we dig our own graves

L: largest piece due to first-half deuteragonist and narrative haunting privileges. right in front of/under light but light isn’t looking at him. it’s kind of fascinating that everyone who light witnessed die is shown right before the moment of doom (e.g. naomi is shown in her moment of clarity before she turns around) except for L, who is shown after his eyes have closed — you’d think in analogy to everyone else he’d be shown as that panel of his eyes widening as he notices light’s smile — so i could make an argument that L is the only one of these people light thinks of as actually fully dead [is he realizing this for the first time?], but to be honest it’s more likely that o&o just thought this panel of him was more iconic and immediately recognizable as his death.

mello: light IS kind of looking at the sketch of mello — near said earlier that mello is the entire reason light got caught, so it makes sense light is focusing on him. he’s in sketch form because as aforementioned that is the only image of mello light has ever seen, but also if we’re to fit it with the others being on the brink of death then it also makes sense because mello died due to kiyomi knowing what he looked like from the sketch.

presumably L and mello are in front of light because they were both main antagonists: the people who played this game with him.

ON THE SIDES - raye, naomi, ukita

raye, naomi: together like always, both shown in the moment they realized light is kira right before they die. it’s interesting that light even thought of them; maybe they represent the beginnings of his mission to him, and/or maybe they’ve been haunting him since yotsuba arc when he uncomfortably remembered he’d encountered them both but didn’t remember why. obviously NOW light remembers but the uneasiness could have stuck with him

ukita: this guy's inclusion is interesting because he's the only one light didn't have a hand in killing. probably why he's also the only one under light's arm. (though naturally ukita is still dead because of light — if light didn't become kira then misa wouldn't have looked for light and killed ukita along the way.) it also means light saw ukita collapse, either in real time watching the sakura tv broadcast or maybe later as a recording. i wonder how he felt? it definitely stuck with him considering ukita being here when a bunch of other dead characters are not (see later)

what raye and naomi and ukita have in common is that they are police officers who got in kira's way. we already know light thinks they deserved to die, but he does still demonstrate conflict about the idea when it comes to other people:

so that's fun!

BEHIND LIGHT - soichiro, misa

this is my favorite section personally.

soichiro: this is the panel where soichiro says, "i'm sorry… i couldn't kill him [mello] after all…" they almost definitely just picked this panel because it's basically the only clear close-up of his face in the hospital scene but that still prompts the question of WHY it's the only clear close-up of his face in the hospital scene. i think it's probably because it's the ultimate divergence of his ideals from light's.

misa: i made a whole separate post about this here already but the choice to include misa makes me feel INSANE because she is the only person here who isn't dead! she is living it up at the teito hotel as of light's mental breakdown! why is she here, among all these victims of kira?!?!

notably this is the panel where misa offers to give light her death note, which light reacts to like this:

anyway to reiterate that earlier post: is that light's retrospective memory of when misa died? when she hands light her weapon and thus becomes a weapon herself and no longer a human being in his eyes?

imo the reason soichiro and misa are quite literally in the back of light's head is that they are people light cannot think about for too long. both of them represent concepts that horrify him — soichiro is a moral paragon and we see light hiding his upset feelings whenever soichiro rejects kira, so soichiro is essentially his unwelcome reminder that what he's doing is evil; misa is the exact opposite of a moral paragon but she's on light's side, she would die for him, arguably this panel tells us she is (in light's mind) dying for him, and so she is also essentially his unwelcome reminder that what he's doing is evil.

similarly both of the panels they're shown in are kind of metaphorical deaths in light's eyes when he thinks back to them, even though soichiro is also actually on his deathbed. we've covered how misa dies in light's eyes when she becomes light's weapon, but light has spent the entire time soichiro was alive hoping that soichiro would come around to kira; he spends soichiro's last moments, even after soichiro said he couldn't kill mello, begging him to kill mello. but soichiro has rejected kira's ideals all along and his inability to kill mello is the nail in the coffin for that. soichiro yagami as a father is dead to light. all light can make out of him now is a death that at least meant something.

NOTABLE PEOPLE WHO WERE (BASICALLY) KILLED BY KIRA BUT AREN'T HERE - watari, rem, kiyomi, wedy, aiber, the yotsuba group, all the other criminals

these people just do not weigh on light's mind as much lmao. in the case of wedy and aiber and the yotsuba group i think light considers them plain criminals, not to mention subordinates to his greater plans, and so he doesn't think twice about them. rem and kiyomi are also subordinates to his greater plans that he discards right after. watari is nobody to him (he didn't even think rem would kill watari!).

SIZES OF THE SCRAPS OF PAPER - L > soichiro > mello = misa = naomi >= raye = ukita

yeah not much to say. that's light yagami's thought priorities ranking for you.

CENTER - light