Death Note Meta (Interpreting the Foot Scene)

by ArgentNoelle

Summary:

1. Criminal Profiling as it Applies to Death Note (Technically, Light is a serial killer or a multiple murderer. NOT a mass murderer.)
2. How Many People did Light Yagami Kill? (It's as low as 1,300 people.)
3. An Argument for Aroace L Lawliet (L says it himself on two different occasions.)
4. Light Yagami and Honorifics (Family dynamics, and how L and Light insult each other by being polite.)
5. How L Solved the Kira Case (L is good at his job.)
6. Death Note—Interpreting the Foot Scene (an in-depth look at biblical and queer readings of the scene, and what L meant by it all.)
7. Light's Bookshelf (When Light designed his room, he decided he wanted to live in a library.)

Chapter 1: Table of Contents

1. Criminal Profiling as it Applies to Death Note • Technically, Light is a serial killer or a multiple murderer. NOT a mass murderer.

2. How Many People did Light Yagami Kill? • It's as low as 1,300 people.

3. An Argument for Aroace L Lawliet • L says it himself on two different occasions.

4. Light Yagami and Honorifics • Family dynamics, and how L and Light insult each other by being polite.

5. How L Solved the Kira Case • L is good at his job.

6. Death Note—Interpreting the Foot Scene • An in-depth look at biblical and queer readings of the scene, and what L meant by it all.

7. Light's Bookshelf • When Light designed his room, he decided he wanted to live in a library.

8. aromantic asexuality and light’s “coldness” • A frequent descriptor among people who watch Death Note and try to come up with a way to describe Light is that he’s “cold” “unfeeling” and “a psychopath.” All diagnosis aside, what is the element here that is being understood and interpreted in that way?

9. Memories regained: why did Light scream when Misa didn’t? • Memories, context, shinigami.

10. Kira is Light Yagami's Excuse • An answer to the question: are Kira!Light and Yotsuba!Light the same person?

11. Thoughts on Genderbent Death Note • How the story would differ & stay the same.

12. Platinum End is a bad genderswapped Death Note.

13. An Ace Reading of Light Yagami • If Light was asexual, how would that tie into his self-identity and canon characterization?

14. The Impact of Light Yagami's Time in Confinement • Some background on the psychological effects of solitary confinement, and how that might have impacted Light.

Chapter 2: Criminal Profiling as it Applies to Death Note

Notes:

The huge pdf these notes are from is worth reading if you're interested in specifics; I didn't copy over anything detailed about the crimes they solved by using criminal profiling. I also don't know when these articles were originally written.

Criminal Profiling articles in the FBI archives

The meta/notes below are taken from the first two scans out of seven (I may or may not ever get around to looking through the rest).

Criminal profiling is basically behavioral science for the purpose of solving crimes. It's useful for a number of things, not just solving murders, but also in dealing with hostage negotiations or dealing with threatening letters.

Letter Writing

Some methods used in dealing with threatening letters. Every word in message is assigned to threat dictionary, compared to words found in ordinary speech and writing, used to figure out stuff about whether same person wrote letters or not [think the questions about whether all the jack the ripper letters were all written by same dude; people think probably not] figure out the signature words of the offender [i.e. shinigami] > used to figure out stuff about background. [where person came from I assume, as far as dialects etc or education levels]. This would certainly have been used when dealing with Misa as the Second Kira.

General Observations from the PDF

Crimes with a clear motive are easier to profile. Kira would actually have been an easy one for L, as the clear focus only on criminals would lead to the obvious assumption that Kira had some sort of connection with law enforcement, only added to by the leak early on in the show, which was combined with his showing-off nature. Then, during surveillance when Light showed the exact same characteristics, no wonder he suspected him.

Profilers lots of times work from photographs & preliminary reports/evidence & don’t always visit crime scenes. L mentions how he usually works apart from the scene, and in Another Note/the BB Murder Case you see how he likes to use investigators on the ground as well as evidence sent to him. Stuff such as where body was, murder weapon, signs of struggle, etc / even when people try to pass of one kind of crime for another there are usually inconsistencies. Woman killed in home with no sign of struggle, had been drinking, supposed sexual murder but no physical evidence of that? Husband did it as crime of passion, washed off hammer in sink & tried to play it off.

Criminal profiling often leads to suggested interview techniques. L realized early on that Kira couldn’t resist showing off to look smart and to taunt the investigators, so created an interview process with the tennis game and then the pictures that would lead Light to do the same if he were Kira. Light, even knowing what L’s tactic was here, still fell for it.

Criminal profiling uses brainstorming, intuition, educated guesswork, and familiarity with a large number of cases. The profiler creates hypothetical formulations—that is, a concept that organizes and explains information from crime scene data & the profiler's knowledge of other crimes.

Useful Information for the Criminal Profiler

Complete synopsis of crime, description of crime scene, time of incident, weather conditions, political and social environment. Complete background information on victim. Domestic setting, employment, reputation, habits, fears, physical conditions, personality, criminal history, family relationships, hobbies, social conduct. Forensic information. Autopsy report with toxicology/serology results, autopsy photographs, photographs of cleansed wounds. Medical examiners findings, impressions of estimated time of death, cause, type of weapon, suspected sequence of delivery of wounds. Additional aerial photographs, 8x10 color photographs of crime scene, sketches showing distance, direction, and scale, maps of the area.

What can this tell the profiler?

This evidence can reveal level of risk of the victim, the degree of control exhibited by the offender, offender’s emotional state and criminal sophistication. [the being away from crime scene of Kira, on top of the targeting of criminals, would add to that whole hands off/judgment from above thing that lead to L suspecting he had a god complex] WHAT NOT TO HAVE. Stuff about possible suspects, as that may bias the profile/investigation.

This information must be organized into meaningful patterns.

Here's an image of the criminal profile generating process that's pretty interesting:

Types of Murder

Homicides are classified by type and style. Single homicide = 1 victim/event. Double homicide = 2 victims, 1 event/location. Triple homicide = 3 victims/1 event/location. Above that, classified as mass murder.

Types of mass murder are classic and family. Classic is a person acting in one location or period of time. Mental issues lead to violent lashing out against people who may not have anything to do with his problems. Shootings where people open fire on bystanders is a classic mass murder.

Family is if more than three members of the perpetrator’s family is killed. If perpetrator takes his own life, it’s classified as a mass murder/suicide. Without suicide & with four or more victims, it’s called family killing.

There are also spree and serial multiple murders [not considered mass murders]. A spree murder is killing at two+ locations with no emotional cooling-off period in between, and considered all part of a same event, which can be long or short duration. A dude took a gun, started walking through the neighbourhood and killing people for 20 minutes. It’s classified as a spree, not mass murder, because he changed locations.

Serial murderers. That is 3 or more separate events with emotional cooling off between events. [I have a feeling that Light would have been considered a spree murderer for the first five days he had the death note. Evidence that it was a single event and he didn’t spend much time thinking about it: he filled so many pages, lost five pounds, wasn’t sleeping, and was still in a manic state when he first met Ryuk]. After that first week, he would be considered a serial murderer. This type premeditates his crimes, fantasizes about them, etc. We’ve got the bus-jacking incident and all the experiments he does; it’s very premeditated. The serial murderer, after cooling off from last victim, proceeds with plans. This cooling-off period can be days, weeks, or months. But there are also other differences between this type and other murder types.

Classic mass murderers and spree multiple murderers are not concerned with who their victims are. A serial murderer on the other hand, selects a type of victim, and thinks he will never be caught. The serial murderer controls the events. Serial murderers may commit spree murders too. For instance, if tracked by law enforcement/hunted down. The change comes about with lack of cooling-off period, and happens because murderer is feeling desperate. Light changed from a serial murder to a spree murderer when he killed the FBI agents going after him.

Possible Motives of Murders

It's important to figure out the primary intent of the murderer. Killing itself might not be the intent. The intent may be criminal enterprise, emotional, selfish, or cause-specific, or sexual. Criminal ones include where money is the object, contract murders, gang murders, competition, and political ones.

Emotional, selfish, or cause-specific include self-defense or compassion, mercy killings/life support disconnection; family disputes may lie behind family killings, paranoid reactions can lead to murder. Symbolic crimes or psychotic outbursts. Even assassinations. Religious, cult, and fanatic groups.  Sexual ones pretty self-explanatory.

Risk Factors and What it Says about the Murderer

Victim risk can lead to stuff about how murderer is choosing victims. [high risk = bus depots, isolated areas, etc, plus other things that would make victim an easier target].

Offender risk is how much risk the offender had of being caught, and can generate assumptions about how he works. For instance, a low-risk victim sought under high-risk circumstances leads to ideas that criminal may not feel he will be apprehended, stresses, needing excitement, maturity level.

Light changing the times he killed people in response to their information about Kira is adding to his risk level by taunting them, it shows he needs excitement and that his maturity level is low. Although L already knew this from the Lind L Tailor broadcast. This is why L felt confident in saying that if they stopped Kira from killing criminals by ceasing broadcasts, he would probably move onto regular people. He’s recognized that this is partially an adrenaline/power-play thing.

Misc.

Escalation. Look at sequence of facts to predict possible escalation of crimes. In the Kira case, L refuses to pressure media to stop giving out criminals' names and faces fearing that it would lead to an escalation of Kira's killings.

Time factors. Length of time needed to kill the victim [with the Lind L Tailor broadcast, L discovers this can happen in real time]

Location factors add to details about offender. L uses the Lind L Tailor broadcast to quickly narrow down where Kira is operating to the Kanto region.

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The Crime Assessment Stage

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Crime assessment stage. Reconstruct series of events, behavior of criminal and victim. Assessments made about classification of crime, organized/disorganized aspects, offender’s selection of victim, sequence of crime, strategies to control victim, staging (or not) of crime, motivation for crime, crime scene dynamics.

Organized vs Disorganized

Organized murderer plans out his crimes, chooses victims carefully, controls his victims, acts out violent fantasies, etc / disorganized is less planned, victims are more random & it may have less to do w fantasy than psychotic impulses. Knowing this can lead to knowing if crime was staged to look like a type of crime it wasn’t. If it’s staged in such a way that you can tell criminal had knowledge of police procedure that leads to knowing there is law enforcement background and that true motive/type of crime may be different than it appears. For instance, rape-murder disguised as extortion to throw law enforcement off his tracks.

Motivation easier to gather from an organized crime/planned out thing.

What to do next?

Create criminal profile, including how criminal will respond to different investigative efforts. Demographics, physical characteristics, habits, beliefs and values, pre-offence behaviors, plus recommendations for interviews/apprehension. Then, suspects are evaluated. Then, get suspect to confess.

The crime scene [what’s there] can show if criminal brought anything, that is, if it was planned or not. This can be different than death scene place. Weapons of opportunity imply that crime was not premeditated.

Task forces are assembled to deal with specific crimes.

If well publicized and offender knows police will get to him [since in the a case referenced in the PDF it means he’d lived or worked in same building] profilers concluded he would probably inject himself into investigation, appear helpful, but actually be seeking information. [Light’s cooperation with the investigation actually a mark against him once it has been narrowed down to someone associated with the task force].

There is no need for the confession if you get the physical evidence [in the case in the PDF, teeth impressions matched. Or, in Kira case, Misa and the DNA matches on the envelopes. The confession L wants to get from her is not to prove that she is the Second Kira—that is already proven—but to find out her method and to try to prove that Light was also Kira.]

At time this was written, they were starting databases about crime types based on interviews with incarcerated felons of different types. [They would certainly start a Kira database where they kept patterns of his kills/times/types/anything they could get about it.]

Observations about Personality Disorders and the DSM (direct quote)

“There are many types of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ behavior. Many of these behaviors may have a label attached to them by behavioral scientists. It is most important to bear in mind that such a label is merely an abbreviated way to describe a behavior pattern. It is nothing more than a convenience by which professionals communicate. The important aspect is the specific characteristics or symptoms of each person. The symptoms are revealed in the way the individual ‘acts out’ and in the responses which the individual may make to the professional. The labels may differ from doctor to doctor because they are simply each doctor’s interpretations of the symptom.

"A symptom, then, is the ‘visible evidence of a disease or disturbance,’ and a crime, particularly a bizarre crime, is as much a symptom as any other type of acting out by an individual. A crime may reflect the personality characteristics of the perpetrator in much the same fashion as the way we keep and decorate our homes reflects something about our personality.”

Notes:

p.s. this is apparently also one of only two fics that use the tag "behavioral science." Pretty surprising! (&, I mean, technically this isn't even a fic. It's a meta)

Even more surprising... it's one of only two fics that use the tag "Criminal Profiler L Lawliet" even though that's his actual job as shown in canon. The fic that uses that tag is Covetous by labasu & it's a crossover with Hannibal & it's literally the best thing ever.

Chapter 3: How Many People Did Light Yagami Kill?

Summary:

I think Light's number of kills, as Kira, is actually *much* smaller than usually assumed.

I was reading this really interesting meta that tried to calculate the number of people each of the different Kiras killed. With Mikami and Takeda, it’s pretty easy to find out their number of kills per day (132), which is higher or similar to the number Light had Misa killing before that. They went with a proposed range of 100-150 post-2009 for Misa. In summer 2009, it’s mentioned in the manga that “the punishments by Kira accelerate in both rate and speed,” which lines up with when Light joins the NPA and gains access to their databases.

Therefore, during the first arc Light was killing definitely less than 132 people per day, and I would agree also probably less than 100 people per day, since the increase in killings in 2009 wouldn’t stand out to such an extent otherwise.

In the meta that I read, 50 was used for argument’s sake, although casuistor pointed out that was an overestimate since, in the absence of police databases, Light was killing based on the news, and that he also researches the cases to some extent since he distinguishes between motives (self-defense or not) and whether a criminal seemed to repent of a crime or not, and it seems like he also didn’t make a point to kill criminals who had already served their sentences.

Casuistor points out that Light kills using the death note from November 28th 2003 through June 1st 2004 (186 days), which is when he first got the notebook to when he enters confinement.

I actually think that Light kills far less people than you might assume, and I also think there’s extra time variability to be taken into account when it comes to Light’s kills between November 28th 2003 through June 1st 2004. So, the following is my idea of how many people Light actually killed…

 

 

 

 

November 28, 2003 - December 2, 2003 - the first five days

This is when Light kills the most people, imo. He thinks he’s going to die, as evidenced by the fact that when Ryuk arrives Light claims he’s “ready for anything” and asks if Ryuk is about to take his soul. He spent the week in a horrible state, barely sleeping, and didn’t think about anything else other than writing down more names/convincing himself that what he was doing was a good thing. This doesn’t line up at all with his later pattern, and in fact is an example of a killing spree brought upon by his initial accidental murders. There are two other things to take into account. Light first started with, in his own opinion, the worst/most notorious killers, which I assume would be killers and cases he was already somewhat familiar with and people who he had already wished would die before he even got the death note, which means he wouldn’t have to do any research.

We also know that he’s filled in at least two full-page spreads in the notebook by the end of the first five days, when he shows it to Ryuk, at which point the shinigami is seriously impressed by Light’s murder dedication.

We don’t know the size of Light’s handwriting, but on average, handwriting is twice the size of typewritten words, and there’s no reason to think Light was particularly trying to write small—after all, he’d literally just started writing in the notebook, the whole thing was empty, so he wouldn’t be worried about using up pages or anything. Typewritten single-spaced pages are 500 words per page, so handwritten pages would average 250 words per page. Even though this is based on writing in English, not Japanese characters, I’m going to assume that the space an English word takes up is fairly equivalent to the space a Japanese name takes up, and say that, based on what we see, since Light has filled in at least two facing pages of the death note by December 2, that he’s killed at least 500 people. This averages to 100 people killed per day for the first five days.

EDIT:

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I found a reference on the death note wiki that counted exactly how many names Light wrote on each page, from the appearance of the book in Rebirth (at the end of the first five days). According to the wiki, "each page in the Death Note has 38 lines and Light writes in four vertical rows of names on both pages, eight vertical rows overall with 152 names on each page, totaling in 304 names on both pages."

Also in Rebirth, the ICPO conference is being called because of the deaths of criminals at large and behind bars, "fifty-two in the past week, and that's just those we know about."

From that I'd actually revise my initial count downward. Light could have killed as few as 304 people, and if it were much more than that, I think the conference would have identified a higher number of suspicious deaths in the past week. So I'm going to go with a total of 304.

total kills: 304

 

 

 

 

How much free time does Light have?

School would begin for him at 8:30 and end at 3:00 if he’s not taking any extracurriculars, at 5:00 if he is taking extracurriculars. Under the assumption that his extracurricular activities tended to be tennis playing, and he’s already quit that, we can argue that his school takes up 6 hours and 30 minutes of his day. After that he has juku (cram school). Classes can run for 4-5 hours after school. Since Light is studious, let’s say he takes classes that run for 5 hours. While some references said juku was only once a week, most references seemed to agree that, especially in the later grades, they were every day. Since it’s 2003-2004, he’ll have Saturdays as well as Sundays off. (Saturdays off on every week didn’t start till 2002).

There are 24 hours in the day, if Light didn’t sleep at all during those first 5 days. But let’s assume he slept two to three hours most nights. Let’s also assume he did no socializing and pretty much didn’t stick around to eat dinner either.

