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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

Ok, I've stopped now.

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. 

And prepare to do it all again, this time with the focus on Wammy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

But for more simple cases we can simplify it to:

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

And everyone lived happily ever after.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rest is simply fan-fiction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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:

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.