Arcana Tarot cards
feature the realm of The Magician

~ written by our guide into
all things esoteric
Tarot Mikami

Death Note Tarot Tales on Death Note News
Welcome seekers after sama, kana and qi!  You won't be the first to want to reverse your life's fortunes; otherwise embrace words to change the world; take steps to transform yourself into a hero; divert humanity away from its current perverse course; perfect its core that all may sing together - refraining from discordance, aligned in peace and harmony; gain insight into the working of the universe; realize your dreams; reach for the stars; sail across the cosmos and converse with the divine; enchant and charm Kannon at the gates of wisdom; seize manna from the Gods; invoke matter from the kether; traverse the mysteries and become God of this New World.

It's not unknown.

But no matter what foolish idea inflames your passion and ignites your will.  Before you take your first steps onto the path of making it real, you will need some guidance.  Sound the intro, maestro!  And enter The Magician.

The Many Roles of the Tarot Magician

The Magician Tarot Card
The second card of the Major Arcana starts the story proper.  It stands at number one, as The Fool is zero.  Without meeting or becoming The Magician, the Fool is merely a broiling mess of notions, running around like a headless chicken with no direction in which to pursue them. 

If nothing else, the Magician is a doorkeeper - providing access to another (or the wider) world, opening a gateway onto an appropriate path, or acting as a way-marker signing the route to take.  Usually this role contextualizes the bigger picture and sets out the destination.  The Wise Man is concerned with destiny.  Though the advice should be taken indiscriminately.

The Magician isn't necessarily on your side.  The guidance given or the way forward illuminated might be a service provided in all innocence and altruism. Nevertheless, he/she has an agenda of their own and the knowledge to manipulate others too. 

They may play a dual role - making Mafia profits sky-rocket, whilst diverting its resources into capturing a Death Note - and could as easily be trickster instead of consigliere. 

Or a charlatan.  This all-knowing being may present themselves as God, then turn out to merely be a man and a murderer at that.  Worse still, a serial killer implicating you in the guise of the great detective L. 

But the differentiation isn't always that clear cut either.  Nothing so black and white.

The Magician juggles many roles, generally playing all the same time; multi-tasking meaning depending upon who is being addressed.  One person's terrorist being another's freedom fighter and all that, while the manipulation might be to save yourself from yourself, or to aid a greater cause.

Either way, The Magician will certainly give our hero something to ponder and a route (or twelve) to take next.  There's the potential for destiny-laden adventure and opportunities lessons to be learned here, if only never to be that gullible again.

The Meaning of Magician in the Major Arcana

Christians are most familiar with The Magician as the Magi - Three Wise Men in modern versions of the Bible; twelve Pharisee priests in the closest we have to the original - who visited the newborn Christ with gifts. 

For everyone else, the name has largely denigrated to the level of sleight-of-hand illusionists and tricksters on stage, or grown fantastical in figures from stage or literature like Gandalf, Merlin and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

It used to mean so much more.  The hints of it permeate our lexicon.  We glimpse their greatness in words sharing the same root, like magnate, mega, magnitude, magnus, magus and majesty.  That last also containing a hint of their skill as spokespeople, mediators, lecturers, teachers and orators - 'gest', as in 'jester', 'gesticulate', 'gesture' and the 'gist' of a story.  It comes from Middle English 'to recite a tale', originating in Latin 'geste' or 'gesta' 'to perform deeds; to act'.  By the time it hit 13th century France, 'geste' meant to 'narrate an heroic tale'.

Stories could (and often still do) command the will of a people.  Which is why governments today are so keen to pressure the press into toeing the party line.  In Medieval Italy and France, which is where our earliest extant tarot cards were made, the majesty of magicians led to them adjudicating in delicate matters, acting as counsellors or speaking on behalf of less learned individuals.

The Magicians as magisters, in fact, or magistrates.  That 'gist' sometimes turning into its other form of 'iurare' to bring us to jury, and conjurer; or 'joculate' as joker or juggler.  Wise counsellor or trickster indeed.  Furthermore, the French word grammairien referred to 'learned men; magicians', whose ability to know the power and perfect usage of words gave us 'grammar'.

But akin to magician is also master, maestro, mahatma, maharaji, maharishi, yogi, guru, the one who knows.  The Japanese would call them dai-sensai, or O-sensai, doshi, Rōshi, or know them as sifi.  In addition to great wisdom and skill, The Magician brings into play the tools that the Fool might need t0 embark upon their journey.
Major Arcana Magician card
In ancient Persia, the Magos were the learned members of the priestly caste, adept at astrology.  They could give you the overview of your life and destiny, as it was written in the stars, taking in the knowledge of what constellation was on the ascendency or ruling within a certain house. It was up to you what you did with that information and how you let it guide your lives.

Over the centuries, their spiritual descendants have been known as the adepts in a variety of other fortune-telling, mind expanding, soul perfecting or perception enhancing skills.  For example, those magnificent seekers delving into the Kabbalah/Cabala/Qabala as scholars, scryers, practitioners, occultists, alchemists, diviners, philosophers, Hermetic code-breakers and ceremonial magicians.

Enlightened beings who know The Way and what it might mean for you.  But if it's shared - and done so entirely, selectively or else strewn with misinformation - and how that translates into relevancy for your own life's destiny, only a Fool can know in passing through the realm of the Magi.

The Magi In All Their Guises: Major Arcana Death Note's The Magician Card

Death Note: The Magician Tarot Card
Tarot Magician Death Note Rules
Death Note Enlightenment The Magican
The Death Note itself can be seen as falling right into the realm of The Magician.  In fact, it's practically the Three Magi represented here in the notebook, as its role is considered in relation to Light Yagami.

Firstly Light has to find the shinigami's notebook, which serves the dual purpose of opening his eyes to the existence of a world beyond his own and highlighting its possibilities. Hitherto unconsidered (or disbelieved) realities are presented as a pathway upon which to forge his own destiny.  It's the Tarot Magician as gatekeeper, signpost and luminary of higher knowledge.

However, its also the Trickster, or Charlatan, insofar as the falling Death Note serves Ryuk's agenda first and foremost. Its presence on Earth is set to alleviate the shinigami's boredom.  Light will pick it up and, primarily believing it an elaborate prank, use it to the detriment of his own future.  Not only will it curse his living years, but condemn his eternal being into the dissolution of Mu.  This ultimate destination for Death Note users means that a destiny is foisted upon Light Yagami, manipulated by ignorance and curiosity into foolishly using it without fully translating all of the rules beforehand.

The Death Note wasn't on his side, nor against him.  It's an item; a thing without judgement nor partiality.  It serves an agenda encapsulated by itself.  ('I am that I am' is the So'ham Sanskrit manta; also viewed as the Word of God in Christian mysticism; or 'As above, so below; so below, as above' in Hermetic teachings.  All very much part of The Magician's inner knowledge, and here beautifully descriptive of the Death Note too.)

Secondly, Light actually reads the rules written inside the Death Note.  Here the shinigami notebook becomes The Magician as a teacher; illuminating the arcane knowledge needed to utilize this supernatural tool.  The rules themselves inspire possible ways in which Light may now traverse in order to fulfil his projected destiny.

Even more dramatically comes that third moment of the notebook of death as The Magician in Death Note.  That's when the touch of it allows Light's mind to access his memories, previously locked away through rejection of the artefact.  Perhaps it's not quite what the ancient Magos would view as accessing the higher self, but it serves the same purpose within the storyline.  In an instant, Light Yagami's ignorance is dissolved, when the doors of perception are well and truly opened upon his past.  His destination now reached, just as planned.

The Magician as Death Note's Gatekeepers and Arbiters of Destiny

Ryuk as The Magician Death Note Tarot
Ryuk is another obvious contender for The Magician's Death Note tarot representative.  His appearance directs the plot in a myriad of ways, not least because it clarifies Light Yagami's overview and destiny.

Just like his notebook, the shinigami confirms the existence of previously unknown layers to reality, broadening Light's horizons and information base. 

Ryuk stands as guide and gatekeeper to the shinigami realm.  Not only can he speak for and translate the Gods, he is one.

Whilst denying Light access to any such services, unless the whim of the moment takes him.  Because he can.

The shinigami also acts as arbiter of knowledge concerning eternity and deals available to human users of Death Notes, which he does deign to share.  Albeit selective in his choice of snippets to pass on, and deliberately obtuse in the timing of all such communication.

It's too amusing for him not to cause maximum frustration in thus trolling his human Death Note user. 

Which all fits in completely with the reason for him being there, performing his role as Earthly sage and sometime mentor. Openly not on anyone's side - but that of his own amusement - Ryuk is the Trickster Mage personified. 

His entire performance is dedicated to his own agenda, aligning with those of others only where each party's motives/tactics run in tandem. Or he's persuaded that the potential for entertainment is strong.

The Death God is, after all, quite bored and he's here to alleviate said tedium. Everything that occurs must factor that in first, as top priority, because it's certainly the only reason Ryuk is acting in any capacity right now.

L's Messenger Mage Watari: Herald, Spokesperson and Point of Contact

Tarot Death Note Watari as The Magician

As gatekeeper to L, Watari's intervention at the Interpol meeting is pure Magician territory.

Not only does it alert all present to the avenue of inquiry now opening up due to the detective's interest in the Kira case, but it allows Matsuda - thus us too - to discover L's existence in the first place.

Thus the Fool takes the first step out of innocence, ignorance and a lack of context for the world.