24 - 6.5 - 5 - 3 = 9.5

So, Light would’ve had 9 hours and 30 minutes per day during those first five days to write. Converting that to minutes, he would’ve had 570 minutes per day in which to write 100 names, so he would’ve been writing, on average, 1 name every 5.7 minutes. That’s pretty fast. (Again, though, he has much more time on the weekends—Saturday and Sunday fall between November 28 and December 2 in 2003). It’s possible Light could’ve written more names than that;  if he wrote twice as fast he could have killed up to 1,000 people in those five days. But, I’m going to go with the lower number because, even if he knows the cases and the criminals, Light’s probably still going to have to look them up in order to have their faces in his mind, and to make sure he’s spelling the names correctly. So personally I don’t find the higher number plausible, and from personal preference when working this out I’m going to go with Light’s minimum possible kills, instead of maximum, for the rest of the meta.

EDIT:

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This is overwritten a bit by the stuff in the next section, where I realized there's canonical info about Light's sleep schedule/killing patterns after the first five days, from which you can actually figure out stuff like how much time he spends in school, how long he sleeps, etc.

On top of that, this is 2003, early internet era. Light doesn't have the kind of high-speed connection to the information he's looking for that we take for granted now. Writing 1 name every 5 minutes is even more ridiculously fast as an assumption when you take technology into account. So for that reason too, his kill count being as low as 304 makes a whole lot more sense even than my initial estimate.

 

 

 

December 3, 2003 - December 5, 2003 - until Lind L Tailor

In chapter 2, Ryuk mentions how dedicated Light is to killing and Light explains, “I don’t have time to waste, Ryuk. I only have a few hours a day to write names into the notebook between getting home from school and going to bed. It’s important that I stay at the top of my class. So I can’t sleep in class, and I have to do all my homework, for both my school and prep course. But I need to get enough sleep, because if I don’t, it’ll affect my health and concentration.” We can see here that between chapters one and two, the state Light is in and what he’s taking into account has definitely changed. This is when his Kira kills change from his initial killing spree to him being a serial killer.

Let’s say Light’s opinion of getting enough sleep is the official 8 hours a night. Let’s also take away an hour for him to eat dinner and two hours for breakfast and walking to and back from school and cram school, and say that he studies for three hours.

24 - 8 - 1 - 2 - 3 = 10

He now has ten hours to write.

Going with his new pattern/what he’s taking into account, and the fact that I’d think Light would have gotten through most of the criminal cases he already knew about without having to research within his first five days, then I don’t think it’s reasonable to say he wrote more than 10 names per day, which would leave 1 hour to research each one. Sure, you could say maybe he only spends a half an hour on each case, especially if all he’s doing is skimming news articles, but considering he seems to want to judge accurately, I just can’t see him thinking half an hour is enough time to get an overview of a case he hasn’t been introduced to before. But that really is up to personal interpretation of Light’s character… 10-20 names per day seems reasonable after the first five days. But I’ll go with 10, which means he’d kill 30 people between December 3 and 5.

December 5th, the Lind L Tailor broadcast happens.

EDIT:

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There's actually canonical info about Light's sleep schedule. During the week, (based on when he's active as Kira) criminals are dying between 4 pm and 2 am, but the bulk of the kills are occurring between 8 pm and midnight. On weekends, the deaths are scattered from 11 am to 2 am.

The fact that he's no longer taking extracurriculars is reflecting in this. Deaths starting at 4:00 mean he starts it probably the minute he gets home from school, which would fit with what we see in the manga and anime. Juku has to end before 8, probably at 7:30 to give him time to walk home.

Light's schedule would then probably look like this:

WEEKDAY

7:00 AM (6:30) wake up, get ready, eat, walk to school (this would give an hour for getting ready/eating and an hour to get to school. If he hurries, he can probably wake up at 7 instead.)
8:30 AM school starts
3:00 PM school ends
4:00 PM Light gets home from school and starts writing in the death note (because school ends at 3:00, the fact that the killings, which happen as soon as Light gets home, don't start till 4, means that it takes him an hour to walk home). He then stays at home, probably has a snack, and then goes to cram school if he has it. Since juku ends by 8, and they tend to run 4-5 hours, that means that his probably don't go for longer than 4 hours, maybe even 3 1/2. 
5:00 PM juku starts
8:00 PM Light gets home from juku and starts writing in the death note again. He probably takes a small break for dinner and then keeps writing steadily until midnight, interspersing that with studying.
12:00 AM Light stops concentrating so much, maybe messing around on the internet or reading or doing something else for fun, although he stays up and occasionally writes names until 2:00. He probably gets ready for bed during this time too.
2:00 AM Light goes to sleep.

WEEKEND

10:30 AM Light wakes up, gets ready, eats
11:00 AM Light starts writing names in the death note (I feel like a 10:30 wake-up time is reasonable, although it could be as early as 10, because I just feel like Light would start writing in the death note as soon as possible after he wakes up.)
2:00 AM Light stops writing in the death note, and goes to bed.

What this means: Light sleeps 4 1/2 to 5 hours on weekdays, and 8 1/2 hours on the weekends. Actually, judging from how long he sleeps on the weekends, I'm going to revise his wake-up time on weekdays to be a half hour later, (changing it from 6:30 to 7) and give him only an hour and a half to get ready. Light seems like the type who can speed get ready and might skip breakfast or just grab himself something he can eat quickly, and given his behavior in canon (leaving halfway through dinner—granted, when his dad was accusing Kira of being evil) he'd probably prioritize sleeping more than eating. This gives a slightly less sleep deprived schedule of 5 hours on weekdays, 8 1/2 on weekends.

We also know that since he kills from 4pm-2am weekdays with most kills happening between 8pm-12am; and 11am-2am weekends; when Light says he has only a few hours to write he means around 5 hours of doing mostly that, although that probably includes some time studying.

Time to write in the death note - weekdays

4:00 (1 hour)
8-12:00 (5 hours) subtract an hour in all that for studying, and say 4 hours.
1-2:00 (2 hours) writing at a slower pace.

8 hours to write, total. If he writes one name per hour he can write up to 8 names. I'm going to say that from the 3rd to the 5th (all weekdays), that's what he does.

total kills: 312

EDIT:

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I found out the canon time Light wakes up on Monday! He sets his alarm for 6:00. He would have three hours in the morning to get up, get ready, eat breakfast and then walk to school. If he's quick, maybe he hangs out in his room and does extra reading/studying for a little while in the morning.

 

 

 

 

December 6, 2003 - December 9, 2003 - suspects narrowed down

In chapter 3, Ryuk mentions he’s never seen Light so listless, and Light claims he’s “taking a little break.” He complains about how the news is all about Kira and L, but he’s obviously been paying attention to that instead of writing so much, and he wants to wait and see what the cops will do. This starts the beginning of Light seeing his actions as Kira as a game, and the whole plot really gets going… for this reason I’m going to say his killings go down to an average of 4-6 kills per day. (I’ll use 5 as my number.) [See the section on December 19 for further reasoning that he probably isn't killing more than 6 people per day.] So from December 6 to 9 he kills 20 people.

On December 9, Light learns from Soichiro that L suspects a student.

total kills: 332

 

 

 

 

December 10, 2003 - December 11, 2003 - on the hour kills

We know an actual number here; Kira’s started killing 23 victims per day, on the hour. For two days, that adds up to 46 kills. In chapter 4, it’s confirmed by L that this happened for only two days.

total kills: 378

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EDIT: in chapter 4, during L's conversation with the head of the FBI, the FBI head says "the number of American criminals believed to be Kira's victims is 327. That's by far the most worldwide." That does seem to imply that Light's total kills are probably not only 10-20 people over that number... so this might lead to a revision upward, maybe by a hundred or even a few hundred. At the same time, though, I'm fairly confident about the general pattern of Light's kills being 5-7 per day, based on the information gained in the on the hour kills chapter, so if you were to go with a higher number, I'd put that sometime in the initial 5-day spree when Light was killing far more frequently.

 

 

 

December 12, 2003 - December 18, 2003 - average kills

I assume Kira went back to his average number of kills. On December 18, Light realizes he’s being followed. That’s 7 days, so in this time period Light has killed around 35 people.

total kills: 413

 

 

 

 

December 19, 2003 - tests

On the 18th, Light decides to test the death note on criminals. “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” he says, “I’ll have plenty of time…” (for once, this doesn’t line up with actual dates, so it’s a bit confusing… mostly, the dates in Death Note correspond to the actual days those dates would’ve been; this is made clear in the Yotsuba arc when the dates that the meetings happen in the timeline were, in fact, Fridays in 2004. After this odd December 19-20, 2003 outlier, I’ll go back to assuming that the dates/days accurately correspond).

Light kills at least twelve people, since in chapter 6, Soichiro gets a call that “another 6” prisoners have died. Light says to Ryuk, “these six were practice for the real test.” I’m going to assume from this that the first 6 people Light killed on the 19th were his average kills (which fits in with my theory that Kira’s average kills were 4-6 per day); Soichiro was shocked because Kira had killed 6 more prisoners than expected, and those were the tests, with people doing bizarre things. So, on December 19, Light killed 12 people.

total kills: 425

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 20, 2003 - December 26, 2003 - average kills + busjacking

Over these seven days, Light sticks with his average number, plus Osoreda, meaning he kills about 36 people. But, only 35 of them would be counted as Kira kills.

total kills: 461

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 27, 2003 - FBI agents die

Light kills his average number (5) + 12 FBI agents. He kills about 17 people.

total kills: 478

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 28, 2003 - January 7, 2004 - average kills + Naomi

Over these 11 days, Light kills his average number + Naomi. He kills about 56 people.

total kills: 534

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 8, 2004 - January 12, 2004 - under surveillance

On the 8th, Light is put under surveillance. He kills only an embezzler and a purse-snatcher (2 people), and the task force & L make a big deal about it not being his usual M.O. as far as choice of criminal. If it was such a HUGE variation in amount of people killed, they’d definitely make a big deal about that too—another point in favor of the fact that Kira tends to kill 4-6 people per day, on average. Light does not kill again until the 10th (chapter 18), when he kills three small-time thieves. In addition, Light mentions that he can continue killing when he’s outside, using the death note scrap in his wallet.

So, Light’s kills for January 8th is 2, nothing until the 10th—then there’s 3, plus Light’s average number from the 10th to the 12th.

2 + 3 + 15 = 20

EDIT:

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Light also kills his average number of kills during these days, since he mentions he set up kills three weeks in advance.

That means he kills (2+3) + (25) = 30 people.

total kills: 564

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 13, 2004 - March 17, 2004 - average kills

Even though Light is doing plenty of other plot-related things during this span of time, there’s nothing that would necessarily influence his killing pattern, nor are we told in canon that his killing pattern changed significantly. Over these 58 days, Light kills 320 people.

total kills: 884

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 18, 2004 - March 31, 2004 - new average kills

As soon as Light graduates, he has more free time. I think it’s safe to say there might have been a slight uptick in the number of criminals he killed. Since L and the task force already suspect a student, there’s nothing hugely notable about killing slightly more people during school break. Schools end in mid-March and the new school year starts in April, so there would be nothing incriminating about this, especially if Light didn’t change his killing pattern literally on the day he graduates, but the Monday after that, the 21st.

There’s also a good case to be made that Light didn’t change his pattern at all, but… he does like to taunt L and the police. So, a little hint towards “yes, I am a student, but what can you do about it since technically this isn’t new info” seems right up his alley.

From the 18th to the 20th he’d kill the average, so he’d kill 15 people.

On Monday, March 21st, maybe he went up to a new average of 10 people per day, which would last until the end of the month exactly (so he wouldn’t give any clues as to what particular school he was going to, etc). Over these 11 days he’d kill 110 people.

total kills: 994

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 1, 2004 - May 31, 2004 - average kills

Starting on April 1st, Light would go back to 4-6 kills per day, and keep that up until the day he went into confinement. There is never any indication in canon, throughout the whole Second Kira plotline, that the First Kira’s kills changed in any notable way. It’s possible that Light continued to kill ten people a day, but changed the remainder to be by accidents, etc, so they weren’t counted officially, but I tend to assume he doesn’t actually kill people through accidents, usually, since he saves that for more minor criminals and seems most motivated to kill worse criminals. In addition, another argument against Light killing through accidents a lot at this point in time is that he would be aware that the more he used that method, the more likely that L would clock onto it. Sure, it’s unlikely, but it would be absolutely devastating to the case, since it would make the disappearance of Naomi after Raye died, and Osoreda’s death, be so obviously tied to him. For those reasons I’m going to say Light did not, up to this point, apart from what we saw in canon, actually kill people through accidents or disease; this way he keeps it as an ace up his sleeve for when he really needs to get rid of someone.

Over these 61 days, Light kills about 305 people.

total kills: 1,299

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 1 - confinement

On this day, Light puts himself into confinement, and the Kira killings stop.

Chapter 4: an argument for aroace L Lawliet

Lots of people have interpreted Light as ace &/or aro, for obvious reasons, but I think there’s just as good—if not more—evidence to headcanon L as aroace too.

It’s true that this doesn’t come from primary canon (manga & anime) but from what I would consider more periphery sources, which are the only places we actually get a look into L’s thought processes on anything other than the Kira case & solving it. So you could also argue the contrary based on what you consider canon. Or, you could argue about how honest L’s being here. It’s not 100% proof, but, I still find these two quotes very interesting. It’s much more straightforward statements about being aspec than you usually get from a character in, like, any media ever…

The Monster Speech (Relight)

There are many types of monsters in this world. Monsters who will not show themselves and who cause trouble, monsters who abduct children, monsters who devour dreams, monsters who suck blood, and monsters who always tell lies.

Lying monsters are a real nuisance. They are much more cunning than other monsters. They pose as humans, even though they have no understanding of the human heart. They eat even though they’ve never experienced hunger. They study, even though they have no interest in academics.  They seek friendship, even though they do not know how to love.

If I were to encounter such a monster, I would likely be eaten by it; because in truth, I am that monster.

Exchange from L: Change the WorLd novelization (page 45)

After Maki led Kujo by the arm out of the room, Suruga whispered in L’s ear, “Hey, Ryuzaki. She’s a little naïve, but beautiful. Things are going to be more exciting around here, eh?”

L looked lost, as if he‘d been asked his opinion about some profound impressionist painting. “Beautiful…? Such things, I don’t know about.”

L describes himself as someone who 1) doesn’t know how to love, and 2) doesn’t know about looking at another person and thinking they’re beautiful.

So there you have it. Aroace L Lawliet :)

Notes:

on tumblr

Chapter 5: Light Yagami and honorifics

Light & his parents

Light uses tōsan and kāsan to refer to his parents. (source: listening to subbed anime.) This is a really ordinary way to refer to his parents, and slightly more casual than o-tōsan and o-kāsan, which is another really ordinary way to refer to your parents. Official translation of “dad” and “mom” did a good job here. (More on how Light’s speech patterns are casual but polite).

Light & Misa

There’s definitely been metas on the fact that Misa went right to calling Light by his first name, without an honorific, & Light’s “um, no” reaction to that… metas which unfortunately I can no longer find. This is the part that in the dub got translated to her calling him darling. (Plus the way she refers to his parents as hers, as though they’re married or something). Of course then he backtracks and is like, “sure you can call me Light” just so she won’t go around calling him “knight.”

Besides the obvious stalkery overtones, and Misa’s general lack of any boundaries whatsoever, I think it’s interesting that Misa wants to not only be Light’s girlfriend, she wants to be in Light’s family. Which is *partially* because of her True Love Obsession, and partially because of the fact that she wants that situation, that place… this ties into later, when Light tells her to give up the eyes, and she’s happy to do it because she can be a better wife to him… like it’s not even that her love for Light is entirely because she loves Light, but because she loves “the person Light is.” Respectable-Light-with-a-loving-close-family. Misa doesn’t just want Light’s love, she wants to be part of that. This also makes something interesting of the fact that she quit her career for him, and why she would see that as a fair choice. Because in her mind, she’s giving up fame but gaining close connections, a family, replacement parents since hers are dead, and a place in respectable society that would otherwise be cut off to her… etc. It really isn’t just about Light, I think. (+ an interesting note on if Light cared about Misa at all).

Light & Sayu

Light just uses Sayu’s name, this is ordinary, since he’s her older brother. Sayu uses o-niichan [or niichan] (source: listening to sub. It was hard to tell if she was using the slightly more formal “o-” prefix, but it seemed like she maybe was). There’s something so cute about this, since it would’ve made perfect sense for her to instead use o-niisan, but she uses chan, since they’re close.

EDIT: quicktimeventfull confirmed Sayu is using onichan!

Light & his school friends

There was another meta that I think I recall pointed out his friends use no honorific to refer to Light, but Light uses one to refer to them. I haven’t read the original version of the manga, so idk if this is true, since I have since lost the meta :(

Light & L

L refers to Light as Light-kun, a friendly way to refer to male friends or coworkers and yeah it does bring in the connotation of both 1) L’s higher status than Light and 2) also the fact that he’s older than Light, but there’s nothing really unusual about the fact that L uses it… except for the fact that they’re “being friends” so people can “see them being friends” so it’s a false closeness. That’s noted by Light a lot with his thoughts about how Light and Ryuzaki are friends but Kira is L’s enemy, etc. Basically, there’s a very performative aspect to the way L refers to Light that they’re both aware of, but that passes by as completely unsuspicious to everyone around them. What other people take as “L and Light being friendly and normal” is L saying “we know each other so well, my young friend and underling, don’t we? :)” when he knows that will drive Light up the wall.

