justice above all.

also,,,, @babelfell: you have the moral backbone of an eclair

Matsuda’s theory he presented at the end of the manga was that Near used the Death Note to manipulate Mikami at the Yellow Box warehouse. He argued that Mikami was usually very careful, seemingly went mad, and died mysteriously in prison (on Feb 7th) ten days after Light died (the Yellow Box confrontation happened Jan 28).

There’s already good meta out there about that, mostly based on the below panels from Chapter 108 of the manga:

But it’s surprising that I haven’t seen fan theories that Near killed Misa too. She jumps off a building at the end of the story, around one year after Light’s death, but she must have banked an incredible amount of years from both Gelus and Rem’s sacrifices despite her eye deals. I make the case that Near may have used a Death Note to kill Misa too, which has some interesting implications.

[continued under cut]

Death Note rules are often seen as absolute truths and most of the time it’s exactly like that, but I’ve seen exceptions to these rules. For example, that every user of a Death Note will die having their name written in a shinigami’s own notebook. And in fact, Light’s the only one who meets said fate: Misa, Mikami, Higuchi and Takada die without a shinigami’s direct intervention although they wrote names (sidenote: at the end of the manga, Ryuk was the shinigami attached to both notebooks in Earth, but he could stay with just a human and, after delivering Misa’s notebook to Mikami and making the eye deal, he returned to Light. Mikami dies commiting suicide even when he’s the owner of a Death Note attached to a shinigami). That makes me think that maybe humans don’t necessarily have to die when their death date says so. I want to highlight this moment in the manga:

Rem thinks that Misa will die sooner if she kills Light, but even if Misa wasn’t in danger for being suspicious of being the second Kira, she is convinced Misa would put an end to her own life if Light died. It is inferred that a shinigami’s (Jealous) sacrifice and offering their remaining life span to the human they sacrificed for is not enough to ensure said human will live until those life span years are over. 

Rem’s wish is removing Light from Misa’s life because she sees him as a toxic element for Misa’s happiness, but she knows too that, without Light, Misa won’t want to live any longer. Rem prefers an unhappy life for Misa than no life at all. So we should accept that a human being life span may change throughout their life without a Death Note intervention and that there’s nothing inmutable.

As for why I think Near would never write nor have someone write a name in the notebook, for him solving the Kira case was about solving it the way L would have. Light mocks Near for not having the fake notebook tested before the Yellow Box incident and, in fact, Near himself recognizes it. If Near would have wanted to put an end to Kira’s reign at any cost, it would have been enough for him having Light Yagami and/or Mikami’s name written in the notebook he thought was the real one, but he chose risking SPK members’ lives without testing the Death Note. JUST for honoring L’s views about solving a case.

The best reason Rem thinks what she does because Misa herself says she wouldn’t want to live without Light. So in that case, why didn’t Misa kill herself right when Light died instead of over a year later? And it just so happened to be a couple weeks after everyone was in the Yellow Box warehouse again, at Near’s behest. Everyone was told that Kira killed Light so Misa had no reason to think he was ever coming back to her, and she kept on living for a full year.

[side note: Misa was every bit as toxic to Light as vice versa and could have walked away, but that’s beside the point]

I think I’ve seen it kicked around that one of the task force members maybe let it slip to Misa that Light was actually Kira and she killed her self over that. But we already know that Misa had idolized Kira both with and without her memories, due to getting justice for her parents’ murder. So why would finding that out about Light—who was already dead—a year later lead her to suicide? I don’t think it would. If anything it would lead her to try and find out as much as she could about Light’s real life and any role she had in it.

That kind of curiosity would bode very badly if Near had a death note or some pages.

I’m not alone in believing Near would write in it— I mean Matsuda who was always trusting and naive and worked with Near, he believed it. He’s right that the timing of the Mikami’s death is very odd, and so is Misa’s.