For the veteran law enforcement agents there, Watari represents destiny in a very practical sense.  They don't need to discuss the way forward in their investigation now, because L is involved.   He IS the way forward; an option for the situation to be passed up to a higher authority. 

(Sneak preview for a later major arcana card - The Hierophant describes L for those with knowledge and experience of his work.)

For Soichiro and Matsuda, Watari's position is doorkeeper to destiny in a much more ethereal way.

To one it will prove downright Fateful, while the other will reach the proposed destination (catching Kira) changed beyond recall.

Destiny's Magister: Roger Ruvie, The Wammy House Ringmaster Tolls Part Two

Roger Ruvie as the Magician in Death Note tarot
One day, Wammy House warden Roger Ruvie will be Watari too.  His role will encapsulate The Magician in just the same way as Quillsh Wammy, as described above.

Nevertheless, in that Fateful moment imaged as tarot arcana (left), Roger already illustrates several aspects of The Magican card.  Each face or facet exhibited simultaneously.

For a start, he's a messenger, delivering the news that the children's idol and surrogate father are both dead.  Divining correctly the information received from a transmission's ending.  Liaison, wisdom, enlightenment, all wrapped up in that single act.

He's doing so as Wammy's House administrator - which has its root in 'ministry/minister' and from there becomes entrenched in symbolism linked with The Magician.  Minister meaning to 'act on behalf of a higher authority', hence a minister of the state in politics or the church (it literally meant 'priest' in Medieval Latin). It gets its secretarial sense from the French, where it became 'servant; overseer; watcher; manager'.

But may also relate to inspiration of a more tuneful note, hence minstrel and musician are both cognitive words. Each obviously pertaining to The Fool, yet The Magician too, as the latter can be former in receipt of self-awareness, context or knowledge, thus driving their own actions.

It all becomes much more blatant, when another cognate is brought into the mix - magistrate or magister.  One who directs or adjudicates; making decisions; laying down the law.

Roger is authorized to tell a twelve and fourteen year old that their idolized foster sibling and beloved guardian are dead. Yet nothing of sentimentality here. His job is to collect children from around the world, bring them to The Wammy House and train them as potential successors to L.

His results are majestic. After coldly dismissing Mello's emotional outburst, the first question asked was which of them was chosen as heir. No querying the fact that kids are about to be sent into an arena which killed two adults, one purportedly the world's most genius detective.  No options considered.

This Wammy Ringmaster magisterially sends both kids to fight round two; their destination seeming less destined than Fated, with such news extolled like passing bells, louder than ever tonight.

Mello the Consigliere: Death Note Mafia Mage with a Dual Agenda

Mello exemplifies The Magician with a dual agenda, while acting as consigliere within the Mafia family headed by Rod Ross.

It's similar to the previously examined outlook of that other magnate Ryuk, but Mello's motivational duality holds some important differences.

The Magician acts by manipulating an individual's lack of essential knowledge or wisdom.  However this doesn't necessary occur every time, only when it suits our canny counsellor's alternate agenda to do so.

Sometimes the concerns will align for both advisor and their directed individual; sometimes not. Regardless, the interests of the latter do not factor into the guidance given by this Mage - whether in counsellor mode, or as councillor representing their client's views and speech to others.

Consigliere (or consigliori) - Mello's position in the Mafia - meant both by the way.  Though technically describing solely the counsel given to the Don, consiglieri (in manga and in life) also fulfil many other roles ruled by The Magician.  Including, but not limited to, mediating in conflict; liaising on the Don's behalf with important contacts and/or authority figures (judges, police etc.); and keeper/archivist of secrets for the entire Family's, so to retain an overview and warn if trouble may be caused, for example, by a capo acting rashly through ignorance of matters concerning another.

Mello seems to be a good consigliere.  At one point Rod Ross is moved to comment that the genius teen has never been wrong in any decision made since joining their Family.

However, no-one should lose sight of reality. Mello was just using the Mafia to achieve his own goals.  

The wisdom imparted by Mello as consigliere causes Rod Ross's profits to sky-rocket.  Yet those and all other available resources are soon diverted into serving Mello's ambition to secure a Death Note. 

After Mello achieves his goal, thus placing a shinigami notebook in the hands of his Mafia family, all agendas probably fell in line, shared and indivisible. For a moment, indeed it seemed to Ross et al that they had absolute power.

And then, in the next moment, they ended up dead.  Mello using the lives of the last ones standing to make good his own escape.
Mafia Mello Death Note Magician

Sakura TV as the Charlatan: Showmanship Masquerading as Wisdom

Death Note Tarot The Magician Sakura TV Charlatan
When Sakura TV appoints itself as the voice of Kira, it's an attempt to appear as The Divinely Ordained or Enlightened Magician.  

As studio boss and anchor-man, Demegawa's overall aim is to trick unsuspecting individuals into believing the station has some conferred higher knowledge. Therefore attempting to gain the same trust or power given to The Magician.

Or in this case, boost ratings.

The Magician can well act as spokesperson for the people/individuals in dealings with authority, or magistrate dilemmas and/or direct juries.  They can certainly translate the divine for those less versed in the sacred mysteries.  However, its beholden upon us all to beware false prophets.

In its more negative (or domineering/pompous) aspect, our spokesperson Mage might not say what we wished them to convey.  

Think politicians declaiming sentiments which make us cringe or cry, all in our name; or the journalist who twists your words, yet 'quotes' you all the same, in pursuit of a sensational story bearing no relation to what actually occurs; or the parent/guardian/teacher expressing their own views as if they were automatically shared by yourself, ignoring or over-riding any attempt at dissent.

While Kira may experience Sakura TV's antics (in the persona of Demegawa) as the above, every other viewer is watching a charlatan or mountebank in action.  A pseudo-priest or trickster mantis preying upon the gullibility of their television audience turned congregation.

On the flip side, even the False Magician may inadvertently act as teacher.  The lesson today from Sakura being not to believe everything you hear on TV.  

(Particularly when tabled as a Trump; donkey imagery warns us off, as seen below The Magician's board in some ancient tarot decks.  Mistake the babbling showmanship of this charlatan for wisdom, and your only sure destiny is to be made feel like an ass.)

Kiyomi Takada: Enlightened Divine Messenger of Death Note

I don't remember who said it, but the quotation snagged in my mind.

Someone was told that David Icke - the footballer turned commentator and write - was now telling all and sundry that he was the Son of God.  There was a pause in which the informant gleefully awaited  the witty put-down that was sure to follow concerning the subject of their gossip.

"Well?" The other slowly asked.  "Has anyone checked if he is?"

And therein lies the rub.  How does one verify such a claim?  And if we can't, then how do we know for sure whether they're a mounteback babbling lies, or insane, or someone Cassandra cursed to be disbelieved in all the divine truth they tell?

The Magi would know.   It tends to be them. Whether reading the portents in divination; searching arcane knowledge to uncover higher truths; or acting as intermediaries between the Gods and us, as the priestly caste or ministering on career paths.

Just occasionally, we get the real thing.  Magos aglow with the numen nod - enchanters, prophets, seers, the chosen and invokers; attuned to the Great Music and entrancing with utterances lifted from source; merely mediums through which the universe flows.

Or television anchor woman/newscaster, who just happens to be the right person, at the right time, with a matching warped sense of morality and all the right contacts to be the Messiah. 

The divine intermediary aspect of The Magician is represented quite literally by Death Note's Kiyomi Takada, twofold.

She performs her role as Messenger of the God(s) in that Takada is the actual, publicly appointed spokesperson for Kira; while also being the conduit that allows both Kiras - Light Yagami and Teru Mikami - to communicate in open conversation.

No charlatan this.  Blessed Takada performs with gravitas; notably refined before this even began.  Now perceived by the ever-growing faithful as gentle, radiant, the real thing and absolutely full of grace. Buying into and believing all Light says; mind mired and amazed beyond all rationality. 

But then it was always thus:
Death Note Tarot The Magician Takada
Quem Deus perdere vult, dementat prius; quem di diligunt, adolescens moritu.
Those the Gods will destroy, they first make mad; and whom the Gods love dies young.

Le Bateleur Matsuda: Sleight of Hand Illusionist in Death Note

The Magician Matsuda - Death Note's Le Bateleur
Le Bateleur is the aspect of The Magician most familiar to us in the modern world; give or take a few fantasy movie mages, and their counterpart skills offered as an option for gamers.

This is the stage magician; the conjurer; the sleight-of-hand trickster; the illusionist; the abracadabra, now you see it, now you don't, bateleur drawing in crowds and thrilling them with misdirection, misinformation, smoke and mirrors distraction, before delivering all enrapt and gasping with awe to that climatic moment of The Prestige.

Le Bateleur - and its cognates Il Bagatto, El Bagatella, Bateleuse - refers to this tarot figure's stick, rod or, ta-daaaa, wand.

This aspect of The Magician appears throughout the Death Note series. There's even a whole chapter, in Death Note 13: How to Read, devoted to explaining all of the tricks inserted into the storyline by Tsugumi Ohba.

The Death Note Magician tarot card we've chosen to depict Il Bagatto in action features Matsuda faking his own death.  Before a stunned crowd of Yotsuba corporate executives, he pulls off The Prestige in garnering their belief that the dressed up Aiber far below on the ground is Matsuda's mangled corpse.  Meanwhile, Touta sits safely on a mattress a mere one floor below.

However, we could just as easily picked any of the dozens of scenarios, whereby Death Note's conjurers wash over truth with a new reality, attested by witnesses swearing on oath that they watched throughout.