Light refers to L as Ryuzaki. No honorific. This is hilarious for so many reasons. L is older than him and of a higher status than him so it would make sense for him to use “san” but he doesn’t. It isn’t “weird” that Light doesn’t because they’re “such close friends!” But actually… he’s insulting L to his face. And L knows it. :) It’s pretty much the same thing L does to him, but in the other direction. By using Ryuzaki instead of Ryuzaki-san, Light says, “we know each other so well, my close friend who’s of similar age to me, we are totally equal haha, greatest detective in the world who?”

I feel like this adds such a fun layer to their whole “we pretend to have one thing going but it’s really another one” vibe, and the fact that they’re using politeness to insult each other, but also to give each other a kind of secret message that no one else is really aware of, even if they’re standing in the middle of the room with everyone else. It’s like their whole relationship in microcosm.

Chapter 6: How L Solved the Kira Case

 

1) By the time the December 4 ICPO meeting is called, L is already certain that Kira is the work of an individual. On the 5th, he makes the Lind L. Tailor broadcast that proves it to the rest of the world, thus giving the case legitimacy. Although he says it’s a worldwide broadcast, it’s limited to only the Kanto region of Japan. Why? Because L managed to pinpoint Kurou Otoharada as Kira’s first victim. Here’s another question... what would have happened if, for some reason, Kira didn’t respond to the broadcast? L would’ve looked pretty dumb. He was already certain from his profile that Kira would respond to the taunt; but this also means he had to be pretty certain Kira would be watching the broadcast. The more times L had to repeat the broadcast, the more likely it would be that Kira would hear about L’s tactic ahead of time and it wouldn’t take him off guard/push him to respond. So, not only did L know Kira was in the Kanto region, L knew in what timeslots Kira would be watching the news. I think it’s likely that L had already worked out from the times that Kira killed that Kira was a student, and he used this from the beginning to frame the nature of his taunts.

2) By the time the Lind L. Tailor broadcast is over, everyone knows Kira is real. L has a case, and he has international backing. Not only because Kira is now proven to be real, but because he’s been proven to be dangerous; he’ll kill detectives, too, not just criminals! This neatly takes care of the possibility that countries might just look the other way since Kira was only killing people they didn’t care about anyway. Not only on the level of politics but on the level of the ordinary population, L creates a narrative of himself as a smart, superior, superhero-type detective against Kira’s terrifying evil, and frames it as a battle between them. He manages to garner support from a wide swathe of the population in one fell swoop. He also proves to his satisfaction that Kira can kill from any distance, but needs a name and a face to kill, which will be the keystone on which he builds his approach to solving the case.

Unfortunately, L doesn’t have a lot of support in the NPA. For understandable reasons; he’s shoving in on their turf and saying he can do a better job than them. There are even rumors among the NPA that L and Kira are the same person... not just rumors, this is stuff that came out of psychological profiling. L asks the NPA to look into the times of death and the NPA comes up with the times; L then has to bring to their attention that this implies Kira was a student. LITERALLY the day after that, Kira changes his M.O., killing on the hour for two days. What L can take from this is that there’s a leak in the NPA, and it’s probable that it’s not from their system, but through the families of the people in the investigation.

(He also learns that Kira can control the time of death of his victims. Not only that, L gets further information on his profile, on how much Kira hates to lose, and how competitive/taunting he is.)

3) Within days, L manages to get 12 FBI agents sent to Japan to shadow the families of people involved in the taskforce. No, not anyone in the families... the people in the families most likely to fit the Kira profile. (Remember, Raye was following Light but not Sayu). L had only 12 people to shadow the families of the entire task force, and this is before everyone quits. It’s a bunch of families, probably a bunch of people in each family, so L starts with the most likely suspects in each family, and probably planned to cycle through everyone in each family eventually.

4) L sees Kira doing tests on criminals and realizes that the killer is stepping up his game and planning for something. He gets the beginning of the “L do you know...” message. This proves to him that Kira feels like the contest between them is personal; that he’s been successful in promoting his “L vs Kira” narrative even to the killer.

Then all the FBI agents die.

5) L figures out from the details of how it went down that the important detail is not the time of the agents’ deaths (Kira can control this) but the order they received the file. With the help of the director of the NPA, L manages to figure out the order, assuming that Kira had to be in contact with one of the first people on that list.

At this point, many people quit the task force; there’s only six people left. This is perfect timing for L to move the investigation into his arena and it means he can be fairly certain that he can trust everyone involved, or at the very least that if someone was to prove untrustworthy, it would be easy to pinpoint who. He creates tests to prove to his satisfaction if Kira is actually one of the people ON the task force. He knows that Kira is the type of killer who would want to become involved in the investigation. Why? Because Kira wants to taunt the police, and wants to taunt L, and he’s interested in law enforcement. Kira kills criminals. He’s obviously either law enforcement or idolizes them. Even though L suspects a student, he’s planning to confront each and every member of the task force that walks through his hotel door to narrow down his suspect pool even further. Because it’s unclear how Kira kills, L thinks his best bet is to get close enough to Kira to actually see how Kira works. Of course, by now he also knows there is some type of physical evidence that he can use to convict Kira... at least he can be relatively certain of that. Otherwise, Kira wouldn’t have felt cornered by the FBI agents tailing him. So getting close to Kira and observing him is a valid move; so far the only one that’s proved to make Kira nervous.

6) The moment L meets the members of the task force and talks with each of them individually, he realizes that none of them can be Kira. The personalities don’t line up with the way he knows Kira acts, and how he knows Kira acts with him, specifically. Again, even though he’s already pretty certain Kira is a student, he’s not letting that blindside him to the possibility that Kira could have been someone older.

L knows by now that he can push Kira to action, and that Kira will kill anyone who goes after him. He expresses some concern that if L tried a media ban on criminals’ names, Kira would just escalate to innocent people. This is a legitimate fear, because Kira has shown that he’ll consistently fall for L’s challenges and taunts. But L also knows that that’s not really Kira’s style, so I think his shooting down of that idea is more complicated. If criminals stopped dying in such numbers and Kira didn’t kill innocents or hold the world hostage, not only would L potentially lose public support and international backing, but he might never be able to catch Kira. He would lose, in other words; in the one case that he seems to consider his greatest; the one case that pushed him to reveal himself as an entity and even show his face. Basically, L is invested in the idea of the Kira case as a showdown between himself and Kira, with himself as the winner.

L makes it clear to the detectives that they’re not to tell anyone of what happens in their meetings, not to advertise the meetings, or write anything down. He has them turn off cell phones and put them aside so Kira can’t try to successfully contact one of them (since he knows now that Kira must be a family member of one of the people on the original, larger task force, and therefore, might be a family member of one of these six). He gives them all belts with trackers and S.O.S. capabilities, so if Kira tries to pick them off like the FBI, they can get advance warning. He also gives them fake badges, so if Kira doesn’t already know everyone’s names, he won’t be able to get them.

7) L searches for security camera footage of the murdered FBI agents and manages to get it. L watches the footage of all of them, mostly people leaving their hotels, but three agents whose deaths were caught on camera. Of those three, Raye Penber, one of the people who showed up early on the list, receiving it only 8 minutes after he boarded the train, and who could’ve possibly interacted with Kira, has a suspicious manila envelope while going through the turnstile, but not when he steps out of the train. In addition to that, Raye stayed on the train for too long, more than one full loop. He obviously wasn’t trying to go somewhere. And when Raye dies, it looks like he’s looking into the train. L comes to the conclusion that Kira might’ve actually gone to the scene of the crime in this case.

8) Naomi disappears. L gets a call about it from her parents. Just a fun side note, but L is terrible with names... he says “I’ve heard that name before” regarding the former agent, as though he barely remembers her, but after seeing her picture, is able to reminisce, “the Naomi Misora I knew had great inner strength. And was an excellent FBI agent,” and is certain that she was trying to go after Kira on her own, and wasn’t depressed and planning to kill herself. He obviously does, actually, remember her well.

Anyway, that narrows down the suspect pool IMMENSELY. Now it’s almost certain that Kira is in one of the two families Raye was shadowing. No, let’s be more clear: it means Kira is probably a child in one of those two families. The Kitamura and Yagami families. It could also be the wife of Kitamura or Yagami, though L suspects a child, but he bugs each home.

What this means is that the suspect pool consists now of Kitamura’s wife and kids, or Yagami’s wife and kids. Of that group, the one whose profile most matches Kira’s is Light Yagami. L knows this before he even puts the cameras in; he doesn’t wait to look up information on all his possible suspects. Light has plenty of publically-available information that point to him being a suspect: he’s a straight-A student, the right age range, has tested high on the practice entrance exams, basically he’s capable intellectually of being Kira. He won a tennis championship two years in a row and then quit. L has Watari go through everyone’s rooms for something suspicious as he’s putting in the bugs, nothing is found on anyone.

L can probably get copies not only of Light’s IQ score, but also any speeches Light’s made as well as other school records. However deep he goes into Light and everyone else’s pasts, he decides that Light is his prime suspect at this juncture and puts 64 cameras into his room, gambling that Light will find some of them. If Light does realize that he’s being observed, L will be able to see if his actions correspond to Kira’s—that is, if he rises to the challenge and tries to taunt his observers and L. That is, if L doesn’t just manage to catch him in the act.

9) Light has little traps on his door to figure out if anyone enters his room. This isn’t suspicious. What is suspicious is what Light does next. Light takes out a porn magazine and flips through it casually on the bed, not even pretending to get off on it. This is the suspicious bit. It’s too calculated. It’s also a kind of taunt to L, if L thinks Light has managed to find some of the cameras. L decides to test the waters with his information, broadcast at the same time to the Yagami and Kitamura families, the fake 1,500 Interpol agents. Then Light does his dumbest move yet, in perfect Kira fashion. After internally thinking, ‘whether or not this news is true, you ran this because you want to see my reaction, L. That’s the same trick you used the first time.’ [The Lind L. Tailor broadcast]. He then goes on to say,

“Interpol is so stupid. What’s the point, if they announce it like this? If they’re going to send in all those detectives, they should keep quiet about it, and let them work in secret. Those FBI agents were here on a top-secret mission, and look what still happened to them. If Kira knows about these guys, he’s going to get them too, for sure. That’s why I bet it isn’t even true. This is just a ruse to put pressure on Kira. But it’s pretty obvious, so I bet Kira’s figured that out, too.”

After this, understandably, L has a bit of a grin on his face, because Light fell for his tactic hook, line, and sinker. This is the moment when L becomes convinced that Light is Kira, although his official “percent” is still at 5%.

After that, the potato chip trick and the two deaths of minor criminals that happened while Light had an airtight alibi. Exactly the kind of reaction Kira had shown when they first decided he might be a student and then he killed people on the hour.

L is forced to take surveillance off of Light after a few days, but is convinced that this only means he wasn’t able to catch Kira in the act.

He thinks that the best way of catching Kira, at this point, would be to show himself to Kira, somehow gain his trust, and get a confession or see him kill.

10) L takes the entrance exams and makes sure he gets a perfect score. Honestly, he might naturally have gotten a perfect score, or he might’ve even doctored the results. It really doesn’t matter how he got the perfect score... the point is, it puts him and Light on an equal level and gains Light’s attention. Because of this, they make the entrance speech together and L tells Light that he’s L, knowing that this will put pressure on Light and also make it impossible for Light to just kill him, while making Light interested in him and obsessed with getting onto the task force so he can kill everyone coming after him. During their tennis match, Light goes for the win, just like literally every time L interacts with Kira. After that, L tells Light that he suspects Light “one percent” of being Kira. This is a lie. In L’s head, during their conversation in the cafe, this percent goes up to seven, but he continues to use the five percent line with the task force. The cafe test is multi-step. Not only does he see how Light interprets the right way to read the message, and if he’s smart enough to figure out there was a secret message in the first place, he gets to see his belligerent reaction to Light being told the message is something other than what Kira intended. And then he gets more and more info on Light’s personality and thought process, with the taunt (showing the messages and the fake forth one) being met with Light doubling down on the attack and accusing L of being Kira. Not only that, but Light answers L’s question about what he would do if he met Kira, to get him to reveal himself, is

to ask him about something only Kira would know. Kind of like what you’re doing now, L.

Which shows that, as L points out, Light has no trouble at all putting himself in Kira’s shoes. And it’s pretty much a showing off/taunting answer in return. L doubts that Light might be Kira when Light shows a genuine response to his father being in the hospital, but Light undoes that doubt by after they leave, saying, is there anything I can do to prove my innocence? How about putting me under surveillance somewhere without access to the outside world? Which puts that suspicion all the way back up.

L continues the tactic of trying to get close enough to Light to push him to slip up through wanting to beat L on a personal level.

11) A Second Kira shows up. L realizes this is a second Kira because the powers and M.O. doesn’t match up. He definitely likes the first one better. After this, he uses Light to create the answers from Kira to the second Kira to try to control not only what the Second Kira is doing, but to put pressure on the first one, especially if that’s Light. After Light goes to Aoyama, the Second Kira broadcasts that she found the first Kira. Well... that’s not suspicious at all.

12) L has Light tailed by Mogi, because he suspects that the Second Kira will try to contact him. Mogi ends up seeing Light with Misa, as well as Light’s other girlfriends. Each of those girlfriends is then inspected. DNA evidence links Misa to the Second Kira, which means Light is no doubt about it, the first. Still, L doesn’t have physical evidence connecting Light to being Kira.

13) Misa loses her memories, Light puts himself into confinement, L is absolutely baffled. The case comes to a screeching halt. He knows that they’re both Kira, but he can’t prove it in Light’s case, because suddenly he has nothing to work with. Light doesn’t respond to his taunts anymore because Light doesn’t have something to taunt L about.

After people don’t die, and then do die, and Light is pretty much cleared of being Kira, L goes the mock execution scheme. If either Light or Misa had their powers, Soichiro would die. He doesn’t, so L is certain that Misa, at least, lost her power. He’s less certain about Light, thinking it’s possible that Light could’ve seen through the scheme. So, L goes with his first tactic with dealing with Light: keeping close to him and observing him. Thus the handcuffs.

It’s actually a smart move. If L were to die while wearing them and Light didn’t, it would be... well... as good as a confession. If Light can kill just by willing it, and is still doing so, L can observe him and potentially notice when and how he’s doing it. If Light has really lost his memories, L can keep Light from haring off and getting them back. And, by keeping them both together, he makes sure that Light still considers the Kira case to be the Light vs. L show. This way, he can predict with certainty that if Light is Kira, he’ll want to win by defeating L personally, by taking over his position and killing him. If Light seems to show evidence to that effect, it’s more evidence.

But Light doesn’t, for a long time. There’s a third Kira. L come to the conclusion that Light has passed both his powers and memories away to get himself out from under suspicion. He predicts that Light wants to catch Kira, but has set himself up to gain his powers back. Unfortunately, L doesn’t know how it all works in detail. He takes Light with him to catch Higuchi and Light touches the death note and then manages to kill Higuchi, while proving via the 13 day rule that he’s innocent.

14) L tries to prove the 13 day rule fake in order to get physical evidence against Light. He suspects Light may have killed with scraps of the death note, but can’t prove it. Before he can manage to get the physical evidence, Light kills him, but L realizes he’s right. Watari deletes all of his L-data so Light can’t use his contacts and networks and databases for bad ends.

15) An automatic message tells Roger that L is dead. His successors now have everything L did as baseline evidence to draw on; and with the help of the fact that Light was L’s prime suspect, etc, Near is able to zero in on Light basically right away.

Chapter 7: Death Note — Interpreting the Foot Scene

 

So, since I’ve never actually seen an in-depth meta on the foot scene, I thought this needs to happen. :)

The Foot Scene

[Watch here] L and Light come inside from the rain, and Light sits on the stairs, his shoes sitting next to him on the ground. L stands to the side, with a towel on his head.

 

L: (walking over) Well, that was certainly an unpleasant outing.
Light: (drying off his hair) It’s your own fault. I mean, what did you expect?
L: (offscreen) You’re right. I’m sorry.
(L takes the towel off of his head and walks closer. Light is still drying his hair and face, but then startles. You then see that L has crouched by Light’s feet and is holding one of Light’s feet in his hand.)
Light: What are you doing?
L: (looking up at him) I thought I might help you out. You were busy wiping yourself off anyway.
Light: Look, it—it’s fine, you don’t have to do that.
L: I can give you a massage as well.
(Light looks startled)
L: (offscreen, continued) It’s the least I can do to atone for my sins. I’m actually pretty good at this.
(Light glances away, looking resigned)
Light: Fine, do what you want.
L: (offscreen, in tones of someone getting down to business) All right.
(Now you see L, looking pensive. He brings his hand, holding the towel, up to Light’s foot. Light makes a pained noise and the scene cuts to a wide shot.)
Light: Hey!
L: You’ll get used to it.
(Light, in a close-up, looks utterly thrown, but makes a small noise of assent. The shot changes to L, where all you can see, with his head down, is the mess of his hair. A drop of water drips from the end of his hair, the sound clearly distinct in the otherwise silent scene [there’s been no music or anything]. The shot then changes to Light’s foot, and you hear as well as see the droplets from L’s hair landing on Light’s foot. The shot changes to Light, watching L who is now offscreen. He reaches over to grab his own towel and brings it over to L’s face. The shot is now on L in profile.)
Light: (drying L’s hair) Here. You’re still soaked.
(As Light’s hand retreats, L looks up, and then back down.)
L: (quietly) I’m sorry.
(soft piano music now begins. L starts drying off Light’s foot again. When the shot goes back to Light, he looks pensive too. There’s silence for some time, barring the music, as the shot changes back to L in profile, looking somewhat distressed. Then back to a wide shot in profile that rises toward the ceiling and the windows letting in natural light. After that, the view changes to the ceiling and its cross-shaped walkways with blue lighting above it, and then back to a wide shot of L and Light, this time facing the stairs.)
L: (thoughtful, quiet) It’ll be lonely, won’t it.
Light: Hm?
(L looks up at Light pointedly and determined. With the shot head on, he says)
L: You and I will be parting ways soon.
(Light seems thoughtfully startled by this point, and looks perhaps like he’s considering something or is struck by the situation and stuck in the moment. The phone then rings, pulling them out of it, L stands up and answers the phone.)
L: Yes?
(Now the shot shows L in the foreground, with Light giving him a dark look in the background).
L: I understand. I’m on my way.
Light: (still glaring at L, baffled) Huh?
(Now the shot is a wide shot again, and both their bodies are cut off since the shot is from behind them on the stairs).
L: Come on. Let’s go, Light. (Closer in on L, with his back to the viewer) It seems like it’s all worked out. (He walks away.)
(The shot changes back to Light’s baffled and angry face as he too stands up).
Light: huh?

