Death Note/Headscratchers/Characters' Actions: Difference between revisions

** Naomi Misora retired; Light was not the only person Penber followed and as Naomi disappeared, Penber was not himself a 100% solid lead, just a likely one; Light is too much a sociopath for a [[Honey Trap]]; and as L didn't get anything definite on Light during the surveillance, he figured getting closer was the way to go.

** Light was quite careful; he made the instructions on the sheet of paper Penber wrote on kill the FBI members after they got the packet with the names and faces, so it's unclear who leaked the information. He also disposed of Naomi by forcing her to kill herself without anyone noticing, preventing anyone from realizing what she knew about him. This reduced the likelihood of him being suspected.

 

 

*** Wait, L's hair is green? What?

*** Its black, it just has some green tints to itsometimes.

*** Looks black to me, although to be fair Gimp's colorpicker shows a little tiny bit of green in some of the lighter areas. Old monitors sometimes overdrive the green. Check your monitor.

*** Is L even white? I thought the writer of the anime said he was, like, one quarter Japnese, one quarter Russian, one quarter English and one quarter something else. So not white.

* Misa told Light that she had a friend handle the Kira tapes she sent to Sakura TV and that the friend didn't know what was really on the tapes, so its safe to assume her friend's fingerprints would be on the tapes so why isn't her friend ever a suspect.

** 1) They didn't know who those fingerprints belonged to. 2) If they found out, they investigated her off-screen and realized she didn't fit the profile.

 

 

** He saw Light's apprentice grab it during the abduction. He let himself be followed when he wrote down the names of the very people Light killed.

** Expanding on the above, Mikami rushed off to write Takada's name in the Death Note to keep her from talking. In doing so he broke his rigid schedule. Curious, Near searched his deposit box and found the Death Note.

*** It Just Bugs Me that I've seen at least three people put this idea forward. It should go without saying that Near couldn't use the Death Note that he stole from Mikami to get Mikami to reveal the location of the Death Note so Near could steal it. Unless the SPK was intentionally trying to fool the ''audience'', Near never had contact with the Death Note before it was switched. Matsuda himself doesn't reference this idea, either; he puts forward an explanation for why someone as careful as Mikami wouldn't test the Death Note before coming to the warehouse, coupled with the fact of Mikami's death.

*** But that's not the theory. The theory is that Near used the Death Note ''after'' he made the switch, to keep Mikami from testing the fake one on his way to the warehouse at the end. It's probably false in the anime, in which Mikami kills himself. In the manga, it's very likely.

** How does Near even pick out Mikami from the thousands of other psychopathic kira supporters anyway? His actions don't make him any more obvious than they would be. Are we looking at a case of deus ex machina just to finish the series? It just made Near seem less belivable (and likable) than L.

*** The manga explains this a lot better - Mikami appeared on two of Takada's shows, giving him enough time to get to know her, Mikami's insistence on people contributing to society to their fullest on one of the shows echoes Takada's "use your skills or DIIIIIEEE!" message, and, most importantly, after the emergence of X-Kira, Mikami made a speech that Near recognized as subtly asking Kira for instructions on what to do next.

*** Honestly... Even in the manga, it's really a stretch. Certainly not as egregious as the anime version of the scene, but still not all that believable.

**** How so? Mikami is meant to be someone Near would conclude as being the second-Kira, that was his entire role. Both Light and Near had the exact same amount of information regarding him, and Near would be looking at the qualities Kira would want in an accomplice; Mikami publically stated he thought Kira was God in a survey, he has a high devotion to justice, and most importantly of all he publically stated that people should live their lives to their fulliest potentia, which lined up with X-Kira's MO. The more you looked at the guy the more you saw that he was fanatically devoted to Kira and his ideals. Plus again, he also pretty much asked Kira to tell him what to do on public TV .

** He probably was doing this offscreen; however, the story was about the battle between Light and L, not fictional dictators being killed off.

** In the last few episodes, Light states that one of Kira's accomplishments is not just an end to crime, but to war. So it's implied that he has indeed killed off various governing officials.