Like when Light becomes aware he is being watched by surveillance cameras. He quickly acts to manipulate the evidence by a tricky sleight-of-hand illusion.

To the onlooker, it would appear as though he was only studying, while taking those potato chips and eating them. The reality being that Kira was killing criminals with a piece of the Death Note hidden, alongside a miniature TV, inside the chip bag.

Even L was fooled by that one.

So what's your favourite showing for the tarot Death Note Bagatella?   Just to check that you kept observing, through all there was to see.

The Three Wise Men (Wam-Magi?)

Picture
Picture
Picture
In the time of Watari, after Kira was born in Japan, wise men from the Wammy's House in Winchester came to Kanto, asking, "Where is the murderer who has been born God of the New World? For we observed his kill count at its rising, and have come to take him down."

When Takimura heard this, he was frightened and all world leaders with him; and calling together all the Kira Task Force and NPA public relations officers, he inquired of them when the Kira was to be arrested. They told him, "In the Yellow Box Warehouse; for so it has been written by Near: 'And you, Takimura, in the land of Japan, are by no means going to know a thing about it, because Mello would have got you killed by then.'"

Then US President David Hoope secretly called - via Watari - for the wise men and begged each in turn to stop threatening to control him into doing worse than Kira, whenever any of them get hold of a Death Note. Then he sent them to Kanto, saying, "Go and search diligently for Kira; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage."

When they had heard the POTUS, they got him killed and replaced with George Sairas; and there, ahead of them, went the star Misa Amane that they had seen rising as Second Kira, until she stopped because L had her tortured. When they saw that the Japanese idol had started begging to have her life ended, they were overwhelmed with joy.

On entering the Warehouse, they saw the megalomaniac with Mikami his worshipper; and Near knelt down (the other two forced to too, as they were now dead and puppets). Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of cake, Transformers, and chocolate.

And having painted a vivid picture for Ryuk warning of a future bound to a Death Note now stuck in Near's vault - while Light languished in a prison for the criminally insane for life - Near successfully manipulated the Death God into taking out Light before returning to the shinigami realm.  Then the Three Wise Wammys left for their own country, where verily two returned to the toy box and Near took L's Code for himself.  And probably Mello's too.
Hold on!  One missing from this listing of The Wam-Magi as read from the Book of God's New World: 

Bored out of his mind, Il Matto stayed put in Winchester, playing SuperMario and thanking the Gods of the Internet that Kira never came with cyber-terrorism on-line.  Else he'd never have been able to get away with hiding behind his lazy, mad, wise Fool routine; playing Tetris instead of getting himself killed in someone else's war.  So wise he only ever ranked third and remained forever Il Matto.  He probably wouldn't have amounted to much anyway.  Beep, beep, lulwut, nub?
Matt Death Note Il Matto tarot
Ok, I've stopped now.
As if by Magic - More Death Note Tarot Tales

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On This Day in Death Note: May 2nd

2/5/2016

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May 2nd 1964: Sergio Zamora Birthday Death Note Kira Spanish dub actor
May 2nd 1980: Vincent Tong birthday Death Note English dub actor for Matsuda
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Thank You All Who Contributed to Month of Matsuda on Death Note News!

5/4/2016

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Another epic monthly event! Redeemed after a shaky start by all who flooded in with their submissions to make this a focus worthy of the character himself.

The archives will show that Death Note Month of Touta Matsuda was an unparalleled success!

Good fight all.

So what went wrong at the beginning (and most of the middle) to make this event move so slowly?  Then in true Matsuda style speed up unfathomably towards the end, and in the nick of time to save the day.

While Death Note News has a plethora of writers, columnists, researchers and the occasional guest penning articles too, it only has one person to actually press the button to publish their considerable output.

If she gets carted off to hospital in the back of an ambulance, then everything grinds to an ignoble halt.

We've spotted the obvious flaw in our administrative set up; and Matti is completely fine now.  Once back at her desk, the contributions for Matsuda Month could flow once more and fabulousness ensued.
Touta Matsuda Death Note month

Thanks are Owed to All Who Participated in Our Matsui Month Event

All due applause and accolades are directed towards:

Sakiko Rau - who kicked us off with an essay on why she (and we) should like Matsuda from Death Note. She will also be jumping on board as a regular columnist writing from a Japanese perspective.  You heard it here first.

Lua
- who did so much in the background to keep the home fires burning, as well as penning a philosophical analysis of Touta Matsuda's importance within the Death Note narrative.

Aerial Skye - who gave us cosplay advice for Matsuda costume creation.

All on the Death Note News Community Touta Matsuda Pinterest Board, for maintaining a steady flow of interesting images and links whatever the month.

Lei K - who turned her considerable talent to Touta Matsuda artwork especially for this event.

Silent Reaper - who allowed us to share her classic comic strip Matsuda's Rant.

Deacon (and the Tuxedo Team), especially Beyond Infinity/Jin - who let us publish their photographs of an amazing Matsui cosplayer.

Ziferonan - who gave us full rein to plunder an extensive collection of Matsuda fan-art, fan-fiction and cosplay too.

Stella Meyer - who not only sent in her Matsuda artwork, but answered questions providing insight and tips on creating the same.

Liam Dodd - who brought an air of the academe to proceedings with a scientific examination of Death Note's infamous Matsuda rescue with a mattress.

Emerald-Moonlight - who let us loose on her gallery and permitted the republication of three pieces of her Matsuda art.

MRSJeevas - who wrote Matsu fan-fiction for this event, though that's not nearly all, considering that in another guise, she is Matti - who researched, edited, proof-read, wrote and caused a backlog on much else that was published this month.

Tarot Mikami - who took us once again into the depths of the tarot's secrets, this time with a distinctly Matsuda Death Note flavour in regard for his monthly focus.

And, of course, all who read and commented, shared links and discussed these articles elsewhere. 

All Added to our Permanent Collection

Matsuda Month Archives
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And prepare to do it all again, this time with the focus on Wammy.
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Death Note Tarot Tales IV: Touta Matsuda - Brave Fool on a Journey

4/4/2016

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Tarot Death Note News column banner
A regular column looking at Death Note
through the symbolic medium of tarot cards,and their actual usage in canon
by Tarot Mikami

Exploring the Royal Road - or Fool's Journey - as told in the Death Note story.  Though not, as you may expect, featuring Light Yagami. 

He lost at the penultimate hurdle.


From the mouths
of babes and fools
comes great wisdom.

~ Old adage
(fool sage variants dating
from the 12th century)
"Matsuda! Don't be silly! We're not fooling around here!"
Soichiro Yagami, Death Note manga, Chapter 14: Temptation

"Matsuda, you idiot!"
~ Various NPA officers throughout the series, notably Light Yagami at the end

"You drove your own father to his death, and now you are saying that we are the fools?!"
~ Touta Matsuda, Death Note anime, Episode 37: New World
Today we'll be looking at one of the greatest examples of the Fool in manga storytelling - Death Note's Touta Matsuda, NPA agent and one of the courageous few in Japan's Anti-Kira Task Force.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Touta Matsuda is the most archetypal Fool in Death Note - not Ryuk, Light, nor any of the Wammy cohort, as would otherwise be the most obvious choices, though all are the Fools in their own story-lines and some take the role through other avenues.  In the most common iteration of tarot storytelling, the Fool needs to begin the tale in ignorance; commit to the quest; learn incrementally; then finish with their overview of the world complete and often unparalleled, ergo in possession of said World.

Throughout Death Note's epic story, the World is up for grabs. The opening theme tune check-lists it.  L is introduced against the background of a globe. Light famously declares himself 'God of this new world'.  But ultimately Light loses his grip upon said world, and his life too.  L and Mello equally slip from this world to the next. Near can be said to both understand and articulate the Finis Death Note world, but he wasn't there at the beginning,  nor did he start in all innocence of the facts. Ryuk is fabulously Foolish; however, he fulfils the characterisation in the Jester/Joker sense - a Wise Fool indeed. Only one character can be seen to fully embrace the tenets of the Royal Road protagonist tarot Fool and that is Touta Matsuda.

Which makes Death Note fundamentally the story of Matsuda's Fool's Journey.
Death Note's Matsuda in anime, tv drama and manga

Three Faces of Matsuda, as seen in the anime; played by Maeda Goki in the tv drama; and the manga
Regardless of whether you concur with such a emphasis on the young police officer - placing him above even Light Yagami and his main protagonist L in terms of importance to the storyline - Matsuda's brave journey is arguably the thing that binds both arcs (and sub-arcs) together, creating a coherent whole of Death Note's overall narrative, while encapsulating most of its themes.

Moreover, he takes us - the reader/viewer - with him, delivering us back to the beginning with our world utterly changed, ready to strike out again into the unknown.  Our outlook wiser; ourselves more accomplished; experience discerning so much now in what we survey; and our skill-sets honed to perfection within this narrow realm.

No more the Fool, but the Master of this now known domain. Which always makes us much more stupid.  Poised to become the Fool again, or else stagnate without stimulus within an overly familiar terrain.

What is the Fool's Journey Through the Tarot?

The Fool - card 0 of the Major Arcana
The Royal Road, or Fool's Journey is one of the oldest, most commonly told tales of all.  You don't have to be a tarot card reader, or know a thing about them, in order to find highly familiar this sequence of events surrounding a certain kind of individual.