Basically, L is thoughtful, sad, and a bit smug, while Light is just: ?????

The Biblical Interpretation

The standard biblical interpretation of the foot scene is that it’s a reference to John 13, when Jesus washes the feet of all his disciples, soon before he’ll be betrayed by Judas. The moment goes like this (NIV version, abridged for length)…

 

It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. […] The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. [Jesus] got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. [He said] “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean. [After that, Jesus said] “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”

It’s clear why this is the accepted biblical interpretation of the scene. After all, L’s about to die, Light’s about to betray him, and L cleans and dries off Light’s feet. It seems pretty cut-and-dry.

Interestingly enough, however, this is not the only foot scene in the bible! Just one chapter earlier, in John 12, we have the anointing at Bethany, another scene that takes place soon before Jesus’s death, which goes like this:

 

Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

Already, this has more direct parallels to what’s actually going on in the Death Note foot scene. You’ve got the reference to hair, which is another visually weighty aspect of the scene, and you’ve got a reference to the fact that Jesus isn’t going to stick around for much longer; “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me,” vs “You and I will be parting ways soon.”

Furthermore, L never makes a thing of Light betraying him in this scene. You could argue that in the previous rain scene he kind of implies that with the do you ever tell the truth line, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch.

So even though a L=Jesus, Light=Judas parallel is easy to make, I think it just doesn’t really jive very well on the details. Actually, L even makes this textual, as he actually says to Light, “It’s the least I can do to atone for my sins.” On the top level of the conversation, this refers to the “sin” of L going out in the rain and then making Light go out in the rain too, which he’s now atoning for. But of course that’s not the whole point.

If L is atoning for his sins, that would make him a human. If anyone is the god here, it’s Light; you could read this as a jab toward the fact that L knows Light is Kira, and that he’s making that known through this somewhat humorous remark.

L is obviously aware of the biblical reading; he’s purposefully making a reference to this fact. But it’s probably not for Light’s benefit. There’s no reason why L would expect Light to have read the whole bible; he probably knows enough about Light’s family background to know that not only are they not particularly religious, but the religion they are more connected with is Shintoism (the Yagami family is shown to have a shrine on New Years).

Instead, L is making a self-reflexive statement or an inside joke. He obviously has some kind of Christian background. In the anime, you have his reference to church bells and his visions of stained glass, that appear even as he’s dying; in the manga, Wammy’s House is shown to have a cross over it.

If reading the scene through the lens of the anointing at Bethany, it fits far better with L’s motivations in this scene as well—he’s already contacted Watari about getting the 13-day rule tested by an inmate, and the call at the end is L learning that he’s gotten approval for this plan. The person that L expects to die here is Light, not L. If anything, L is Mary, preparing Jesus for burial.

BUT!

This is still not the only foot scene in the Bible, and personally, I think a very interesting one that never gets brought up is Luke 7, Jesus anointed by a sinful woman. It goes like this…

 

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Now personally I think this lines up even better with what’s actually going on in the Death Note scene. For one thing, this entire story is about sins being forgiven. The “woman who lived a sinful life” would, in this case, be L, who not only wipes off Light’s feet but (symbolically) “cries” on them through the droplets that fall from his hair onto Light’s feet. This is somewhat like the fact that the woman “began to wet [Jesus’s] feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair.”

The Pharisee points out that “she is a sinner” and thinks Jesus isn’t a prophet by not realizing who he’s allowing to touch him. But Jesus points out that 1) yes, he knows, 2) the whole point of forgiving sins is that the people who have more to forgive feel most grateful when their debt is forgiven, and 3) the woman showed Jesus more hospitality and love than his actual host. It turns out that the woman’s faith and love have saved her, that’s the reason she’s been forgiven.

Now the complexity of this is really interesting. Not only does this add a layer to L’s jab, with L’s words now meaning that Light, if he were a real god, would forgive sins, especially among those who sinned the most [i.e. he wouldn’t kill criminals]; L is also saying in a roundabout way that he does care about Light.

Here’s a little background on the cultural aspects of the biblical anointing scenes:

 

Hospitality is a very strong value in the Near East, with much fuss made over guests. For example, a basin would typically be provided so guests could wash the dust of the road from their feet. Scented olive oil was sometimes offered to anoint a guest’s hair (Psalm 23:5b; 45:7; 92:10; Amos 6:6). And beloved guests would be kissed as they were greeted (2 Samuel 15:5; 19:39; Matthew 26:49). We see that Simon offered none of these marks of a gracious host. Such overflowing hospitality wasn’t required; Simon wasn’t being discourteous. The way he welcomed his guests this day seems pro forma, but not especially warm or cordial. (x)

As for the woman’s part in the story:

 

We’re not told what her sin is, but she is probably a prostitute rather than an adulteress. […] William Barclay says, “It was the custom that when a Rabbi was at a meal in such a house, all kinds of people came in — they were quite free to do so— to listen to the pearls of wisdom which fell from his lips.” Even though I can’t find much to substantiate this practice, I think it must be the case. Simon doesn’t seem so alarmed that such a woman is in his house, than that Jesus doesn’t perceive what kind of woman she is. On another occasion, Jesus is invited to eat at a prominent Pharisee’s home and finds a man “in front of him” suffering from dropsy (14:1-2). […] To go about in public with her hair down was considered a shameful thing to do, yet she is not deterred. […] Next, she begins to kiss his feet. […] kissing the feet might be considered a common mark of deep reverence, especially to leading rabbis. (x)

In Chapter 109, or the C-Kira story, Near talks about a time when the kids a Wammy’s House were allowed a Q&A with L over video call. This took place, in Near’s words, “a little while before [L] started the Kira investigation.” Near continues, “everyone peppered him with questions, and L answered every one of them.” The next panel shows L replying to an unheard question, probably something along the lines of, why do you do what you do/why do you try to catch the bad guys?/or, where do you get your sense of justice? L replies:

 

“It’s not a sense of justice. Solving complicated cases is my hobby. If you wish to measure good and evil by the law, then I’m also a criminal who has committed various evil acts. It’s just like how all you guys want to solve puzzles or video games as quickly as possible. It’s a game, a hobby. That’s why I only take up cases that interest me. It’s not about justice. And in order to solve a case, I will do anything. I am a cheater who hates to lose.”

Relight shows L’s answer to a different question from the same scene, where L’s answering a Q&A at Wammy’s House. The question is, “can you tell me if there’s something that you’re not good at, or maybe something that you’re scared of?” which leads into L’s monster speech:

 

“There are many types of monsters in this world. Monsters who will not show themselves and who cause trouble, monsters who abduct children, monsters who devour dreams, monsters who suck blood, and monsters who always tell lies.

Lying monsters are a real nuisance. They are much more cunning than other monsters. They pose as humans, even though they have no understanding of the human heart. They eat even though they’ve never experienced hunger. They study, even though they have no interest in academics. They seek friendship, even though they do not know how to love.

If I were to encounter such a monster, I would likely be eaten by it; because in truth, I am that monster.”

I think that both of these quotes show an interesting insight into L’s thought process. L describes himself as “a criminal who has committed various evil acts” [if measured by the law]. While this does show that L has a more nuanced conception of good and evil than what the law says is ok and not ok, he also chooses to use the word evil to describe some of his actions for a reason. That’s not a word carelessly chosen, especially with his Christian background. In other words, L admits that he’s a sinner. He doesn’t seem to have a huge problem with that, but he admits it. In the second answer, he goes so far as to describe himself as a “lying monster.”

From very early on in the manga, L realizes that because of the way Kira can kill from a distance, he’s going to be incredibly hard to catch, admitting to himself in chapter 10, “even if I find you, I can’t prove you’re a murderer unless I catch you in the act, or nail down hard evidence.” This is an interesting aspect of the similarities between L and Light. In chapter 16, when L wants to put surveillance on the Kitamura and Yagami families, Matsuda points out, “in Japan, that’s an illegal violation of human rights!” and Aizawa says “if this gets out, they’ll dismantle the task force!” L’s answer is “I promise you, nobody will ever find out.” In the same way, during the last arc of the manga, Light later describes how it’s the winners that get called justice.

In Chapter 18, L thinks about his beliefs regarding Kira, from which you can get a bit of insight into his religious beliefs as well. He thinks,

 

“If one of [the people in the Yagami or Kitamuri families] is Kira, that means Kira’s psychological state has already reached the divine level. He’s judging sinners without batting an eye. I almost want to think that Kira no longer exists—that this really is divine judgement. But while Lind L. Tailor really was a criminal, the F.B.I. agents did nothing to deserve being killed. Or was it sacrilege on their part to question divine will? Well, I have no time for those who say the gods are capricious and beyond human understanding. For a god to need someone’s name and face to kill them is ridiculous. This isn’t divine judgement. It’s the work of some childish killer who’s playing at divine retribution. That’s all.”

L goes so far as to make implicit jabs about Light wanting to be god as early as Chapter 26, where the fake name he picks for Light is “Light Asahi.” This is a real Japanese name, a reference to a beer and soft drinks company, and it literally translates to “morning sunlight.” (Light morning star—L’s making a joke that Light is the devil. This one, Light probably did get.)

But even though L feels some disdain for Kira’s god-complex, L has some respect for Kira’s cleverness and, I’ll go so far as to say, even his ideals, warped as they are in practice. When the Second Kira shows up, L says, “I don’t want to die, either. It would be bad enough to be killed by Kira, but to die at the hands of an opportunist pretending to be Kira would really grate.” Later in the conversation, when describing the Second Kira, L says, “I don’t like his style… it’s not like Kira at all…” and in describing the First Kira, L says, “so far, aside from people who were after him, Kira avoided attacking innocent people. His method was to make his views gradually penetrate and change society. Kira’s aim is not a dictatorship based on fear.”

Here’s where we get into far more speculative territory. This leads to…

The Queer Interpretation

Pretty much everyone who ever saw the foot scene thinks its gay. It’s not trying to be subtle. But, besides fanservice, what is it actually doing, and is there a way of connecting it to the overt biblical interpretation? I think that there is.

In Chapter 18, right after L rejects the theory that Kira really is a god, he concludes, “the mass-murderer we’re calling Kira definitely exists. And I’m definitely going to catch him.” He thinks about the problems of trying to catch someone who can kill even under surveillance, and comes up with a seemingly far-fetched plan. “The best thing would be to get him to tell me himself that he’s Kira, and carry out a murder in front of me. But there’s no way I could do that… or could I?” Right after this, L decides to show himself to his prime suspect, Light; and we never get any indication that L’s plans have changed, until the Second Kira shows up and he decides to go after Misa as the weak link.

L wants hard evidence, but if he can’t get that, he’ll take a confession that happens because Kira felt close enough to him on a personal level to slip up and actually trust him. This is almost the exact same plan that Light comes up with after meeting L. Light’s plan (spoken hypothetically to L) is, “if you want to be friends with me, I’ll gladly hang out with you. I’ll make you trust me. And when you’ve told me everything I need to know, I’ll kill you.” In Chapter 30, Light explains to Misa, “right now I am investigating with [L] in order to gain his trust.”

To that end, they play tennis with each other, hang out in cafes, etc. L invites Light onto the task force to more closely observe him, and in Chapter 31, L makes the proclamation, “I don’t want Light-kun to be Kira. Because… Light-kun is my first ever friend,” to which Light replies, “yeah… you’re a good friend to me too, Ryuzaki.” Both L and Light are lying here, so you could call them lying monsters, who “seek friendship, even though they do not know how to love.” (More about the details of their mutually-enjoyed rivalry.)

Light is also incapable of falling in love with a woman.

This isn’t unacknowledged subtext, either. In Chapter 37, when L and Light put the handcuffs on, Misa says bluntly, “this is what you meant by being together 42 hours a day? Two guys chained together is gross… this is what you’re into? You were with Light at school, too… but Light belongs to me… and if you’re always together, then when am I supposed to go on dates with Light?”

After this, Light tries to get Misa to back off, but Misa doubles down on the fact that she’s Light’s girlfriend. Once Aizawa pushes her out of the room, L and Light have this exchange:

 

L: Are you serious about Amane?
Light: No… as I said, it’s all one-sided.
L: Then could you act like you’re serious about her? We know she’s involved with the Second Kira from the videotape evidence… and also that she loves you…
Light: You want me to get close to her and make her reveal things about the Second Kira?
L: Yes, I think you are capable of doing it, Light-kun. This is one of the reasons that I released the two of you.

Of course, then Light denies that he would ever do such a thing, and that “taking advantage of a person’s feelings like that is the most despicable thing a person can do.” L is understandably surprised by the vehemence of this statement, considering that that’s literally what Light has been trying to do to him for months with their stated friendship. After all, this is Light “if you want to be friends with me, I’ll gladly hang out with you. I’ll make you trust me. And when you’ve told me everything I need to know, I’ll kill you” Yagami. Or… is it?

Considering that this exchange (about Light potentially getting close to Misa—romantically and possibly sexually—for the investigation) is later on in the same scene where Misa brought up the sexual reading of L and Light’s relationship, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the comparison here is warranted.

And this isn’t even the end of L’s bit of queercoding. The 6 most feminine foods in Japan are “cake, fruit, salad, pudding, ice cream parfaits, and pasta” and “An anime character’s eating habits are clearly used to say something about that character’s position on the axes of masculinity <—> femininity, immaturity <—> maturity, and even normality <—> weirdness.” (Japan, Food, and Gender)

After Misa realizes she and Light would have to kiss in front of L, and L admits, “I will be watching” [if you do anything with him], she says, “huh? What the hell? I knew it! You are a pervert!” Misa accuses L of being sexually weird and, in her words, perverted. This encompasses everything from L tying her up while interrogating her, to L putting handcuffs on Light, to L (as far as Misa is concerned) wanting to watch her and Light kiss. By accusing L of perverse sexuality, she’s absolutely accusing L of being gay (as well as kinky). I mean. If that wasn’t already obvious from her whole speech. Alex Benkhart writes:

 

The current understanding of “homosexuality” was born around the turn of the 20th century, and is intertwined with the birth of another, maybe for fundamental concept, “sexuality.” Believe it or not, the idea of “sexuality” as we understand it is pretty new, and only became popular about a hundred years ago, which admittedly can be kind of difficult to conceptualize. In my last post I talked a bit about Makoto Furukawa’s “Three Codes Framing Homosexuality in Modern Japan,”  and hentai seiyoku or “perverse sexuality,” is the third and final of these codes.

(More on a queer reading of the manga and anime).

Anyway, this has gotten pretty far from the foot scene, but getting back to that… in Luke 7, when Jesus is anointed by a sinful woman, the woman is probably either a prostitute or an adulteress. In other words, she’s been using her sexuality in ways she “shouldn’t be.” L, who is visually tied in with the woman through the scene’s focus on his hair and the rain “tears” that fall onto Light’s skin, and is textually tied in with her through his spoken line, “it’s the least I can do to atone for my sins” has also been trying to get close to Light under false pretenses, the way he wants Light to get close to Misa for the purpose of the investigation.

The sexual reading of L in the rain and the foot scene goes even further, though. “Taking a bath right before having sex is considered common in Japan and having wet hair can thus be associated with sexual situations.” (No Romantic Feelings—Asexuality in Japan, thesis by Kaisa Lehtonen, University of Tampere) Of course, this isn’t the only symbolic meaning that water serves in that scene. In Shintoism, water is a purifying substance, which fits well with the emotional tone of the rain scene, where L is pensively reflecting on his life and hearing church bells. L feels that he needs purification and atonement.

I don’t think there’s much to say about the exchange from the foot scene that goes:

 

Light: (startled, thrown) Hey!
L: You’ll get used to it.

other than that it… really reads sexually. It just does.

So… where does that leave this?

TL;DR

I think there’s a valid textual reading of the foot scene as L feeling guilty that he’s about to get Light killed.

L is conflicted between being understanding of Light’s ideals and scathing about the idea that Light considers himself a god. And so, he creates an ironic self-aware reference to himself as a sinner who’s used his sexuality wrongly, as a “lying monster,” in order to manipulate Light into trusting him, and who needs to atone through an honest and genuine act of service while he still can.

Meanwhile Light is still: ?????

 

Notes:

on tumblr

Chapter 8: Light's Bookshelf

Summary:

an overview of the books Light owns :)

2 Textbooks (read on tumblr)

 

2 schoolbooks he’s got open at school.

One seems to be a math book? This would make sense judging by the fact that Light is copying down equations. I can’t figure out what’s in the math book, but these are Light’s notes (I’m using * in place of unidentifiable exponents.)