 

 

** Not quite. In volume four, he wonders if he could get the second Kira off as leniently as possible for turning the original Kira. That showed that he would be willing to make a deal like that.

** But just how short ''is'' Misa's lifespan after all the screwing around given that she's had it halved twice but then ''also'' had the lifespans of two Shinigami added to it?

*** Well, considering that she was supposed to die when that one shinigami saved her, her lifespan equals (1/8 Jealous' lifespan)+ (1/2 Rem's lifespan). At the time Rem could make that prospective deal, it would be 1/8 whatshisname's lifespan. Of course, without knowing a shinigami's lifespan, that could be any length of time.

*** I don't think it's ever explicitly stated that you can't extend your own lifeline by killing someone with the Death Note-otherwise, it'd be totally idiotic to take the Shinigami eyes because no matter what badassitude you pull off with the Death Note, you'll always die in half the time. Events will conspire such that you will die in a shorter period of time, but a Death Note can augment these events again.

** Light breaks down because he is a sociopath who has just been exposed for all to see; his falling apart represents the mask torn off from hiding his madness. There are no more strings to pull and he knows it; there's no way he could be sentenced in an offical trial (he wrote damn names into a notebook!), so most likely he would have faced just a quick field execution.

** Given that most of the world now seems to take Kira's existence for granted, pinning the deaths ''to'' someone shouldn't be that far out there. The only question is whether or not the Death Note itself would be admissible as evidence. Considering that nobody else who learned what the Note was seemed to have a problem with it, that, too, ought to be at least possible, if not an easy trick. Just off the top of my head, if they didn't want to risk the trouble of getting the Death Note officially recognized, they could have pulled a Lind L. Tailor on him - arrested, tried, sentenced and most probably executed in secret by those "in the know."

*** Remember that Near wasn't a good guy by any stretch and had long since demonstrated a willingness to engage in criminal activities to catch Light. There was no reason to expect any outcome but a quick murder.

** There's a famous saying that applies here. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". It's clear the Death Note is as near as absolute power as one can get in the series (or in the real world for that matter) without being a Shikigami. Imagine the possibilities of being able to just kill by writing a name in a book, especially when you're in a world where magic is not meant to exist. Who wouldn't be tempted with that power? Unfortunately, the allure of that power just changed Light for the worst. As we saw, at the beginning he was only planning on killing criminals to make the world a better place. Then that extended to killing people who were trying to stop him, because in his mind, they were just as bad as criminals. Then it went further as to Light making himself to be the new God of this world. With such power and an extremely high opinion of himself (that was being fed with every win he had, especially after defeating L) when reality finally crashed down on him, it hit him real hard. Doesn't help him that he was practically unstable because of the power feed all of his success seem to be giving him, all it needed was for something to fall apart for him to snap.

* Why didn't anyone try to {{spoiler|revive L?}} I mean, come on?! He's the freakin' leader of the Kira investigation! But has anyone attempted to revive a victim of a Death Note?

** Personally, I always thought heart disease sufferers walked round with "Please Resuscitate" necklaces in this universe. But as for your original question, they did in the manga. They probably avoided it in the anime for time, and so that there was no break in the staggering dramatic irony.

*** Yeah, the anime just cut that part out for the sake of pacing.

 

** In the first place, Machiavelli never said that a Prince mus rule by fear (actually, quite the opposite, only attacking when strictly necessary). Plus, no, it's not good enough, as God does not rule by fear, and seeing how many [[God Is Evil]] story are, I think that take out a God whose lifespan is 100 years at best is not a big deal. Also, Light {{spoiler|DID kill a God of Death (Rem)}}, why can't all the humanity can?

*** He believes that he's not only dealing with criminals, but also dealing with the conditions that cause them, thinking that criminal acts cause the victims to believe that unscrupulous means are the only way to get by. He thinks that if no one commits crimes, everyone will be free to live virtuously, and the vicious cycle will be eliminated. Whether they will continue to do so without the fear of death by Kira is another matter, though.

** Once he is done killing his genius rivals, he can start looking for and grooming a successor so the world will always be ruled by Kira. Hell, maybe he would finally consummate his marriage with Misa and produce the next God of the new world himself!