Ninety percent of all Hollywood blockbusters and best-selling novels are telling - and retelling in the sequel, then again for the third in the trilogy - the story of a Fool, who embarks upon a great adventure, which changes them and their world(view) forever.   A great many of them also do so by touching upon a series of meetings or circumstances, each relayed in a precise order, which matches that of the Major Arcana in tarot.

It's not that the movie or literary worlds are swamped with secret tarot readers inserting some vast and dodgy agenda.  It's that the Fool's tale mirrors the span of human life itself, therefore has a commonality across all cultures, globally or historically.

Everyone can relate to a plot with such basic building blocks as 'the hero knew nothing, learned some stuff, grew up (physically/mentally/spiritually/whatever fits best), put such learning to the test and/or applied it practically, then the hero knew everything'.   Or at least 'something', often with a reward - if only survival - when retold via celluloid or the printed page.  We all like a happy ending, or failing that, some satisfaction at witnessing just desserts occur.

Those markers set out along the path of the Major Arcana tend to be used by writers and directors for no particularly mystical reason either.  It's because they also represent the most intuitively efficient plot devices to get the Fool from the beginning to the end.

Touta Matsuda on the Royal Road - Death Note's Fool's Journey

The hero who knows nothing meets someone who opens up their world-view to possibilities (Magician); something/someone occurs to make the hero emotionally connect with what the Magician showed him/her (High Priestess), thus they commit to the journey/quest (Empress).  In order to set out, or survive the trip, they must take on provisions and see to their physical needs (still Empress).  They also need information about the delineation of the quest's boundaries, limits, rules, what it will take to succeed (Emperor), which usually involves finding or inviting in an expert (Yoda... I mean Hierophant).

See what I mean about intuitive, commonplace and common sense storytelling?   That's effectively the end of the first arc in the Major Arcana.
Death Note Soichiro Yagami and Touta Matsuda - first appearance

0 - The Fool
Matsuda begins never even having heard of L. Plus only just hearing that serial killing of global proportions going on - his introduction to the concept of Kira.
Watari's first appearance in Death Note

I - The Magician
Broadening Matsuda's awareness occurs in a combination of Soichiro, Watari and L. But it's Watari who opens up a gateway into the eventual quest.
Death Note police officers sacrifice ultimatum

II - The High Priestess
Until Kira started killing FBI and police officers, the hunt for him was just part of the job. Afterwards, it became personal; a matter of life and death. Matsuda would be forced to consider it on an emotional level, with all due regard to family feeling and other ethereal/spiritual/sentimental concerns, as well as the physical.
Death Note Anti-Kira Task Force - Five men, life on the line

III - The Empress
Matsuda is one of only five men willing to put their lives on the line to combat Kira. He's committed to the quest.
Death Note L and the Anti-Kira Task Force

IV - The Emperor
Perched upon his armchair like a throne, L spells out the details in the search for Kira, and what it will take to catch him. L even has Matsuda et al to meet him at his residence - The Imperial Hotel. Imperial means belonging/ pertaining to/of the emperor or empire.
Death Note Naomi Misora and Kira

V - The Hierophant
Naomi Misora used to be a brilliant FBI agent, but has been hiding away at home for no good reason since becoming engaged. Her return and subsequent disappearance provides key clues to the NPA Kira Task Force. Though L, by his very nature, also doubles in this informative role.
The next tranche of cards deal with the learning process.  In movies, books and manga, this is often learning by adversary, as that adds more dramatic tension than watching the hero sitting in a library and/or writing essays.  Unless it's the movie Karate Kid, wherein the 'wax on, wax off' part gloriously shows us how the Fool learns through practice, revision and sheer hard work.  But back to the Major Arcana.

Having learned all they can about what the journey is, why they should undertake it, committing to it, getting in supplies and information, then perusing the full game-plan, our hero has a choice to make.  Do or do not, there is no try.  Take the quest on, or go home now, there is no time for dithering  (The Lovers).

Alternatively, it can mean what it says on the packet.  The introduction of a love interest and/or partner is beloved of film-makers and book authors both. The inherent dualism usually strengthens or otherwise propels the plot forward, while the will of the individual to stay the course is generally now a foregone conclusion (The Lovers).

Any one of the below could feature as The Lovers moment in the Fool's Journey of Matsuda, and they all happen in quick succession.
Death Note NPA protest L's unorthodox tactics

VI - The Lovers
Everyone protests L's unorthodox (and later shady) tactics in the Kira case, but their compliance indicates their decision to accept anything to win the Kira case. Matsuda is among those continuing his Fool's Journey at the cost of his moral integrity and sense of right or wrong.
Death Note tennis match L and Kira

VI - The Lovers
The meeting between L and Light, escalating their duel of wits and ultimately bringing Light onto the Kira Task Force all have profound effects for Matsuda's position. Not least because it deepens everyone's involvement and makes events much more dangerous.
Death Note Misa and Light change the world

VI - The Lovers
The emergence of Second Kira, with Misa and Light quite literally becoming lovers, complicates the case immensely and causes the Fool's Journey to become yet more perilous. More moral dilemmas occur to Matsuda, as L breaks Japanese (and international) law to torture Misa and Light.
The hero then needs to set out their own personal strategy for success (The Chariot), before putting it into action and applying stamina, trust, skill or sheer brute force to see it through (Strength).

Afterwards, there must be a period for reflection, evaluation of the tactics employed, tinkering with them etc, or recovery, depending on what the strategy actually cost in its application (The Hermit).  Otherwise it's time to bring in another expert, usually - again for dramatic tension - the one who won't come out to play for anyone else, but who the Fool charmed with their earnestness and/or passion for the quest (also The Hermit).

End of part two in the Major Arcana's basic story-telling plot touchstones.
Matsuda supporting L

VII The Chariot
Despite feeling unsettled by L's methodology in a dangerous, potentially deadly investigation, Matsuda makes the personal decision to throw in his lot with the Wammy detective. It seems like the quickest way to catch Kira.
Death Note Misa tortured

VIII Strength
Matsuda's stamina in loyalty and compliance is soon put to the test, when Misa and Light are incarcerated indefinitely without charge. L doesn't balk from torture in an attempt to force a confession, with Matsuda in uneasy witness.
Matsuda on police work

IX The Hermit
Along with the rest of the dwindling Task Force members, Matsuda quits his job at the NPA. Fundamentally putting his career on the line, and devoting his life to the Kira case.
Part three in the Fool's journey begins with our hero discovering that you can learn it all and become as skilled and experienced as may be.  But luck will always play its part, for good or ill.  No-one can predict every move nor aspect of their lives.  (Wheel of Fortune)  Either that or our hero gets a kick which momentarily puts them out of the game, or the converse, a boost which raises them in it.  (All still the Wheel of Fortune.) 

However, all being well, everyone should get their just desserts.  The hard worker should bring home a decent pay.  The victimised should see recompense in whatever way is most appropriate.  The baddie should get their comeuppance.  Real life doesn't work like that, but neither is it totally devoid of the same. Just as with fortune and luck, justice is more often served than the cynical could admit. (Justice.)   (NB Some modern, and all earlier, tarot decks placed Justice after The Chariot.  The Golden Dawn switched it around in the 1920s, and most decks since have copied them.)

With all of the elements known and/or in place, the Foolish hero enters a formative stage in their lives.  A time of willing sacrifice for the greater good and/or in exchange for greater insight - Odin in Yggdrasil or Christ on the cross; Light submitting to tortuous detention under the auspices of L; the average student sitting down to write their dissertation.  (The Hanged Man.)  Which, all being well, results in a transformation in being; a sudden escalation of understanding; or something else which sees our Fool shed all past ignorance and grow in whichever way is relevant to their journey.  (Death)
Matsuda sneaks into Yotsuba

X The Wheel of Fortune
In an attempt to prove his value within the Kira Task Force, Matsuda tries his luck with infiltrating the Yotsuba Group headquarters in search of a lead on possible Death Note usage.
Matsuda eavesdropping on Yotsuba

XI Justice
Matsuda's daring is rewarded with overhearing a snippet of information linking the Yotsuba Group with Kira.
Matsuda caught on a mattress in Death Note

XII The Hanged Man
With his life already on the line - in immediate danger of execution by the unscrupulous executives - Matsuda undertakes a terrifying and foolhardy escape from a hotel balcony, free-falling onto on a mattress held into the air below.
Death Note Rem dies
Death Note task force react to Wammy's death
Death Note L dies manga
XIII Death
It's not so much the physical deaths per se of Rem, Watari and L, which makes this a transformative period for Matsuda.  It's the changes wrought upon his life caused by their demise. Including the impact of their loss on the investigation, with dire implications for Matsuda's own continued well-being.

Beyond that, all stabilizes again into a steady work-a-day rhythm.  All fine-tuned skills need time to be applied; all heavy graft requires a period of relaxation to follow.  After all that excitement comes the novelty of boredom, or else an uncoiling to still all jangling sensibilities in a quieter life (Temperance).  Which is nice at first, but soon becomes a tad too hum-drum, familiar and finally downright soul-destroying.