 

[…] )x* + (5 - 4)*

[some notes I can’t make out, in Japanese] X日[?]

5 + [?] = k […]* - […]

5 ≥ 0 […] ≥ 0 […]

k = 7 […] [some more unidentified Japanese words]

The other one is in English, a science book or maybe something specifically about ecology.

 

Another is the extinction of many species of […] the planet[?] Species are becoming extinct at a faster rate than has occurred at any time since the […] million years ago that destroyed much of the […], including the dinosaurs. These developments are indications[?] […] of the most difficult […] and difficult […] problems is global warming, in which […] produced by the burning of fossil fuels create a […] the release of heat[?] […] records of global temperatures […] projections into the future show that at present we are experiencing a sudden and extreme rise in temperatures. If this increase continues, by the year 2,000[?] the planet’s average temperature will be the warmest in 13?,000[?] years. The effects of global warming could be very serious, including lack of […] in […] areas, flooding in other regions resulting from a rise in sea levels, and problems in agriculture. As ways to address this problem, we need to plant trees, […] more carefully and develop alternative […] fossil fuel energy sources that do not produce greenhouse gasses.

—Chapter 9. Time Running Out for the Environment

I’m actually super impressed by the amount of detail and actual information that went into writing this textbook page you can barely glimpse!

(Since this is going on while the class is reading from the environmental textbook, cornflowershade and I decided that Light just opened his math textbook and started doing homework while in a different class)

 

Light's Art Books (read on tumblr)

 

On the right, a group of books in English:

 

Munch
David
Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Mondrian
Klek

They seem to be art books. “Munch” would be Edvard Munch, otherwise known as the guy who painted The Scream:

 

Munch was an expressionist painter. According to Wikipedia, “With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of ‘the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self’. Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: ‘I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature.’”

Here are some interesting things about Munch:

 

[His father] also instructed his son in history and literature, and entertained the children with vivid ghost-stories and the tales of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

As Edvard remembered it, Christian’s positive behaviour towards his children was overshadowed by his morbid pietism. Munch wrote, "My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious—to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born.”

“David” is probably Jacques-Louis David, who created The Death of Socrates and The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons.

 

 

Brutus’s sons had attempted to overthrow the government and restore the monarchy, so the father ordered their death to maintain the republic. Brutus was the heroic defender of the republic, sacrificing his own family for the good of the republic. On the right, the mother holds her two daughters, and the nurse is seen on the far right, in anguish. Brutus sits on the left, alone, brooding, seemingly dismissing the dead bodies of his sons. Knowing what he did was best for his country, but the tense posture of his feet and toes reveals his inner turmoil. The whole painting was a Republican symbol, and obviously had immense meaning during these times in France. It exemplified civic virtue, a value highly regarded during the Revolution. (Wikipedia)

Near the beginning of the French Revolution, he also attempted a massive painting titled The Tennis Court Oath.

 

“Political circumstances in France proved too volatile to allow the completion of the painting. The unity that was to be symbolized in The Tennis Court Oath no longer existed in radicalized 1792. The National Assembly had split between conservatives and radical Jacobins, both vying for political power. By 1792 there was no longer consensus that all the revolutionaries at the tennis court were ‘heroes’. A sizeable number of the heroes of 1789 had become the villains of 1792. In this unstable political climate David’s work remained unfinished.” But a more famous work of his was The Death of Marat.

 

 

On 13 July 1793, David’s friend Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday with a knife she had hidden in her clothing. She gained entrance to Marat’s house on the pretense of presenting him a list of people who should be executed as enemies of France. Marat thanked her and said that they would be guillotined next week upon which Corday immediately fatally stabbed him. She was guillotined shortly thereafter. […] ‘Atheists though they were, David and Marat, like so many other fervent social reformers of the modern world, seem to have created a new kind of religion.’ At the very center of these beliefs, there stood the republic. […]

[In his later life, David wrote] “In all human activity the violent and transitory develops first; repose and profundity appear last. The recognition of these latter qualities requires time; only great masters have them, while their pupils have access only to violent passions.” […]

It is likely that much of the criticism of David following his death came from David’s opponents; during his lifetime David made a great many enemies with his competitive and arrogant personality as well as his role in the Terror. David sent many people to the guillotine and personally signed the death warrants for King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. One significant episode in David’s political career that earned him a great deal of contempt was the execution of Emilie Chalgrin. A fellow painter Carle Vernet had approached David, who was on the Committee of Public Safety, requesting him to intervene on behalf of his sister, Chalgrin. She had been accused of crimes against the Republic, most notably possessing stolen items. David refused to intervene in her favor, and she was executed. Vernet blamed David for her death, and the episode followed him for the rest of his life and after. (Wikipedia)

Pretty much everyone would recognize Michelangelo, Renaissance painter, sculptor, poet & architect. As far as his connection to Death Note, a segment from the Sistine Chapel, The Creation of Adam, is actually replicated in the first intro.

 

In the Death Note image, instead of God reaching out to/creating Man (the image behind God has been interpreted as either a rendering of a human brain or a uterus) it’s Ryuk handing Light an apple. Giving him death instead of life, obviously, but also serving as a tempter (apples being the pop culture interpretation of the forbidden fruit). The figures around God have been argued about by scholars for ages, but the figures around Ryuk seem to pretty clearly be other shinigami. (Gelus and Midora and some others?) The gold sunburst is reminiscent of Roman baroque art (this effect appears in a lot of Death Note art, so I would guess it isn’t particularly significant to this piece).

The Ecstacy of Saint Teresa, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

 

In addition to the sunburst, there’s bones and what specifically look like the skeletons of wings behind Ryuk’s shoulders. What makes this even more interesting is the fact that Light has wings in this picture too! But his are white and feathery. The other notable image is the chain attached to Light’s left hand. I’ve previously read a meta, unfortunately I don’t remember where, that pointed out how the chain symbolically attaches Light to earth (and how in his flying picture at the end of the intro he doesn’t have it, that is, he’s ascended to godhood) so you might even say the chains are his humanity… but it also makes me think of Icarus, wanting to fly closer to the sun… ANYWAY what’s cool is that Light & Ryuk’s picture actually tells the inverse story of the Creation of Adam; Light’s shows the fall.

“Mondrian” would be Piet Mondrian, a dutch painter and art theoretician. In his earlier works he explored different styles, but Tableau I epitomizes the style he would eventually be known for:

 

“Klek” is probably Jo Klek, or Josip Seissel, an avant-garde artist, surrealist, and architect.

Here are some of his works:

 

And this:

 

Maybe Light had these books because he took a class on it in school, but I doubt it. Judging by the size of the books, I’m pretty sure they’re art books, not textbooks. Just lots of pictures for him to flip through! And he keeps them literally at the head of his bed. My conclusion: Light appreciates art.

Further evidence to that effect:

 

The only time he ever seems appreciative of Misa is when he learns she can draw.

Light's Psychology Books (translated by mikami on tumblr)

 

This is a collection of books on psychology; the full translation Mikami did of all the books is linked above. Light groups his books by subject and this is not on his school bookshelf (the shelf over—and under—his desk). So this is all stuff Light has for his own person use; interestingly there is a lot of books on child and adolescent psychology (4 of 13), three books specifically on psychotherapy, and, of further interest, one on intrusive thoughts, and three that are actual books that exist.

---

The real books:

1) The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation by Margaret S Mahler

"The biological birth of the human infant and the psychological birth of the individual are not coincident in time. The former is a dramatic, observable, and well-circumscribed event; the latter a slowly unfolding intra psychic process.'Thus begins this highly acclaimed book in which the author and her collaborators break new ground in developmental psychology and present the first complete theoretical statement of the author's observations on the normal separation-individuation process. Separation and individuation are presented in this major work as two complementary developments. Separation is described as the child's emergence from a symbiotic fusion with the mother, while individuation consists of those achievements making the child's assumption of his own individual characteristics. Each of the sub-phases of separation-individuation is described in detail, supported by a wealth of clinical observations which trace the tasks confronting the infant and his mother as he progresses towards achieving his own individuality." (amazon description)

2) Stress and Emotion: A New Synthesis by Richard S. Lazarus

"This volume is a sequel to the landmark work that established an exciting new field of study, Stress, Appraisal and Coping (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). The author now explores the newest trends in research and theory, focusing on the rationale for cognitive-mediational approach to stress and emotions. He makes clear distinctions between social stress, physiological stress, and psychological stress. By integrating both stress and emotion into one theoretical framework, with appraisal and coping as its basis, this book takes a narrative approach to both theory and research. Lazarus concludes with a look at stress and health, with a specific focus on new developments in infectious diseases, the role of the nervous system, and his view of recent changes in psychotherapy." (amazon description)

3) Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes by Paul Watzlawick

"Called 'one of the best books ever about human communication,' and a perennial bestseller, Pragmatics of Human Communication has formed the foundation of much contemporary research into interpersonal communication, in addition to laying the groundwork for context-based approaches to psychotherapy. The authors present the simple but radical idea that problems in life often arise from issues of communication, rather than from deep psychological disorders, reinforcing their conceptual explorations with case studies and well-known literary examples. Written with humor and for a variety of readers, this book identifies simple properties and axioms of human communication and demonstrates how all communications are actually a function of their contexts.

Topics covered in this wide-ranging book include: the origins of communication; the idea that all behavior is communication; meta-communication; the properties of an open system; the family as a system of communication; the nature of paradox in psychotherapy; existentialism and human communication." (amazon description)

 

Light's Criminal Law/Investigation Books (translated by mikami on tumblr)

 

Japanese as well as well as globally. The two books with English titles are "About FBI" and "CIA" respectively. (full translation on tumblr)

He also has another book on law (in his school bookshelf) (read on tumblr):

 

I used these translating tools (1, 2, 3, 4) to try to figure out what this book says, and as far as I can tell it says “法文英” (legal text) + “Try Again” + “集題問” (group questions). Which… kind of makes sense? But is also a bit confusing. Group questions about a legal text? A workbook of some kind, maybe???

If Light gets the answers wrong he’ll be eaten by Ryuk’s shadow, lol

---

*edit — a cool correction by Hamster4: "I think the 'book on law' on Light's school bookshelf might actually be about English grammar. I don't speak Japanese but since I'm Chinese I can read kanji rather easily, so they are actually "英文法" and "問题集". "英" being English, "文法" being grammar and "問题集" being collection of questions."

 

Light's Engineering Books (read on tumblr)

 

So I used these translating tools (1, 2, 3) to try to figure out what’s on those big blue books and as far as I can make out it says “工千丨ニ” which means “Engineering 2.” That makes sense to me, since Light obviously knows how to build stuff…

 

Light's Architecture Books (read on tumblr):

 

A series of volumes on architects in the world, including volume 6, “construction laboratory” with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house. (Inspired by Japanese architecture). The house is literally built on top of a waterfall.

 

Inside it, Light has hidden magazines that he wants to “hide” from L…

Using these translating tools (1, 2, 3, 4) I can make out “あにま” (animal) + “1”  and “ソ⼹ツク” (software) + “special” on the first two books, the last book I can’t figure out.

The books to the right of the architecture series also seem to have something to do with building, which would make sense since Light groups his books together by subject.

Light's Books In Another Language (read on tumblr):

 

I’m pretty sure these books don’t actually have real words/letters, but are meant to look like a language that’s not English or Japanese. There’s something too definite about the pattern of shapes to be completely random? I’m guessing it’s possibly meant to call to mind Greek or Cyrillic script. Other than that, I have no idea.

So, maybe Light knows another language! :)

 

Cyrillic alphabet:

 

In Conclusion:

When Light designed his room, he decided he wanted to live in a library. Every single wall is covered in books (though he also has a sound system, closet space, and some slide-out boxes where he keeps things, like, presumably, his soldering equipment). Over, and under, his desk, he keeps all his schoolbooks. Everywhere else he keeps the books he's personally interested in. The subjects he's personally interested in include:

1) art

2) psychology 

3) criminal law/investigation

4) engineering

5) architecture

6) an unknown language

It makes me wonder if he would've enjoyed being an architectural engineer.

Chapter 9: aromantic asexuality and light’s “coldness”

Summary:

A frequent descriptor among people who watch Death Note and try to come up with a way to describe Light is that he’s “cold” “unfeeling” and “a psychopath.” All diagnosis aside, what is the element here that is being understood and interpreted in that way?

Continued in An Ace Reading of Light Yagami which focuses less on an argument for ace!Light and more on how Light being ace would intersect with his canon characterization, motives, and identity.

 

Misa: Don’t you believe in love at first sight?
Light: (...) ...No. (Death Note, chapter 30)

A frequent descriptor among people who watch Death Note and try to come up with a way to describe Light is that he’s “cold” “unfeeling” and “a psychopath.” All diagnosis aside, what is the element here that is being understood and interpreted in that way? Is it because he lies all the time? (So does L). Is it because he murders all the time? (So does Misa. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her described as “cold” or “unfeeling” although she casually betrays her friends and is not shown to have a single care for anyone who’s not Light.)

Maybe it’s more than Misa’s cutesy manner versus Light’s reserved front that make people assign to one the idea of “cold” and not to another. After all, Misa has a very “understandable” motivation. She’s in love. She’s head-over-heels. She’s obsessed. She murders more people than anyone else in the entire series.

Light has strict ideals. He doesn’t sway from them, even when he should. L is his opposite, his foil, the only person who ever understood him, and Light kills him easily. He feels bad about it, but he never once considers changing his ways.

Plenty of other people in the series have strict ideals and wouldn’t ever consider changing their ways. Not least among them is Soichiro, who would probably kill Light and then himself if he ever found out that his son is Kira. Is he “cold” or “unfeeling”?

L is described in similar terms, although in peripheral canon. “He had been called a kinky detective who relished bizarre murders, a human computer capable of measuring mass murders in terms of cold numbers, a reclusive sociopath.” (L: Change the WorLd novelization). The novelization then goes on to say that this estimation of him is entirely wrong.

Maybe it’s the fact that Light pretends to feel things when he doesn’t. He “uses” people.

When people are shown to have something Light needs, particularly information or the ability to obfuscate something he’s doing, he generally uses flattery to convince people to do what he wants them to.  Most often, he uses these techniques on women, especially those shown to have a romantic interest in him. This behavior brings to mind an American film trope, the femme fatale, a woman who uses seduction in order to manipulate the men around her. Like the femme fatale’s focus on seduction techniques in order to get ahead, Light calls these women beautiful and uses romantic ideas like fate to keep them interested in him and therefore useful to his goals. (rachello344)

In the Sino-Japanese folklore “red string of fate” (unmei no akai ito, 運命の赤い糸), an invisible red string around one’s little finger, connects two lovers to each other. (Kaisa Lehtonen, “No Romantic Feelings—Asexuality in Japan”)

And yet a femme fatale is usually at least a little bit in love. Terrible, twisted, desperate love—that’s the center of noir! Light is not in love. He never seems to feel it. (Except for his actions toward L, which could easily be interpreted through a noir lens). None of Light’s interactions with his “potential love interests” have any hint of him falling in love, or feeling even remotely attracted to them in the slightest.

Overtaken by evil, Light even takes advantage of love to achieve his goals. (HTR13, page 9)

What exactly do we mean when we refer to “love”? In English there’s only one word for it. We can add descriptors, of course, say “romantic love” “familial love” etc, but mostly, we just use the word love.

In Japanese, there’s two big words that mean “love”—ai (愛) and koi (恋). Here is a small description of the difference. In short, koi is romantic or passionate, while ai is a general feeling of love, “‘koi’ is always wanting and ‘ai’ is always giving.”

Cultural discourses in Japan acknowledge also the spectrum of affectionate feelings of different kinds. Besides feelings of romantic love (ren’ai, 恋愛) or sexual love (seiai, 性愛) the language has different expressions for romantic love in a sudden, passionate sense (koi, 恋) and love as an affection that can grow into a person (ai, 愛). The latter can include the love felt for one’s spouse or romantic partner, as well as love towards one’s family or friends. The expression “I love you” in Japanese is “Ai shiteiru”. “Koi shiteiru” on the other hand refers to “falling in love with someone”. (Kaisa Lehtonen, “No Romantic Feelings—Asexuality in Japan”)

Misa epitomizes koi in all ways throughout the series—passionate, romantic, frequently selfish, a “love at first sight” kind of deal. When she’s first seen Light in Aoyama and looks him up on the internet, Misa says “so it’s spelled with the kanji for ‘moon’ but read as ‘Light’ ... that’s kinda hot.” (Death Note, chapter 29). Her computer even has a sticker on it that reads “sexy dynamite” in the same panels, as if to drive home the association between Misa and sex/romance.

Kaisa Lehtonen writes,

As will be seen from the accounts of the people I spoke with, in Japan, asexuality can also be described as ‘lack of romantic feelings.’ [...] generally Japanese who feel neither sexual nor romantic attraction (overlapping category to AVEN's “aromantic asexuals”) seem to identify themselves as “asexual” written as asekusharu (アセクシャル). [...] in Japanese it is also common to describe an asexual person as a person who ‘does not have romantic feelings’ (ren’ai kanjou, 恋愛感情 ).

This fits extraordinarily well with Light’s insistence that he doesn’t believe in “love at first sight” and his claim that “for example... if you write ‘Light Yagami falls in love with Misa Amane,’ the part about me falling in love will not happen but I’ll die from whatever method is outlined after that.” (Death Note, chapter 29). Light refers to the death note rule that when writing names and actions of death “the causes and situations of death are not impossible to occur” to justify the fact that “the part about me falling in love will not happen.” What Light is textually trying to say is that you can only control people’s actions, not their feelings; and yet the Death Note is certainly shown to have the ability to change people’s state of mind.