And I’m not convinced Near was dedicated to using L’s methods to solve the case. For one, he was more cautious than L. He also explicitly criticized L’s methods, even called L a loser. I think he did respect L and his work but wanted to improve on it given L had failed and died. Near’s reaction to Light mocking him isnt surprising as I seriously doubt he would ever admit to using the notebook. Near could lie quite well too, especially if he learned a thing or two from L.

As for why he didn’t write Light’s name if he had the notebook? It’s because Near did hope to capture Kira and imprison him. I believe he was trying to avoid Light/Kira becoming a martyr, which is actually exactly what happened (the end of the manga shows Kira worshippers having a vigil). Perhaps his desire to avoid that and to incarcerate Kira like a common criminal was worth writing Mikami’s name in the notebook, and ‘risk the lives of the police.’ He’d already had people die under him thanks to Mello, and it didn’t stop him.

I think that Misa waiting to kill herself a year after Light’s death is more related to her own personality and views. Come on, Near has no way of knowing: 1) a shinigami can die via killing to save a human’s life. 2) Misa was (kind of) responsible of two shinigamis comminting suicide. If Near wrote Misa’s name, why didn’t he have her killing herself right away to avoid suspicions?

According to HTR, Misa put an end to her life the next St. Valentine day AFTER Light’s death. Light was killed in April, Misa waited till next lovers day, and I see that decision as a consequence of Misa’s idea of beauty, love and a very twisted way to profess it:

The first thing she mentions after learning about a way to kill a shinigami is “what a beautiful way to kill”, so the most relevant information to her after being revealed an information no other human being (and probably no other shinigami besides Rem) knows is love-related: for Misa, dying for love is beautiful and worthy of admiration (and this idea is supported when she asks Rem to kill her and begs her not to harm Light, so she is convinced the most supreme proof of love is offering your own life to protect the one you love, even if your love doesn’t love you back).

Now look this manga moment:

She is being tortured, she is asking desperately for death, yet she still has energy left to think about something as shallow as physical beauty and preserving it before time fades it. This is another manifestation of how Misa understands love and death. She herself claimed she couldn’t live without Light, yet she waited till St. Valentine’s Day to commit suicide. Why? Because it was important to her, it was important to her leaving behind that macabre legacy. That was her way of showing her decision was love-driven, so I can’t see why the date of her death is somehow Near’s decision.

Matsuda always was ready to offer the simplest explanation to Kira’s killings and being on Light’s side, claiming he was innocent and definitely not Kira, because he liked him, he admired him, he would have given anything for Light not being Kira, even opposing L’s deductions and far superior reasoning (as oposed to Aizawa, who was ready to question Light’s innocence). Yet Light’s proven guilty and suddenly he has the capacity to conceive this weird theory to whitewash Light’s actions and blaming Near out of spite, beacuse Matsuda was loyal to Light and needed to somehow ease his disappointment in the face of Light’s guilt.

I see Near’s wish to “win like L would have” as solving the case, not “eliminating the problem”. I’ll explain myself: the most efective way to end Kira’s reign (aka “eliminating the problem”) would have been informing intelligence services from a random country about his suspicions on Kira’s identity, then Light would have met his end anonymously, in a dark alley or at his home, THIS is the way real world works, power doesn’t care about definitive proofs nor arguments. But Near wants to follow L’s guidance, and L would have wanted to expose Kira with irrefutable evidence, not just “saving the world” from Kira. That, I think, is what Near means when he says he’ll win in L’s way.

So about Light’s date of death, it definitely wasn’t in April, that’s a typo in How to Read. The rest of the manga timeline is aligned with Light’s death on Jan 28, including other characters deaths listed in How to Read like Mikami and Takada:

You can see that if we went by an April death for Light, then Mikami died before ever stepping into the warehouse according to HTR. We know that isn’t true from the manga, and also that Takada died just before the confrontation. Dunno why HTR would have that typo but yeah. So I stand by my original statements about the timing of Misa’s death vs Light’s death, and the reunion Near called at the Yellow Box a year later.