Our hero looks for diversion - any diversion - something to break up the day and/or a life. Temptation hums everywhere (The Devil).  And not every diversion is entirely sensible.  After all that hard work building up to whatever the quest required of its Foolish hero, frustration or the sheer monotony of being did its steady job of erosion.  A mistake which can see the whole edifice falling down (The Tower).  It's time for our hero to learn the lessons of destruction, and how to accept it as the necessary (and often welcome) flip side of creation.  Or, as Kipling put it in the poem If, 'meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same'.
Death Note Kira task force post-L

XIV Temperance
Once L is dead, the group are nominally leaderless, though Light as Second L fills the void. For Matsuda, this is a time of waiting to see what will happen without the genius detective guiding things.
Death Note Sayu kidnapped

XV The Devil
When the Kira case moves forward its with a shocking suddenness, dynamic in its action. Matsuda always prefers that to steady, routine work and waiting, but not when it involves the abduction of Sayu, and her father in danger. Mello brings temptation, while upping the stakes considerably.
Death Note death of Soichiro Yagami

XVI The Tower
Matsuda's whole world collapses in on itself with the death of his mentor Soichiro Yagami.
Ide and Matsuda eavesdropping
XVII The Star
But for most of us, it would take the grace of the Dalai Lama to put such sentiments into actuality, when disappointment, panic and stress abound.  So, being human, we rely upon the second best boon afforded us - hope  (The Star) - and enter a necessary time of sifting through the ruins of a life, shattered dreams or fatally disrupted plans.  A moment of reflection as to what went wrong and what can make it all right again.  Giving ourselves time to mourn, regroup and go on (The Moon).

If our once Foolish hero is able to rise up again from the collapse of everything, then he/she/it can rebound from anything.  Theirs is the confidence come from knowing nothing can hurt nor touch them again, at least nothing from which they can't recover (The Sun).  Then comes the hardest moment of all - the ability to look at oneself, and others, as they truly are.  Without excuses, prejudice, projection nor bias, and gain the final insights available through comparison, acceptance or rejection.  In short, making a judgement call fuelled by all that's been met, learned, experienced and practised on the journey thus far (Judgement).

And if all went according to plan, with no lessons skipped nor learning shirked as irrelevant, the Fool has the wisdom necessary to complete their quest.  They have mastery in this universe.  They own The World.

Death Note Matsuda doesn't think Kira evil

XVIII The Moon
In the dark night of the soul, all considerations are on the table. Matsuda seems ready to run with the crowd here, supporting Kira.
Death Note finis stupid fools

XIX - The Sun
A moment of true enlightment for Matsuda, as Light Yagami admits to being Kira. The young police officer no longer has uncertainty in whatever thought or action may come.
Matsuda shoots Light Yagami

XX - Judgement
No longer a Fool per se, this close to the end of his Journey, Matsuda knows enough to make a judgement call in full understanding of its consequences.
Picture

XXI - The World
By the end of Death Note, Matsuda has the widest possible overview of his World. It might not thrill him, but he has insight enough to understand that rejecting L doesn't mean he has to accept Near.

Death Note's Fool's Journey Tarot Imagery Could Be Deliberate

Given the Death Note creators' propensity to play around with tarot imagery, it's probably no accident that Matsuda's shining moment of heroism, and true enlightenment in grasping the entirety of the story so far, comes in an anime episode called New World.  The final card of tarot's major arcana is The World.

In the manga, this chapter is entitled Curtain, as 'black curtain' (which additionally describes the aesthetics of these pages' black frame) suggests someone orchestrating events behind the scenes, in how the words sound in Japanese.  This according to Tsugumi Ohba, who revealed his reasoning behind the choice of title in Death Note 13: How to Read.  He just skipped the 'black' because there already was a chapter with that in the title, and he didn't want to imply a new character was about to emerge.  His Fool (and therefore unwitting focus for his audience) was already there, hidden in plain view, amongst so many other contenders for the role.

One doesn't have to deliberately, or even knowingly, move events along in order to be the force behind their momentum. Fools, in many a popular epic, tend towards being a catalyst rather than an instigator. Right up until their moment of fruition, when they become the best placed individual to confront whatever rocks their world.  Thus the journey is brought to a climatic end and the Fool is momentarily a Fool no more.  They have gained The World and its secrets have all been revealed.

To which there is no point.  Every story ever has been about the quest. The ending is just the precursor to the credits starting to roll.

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Matsu's Musing, a Decade On: Death Note Matsuda Fan-Fiction by MRSJeevas

4/4/2016

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Death Note Tota Matsuda pensive
There was a documentary about Kira on television tonight.  Matsuda sat and watched, thought he'd had himself convinced until the last minute that he would not.  Then duly sat in silence for a long time after the TV had been shut off, partway through its closing credits.

Not thinking anything much about it.  Despite its scheduled high intentions, the depiction told him nothing he didn't already know.  Same old, same old, only slightly rehashed.  One or two added examples of the pitiful nature inherent throughout the dregs of humankind - a camera lingered over Kira worshipping websites still running; interviewed the leader of a cultist enclave, who maintained a shrine in honour of a mass murderer's divinity.

Yet the statistics piled up, droned through an announcer's bland diction and sounding all the more dire for it than worse read in spreadsheet on Matsuda's work computer.  A tiny part of himself wondering once again if he'd ever been on the right side of anything.

Not thinking about it otherwise, mostly because what was left to dwell upon after a decade spent doing just that? There madness lay, or outrage. Guilt. A sense that one day he should snap. If only to honour the dead in showing he was not so unscathed in surviving. If only he wasn't so stubbornly, optimistically, stupidly sane.
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.

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Why is Matsuda Important to a Story like Death Note? (Analysis by Lua Cruz)

4/4/2016

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It’s always interesting to discuss the motivations or moral inclinations one could read in the characters of Death Note.

In most cases, as one considers how a character’s morality fits into the story, it’s rather easy to see the reasons why the character themselves are important. However, Matsuda doesn’t seem to be remarkable in the same way the other characters of Death Note are.

In fact, thinking about Matsuda made me realize his importance seems to rely mostly on the fact he is actually isn’t remarkable at all.

Matsuda doesn’t hold strong enough convictions to make his moral actions interesting on their own, and that’s what makes his moral actions unique in this context. He is there to show us the difference between the characters involved in the Kira case (the genius detectives as well as the more experienced law enforcement) and the people affected by the Kira case (regular people such as Light’s family).

As a police officer, Matsuda still lacks the resolve the older investigators have, and that, which appears to make him simple-minded or even stupid sounding, puts this character in the position of judging Kira not as law enforcement but as just another person who can see the criminality rates dropping.
Death Note's Matsuda thinks
As a police detective lacking in experience, Matsuda becomes the one character involved in the Kira case that is just an ordinary person. He doesn’t have, yet, the strength of will to do good despite himself and, as we see when Matsuda is confronted by the reveal of Kira’s identity, his personal feelings and his moral views are still pretty much the same. If his importance comes from being the less experienced detective, it also comes from Matsuda being our constant reminder of a common sense point of view among more specific moral inclinations.

That is not to say, in any way, that Matsuda isn’t willing to sacrifice himself. The values Matsuda holds true and that motivate him towards acts of selflessness are not motivated by the greater good, so to say. If we look closely, he acts kindly and in a caring manner not as a police officer but as a friend or an empathetic acquaintance. Matsuda’s acts of bravery don’t hold the same meaning as Soichiro’s or Aizawa’s because their reasoning is presented to us as something done because that’s the right thing to do despite their internal conflicts while Matsuda’s actions are shown to be motivated by a desire to do good but an inability to detach himself from his personal desires and conclusions. For example, to show the contrast between Matsuda and the other investigators, we can take Ide as an example.

Ide disagrees with L and walks away from the investigation, he is still unable to walk away from the case itself as that would be turning a blind eye into a situation considered morally wrong. Ide couldn’t bring himself to choose neutrality when he was faced with the consequences of letting Kira run free; walking away from the investigation becomes a shameful act. When Matsuda is faced with doubts regarding Near as L, he isn’t ready to choose his convictions over his work even when he seems convinced Near did terrible things to be able to end the Kira case.

By the end of the manga, Matsuda has acquired some experience and that’s enough to make him doubt Near’s intentions. Nevertheless, Matsuda is, still, only beginning to abandon the path of an ordinary person and truly becoming an investigator. As he chooses to put aside his worries about Near, he also shows us there is a transition to be made from an ordinary person who is meant to be protect by the law and whose concerns can be perceived as personal ones, an actual investigator who can understand doing the right thing requires more than a good heart.

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The Matsu Art of Emerald-Moonlight: Drawings of Death Note's Matsuda

4/4/2016

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Australian student artist Gabrielle V. is a Matsuda Death Note fan of some long time standing.   Here she shares
three of her amazing portraits of Touta Matsuda; artwork utilizing her favourite, trusty mechanical pen.

Death Note: Matsuda

Emerald-Moonlight - Death Note: Matsuda - Death Note News

Originally posted in her digital gallery - Emerald-Moonlight/DeviantART
Republished here with permission
Gabrielle (aka Emerald-Moonlight) writes that these are older pieces, dating back several years ago.  She still draws Matsuda from Death Note, but none of her latest artwork featuring him is digitally accessible.  Much shame right there! 

Nevertheless, she gave us the pick of her DeviantART Matsu pictures to feature here for Month of Matsuda.  These are the ones we chose from a great array right there.

New Beginning

Emerald-Moonlight - New Beginning Death Note Matsuda artwork

Originally posted in her digital gallery - Emerald-Moonlight/DeviantART
Republished here with permission

Hate You

Emerald-Moonlight - Hate You: Death Note Near and Matsuda fan-art

Originally posted in her digital gallery - Emerald-Moonlight/DeviantART
Republished here with permission

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A Physicist Looks at Death Note Matsuda's Handstand Balcony Jump (Guest Article by Liam Dodd)

4/4/2016

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A quick disclosure before you wander down this rabbit hole. Matti asked me look into the scene below and discuss the possibility and likeliness of such a series of events being plausible, before inevitably concluding with ’Yeah.. but no’.