For the informants “not having romantic feelings” towards anyone seemed to be the key point of their experiences; Everyone told me that their internet searches had included something along the lines of “I don't have romantic feelings” (ren'ai kanjou ga nai, 恋 愛 感 情 が な い ) or “I don't understand romantic feelings” (ren'ai kanjou ga wakaranai, 恋愛感情がわからない). [...] I found for instance a blogger who argued quite straightforwardly that it is impossible for a person to be both “asexual and heterosexual” or “asexual and homosexual”, since there are no asexuals who feel romantic attraction, and thus the terms “asexual” and “nonsexual” should never be confused with each other. … I got the impression that nonsexuals were seen as people who could fall in love and feel romantic attraction towards others, but who did not want to have sex or were for one reason or another not interested in it. (Kaisa Lehtonen, “No Romantic Feelings—Asexuality in Japan”)

Lynkemma adds, “assuming he is telling the truth here, as far as Light is concerned, the idea that he might fall in love with a young and sexually attractive girl is something that is «impossible to think of». And this in spite of the fact that he knows that people can be made to commit suicide, hijack buses, cut themselves and draw pictures in their own blood...” (Lynkemma, Death Note—A Queer Reading). When Light experimented with the deaths leading up to Raye Penber, Light discovered he couldn’t make someone draw a picture of L without having seen him (in other words, make someone possess knowledge they didn’t already have), hop across the globe in an impossible time frame (in other words, make someone break the laws of physics), or in any other way do something they weren’t “capable” of.

Light: All right... I can’t become your boyfriend, but I can play the part. (Death Note, chapter 29)

What Light promises to Misa is that he will act the way a boyfriend is expected to, but that there’s no way he’s ever going to “feel” it. Of course, to Misa, this is just a hurdle on the way to their true love and him finally falling for her in return.

It was clear that the cultural image of men as naturally sexually active and women as not that interested in sex was also present in the Japanese discourses. (Kaisa Lehtonen, “No Romantic Feelings—Asexuality in Japan”)

In chapter 17, Light makes a big show of why he has traps on his door, and gazes unenthusiastically at sexy girls. As L watches through the surveillance cameras, he muses, “it’s only normal... but... to me... it looks like [Light’s] making a show of saying, ‘I was checking if anyone entered my room because I have books like this stashed inside.’” Light then tries to justify his non-interest to the cameras by saying, “jeez, tricked by the cover again.” As though maybe the girls inside just weren’t sexy enough, or his type, or something like that.

Sachiko: You sure are late, Light.
Light: Yeah... I have a girlfriend now... I'll introduce you next time.
Sayu: Whoa! What? Light has a girlfriend? Wow!
Light: Come on, now. I'm an 18 year old college student, of course. [...] I got room service at the hotel.
Sayu: Whoa! Hotel? What's this? Scandalous!
Now, there are several things to note about this. First and foremost: Light is lying, he doesn't have a girlfriend. This is even before Misa enters the picture, the girlfriend is entirely fictitious. The lie serves the purpose of keeping his involvement with the Kira investigation secret. But note his comment I'm an 18 year old college student, of course. This is one of the few examples of Light articulating what is essentially his role, the act he puts on. He is an 18 year old college student, so it is «natural» that he should have a girlfriend. It fits his image, it fits the normality he is trying to project. (Lynkemma, Death Note—A Queer Reading)

Light knows that sexual interest (in girls) is a convenient excuse. He uses it all the time as just that—an excuse. While this can be interpreted as him being gay, what ends up being shown in the series is Light consistently using the assumptions other people have that he’ll be interested in sex to hide the fact that he has other goals entirely—killing L, yes, and then after that changing the world; being Kira; becoming a god; saving humanity. These ideals matter to him with the same intensity that having Light’s love matters to Misa, and he will do just about anything to accomplish them.

[Light is] likely not capable of loving a woman. This is probably because he looks down on everyone. He does possess love for his family and for humanity as a whole, however. He also had many friends. (HTR13, page 60)

Kaine-san: I can understand affection (ai, 愛) but what I don't get is romantic love (koi, 恋). (“Ai” wa wakaru kedo, “koi” wa wakaranai, 「愛」は分かるけど、「恋」は分からない。)
KL: Ah, in Finnish both “ai” and “koi” are the same (rakkaus, love), so I still feel sometimes that I don't quite get the difference...
Kaine-san: “Ai” is something that comes gradually, something you have growing on you, like the love you feel towards your family... (Kaisa Lehtonen, “No Romantic Feelings—Asexuality in Japan”)

However, the one thing that can sway Light from his goals as Kira is considerations about his family. His love for Sayu is what causes him to ruin the entire plan he’d created to clear his name, when she gets kidnapped, and his relationship with his father is complex and drives many of his actions.

But while Light cares about his family, and about humanity as a whole, he is still cut off in a distinct way from them.

It was often the people around them, that made the informants first realize that they saw and felt the world somehow differently from the others. Satou-san had started to feel left out as a high school student, after realizing how hard it was to follow the peer talk about crushes and relationships. Okutsu-san described her experiences similarly: “I felt somehow different, restless with other people”. Not being able to relate or identify with others came up often in the interviews. (Kaisa Lehtonen, “No Romantic Feelings—Asexuality in Japan”)

In Death Note, chapter 1, Light is shown looking listlessly out the window at school while his classmates around him chatter, read magazines under their desks, sleep, or study; he’s the only one shown looking upward, out the window, and away from everyone else. He thinks, “same old thing, day after day... what a bore. This world is a rotten mess.” In episode 1 of the anime, “Rebirth,” we get a whole montage emphasizing his feelings of restlessness and alienation from the world.

“Of course I was not interested in love in the first place, but I just tried to date someone as an experiment like decent people do.” (Kaisa Lehtonen, “No Romantic Feelings—Asexuality in Japan”)

Doesn’t this sound like Light? Not interested in love, and yet he’ll date because it’s expected of him. Throughout the series, he never shows the slightest interest in even the idea of love. In chapter 60, Light thinks, “I’ll be killing [Misa] eventually... I can’t develop feelings. That’s how most idiots screw up.”* Fortunately for him, he never seems to develop feelings for her, even six years later when they’ve been partners in crime for a long time. Even his relationship with L could be easily described in the same way; you could have him say “I’ll be killing [L] eventually... I can’t develop feelings. That’s how most idiots screw up” and it would make sense. He enjoys L’s company, but L’s presence never sways him from his ideals. It never even makes him consider it.

*edit: VERY interestingly, I found this literal translation of the line by charleywng on tumblr who explained that is has actually been mistranslated in the official translation, and means something more like "She can eventually kill / She can kill (me) sooner or later; I should be careful with her feelings / I should not alter her feelings (towards me); That’s how idiots fail." In which case, Light does not, even once, ever think of the possibility of "falling for" someone at any point in the manga. Instead, he's just being careful to not die.

Light defines himself fundamentally as a decent person. He does so many of the things he does in life because decent people do them, and so, so will he.

During college he had about five or six girlfriends, some being merely camouflage. (HTR13, page 60)

Kaine-san: I tried to go out with people, but well yeah. When I tried they were like “You have not gone out with enough people.” So, like, how many people does one have to go out with to prove that they are asexual? (KL: Ah, ah, ah...) Right? It's like the Devil's Proof [...] In the end, even if I'll never fall in love with anyone ever, they can just say that she had not met The Right One yet, right? (Kaisa Lehtonen, “No Romantic Feelings—Asexuality in Japan”)

In chapter 55, when Light has regained his memories and is coming up with an excuse to continue seeing Misa, he tells L, “Ryuzaki, we’re talking about a woman who not only says she loves me, but risked her life to help me out. [...] After receiving that much affection and dedication, any human with feelings would be moved.” L then asks, “so you’ve developed feelings for her?” Even though this is exactly where he’s wanted the conversation to go, Light is quiet for an entire panel, unable to answer in the affirmative. Finally, he lies, “yeah, maybe I just hadn’t noticed it until now...”

There’s something so deeply ironic and poignant about this line. Light claims, “after receiving that much affection and dedication, any human with feelings would be moved” and yet he’s not moved; he knows he’s not. For him, this is something impossible to think of—Light falling in love is something not even the death note, with all its powers, could contrive. And so, living in a world where everyone seems to be obsessed with sex and romance to one extent or another, Light comes to the conclusion that this is something intrinsic to being a “human with feelings.” And—if not a human with feelings—what does that make him?

Notes:

also, here's a short but awesome meta by palant1r about Light's aceness in canon: something i find really refreshing about death note as an aroace person if you're interested in the subject, go read it! :)

Chapter 10: Memories regained: why did Light scream when Misa didn’t?

Notes:

read on tumblr

I saw this question come up in a sidenote in someone’s meta about Misa. Unfortunately I can’t remember what the meta was… BUT… ever since then I’ve been thinking about it. The interpretation that had been given in that other meta was that it was evidence of that Misa and Light were people with two very different histories and mentalities. This is true, obviously, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder whether the differences in those scenes could be attributed to the particulars of the scenes themselves.

The thing is, Light screamed because he was *finding out that he was Kira.* Without his memories, he hadn’t approved of Kira at all, although he’d recognized that Kira acted with a mentality that was familiar to him. Misa, of course, revered Kira, so finding out she was Kira was something positive to her.

But Misa also… didn’t *learn* that she was Kira in the scene where she got her memories back. She already knew that. The scene where Misa discovered that she wasn’t who she thought she’d been all this time was the one in the bathroom with Rem. In chapter 47, she sees Rem, and her initial reaction is similar to anyone’s on seeing a shinigami for the first time.

In chapter 48, Rem explains everything to her, and Misa comes to believe her. She’s still visibly shaken throughout the entire conversation, though. Even when she admits that Light being Kira would be awesome, you have this look at her:

Which makes it hard to believe that what Misa is feeling here is some kind of unfettered joy. In fact, we never actually see Misa’s *unfiltered* reaction to knowing that she’s Kira. Not only does she learn that Light (who she loves) is Kira before she ever learns it about herself, but she’s also faced with a stranger, a dangerous shinigami who she doesn’t know if she can trust, but who obviously expects something from her. She’s performing. I find it really interesting to parallel it with Light & Ryuk’s first meeting, because here you see both Light and Misa in similar situations, reacting in incredibly similar ways.

You can visibly see Light trying to pull himself together and regain the upper hand. Misa’s doing the same thing when faced with Rem. And by the time Misa got to the death note, she already knew basically what she would be remembering. But Light was in for a shock. He’d heard Ryuzaki’s theory about him being Kira, but it had never been confirmed. All of a sudden, though, he’s remembering things about himself that are completely horrific. Of course he screams.

And I think it’s quite possible, if Misa had gotten her memories back unprompted, by touching a death note without advance warning, that she might scream too. But we’ll never know.

Chapter 11: Kira is Light Yagami’s Excuse

Notes:

Thanks to Okami_Seele who wondered if Kira and Yotsuba!Light could best be understood as the same person or not... I've been considering this meta for a while, but now I wrote it! :)

The central interpretation that Death Note puts forth is that Light was just a teenager, an accomplished student who had everything going for him. He couldn’t handle having screwed up massively by accidentally murdering two guys, and ended up being non-magically corrupted by the power to kill. “Kira” is the name given to Light’s acts of murder by the general public. After quickly taking this in stride, thinking of Kira and Light as different entities explicitly allows Light to disassociate himself from situations that make him uncomfortable, as well as hype himself up with ideas about how grand his story is. You can see this actually happening in the early parts of the manga quite a bit.

During the Lind L. Tailor broadcast in chapter 2, L says to Light, “what you are doing... is evil!!” to which Light responds by completely flying off the handle. “Me... evil? I am righteous! I’m the hero who’s liberating people from fear. I’m the savior who’s going to be like a god of this perfect new world! Those who try to fight me... they’re the evil ones!!” and he unwisely writes down Lind L Tailor’s name and then gloats about it. “Now we’ll see what happens to those who offend Lord Kira.” By chapter 3, you have Light’s listless reaction to the epic fight between L and Kira that’s now in all the papers; he describes it to Ryuk as “take one step out of the house, all you hear about is L and Kira. You can’t avoid it, even if you want to... I guess it might be pretty interesting if I wasn’t Kira.” But after describing the stories that are in the papers, the radio, and TV, his dialogue changes to “if Kira pays too much attention to this stuff, it just stresses him out. Gotta give his mind a rest, once in a while.” When Light gets too close to the truth (being suddenly some kind of supervillain celebrity in a fight to the death with some shadowy entity “L” who has already figured out basically where he lives is stressing him out) he has to step back by not only framing his stress as a hypothetical, and his listlessness as logical, but also by putting the whole situation off onto “Kira” who has now in the space of a paragraph become “him” instead of “I.”

In chapter 3 you get another fascinating moment. When Light goes to the abandon building to practice his pyrotechnics, he talks to Ryuk about the danger he’s realized that the Death Note poses to him. “Until now,” he explains, “I was thinking if anyone in my family saw [the Death Note] I could explain it by saying I’ve been keeping notes on the Kira case, to practice becoming a detective...” but now that he knows that anyone who touches the notebook can see Ryuk it’s an entirely different matter. “Even without this headache, I’m walking on a tightrope here,” Light admits. “If I blow it... Kira... will have to kill his own family.” As he finishes his little speech the panel zooms out to see that Light is holding onto the Death Note with a sickly, uncomfortable look on his face, almost curled in on himself. He’s visibly sweating—not just one sweat drop to indicate discomfort but “shaking and sweating” levels of this is probably meant to be taken literally. Ryuk’s figure in the background looms over him, but Light feels trapped in this moment, stuck in his own head. It’s such a fascinating image, compositionally and in what it says about Light’s mental space. And it’s in the dialogue too. Once again, Light has used this conversational technique to try to distance himself from something unimaginably horrible to him. “If I blow it...” he starts, but he can’t finish it by saying, “I will have to kill my own family.” He can’t say that. He can’t even think it. No, “Kira” will have to do that. Kira will kill Kira’s family. But only if Light blows it. So Light has to be very, very careful. It casts Kira as an inevitability. Something that will just happen if Light fails. Light has no power over “Kira’s” actions. He washes his hands of the matter. In fact, he washes his hands so spectacularly that in the beginning of chapter 4, where the scene continues, he’s able to make a joke about Sayu having a heart attack just from seeing Ryuk’s face. The emotional minefield has been successfully sidestepped. “Kira” has the responsibility for all of Light’s unforgivable actions, “Light” can remain himself.

By chapter 22, when Soichiro affirms that L—who has found and accused Light of being Kira and is at this very moment sitting right next to him—is indeed L, Light has an internal panic which ends with him having to remind himself, “right now I’m Light Yagami, concerned about my father...” By this point in the manga, Light has gotten himself so deep into acting as Kira, and so many of his daily decisions are caused by whether it would make him look suspicious or not, that it’s his identity as “Light” that he has to consciously reaffirm.

The dichotomy between what Light’s two personas allow is perhaps never so well articulated than in the moment in chapter 32 where Light tells Ryuk, “Ryuga is Light Yagami’s friend. But L is Kira’s enemy.” Despite getting along well with Ryuga on a personal level and playing into the idea of them being friends in his ordinary life, Light is fully aware that L is and always has been trying to kill him, and their contrasting personas of “L” and “Kira” cannot both survive—it’s only a question of who will kill the other one first.

So if Kira is an excuse, then why does the Light we see in the first half of the manga, and the Light we see in the Yotsuba arc, feel so diametrically different? There’s a number of reasons. One is that, in the first arc, we’re given privileged access to inside Light’s head. We see his internal monologue, his plans, his occasional moments of weakness and doubt, his moments of triumph and despair—we’re like Ryuk, able to be up close and personal on the villain protagonist. Then, Yotsuba arc rolls around. What we see now is Light’s public face, and a lot of stuff about Yotsuba. Light doesn’t appear as much in this section—and when he does, we see much less of him. While we’re still occasionally given access to his inner monologue, much of what we see is him in silence and what he chooses to speak out loud to his father and coworkers and L. He’s also not the protagonist of this section. Yotsuba!Light doesn’t drive the story. He reacts to it. Even Misa has more moments of agency in this section than Light does. It makes for a profoundly different reading experience, and so the emotional image painted for the reader in the section is also going to be different. Light won’t feel like the same character not because he changed so fundamentally, but because we, the readers, changed position; and because Light is also in a different position. We’re seeing him from the outside, from a remove, in a situation where all Light can do is wonder about a truth we’re already aware of. For argument’s sake, imagine if the Yotsuba section had also been told with Light as the protagonist: we would have seen moments of him alone, moments where we learn about his reactions to being chained to L; we’d hear about his plans. Maybe L would interrogate him in private, and Light, who thinks he’s so innocent but who knows how bad the evidence looked, would have to react to this. There are ways to write Yotsuba arc where Light is still the main character, but that’s not how the story is being told. The plot of Death Note is about Kira (who happens to be Light Yagami). It has no interest in Light without the Death Note. Light without the Death Note is a plot device created by his previous self.

What we do see, in small glimpses (and it usually is “see”—the art shows more of Light’s interiority here than the writing does) is that Light is not as comfortable and confident and unruffled as he wants to project. In the background of panels, you see him react in all sorts of interesting ways. He also punches L in the face and has one of his most interesting speeches of the entire arc, which is enough to build an interpretation off of: “Don’t be ridiculous! Just because I’m not the true Kira... just because you were wrong, you want to give up?! You gonna sulk like a baby?!” He’s so mad at L.