Near’s wish “to win like L would have”…but what was L going to do right before he died? Use the death note to kill criminals and test the fake rules. L was certainly not above testing the notebook’s power or sacrificing people, and early on set up Lind L Tailor to test it in a roundabout way before he had the note itself. Neither of us know what Near meant by that statement precisely, but it seems evidence more for my side than against. Also the world would figure out quickly that Kira was dead/inactive/“taking a rest” whether Light was killed or incarcerated because murderers would have stopped dying either way. The cult kept going in the manga after Kira ceased activity, they didn’t know the details but assumed his death because of the very strong convjnctions and tenacity of Kira. Also, Kira was not silent. He communicated with people via the news or Takada, etc. Kira would have been both silent and inactive if jailed by Near.

Can we assume that Near didn’t know how shinigami could die? He might have been banking on that very reason being why Ryuk wouldn’t save Light. Or if he didn’t know before, he could have learned after Light’s death. If Near or the task force/police didn’t ask Ryuk about what happened to Rem during the conversation Ryuk was dishing all the secrets, then it was a missed opportunity. They knew that at one point there was a shinigami Rem and then suddenly…there wasn’t. Didn’t they wonder given that Rem disappeared the moment L died? Near was smart and curious, and I think he would have pumped Ryuk for all the info he could given the opportunity.

Have you read these two excellent metas (by casuistor and mikami) on why Near probably controlled Mikami at the Yellow Box? They provide a lot of great thoughts as to why Near would have done it and how. Certainly makes it a lot more likely that Near wouldn’t care about using the death note again to take care of what he might perceive as a lingering threat. I already mentioned in my last post a theory as to why he might not have written Misa’s name right after Light’s death, and how that played into why Misa might not have killed heraelf right away either.

Your thoughts on Rem and Misa’s motivations are interesting! I do agree that Rem wouldn’t need hard evidence to kill Light (or try to, if she even could) if Misa died. She’s emotional and impulsive, she’d just write it. She would be much more cautious if Misa were alive, because of Misa’s prior statements about not wanting to live without Light. This ties back in to what I was talking about their death days. Misa died over a year after Light which seems odd given the depth of her devotion. I don’t think the day of Feb 14 was anything but a coincidence but I could see how it was chosen due to the differences of how Valentine’s is celebrated in Japan (women give presents to men vs vice versa in a lot of the west). Misa had already given herself to Light every day since they met and this might be seen as her final ‘gift,’ her life which she’d always promised.

Still…a little late and she missed the first Valentines Day after his death. Why not that one?

Thanks for discussing this stuff with me Pasi!

Regarding Near’s proclivity and reasons he might write in the death note (and for evidence he did in fact control Mikami), I think this prior meta by causitor sums it very well. Having a convincing case as to why he would control Mikami using the death note makes it more likely he might do it again. As to following L’s methods— L was going to write in the death note or have someone else do it before he died, to test the fake rules. In fact L was going to use the death note to kill murderers to try and expose Kira. So, which of L’s methodology was Near referring to? L was not above testing the death note himself, although Near claims not to have done so (and I think that’s a lie).

I agree that Rem wouldn’t need solid evidence to kill Light (if she in fact could have), if she believed that Light killed Misa. She would have just written it out of anger/on impulse because she was an emotional shinigami. I do think she would need some evidence to kill Light if Misa was still alive because of what Light meant to Misa. But anyway, I’m not sure how that is related to whether Near killed Misa or not, or at least as to whether it is a plausible theory.

Could Near have deduced how shinigami die? If Ryuk spilled guts about the fake rules and other things to Near, I’d imagine that someone as smart and curious as Near would pump a shinigami for as much intel as possible. Past that, Near and all the police knew that after Higuichi was captured there was a shinigami named Rem…and then suddenly there wasn’t. Near would know that shinigami were tied to human death note users, so what happened to Rem? Do you think Near or any of the task force wouldn’t have asked Ryuk that? Who knows if they did but it would be a large missed opportunity if they didn’t.