I haven’t watched Death Note in about five years, but I’m a physicist by trade, and have worked a lot in science outreach, so have ended up becoming Matti’s go to for ’Is this science bonked or not?’.  I’ve also spent enough of my life online that I have picked up a certain set of skills that make dinner party conversations with me rather awkward. So anyway, enjoy.

Death Note Matsuda's Handstand on a Balcony Leap Scene (Ep 19: Matsuda)

So let us begin by discussing the elephant in the room: the plan is really quite stupid.

A fundamental aspect of any plan is that it can’t be dependent on many independent occurrences happening in the sequence that is desired, for it to be successful. If you watch through the scene with a healthy level of scrutiny and cynicism then you notice that with a few significant changes in the behaviour of various actors within the plot, the outcome would have been very different.
Death Note Matsuda on the balcony
You could argue that the people in the room are very predictable, or that the masterminds behind this plan had thought it through so well that they knew exactly what would happen, but I’ve struggled to get three friends to meet at the pub at the right time and that involved significantly less props.

I don’t remember the exact context of this event, but they must have been an easier way to do it, and one that had at least one built in  contingency.

But we’ll get back to my nitpicking later, let’s go through some of the physical events that happen.

There’s the fall, the catch, the thrown weight, the fake body, and the removal of the body.
We’ll start with the initial fall, because, well, it’s where the plan really takes off. We’ll get to the possible issues with this actual plan in a bit, but let’s focus on the physics of what is going on.

To be successful in landing on the mattress below, he needs to fall with almost no horizontal deviation. The overhand of the mattress below is marginal at best, and this is a necessary feature (as I’ll address later) for the plan to work at all.

Falling with only a vertical component is difficult, as any horizontal motion you gain will continue until you are able to correct it in some manner.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds. At low speeds your behaviour in free fall is similar to that of an astronaut on the ISS. Because there is no base for you to push against any movement you do will generally have minimal impact on your actual location, and instead will just cause you to rotate around the centre of mass.
Matsuda falls in Death Note
This can seem a little counter-intuitive at first because it goes against our normal day to day experiences with motion and mechanics. When we want to go forward we just ’go forward’ and usually lean ourselves forward slightly, but we are actually pushing back against the ground to launch ourselves forward. We don’t really consider this about our movements, because we do it all so instinctively.

When people are thrown in zero gravity environment, like vomit comet flights, they usually flail around and try to swim through the air. This is exceptionally inefficient because you can’t swim in air. (Start at 2:20 in the video below.)
So to be entirely factual, you can kind of swim through air, but you need to going quick enough (or in windy enough conditions) that you can divert the air around you to guide yourself.

However, the few feet fallen between balconies is not enough time to even get close to the right speed. So unless a strong gust blew him suddenly back into the building, he has got to fall almost straight down. Which is a lot harder than it seems even with all the caveats of caution that we have looked at above.

Firstly, the last point of anchorage was the balcony ledge, upon which he made himself fall off of to the right. As a result his momentum is heading away from the building already. From where he is it is possible for him to fall vertically, but it is just very unlikely. His stance before ’slipping’ is nearly completely upright, so his centre of gravity is very high. That point is also very far from the pivot point, so is able to move a great distance horizontal with only a slight lean over the edge, and once set in motion they’ll be very little to correct it.

This is a fundamental issue when trying to on to an that is not below you, but instead below the object you are hanging off of. If you watch some trying to swing to a balcony from the one above you’ll notice that is actually very awkward to do.
The basic principles of mechanics make the very first part quite difficult, but we won’t write it off as impossible, because it is technically possible, just bloody awkward.
So now we get to the next part which poses some problems: the mattress landing.

We have to assume that he is able to land on the mattress, but even landing on it isn’t a sure sign of success.

To illustrate this, I want you to go to your bedroom and lift your mattress over your head. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to come back.

It actually doesn’t matter when you have gone to get your mattress because the mental image of you struggling to lift is enough to amuse me, because as you would realise if you *had* attempted to lift the mattress, they’re really bendy.

Way too bendy to actually be reliable to do what the video shows. We see our daring protagonist land on the propped up mattress comfortably, and head into the room swiftly. There are a multitude of ways that this part of the plan could backfire horribly.

If any of you engaged in the typical childlike behaviours of the youthful, you may have jumped on your, or more likely your parents, bed. However, if you have ever tried to repeat this as an adult you may have realised that beds are actually quite crap for bouncing on.

If you apply any significant force to a mattress you just depress to the point where you are either resting on springs or leaning on the surface beneath.

This is going to be a lot worse when you have the mattress resting on single points or edges. When the mattress is propped on an edge (like in the scene) then most of the mattress can bend or morph to accommodate the new uninvited guest, but the part resting on the ledge can’t.

So the force applied here just crushes the mattress against the edge, so where there was a one a nice cushion separating you from smashing your ribs against the ledge, there is now just a few centimetres of incompressible fabric.

In other words, it’s going to hurt like hell.
Matsuda mattress rescue

The Manga
Funny Death Note Matsuda mattress bends

The Likely Reality
Some of you may be shouting about ’crumple zones’ or *impulses*. Firstly, well done for listening during your science lessons. Secondly, you’re still wrong. Sorry.

Impulse is the change of momentum of an object, and cannot be changed for a given interaction. Momentum is simply to the mass of an object, multiplied by its velocity. So for a set object at a set velocity, coming to a rest, the momentum change is always going to be the same, so the impulse will be constant. But the force acting on that object is related to the time taken for the momentum change to happen. Impulse is usually denoted by a J (don’t ask why) and is defined as
Impulse definition formula
But for more simple cases we can simplify it to:
Simplified impulse formula
The first method is more thorough and can deal with more complex and interesting cases, but the second method is more applicable to every day examples. So working with the second equation let’s posit some numbers so we can illustrate our point. Let’s say you weigh 100kg and you’re travelling at 20ms-1 your momentum will be 2000Ns. If you, upon hitting the mattress, are going from that speed to rest your momentum change, or impulse, will be 2000Ns (as when you are not moving your velocity is zero so your momentum is also zero). The force you, the object feel, can now be found from the above equation for impulse, but we need to know the time over which it takes for you to stop. In a world without mattresses the time taken to stop is extremely short. If we assume that it takes 0.1 seconds to stop, then we have
Physics formula for velocity/momentum etc
This number is pretty high, and is like being rocked by a heavyweight boxers punch over your entire body. It’s not guaranteed to kill you, but it is like falling from a five story building, so unlikely to go well. But if we to simply extend the time it to stop by a factor of 5 (so it now takes half a second to stop) the force would drastically reduce to 4000N. Which would feel more equivalent to falling off a 2 foot high table (or around 70cm). An uncomfortable experience, and you can still break bones or damage your dignity, but significantly less likely to kill you.

But the ability of a mattress to replicate this increase of time to stop is highly suspicious, especially given the fall to that point. We have to take a few liberties because working out what exactly is going on in terms of precise numbers is not easy, but if we go for assumptions that make the events more likely, it looks like the fall is about two floors. This means that by the time he hits the mattress he is travelling at about 11ms-1. If we give him a weight of about 60kg then the force he experiences upon stopping at the mattress is a minimum of 3300N (but more likely nearing toward 6000N). This isn’t too bad as we showed earlier it was like falling off a table, but that was based on falling off a table onto a relatively flat floor. Here, we’re not.

We’re falling backwards onto a sharp edge. That force instead of being spread across the whole body is being focused directly across his back. Once again working on rough estimations, if we say the area of impact is about 0.006m2 (60cm is the width of his back, and the thickness of the ledge at impact is about a centimetre because his coming down on it at an angle) than the force per square metre climbs drastically 550,000Nm-2. That’s the kind of force
that snaps bones and spinal columns pretty swiftly.
Death Note Ep 19 - Touta Matsuda on the mattress, where he's landed without injury. Soichiro Yagami looks on.

Death Note Ep 19 - Touta Matsuda on the mattress, where he's landed without injury. Soichiro Yagami looks on.
What we are reliant on for this part to work is that the super thick mattress used isn’t like most mattresses, but instead is incredibly springy and cushioning, and able to absorb the entirety of the force, without dislodging or sliding, and without bending backwards over the edge (throwing our unlucky chap to the fate he seems destined for anyway).

I suppose it is possible, and I have just been experiencing awful mattresses, but it is demanding a lot from us to expect mattresses to behave like they do in TV, rather than how they do in real life.

So we are now down to the final part of the ruse, the fake throw and body. I’m including these two acts together because the problems with both are linked together. The initial part is how long it will take for someone falling to hit the ground. Once again, we are going off assumptions, but they will illustrate the problem even if we are off by a floor or two.

From my guesstimates it looks like the mattress is two floors below the party, and the ground is 5 floors below the mattress. With a height of seven floors we get an approximate height of the fall of about 21m (a storey is about 3m), and due to a series of equations called the suvat equations we can work out how long it would take to fall that distance.
suvat equation
For reasons that are best left unexplained, s is the distance, u is the initial velocity, a is the acceleration, and t is the time. In our case we know most of these values already. As we have said before s is about 21m, u is zero because he initially starts at rest (yes, that weird daredevil feat is classified as rest in this case, physics is odd), and a is just the gravitational acceleration due to the earth, which is 9.81ms-2. So we can rearrange this all to find an equation for t
Formula for Matsuda's fall Death Note
But that isn’t what happens here, instead the bag is thrown when he hits the mattress. If we assume the best case scenario, that the bag is thrown the moment he hits the mattress, then we instead have two equations that must be added together (one for the 6m fall, and another for the 15m fall). This gives a time to fall of a little over 2.8s. You may say that 0.8 of a second is too small for us to notice, but you would be surprisingly wrong (and it should be noted that the reality of the scene was the bag was thrown after he hit the mattress which would just increase the number).