L tries to explain that he just means that chasing after Kira doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere in the investigation so it might not be the most logical course of action, but Light can’t hear that. He’s still stuck in his emotional reaction. “Who’s the one who swore to send Kira to his execution?” he presses. Then he’s leaning forward, grabbing L by the shirt, like he’s going to shake him. “The police, the FBI agents, TV announcers, how many innocent people have been victimized?! You’re the one who put Misa and me in confinement!!” That’s the crux of the matter. Earlier, Light had said that Kira killing people was bad enough but he’d never forgive him for what he’d done to Light and Soichiro. Now you see what Light will never forgive L for. Getting locked up for fifty-three days.

There’s something really fascinating about this. The Light we saw in part 1 was a Light who was slowly being backed into an inescapable corner, but who had the hope that he would somehow win. The Light we see in the Yotsuba arc is one who still has the hope that he’ll somehow win, but he’s already suffered a defeat that the Light in part 1 could never even conceptualize. He’s been tortured. And he’s still technically a prisoner. Casuistor wrote the most amazing meta ever about Yotsuba!Light and his motivations, Hellscape. It’s the most in-depth I’ve ever seen someone discuss that version of him. As Casuistor says:

So to summarize in brief before moving onto an analysis of Light’s development during the Yotsuba arc itself, we have at this point a Light Yagami who feels as though he has he has endured a terrible injustice. He has spent the past couple of months accused of heinous crimes ranging from the deaths of thousands of criminals to potentially patricide. His integrity has been repeatedly attacked and slandered, and any defense of his own character that he has to offer is routinely disregarded. Light is his only advocate and naturally he feels quite seriously persecuted. [...] In fact, in direct reaction to bearing the weight of these accusations, Light becomes determined to prove he is not the monster people accuse him of being, and his actions during the Yotsuba arc very much reflects this desire to prove that he is a virtuous, moral and overall upstanding human being. What’s interesting is that this desire to prove himself is not just external. He wants to prove it to himself as well. This is not a driving motivation that Pre-Kira Light ever feels the need to act on; he knows and everyone else around him believes he’s a good person. Pre-Kira has nothing to prove; Yotsuba-Light has everything to prove. In fact, if Yotsuba-Light actually has more in common with Kira-Light than he does with Pre-Kira Light.  

What Casuistor goes through beat-by-beat is how everything Light does in the Yotsuba arc is to shore up a certain image of himself and protect the idea of him as innocent, and to make sure that L can’t find anything else to pin on him. Anyway, there’s far too many good points in that analysis to go into, but...

The handcuffs themselves are interesting to talk about because they have different meanings to the people they connect. On the surface, it’s meant to represent the promise to catch Kira together. Not in the roles of investigator and chief suspect as was the case previously, but as equals. Two brilliant minds dedicated to the same purpose of putting an end to Kira.

But the grin reality of the situation is that even though Light’s own wishes are to stay and work on the case, Light has no choice but to stay because he is literally handcuffed to a person who will not release him.

But what’s interesting about this is that as shown in that panel above, Light chooses to speak of being chained and having his freedom restricted in sugar-coated euphemistic language. With a new solid lead on the Kira case, Light believes there will be a day when he can make L see that the handcuffs won’t be necessary. In a sense, the handcuffs represent Light’s promise to himself – they are something he can be positively motivated by. This is Light’s personal promise to be proven innocent instead of a sign of his continued imprisonment.

To an extent, this trick of shifting the framing and context makes it possible for Light to achieve a truce with L.

I would add only one thing to that really great discussion. Casuistor has a fairly non-romantic (in all senses of the word) take on L & Light’s relationship. And I think it’s a pretty legit take with a good basis in canon. Light & L really have no particular reason to be friends or to like each other and plenty of reasons to hate each other, be irritated, and get on each other’s nerves. But I take a slightly different interpretation in that think that Yotsuba!Light, despite all his barely-hidden resentment towards L, completely believed that he enjoyed L’s company. I don’t think those things are incompatible for Light to feel, and in fact I think Light has a very pressing psychological reason to convince himself that he enjoys L as a person. Because he can’t leave, and if he admitted that to himself all the time he’d be confronted day in and day out with the idea that he’s nothing but a victim. From the beginning of canon, we see Light reject any interpretation that hinges on such a thing. Anybody might say that Light finding a random notebook and then seeing that actually, he killed people by accident and now a god of death is going to follow him around until he stops being interesting at which point that god of death will kill him is enough to consider Light a victim. Not Light, though. Light is obviously a god. Light is obviously chosen for higher things. Light is obviously just doing all this because he wants to.

The relationship between Light & Ryuk and Light & L is really rather similar in some ways.

So that’s where my interpretation splits from Hellscape, (which anyone who is interested in Yotsuba!Light or what exactly the whole amnesia thing was should read, it is so awesome). Yotsuba!Light is L’s friend and he is perfectly a-okay with being handcuffed to him, even if he actually isn’t.

And then there’s also Light’s relationship with his father, which is a whole other amazing and interesting part of canon. Touched on both by that meta, and also by13Beyond13, who discussed the difference in Light’s motivations and in who he’s using as a role model in the different parts of the story (L vs Soichiro). It’s really interesting.

And then he gets his memory back. And he screams.

Back in chapter 22, L asks Light what his image of Kira is, and you get probably the most self-aware explanation Light ever gives of himself and his actions until the “Kira knows he’s evil” speech after his father’s death. Light says:

“I think Kira is... an affluent child. If, as assumed, he can kill just by willing it... if a human being had that kind of power—using it to get rid of criminals, and at the same time making it an example to others to make the world a better place, is something only a child would think of doing. I’d say he’s anywhere from a fifth-grader to a high-school student... if it was anyone younger than that, they’d either be too scared by the power to use it, or they’d use it to kill people they knew, people they didn’t like... and it if was anyone older than that, an adult, they’d only use it for their own personal gain. You could think of tons of ways to use that power and become really rich. Kira still has some purity about him. He’s an affluent child, who already has everything he needs. I’d say he’s probably a junior-high student who has his own cell phone, computer, and TV.”

With the distance that creating a criminal profile of Kira offers, Light is able to admit why he did what he did and even give a nod to how his social status influenced how he went about using the death note. The most crucial moment in this profile is the line “Kira still has some purity about him.” L picks up on this as an oddity—the only place Light’s profile doesn’t match up with L’s own profile of Kira. In context, this line of Light’s refers to his position at the cusp between childhood and adulthood, but also foreshadows the inevitability that eventually, Kira will not “still have some purity about him.” By the time chapter 75 comes around, immediately after his father’s death, Light’s description of Kira has changed to the extraordinarily depressing, “Kira is a mass murderer... evil. That’s true. But there are may people who support Kira... that’s also true. I think Kira understands this. That what he does is evil. But Kira will sacrifice even himself to change the world for the better... that is the true justice Kira has chosen... that is probably what Kira is thinking...”

Soichiro, perhaps the moral heart of the story, sums it up in chapter 22, after Light has already spoken: “Kira is evil... there’s no denying that... but lately I’ve been starting to think of it more like this... the real evil is the power to kill people. Someone who finds himself with that power is cursed. No matter how you use it, anything obtained by killing people can never bring true happiness.”

And that plays out over the course of the story until Light’s eventually unhappy death.

Plenty of people have talked about Light’s whole breakdown starting with “that’s right. I am Kira.” But what I think is interesting is how it happens right after he’s been literally backed into a corner. Everyone knows he’s Kira. He can no longer sustain both “Light Yagami” and “Kira” and “Light Yagami” is the one who’s been struck down completely and resoundingly. Despite everything Light’s been doing for years to keep both these things in balance, to “walk the tightrope” he ends up being pushed off and it’s Kira’s side he lands on. He has to. Everyone knows, now, that Light is a murderer and that he’s Kira. He has no excuse for his actions unless he believes them wholeheartedly. If he’s Kira, then he doesn’t have to be hurt by this, although he still is. He basically pleads for everyone in Light Yagami’s life to understand him. Why should he care about that? It’s not just because he doesn’t want to die. There’s more to it. He needs the validation of feeling like he’s not evil. If the people who know him personally can say, you know what Light, you’re right. I get why you did it. Then it would all make sense. He would have given up “Light Yagami” and everything that belonged to him—his future, his family, his morals—for a higher purpose. Near cuts that down pretty quick with his “you’re just a crazy mass murderer,” and then adds insult to injury by asking what everyone else in the room thinks.

And no one comes to Light’s defense. Not a single person. You see a number of panels that starts with an almost vulnerable shot of Light looking down, seeming almost like he feels bad. The moment stretches, there are close-ups on his eye glancing over at everyone, and everyone, one by one, condemns him with silence. After these rows of panels, Light’s eye, crueler than ever, tilts up to look toward the heavens—he can’t gain validation from anyone on earth. He’s going to have to get it from himself. He’s going to have to convince himself that everyone else is “a bunch of hopeless fools...” and it’s only then that he glances down at his watch and decides to completely lose it for the mere chance of killing Near.

Notes:

on tumblr

Chapter 12: Thoughts on Genderbent Death Note

Written on tumblr in answer to the anonymous ask:

How do you think a female mogi, matsuda, L, Light, Mello, Near, and Matt would be like? Would the story have some alterations? 

---

good question! Well, for one thing, I think they would not underestimate Misa as much, so they would keep a better watch on her in Yotsuba arc so she wouldn’t be able to go after Higuchi by herself which would end up making Yotsuba arc longer. Which could be fun…

Light’s relationship with her father would be slightly more strained because even though she’s still working cases with him, Soichiro’s protective streak would be slightly more obvious and Light would have this feeling that she’s never being respected as much as she wishes she was—but that she technically doesn’t have anything to complain about because he does trust her and he is really proud of her, but Light always feels like it’s never enough. (Which is pretty close to regular canon I think…) She would still be trying to get into the NPA and become in charge of the whole organization but she’d be more jaded about it, and twice as motivated too. Matsuda would be cheering her on and really rooting for her career.

I think Sachiko would be very supportive of Light’s career aspirations because Light being an obvious genius has this aura of ‘anything else would be a complete destruction of her person’. There might have been a whole moment earlier in Light’s life where Sachiko and Soichiro tried really diligently to persuade Light to a life as a teacher or doctor instead, but Light wore them down by being so dedicated and studious and unswayable without ever giving the impression that she was actually fighting with them. This lasted throughout most of middle school and in fact until Light solved her first case with the NPA after which Soichiro did a complete 180 and declared that Light was a natural and how could she ever do anything else than follow in her father’s footsteps?

In college Light would not have multiple boyfriends. She would have dated very sparsely throughout her life and never for long enough that it was considered serious. She does however have a lot of friends and most of them are boys. She and Takeda compete with each other for every little thing at To-Oh, furiously but with mutual admiration. On occasion, they team up to get something done and are considered unstoppable.

Misa would be just as worshipful of Kira and for this reason, despite having been homophobic before seeing Light, would change her entire opinion upon realizing that Kira is Light and Light is a girt. She would still fall in love with Light at first sight and track Light down, but would be more sensitive to Light’s vehement declaration that they can’t be seen to be dating. Light would try at first to say “I’m not into girls” but after Misa’s threat would be like “whatever, I guess we can go out secretly but no one will ever know.” Misa would still be secretly jealous of all of Light’s friends who are boys, wondering if Light likes any of them, and slightly insecure about it.

When they’ve lost their memories Misa is still insistent that she fell in love with Light at first sight and that they got together, and Light is still denying it, but the rest of the taskforce are a little less likely to believe Light on that one… but they don’t necessarily think it’s that Light is Kira but more that maybe Light is just hiding that because she doesn’t want to let it be known that Light is gay. (Light is aroace but no one except Light knows it. And L, who guessed it). They still end up having their awkward three way dates and at the end of Yotsuba arc once L is dead and Light announces that she and Misa are together no one is surprised. Misa wouldn’t keep trying to get her and Light’s relationship known “officially” the way she is in canon, and would not be trying to get married (or rather its legal equivalent in Japan at the time, adult adoption, which would be where one or the other one of them would be added to the other’s family registry as a spouse—Misa would be aiming to get into Light’s family—but again this would be more of a daydream of hers because she wouldn’t consider it as seriously, because of Light’s reputation and career) and that would make Light feel less trapped, and so they’d actually get along a little better because of it.

L would have a slightly harder time keeping the taskforce on her side, but she would still manage it. Matsuda would be even more intimidated by her than he is in canon.

Everyone would still think Kira is a guy. Light would be both bitter and envious of this. Bitter because “of course no one thinks Kira could be a girl” and envious because Kira isn’t a terrifying, omnipotent phenomena “for a girl” but is just that good and just that respected and revered.

I’m having a heard time imagining that Mello’s arc could’ve gone the exact same way with joining the mafia as a teenager and then making it to the top so quickly but honestly, since we don’t see that arc even happen onscreen in the first place, and it’s already quite unbelievable, I think she could manage it :) Things would not change very much for Near, although maybe her conversations with the president and people like that would be a little more complicated. Light would have to do more convincing to get Takeda to “go out with” her—which Takeda would not be interested in; but upon finding out that Light is Kira, Takeda would go along with the charade of meeting furtively in hotels and pretending to be having an affair. Although she wouldn’t consider Light romantically, her respect and hero-worship for Kira would pretty much put her in the exact same position regarding Light as she is in canon, just with a tad more self-awareness.

Mikami would have many, many fantasies about a universe where Light gets rid of her other second in commands and eventually marries him. Light would absolutely clock this and take advantage of it. It wouldn’t change much between them though since they’d have pretty much the same dynamic as canon.

In the warehouse scene, Near would already have long hair because she’d probably have started growing it out since she was a little girl, and Light would still feel like Near was trying to replace L but the visual but not be quite as pointed and mocking. It would look really cool though, like I can picture the way Near’s hair would be swirling across that dirty warehouse floor in this way that’s very eerie and almost mythic :)

Chapter 13: Platinum End is a bad genderswapped Death Note

Notes:

a rant about the first 8 chapters of Platinum End

so yesterday I was bored and wanted to read something that I wouldn’t get too emotionally invested in. so I decided to go find platinum end and see how bad it is. and wow, it… really is that boring. 3 chapters in & i was skimming over most of it & I’m not sure I can make it to the end. there’s literally not a single compelling aspect about this entire piece, except maybe the question of why it exists. it’s like Ohba went. “hmm. I have one really popular manga, but I’m honestly not sure why it got popular, so if I just do all the same things in *this* story maybe I’ll replicate my success” which. I do have *some* sympathy with. having something you make get that popular, everything else is going to reflect on it whether you want it to or not, and I understand how that could cause some writer’s block. especially when it seems he doesn’t? actually know what his strengths as a writer are?

because here’s the thing Ohba *does* have strengths as a writer. he can write incredibly convoluted plots with ramifications, and that can be a fun thing to watch play out (he’s got “convoluted” down here, but instead of being connected by cause and effect, stuff seems to just “happen” and there’s no ramifications yet, which makes the plot super boring). The other thing Ohba is good at is writing smart characters doing clever things. And it’s not like he lost all of his capacity as a writer, he was still good at it when he wrote Minoru. so it’s not like he can “only write one kind of smart character” either. If he wanted to avoid writing Light 2.0 he could’ve done that and still made it compelling, I think. but… so far, the most interesting character here is… the guy who was dying of cancer and wants to design superhero suits. But upon further reflection, most of what makes him interesting is because of Obata. because Obata at least put some *effort* into the art, while I feel like Ohba put 0 effort into the writing. I don’t feel the story plays to Obata’s strengths as an artist, but he’s managed to create some nice panels that are somewhat memorable. and again, the only reason any character or scene becomes interesting is because of the artwork. Like the main character: he’s got no personality beyond being depressed and missing his family and an obsession with finding happiness. but Obata draws him with pathos in some certain scenes, and it could almost make you feel something except that it doesn’t.

The main duo, that is the main character and his angel, don’t play off each other well. she’s also a bit morally iffy, which I feel was purposeful: the only remotely memorable line so far is when she’s talking to the other angel about the main character and says “I don’t think he’s the kind of person who can be happy after committing murder yet.” like. what kind of a line is that. what kind of a contest is this.

yeah, none of the god contestants except for knight dude want the job, since they’re all depressed. conceptually that comes the closest to being interesting this story gets, except it’s the least fun thing in the world to watch. and knight dude is just. you can’t even root for him, he’s that dull. others have mentioned the super weird conversation between knight dude and his friend(?) when they’re at the archery place, where the friend is like yeah if I had a wish I’d wish for all ugly girls in the world to disappear. which yeah. sexist. and knight dude is like cool wish! (???) but then the friend goes on and is like ‘and all guys more handsome than me, too’ and then knight dude is like 'can’t do that one, I’d have to die’ and friend laughs and agrees. what I want to know is, who talks like this?? was knight dude “joking”? he has no sense of humor though; it’s not played that way. and the friend just. Idk that whole scene is baffling.

there are gore and fanservice scenes like “look! shock value! surely this counts for something???” which are also honestly incredibly dull. Obata draws that stuff like he’s drawing the Yotsuba building. actually the Yotsuba building was more interesting. because yes, Yotsuba makes a cameo so knight dude can blow up its doors with his arrow weapon. Sakura TV makes a cameo too.

anyway I can see where Light gets his belief that humanity is boring from. it’s from the author because the author seems to think that too. Ohba probably should’ve stuck to writing genius characters and villains, all his “good guys” have no personality whatsoever. they’re like little paper dolls. unfortunately, the villain in the piece (so far) also feels like a little paper doll.

there’s one moment or aspect that could’ve been interesting, but again, wasn’t. which is the fact that the main character is in love with Saki, this girl at his school. But she’s also a god candidate and ended up shooting him with cupid’s arrow to make him on her side (it doesn’t last, he’s still on her side though). That plus main character’s tragic Cinderella backstory including dead parents makes him a bit of a Misa parallel, and I don’t think I’m reaching with that because there’s an actual line where he (who has wings, Saki doesn’t) offers to Saki “I can be your wings!” so. Misa who won’t kill people though, and has no sense of volition, which makes him significantly less interesting.