Humans have a surprisingly good instinct for how things behave in Newtonian physics. It is the physics of every day motion.

When your friend is running across a field and you hurl a ball towards them you have instinctively solve a bunch of equations simultaneously to calculate where your friend will be, the trajectory of the ball, how long the ball will travel for, so where to aim for the intersection of friend and ball. Your brain is amazingly good at instinctively understanding how bodies behave at speeds and masses familiar to us, so when something happens within these ranges that feels wrong we notice very quickly. When the wannabe acrobat tumbled off the edge the people would have instinctively expected him to hit the ground at a certain time.

There would obviously be a margin of error, but the actual noise would come after they had begun to feel that disaster had been avoided. They wouldn’t know it immediately, but something about it would bother them, and would niggle at them. This could be avoided if the next part, which is too have some human juice surrounding the body.
Aiber as Matsuda in Death Note

Death Note's Aiber stands in (well sprawls in) as Matsuda's
supposed corpse for the viewing of Yotsuba executives. Wedy stands by
ready to scream as if witness to the fall and thud.
I don’t recommend looking up pictures of people who committed suicide by jumping off of great heights, but the person rarely looks all that pleasant afterwards. There are cases (the picture known as ’The Most Beautiful Suicide’ is a notable example) where the person looks relatively normal, but these are usually from when the impact was cushioned in a way that wasn’t enough to prevent death but was enough to stop the body being damaged.

There is usually some blood, some contortions of the limbs (that have broken or bent in inhuman ways), and in the most unpleasant of cases the head has cracked violently. These are pretty nasty aspects, but not beyond what you would expect the supposed mastermind of this act to know, and given the stakes these men have in deaths, they would probably know of this too.

They probably wouldn’t immediately call the whole act bullshit, but just like the extended fall time, it would continue to bother them and haunt them for reasons they can’t quite understand. They would probably at first assume it is because it was such an odd and ’tragic’ act, but those little errors, those disjointed continuities, they would begin to become more and more obvious to them.

Unless these men are truly the idiots that L assumes them to be (which I doubt because their supposed positions of seniority), someone would become suspicious of something, and seeing as they seemingly wanted him dead (once again, the narrative context is a little lost on me) I doubt that once they were rumblings that it could have been staged, it would be harder to put it back in Pandora’s box again.

Matsuda's Mattress Rescue: Implausible, but not Impossible

Death Note Touta Matsuda balcony Yotsuba
So after looking through the mechanics of the act it becomes obvious that the whole thing is possible, but decreasingly plausible.

They are so many little parts of it that either require the world to be more favourable than it usually is, and for those in the room to not notice any inconsistencies with the normal reality of such a large fall.

But the problem with the whole thing is that it fundamentally requires every single person in the room to act exactly as L predicts them to.

All it takes is for one person to run to the edge of the balcony, one person to attempt to physically remove him from his foolish feats, or one person to look down a little too soon and see a mattress poking out.

A good plan does not require that everything go an exact way for it to work, it just requires a few key events to ensure the course of fate runs the way you desire. The fundamental reason this plan would not work in the real world is because people like L think they can control everything but forget that humans have an amazing ability to go off script.

Read more from Liam Dodd Physicist at his own website, where he's also linked the article published here.

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Death Note Matsuda by Stella Meyer, with Advice on Creating Matsuda Artwork

3/4/2016

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Death Note Matsuda by Stella Meyer - Death Note News
Stella Meyer, a student and traditional artist from the United States, works mostly in pencil, though she employed pen too for part of her recent Death Note drawing featuring Touta Matsuda.   As a fan, there's plenty more where that came from in her gallery as JetDragon1656 on DeviantART.  You may also commission this talented artist in the creation of bespoke artwork.
Meyer additionally took the time to answer a few questions, providing tips on drawing Death Note's Matsuda.

Do you/have you created Matsuda art now or in the past?
Yes - currently.

How would you go about creating a Matsuda drawing/sculpture?
I personally started with drawing his face structure and then went about everything else from that.

What attributes, clothing and/or scenarios, do you feel are essential to include in Touta Matsuda artwork?
I think that the expression is essential to making Matsuda look and feel like the actual character.

Detail from Death Note Matsuda by Stella Meyer

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Near's Cheating as Canon Truth Revealed Through Matsuda's Death Note Theory

3/4/2016

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Death Note Manga Near and Light
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.

So - Run it by Us Again - How Did Death Note End?!  I Think We Missed a Bit...

Near L Mask Death Note
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.

Death Note Doesn't End at the Yellow Box

Shinigami Realm post-Kira Death Note
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.
Kira worshippers torch procession

Matsuda's Theory is Not a Coda; It's the Final Piece in the Jigsaw Puzzle

Matsuda's theory Death Note
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.

No Black and White in Light and Near - Matsuda Muses Upon Morality Post-Kira

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:
Death Note Matsuda and Ide - For What We Were Fighting
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.
There's another point unsettling Matsuda, prickling at his conscience - just because they all decided (at the time and since) to stand against Light Yagami, why should that make them automatically pro-Near?

It's like there's only two sides about which to align oneself, and if one is demonstrably evil/insane/wrong, then the other by default is good/reasonable/right.

The entire Task Force appears to view Near as L's true successor, completely, absolutely and with all due trust.  Their resources are placed at the Wammy boy's command.

Yet to Matsuda's mind, Near never earned that.  Moreover, there are a string of worrisome - potentially catastrophic - concerns which were never fully answered.  They could well be swapping one egotistical and manipulative serial killer for another; making the same mistakes all over again.  Unfortunately no-one appears ready nor willing to hear him out.
Death Note Matsuda doesn't wanna work with L (Near)

Does Tota Matsuda's Theory Reveal Death Note Truths as its Grand Manga Finale?

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:

Near Played Mello like a Puppet

Before indulging in speculation about this part of Matsuda's Theory re Mello, please read what Death Note News reader Dominic Miller has to comment below.  He has effectively disproved its veracity, as Near didn't have Mikami's notebook in time for this sequence of events to be feasible.
Death Note Matsuda's Theory that Near Puppeteered Mello into death
Death Note Mello bowed in manga
  • Was Near conveying misinformation to Mello via Hal Lidner, psychologically edging his foster brother into acting just as Near willed.  A pawn in his game after all.

Alternatively, as alumni of the same orphanage, Near might be expected to know Mello's real name, while also having a good mental picture of his face.  Mello's move certainly benefited Near, while obviously having dire consequences for Mello himself.  

  • Did Near write the name of his Wammy rival into the notebook captured from Mikami?

Thus eliminating a challenger to his own glory right on the eve of Near's win over Kira, whilst also taking out the dangerous Takada, setting up Mikami, providing evidence that Light is Kira to throw into play AND testing possible conjecture of Near's own in the validity of his real/fake Death Note. 

Five strikes in one foul swoop, if this one was true and Near really did manipulate Mello into his own martyrdom.  (With an option on Matt too. Near had the means and that eliminated the next in line after Mello, once the second's heart was broken and finally, decisively he could be burned out of this deadly game of L's Succession.)

If Mello's abduction of Takada was orchestrated by Near via a Death Note, it would explain some of the more bizarre aspects and imagery surrounding Mello at this time.

For a start, the moment of possession would have come when Hal and Mello spoke on the line. She passes on Near's specific message, "Soon he'll bring things to a conclusion directly."  And Mello answers, "He's going to make him write our names in the notebook directly."  Just as Hal said, he knew.

The blond Wammy teen sits on a darkened throne, forearms draped across his thighs and hands dangling; head bowed listlessly beneath a cascading curtain of hair.  Like a puppet awaiting his strings to be pulled; on a floor decked as a chessboard; surrounded by mannequins, aping the debris from a battle-field; and a white dust-cover behind him draped as an awaiting winding sheet or shroud.

If Mello's actions from now on are controlled by his puppet-master Near, then it accounts for his uncharacteristic lapse in judgement in the back of the truck.  When Takada - known to use the Death Note and likely to have a snippet of it upon her person - is allowed to retain her underwear, and is even afforded a blanket for the sake of decency.

All the privacy she needed to extract the weapon to kill Mihael Keehl on Near's behalf.  Just as planned.

Near Controlled and Killed Mikami

  • Near was in possession of Teru Mikami's name, facial image and a Death Note prior to the meeting in the Yellow Box warehouse.  Did he write Mikami's name in there, directing the lawyer's actions in the days leading up to, during and after their denunciation of Kira?

  • Mikami died mysteriously in prison ten days after the Yellow Box confrontation.  His passing went without remark by those who should have been asking questions concerning its convenience in tying up loose ends for all on the Kira case.  Did Near kill Mikami by writing the fatality into a Death Note?
I'm not going to tackle this key aspect of Matsuda's theory about Near in the Death Note ending, because quite frankly Casuistor and Teruzuki have already done and completely owned that.  Convinced me anyway.

Read their take on the matter over on Tumblr:

                 Matsuda’s Theory about Near’s Victory

Matsuda's Death Note theory - Near controlled Mikami

Death Note Near burning shinigami notebooks
Death Note worst homicide weapon in history

All ur Death Notes Belong 2 Near

  • Why was Near sole allowed custody of all shinigami notebooks remaining in the human world?