The thing is, if Ohba had taken the flip and played it through all the way, he could’ve done something kind of halfway-clever, and had Saki be a Light parallel. Like, if main character thinks this girl’s so sweet and nice but you the reader meet her and go “wow, she’s cold and calculating and totally just using him to gain her foothold as god” that could’ve added something to the character dynamics. but instead she, also, has no personality and does nothing. and so far main character hasn’t even wondered once why the girl he likes apparently lost the will to live so much that she got entered into this contest.

Chapter 14: An Ace Reading of Light Yagami

Summary:

Somewhat a continuation of my previous ace!Light meta, aromantic asexuality and light’s “coldness”

[Light is] likely not capable of loving a woman. This is probably because he looks down on everyone. He does possess love for his family and for humanity as a whole, however. He also had many friends. (HTR13, page 60)

 

This quote from HTR13 shows the writer's bafflement with the idea that someone could be incapable of romantic feelings, while also being quite sure that it's true in Light's case. It also draws distinctions between romantic love and the kind of love that Light is capable of. My previous meta went more into the different pieces of canonical information that support the interpretation of Light as asexual, so I won't go into it again here; instead, moving from the assumption that Light is, in fact, asexual, how would he experience and interpret that?

The paper No Romantic Feelings — Asexuality in Japan by Kaisa Lehtonen was invaluable to this meta. (It will be referred to here as AIJ for easy reference.) The paper was a group of interviews conducted with Japanese people who identified as asexual.

First, a little clarification of terms:

• "asexual" asekusharu, アセクシャル — correlates somewhat with the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN)'s definition of "aromantic asexuality", but is seen as very different from, and non-overlapping with, "nonsexual"
• "nonsexual" nonsekusharu, ノンセクシャル — correlates somewhat with AVEN's definition of "asexuality" but also includes those who do not wish to have sex, for whatever reason. Is seen as very different from, and non-overlapping with, "asexual"
• "romantic love" — ren’ai, 恋愛
• "sexual love" — seiai, 性愛
• "romantic love in a sudden, passionate sense" (what Misa experiences when meeting Light; love at first sight) — koi, 恋
• "love as an affection that can grow into a person" (which can be used in the sense of either an established relationship, or as something familial; Light is canonically familiar with this as he's quite close to his family) — ai, 愛
• "herbivore man" — a non-traditionally masculine man; a man not interested in competition or pursuing sex ["herbivore men are guys who fly in the face of stereotypes of Japanese masculinity.  They're known for being relatively passive, with a low interest in sex, money, and career status, content to hang around the house and pursue quiet hobbies like gardening, which seem "feminine" by Japanese standards (para. 1-2, 4-8). They're called "herbivores" not because they eat a lot of vegetables, but because of their lack of interest in sex." Japan, Food, and Gender, part 3]

AVEN is a forum that is still up today and is and was hugely influential worldwide in the idea of what "asexuality" is and can be defined as, but it's primarily an English-speaking forum.

If Light self-identified as asexual it would probably have been something he ran across in his own research online. We know that Light had his own computer and was very comfortable with using the web, even so far as knowing how to search up Kira-fansites when they appeared, and being able to hack into the NPA computers.

As far as online sources Light would have, he could have found AVEN, which was founded in 2001, but it's more likely he would have spent time at asexual.jp — "even Kaine-san who lived abroad and could read English had not heard of AVEN prior to the interview" (AIJ). Asexual.jp existed since 2002, so it would've been in existence for two years before the start of the manga, and five years before the start of the anime. Light would probably have started with a search similar to "no romantic feelings" and come across more general web articles to start with.

Besides the definition of asexuality as “lack of sexual attraction”, in Japanese it is also common to describe an asexual person as a person who “does not have romantic feelings” (ren’ai kanjou, 恋愛感情 ). This way of defining asexuality was also how the people I spoke with tended to present asexuality. [...] For the informants “not having romantic feelings” towards anyone seemed to be the key point of their experiences; Everyone told me that their internet searches had included something along the lines of “I don't have romantic feelings” (ren'ai kanjou ga nai, 恋 愛 感 情 が な い ) or “I don't understand romantic feelings” (ren'ai kanjou ga wakaranai, 恋愛感情がわからない). (AIJ)

“I felt somehow different, restless with other people,” said one interviewee. Some had tried dating, or tried "falling in love as much as anyone normal would.” Sometimes it was explained like this: “Of course I was not interested in love in the first place, but I just tried to date someone as an experiment like decent people do.” The interviewees wondered what the reason for their experiences might be, ranging from fear of men, to being a lesbian, or perhaps that they simply had not found "the one" yet, or even that they might end up feeling it after getting to know someone or kissing. But no — that wasn't it. Then perhaps they were just selfish, perhaps there was something wrong with them, perhaps they were even ill? These were things the interviewees had wondered about at one point or another. But finally each went searching on the internet, eventually coming across personal blogs.

Certain differences were found between AVEN's take and those of the interviewees, for instance, AVEN emphasizes community, while the interviewees in AIJ "did not consider themselves to be part of any communities and were even skeptical if there were any feelings of community between the Japanese who identify themselves as asexual."

Many of the people who took part in the interviews did not consider asexuality to be that strongly part of the LGBT movement in Japan. (AIJ)

They had read the blog posts of others and even sometimes met up, but "every one of them seemed to think that the blogs were more about individuals sharing their personal experiences than about creating any asexual sense of community," although Lehtonen admits that perhaps the way she described "community" had been misleading or perhaps too formal, and had added to the tendency of this kind of answer. For instance, "Hiro-san told me that through the blog she had found a nakama she could be herself with. 'Nakama' can be in practice overlapping with community, but the word has a very informal feeling. A nakama refers usually to a group of close friends, mates or companions." Many had told their friends or family about being asexual, some hadn't.

[AVEN] often underlined the importance of the asexual internet community for the individuals. It is not surprising that the ways of speaking about the community in AVEN and in the English research are in line with each other, since it has been common to look for [research] informants through AVEN forums. (AIJ)

When Misa asks Light, "don't you believe in love at first sight?" he answers, "no." This implies not only that he isn't into her, personally, but also that he has an opinion on a specific type of attraction (he doesn't think it exists). Light strikes me very much as the kind of person who believes that pretty much everyone else in the world is also playing a part, just like he is.

While a Light who, say, identified as gay might be fairly confident, as it's a more set and understandable label that he and others would be socially aware of, and therefore something he could make use of (anything that Light can make use of is something he feels comfortable with, imo) I think that the liminality of being asexual might trouble him more. Especially since, although Light probably would not have known about asexuality before going searching for information about it, he would have known about the idea of an herbivore man.

And we can very clearly see that Light has an invested interest in traditional masculinity: he's incredibly active ("In order to win, you have to attack!") and extraordinarily ambitious (he wants to become Director of the NPA—that is, get the highest possible position in the organization, above even his father; once he's Kira he decides that being god isn't too much of a goal). Furthermore, Light has a strong aversion to femininity, which we usually see come across in his misogynistic moments: and his misogyny never seems to come from a broad-based belief that women are inferior, but rather a disgust with women who act feminine. A Light who knows he's asexual before the events of the manga, or even a Light who had never run into the term but was self-aware enough to realize that he was not interested in sex or romance, would be extraordinarily motivated to prove himself in all other masculine arenas he can, that is, to make up for his lack of sexual and romantic interest by being the best in every other field.

And he certainly canonically seems to be aware of this aspect of himself, as he explains to Misa, “for example... if you write ‘Light Yagami falls in love with Misa Amane,’ the part about me falling in love will not happen but I’ll die from whatever method is outlined after that.” (Death Note, chapter 29); here Light refers to the death note rule that when writing names and actions of death “the causes and situations of death are not impossible to occur.”

The performance Light is constantly putting on is the performance of masculinity and his expected social role, and it's quite self-aware, as his many girlfriends, "some being merely camouflage" (HTR13) would attest; even his behavior when the cameras are in his room enters this uneasy space: Light buys porn because he knows it's something expected of a guy, he sets up an extraordinarily perfect stage on which to be normal... but then instead of following through with it, he acts as though the existence of external indicators of normality ('I have porn and I look at it, too!') might be enough to overcome the textual lack of attraction he feels and therefore convince the observers around him. This is the same pattern he uses throughout his life: Light will get close enough to a "socially-normal thing" to gather up the external indicators, and wave them around while saying 'I'm totally that kind of person' relying on others to fall for the indicators instead of looking at what he's actually doing. And it's this precise pattern that gets him into trouble with L when trying to prove himself not Kira, again and again.

According to the OECD statistics from 2014 the percentage of Japanese people living in a marriage is notably higher than the OECD average (p. 93). Although the reported percentage of young people who do not intend to get married in the future has slightly risen compared to the past, the proportion of the never-married singles who want to get married in the future is nevertheless very high, approximately 85% (The Fifteenth Japanese National Fertility Survey, from now on JNFS 2015: 1). There is a strong association between marriage and having children in Japan, which is visible for instance in that only 2% of Japanese children are born outside wedlock (Raymo et al. 2008: 8). In the European Union the percentage is around 40% (Eurostat 2012). (AIJ)

As part of his life path of Perfect Normality, Light would probably be expecting to get married at some point in time; but to someone more like Takeda, who he gets along with intellectually and who is socially ambitious while still remaining inside the bounds of what Light feels comfortable with, rather than someone like Misa, who Light feels is much too forward and too scandalous, and who therefore — by association — takes Light's own self-image in a direction he doesn't like.

It's not out of the bounds of possibility that Light may have been accused of being an herbivore man at one point or another in his life. In episode 5 of the Death Note Drama, this potential interpretation of his character is even made explicit, during a tense scene between him and Misa:

[In the 2015 drama, Light is still under surveillance when Misa comes to visit him for the first time. At first, he, Misa, and Sayu are all having tea together in his room]
Light [v/o]: L's watching us here. I need to get her outside...
Misa [v/o]: Is he bashful? Is Kira the herbivorous type?
[After Sayu leaves the room, Misa begins dropping more and more obvious hints about them both being Kira; Light frantically tries to get her not to mention anything incriminating, eventually attempting to drag her bodily out the door — but Misa blocks the door and faces him]
Misa: Stop messing around and say it!
Light: Please, Amane-san!
Misa: I think our meeting was destiny. You're my savior.
Light [v/o]: Shut your mouth!
Misa: I've wanted to meet you for so long!
Light [v/o]: Stop talking...
Misa: because... you are...
Light [v/o]: Damn it...
Misa: Ki...
[She trails off as Light kisses her frantically. L, watching through the cameras, is completely startled by this turn of events. Finally, the kiss ends, and Misa looks at Light adoringly]
Misa [v/o]: Kira here might be a carnivore after all!

Interestingly, the Death Note Drama is the only interpretation of Death Note where Light ever (eventually) seems to get on board with the idea of being with Misa, even for appearance's sake, and it may have to do with the way his self-image in this series was created differently. After the death of his mother when he and Sayu were kids, this version of Light was forced to grow up and take the mother role for his little sister. In addition, the fact that Soichiro wasn't around when Sachiko died in the hospital because he was too busy working, made this version of Light deeply disillusioned with the traditional power structures and ambitions he idolizes in main canon. He has long since turned away from the idea of being in the NPA; yes, he still becomes Kira, but his motivation is more honestly justice-driven and less ambitious. He still gets a thrill from the game with L, because that underlying personality trait remains, but being someone who "wins" is no longer the abiding aspect of his self-identity. Main canon Light, however, is very invested in his traditional ideal of success, and also in making his father, himself a traditional ideal, proud. There's no way Light could disentwine himself from these structures without also knocking Soichiro off his pedestal. And so instead he takes the route of secrecy, going into the NPA as Light Yagami, while at the same time destroying all that the NPA stands for and rendering it nearly obsolete through his identity as Kira. And when at last, in the warehouse, these two conflicting aspects of himself are made to meet, it's also the first time Light is able to articulate a worldview that dissents with his father's: "that's right, Matsuda," he claims. "Overly earnest people with a strong sense of justice like him always end up the loser. Do you want a world where people like him are always made fools of?! [...] A society, a world where people like my father will never have to be made into fools... Soichiro Yagami died to create that."

 

Chapter 15: The Impact of Light Yagami's Time in Confinement

This meta draws from the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy paper Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement by Stuart Grassian.

While solitary confinement is generally used in TV shows as a less extreme method of torture or interrogation, since it does not involve physical violence, it is actually quite brutal. People who undergo solitary confinement may experience perceptual distortions up to and including hallucinations involving multiple senses, as well as paranoia and obsessional thoughts, and difficulties thinking and concentrating, along with violent outbursts and self harm. "Prisoners confined in solitary confinement for no longer than one week were oftentimes found to have acute psychotic breaks," and there is a group of symptoms that tend to show up in cases of solitary confinement that are quite distinct, and some of the hallucinatory symptoms are ones that commonly show up in neurological illnesses.

Solitary confinement was first popularized in the American prison system, with the idea that it would allow criminals to think and repent—however, what was instead found was a baffling pattern of mental illness that correlated with the people who were put into such sensory restrictive states. After this was realized, the extreme measures of solitary confinement in prisons were scaled back, but solitary confinement continued to be used as a method of torture.

Not every person who undergoes solitary confinement will have the full range of symptoms. Some people deal better with it than others, and there are a few underlying reasons why that is. Firstly, "an individual who receives clues which cause him to experience the isolation situation as potentially threatening is far more likely to develop adverse psychiatric reactions." How does this apply to Light?

For the first seven days Light spends in confinement, he still has all his Kira memories and knows that he is locked up because he wants to be, as part of his grand plan. He seems quite in control and generally even-keeled. Then, he loses his memories. Instantly, he panics, because he suddenly believes he's been framed and unjustly imprisoned for the crimes of Kira, and he has no clue if he'll ever be freed. Light's isolation immediately becomes a threatening experience. Canon glosses over the full fifty-three days of his confinement, but we can see a little bit of how it wears on him in the few panels it cuts to him, as he progresses little by little over the days to increasingly apathetic postures.

Going into more detail on the symptoms of solitary confinement, adjustment to isolation tends to take one to three weeks. This will include anxiety and hyperactivity. But gradually, the prisoner "gives up all spontaneous activity within his cell and ceases to care about personal appearance and actions. Finally, he sits and stares with a vacant expression, perhaps endlessly twisting a button on his coat." This is something we canonically observe in Light's time in confinement, as the Light at the end of his confinement spends his days apparently lying on the floor and staring into space, when L isn't interrogating him.

There is another reason that doesn't bode well for Light's time in solitary confinement, and that is his personality. The people who do the worst in solitary confinement include psychopathic individuals and people with ADHD. The reason, the study surmises, is that solitary confinement is in effect extreme sensory deprivation, and these personalities already suffer from being chronically understimulated. Without diagnosing Light, I think it's possible to surmise that he would do badly in solitary confinement, as he is canonically "unable to tolerate routine and boredom" similar to those who suffer the most in solitary confinement. The quoted paper makes this remark: "Individuals with high needs for novelty and new sensations, ... who are emotionally unstable, or who are unconcerned with social approval seem unsuited for ... such environments ... The opposite [traits are found in] those who adjust well." Bad news for Light all around.

On the plus side, Light is educated and functioned quite well in day to day life before confinement, which are some of the traits found in those who do the best in such a situation. Even so, although individuals who do the best in this situation don't suffer the same psychotic states, they still experience perceptual disturbances, anxiety, panic attacks, and difficulties in cognition and memory with frequent mental fog.

Fortunately, the acute symptoms of solitary confinement quickly disappear the moment a person has been released from the situation. Unfortunately, there are also many long-term effects such as PTSD including pervasive feelings of hopelessness and depression, hypervigilance, withdrawal, and personality changes including intolerance with social interaction.

I would argue that Light canonically shows evidence of some of these long-term effects, as the Light we see in part 1 is social, friendly, and outgoing to all appearances (despite his inner thoughts) and even while being suspected of murder, is a generally optimistic and happy person. Yotsuba arc Light is rarely the focal character, and is mostly seen "performing" for the rest of the task force and L, but in part 3, after the time skip, where Light is again the main character, we can see that he lives a remarkably different life.

Despite quickly rising through the ranks of the police and growing the scope of his Kira activities, Light spends most of his days in one single apartment, interacting with the same five people. He does not seem to have any social life outside of this. He is markedly less social than his younger self, and frequently blindsided by events that one can assume his younger self would have taken in stride. He spends plenty of time gloating about his superiority over Near, yet Near is able to easily undermine him again and again—and I argue that it's not that Near is so much smarter than L, or even that Light is in a worse-off position now than he was back then. At least not to start.

The real difference is in the way Light reacts to threats and the fact that he spends so much less time cultivating his social image and disregarding his allies.

There are many possible reasons for the difference in Light's character pre- and post- timeskip, but one I've never seen brought up is the potential effect of the solitary confinement he underwent.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 7 of Meta/Essays