Near stated that Ryuk confirmed two false rules, with one of them being the burning of a Death God's notebook will causally kill its destroyer.  Near then burned all of his accumulated Death Notes, in order to keep them from being used by any future Kira pretender.

However, no-one else was present for that conversation with the shinigami. Though they all heard it heralded in discussion within the Yellow Box Warehouse. 

  • Moreover, nor did anyone witness Near's Bonfire of the Death Notes.  Therefore how can anyone be so sure that he hasn't got them still?

If Near possesses just one Death God's notebook, then he's currently an extremely powerful force to be reckoned with upon the world stage.  He's had ample opportunity to assess its possibilities and to know its limitations.  He's had Light, Misa, Mikami, Mello and a host of others test it out for him.

He has already used it to control the actions of others, supposing that Matsuda's theory is correct; and has killed several times for personal gain and achievement by cheating.

Nobody knows that he has it.  He's not orchestrating a crusade as Light attempted to do.  He's just got access to a remarkable level of personal power and influence, the eternal company of a Death God to discuss what's previously not been met in his philosophy. 

Near's under the radar because nobody thought to check that he really did incinerate those books.  A strange oversight to be made by police officers entrenched for years on this case.

Why is Near Staging a Reunion on the First Anniversary of Kira's Death?

  • Now, on the anniversary of that traumatic confrontation with Kira, why is Near:
  1. chasing a drugs cartel into the very same location;
  2. preparing to confront them actually in the Yellow Box Warehouse;
  3. and calling upon those there last time to join him in situ once again?

Ide initially sees nothing strange in this.  Aizawa agreed to send the staff.  No immediate word from Mogi, though the assumption is compliance.

Only Matsuda wonders what game the Wammy boy is playing now.  Though in this, at least, he does appear to persuade Ide that something strange is going on - a connection to what went before; what was previously arranged.
Death Note's Near assembles a Yellow Box reunion on Kira's Death Anniversary
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!"
Last panel in Death Note
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.

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On This Day in Death Note: April 3rd

3/4/2016

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Matsuda Death Note Actor Maeda Goki born April 3rd 1991
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Exploring Ziferonan's Matsuda of the Imagination in Cosplay, Art and Fics

1/4/2016

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Prepare to rifle through the zany gallery of Ziferonan, a Russian Touta Matsuda fan with an all-rounder's
talent in expression for his Death Note idol.  He said we could take what we wanted. So we did.

Matsuda on a Rainbow

Matsuda on a Rainbow by Ziferonan - Death Note News

Originally published on DeviantART
Reproduced with permission from Ziferonan

Jedi-Matsuda

Jedi-Matsuda by Ziferonan - Death Note News

Originally published on DeviantART
Reproduced with permission from Ziferonan

Dark City

Dark City - Death Note Matsuda art by Ziferonan - Death Note News

Originally published on DeviantART
Reproduced with permission from Ziferonan

There's plenty more where that came from.

In fact, it was hard work to whittle down which pieces of Matsuda fan-art we wanted to nick from Ziferonan's extensive collection.

Particularly when so many of them were very imaginative and unique in their aspect. The sort of Death Note art you don't tend to find anywhere else in the fandom, and we like that in a gallery!

To discover more Death Note Matsuda art from the mind and vision of Ziferonan, divert yourself onto DeviantART, where gems like these await.

Death Note Matsuda art Gloomy Day by Ziferonan - Death Note News

Originally published on DeviantART
Reproduced with permission from Ziferonan
Matsuda-Momo by Ziferonan - Death Note News

Originally published on DeviantART
Reproduced with permission from Ziferonan

Puppet - Death Note Matsuda Fan-Fiction by Ziferonan

Death Note Matsuda art Puppet on a Rose by Ziferonan - Death Note News
Not all of Ziferonan's Matsuda artwork stands alone. Some support his Death Note fan-fiction featuring Touta Matsuda too.

Part one of Puppet starts here with Sleepwalker, and continues on into a four part tale.

What you're seeing alongside here is the cover art to Ziferonan's Puppet Matsuda fan-fiction, with the picture alternatively titled Puppet on a Rose, when it was posted to DeviantART.

In Ziferonan's story Matsui is beset by the demands of Ryuzaki and Watari, leaving the sanctuary of the Kira investigation headquarters in search of cake.  Yet outside presents itself as a most surreal world, given Matsuda's sleepless state and the ever-present worry and trauma of seeing colleagues killed, while knowing himself to be upon a suicide mission, probably.

Not the quest for cake.  The Kira case.

But what catches his eye at four am isn't a bakery, nor a lead on the hunt for a serial killer.  Richly glowing, bright within the dreary early morning air is a toy shop, and Matsuda enters.

... Touta felt himself falling somewhere very very deep away from reality...

Puppet is Ziferonan's first fan-fiction story in English.  It was originally written in his native Russian and translated so the English-speaking fandom might enjoy it too.

Read it from the Puppet: Sleepwalker link given above, then on to:

Puppet 2: Missing
Puppet 3: Spring Dream
and concluding with Puppet 4: Care

A Kira-ish Matsuda Cosplay by Ziferonan

And if all of that wasn't enough, then Ziferonan also cosplays Touta Matsuda from Death Note.
Albeit apparently accidentally.  He was aiming for Mikami at the time.

Death Note Kira Matsuda cosplayer Ziferonan - Death Note News

Kira-ish Matsuda with a Note
Originally published on DeviantART
Reproduced with permission from Ziferonan
What do you reckon?  The scariest Matsuda ever envisaged?   Or much scope for thoughtful contemplation about what the Death Note world would have looked like, if it HAD been Touta Matsuda who picked up a shinigami's notebook?   Way more fan-fiction in the plot bunny right there!

~ Thank you for the pick of your gallery, Ziferonan.  Didn't use nearly all that we would have liked to!

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Analysing Light Ten Years After Death Note, Plus the Importance of Matsuda

1/4/2016

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Light Yagami Death Note
To mark the tenth anniversary of Death Note, there's a fabulous analysis of the manga's protagonist over on Anime News Network.

Under the heading Ten Years of Death Note: Is Light the Bad Guy?, columnist Jacob Hope Chapman takes a reasonably in-depth, albeit whistle-stop look not only at the character of Light Yagami himself, but how fans received him and how the author may have intended him to be.

There's a discussion on why people might accept mass murder and even justify the need - touching upon the darker impulses within us all; and whether insanity runs more rampant than merely with Kira.

Chapman brilliantly, and humorously, makes the case for Light Yagami being no 'anti-hero' nor erstwhile saviour, but a villain par excellence. Perhaps manga's most iconic villain at that.
Moreover, Chapman contextualises Kira within the wider auspices of justice.  Making me happy, he also alights upon issues of human rights, which Light Yagami certainly never goes near.

Though he never elaborates upon the point, the columnist does demonstrate quite clearly how easily society will accept the wicked and insane, if the justification is presented gradually and enticingly enough.  In this regard using Kira apologists amongst the Death Note fandom as an example, rather than, say, Donald Trump's supporters.  Seen from a long view, their pro-Kira arguments are denigrated as 'commonly insane'.  Can't argue there!

Everyman Matsuda - The Reader's Representative Within the Death Note Plot?

Chapman also talks about other characters in relation to Light Yagami (who is, after all, the focus of his analysis).

In particular he notes how Matsuda is too regularly dismissed as merely the idiot of the Death Note world.  When, upon closer inspection, it turns out that the young police officer holds a vital role within the narrative and its dramatis personæ.

Matsuda serves as an everyman, the character whose views act as a litmus test for the wider perspective of fashionable society.  As he wavers in support of Kira, then so do the greater Japanese masses.

If not an actual bellwether, then Matsuda certainly performs as a weathercock, testing the winds of public acclaim or disdain concerning Kira at any given juncture.
Matsuda Death Note anime
His ultimate dismissal of Light Yagami as God - or Kira as a force of justice and good - pretty much serves as the Japanese populace turning its collective back upon such grandiose pretensions of divinity.   Or as Chapman puts it:
Matsuda's emotional breakdown is one of the best parts of the show's finale because it just feels so right. Over time, without anyone noticing, Matsuda came to represent the everykid: all those normal Japanese millennials just trying to live their lives, maybe secretly posting defenses of Kira online, maybe just keeping their conflicted feelings to themselves, but open enough to the incredible change Kira had caused to feel like maybe condemning him wasn't fair. Of course there's something attractive about the idea of people who hurt others getting universally punished to create a more peaceful humanity. But it's just an idea, and when Matsuda is confronted with the reality of Kira—an egomaniacal brat who even killed his own dad to further his self-righteous empire—he feels more betrayed than anyone else.
~ Ten Years of Death Note: Is Light the Bad Guy?, Jacob Hope Chapman, Anime News Network (March 18th 2016)
And though Chapman doesn't go so far as to say it, doesn't that make Matsuda our representative in the Death Note universe too?  The Everyman serves as spokesperson for the readership, as we get seduced by the rhetoric of Light Yagami and symbolizes our own slap in the face by reality, as Kira's descent into insanity becomes way too obvious to support.

Then we too, like Matsuda, get to retrace our own allegiances back through each worsening compromise to that first loosening of all common sense and good morals.

Instead, Chapman sees in Matsuda a proxy for Tsugumi Ohba's own secret views on the matter, which itself makes fascinating reading and compelling food for thought.   It's definitely worth the time to check it out.

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