#bmeta

Hi! It is included in the official timeline of events for the manga series in the How to Read Vol. 13 book. But I don't think that it was originally conceived by Ohba and Obata as something that was meant to be included in the manga timeline; I think it was mostly the brainchild of the writer NISIOISIN, and it was published shortly after the manga series ended as official Death Note affiliated content.

The way I picture it probably going is that Ohba just made up a name for a case that L remembered Naomi from without thinking up too many more details about it (as Ohba claims in the HtR13 interviews that he hadn't really fleshed out L's past at all whenever he first started writing him as a character):

And then later on NISIOISIN (an established professional writer in his own right) wrote the novel, and he decided to take the name of that case from the manga and to make up the story behind it. I am not sure how much O&O collaborated with him on it, if at all. The cover art for it was made by Obata, and apparently Ohba has read it and seems to like it, because he mentions it a couple times in the HtR13 interviews. Though it also sounds like some of the things that were included in it were surprises to Ohba.

These were the references to the novel I could find again while skimming the behind the scenes book:

So I think how much you want to take it seriously as canon should be kind of up to you? The way I see it, if you couldn't get the story behind the LABB case from reading the manga itself then it technically shouldn't be considered canon to the same degree that the original manga story is, especially since it wasn't written by Ohba.

Hey very true!

It’s funny sometimes to remember that the whole Another Note novel was based on just these few panels in the manga:

It seems like such a small throwaway bit of information, but Nisio Isin really took it and ran with it. He actually created a ton of the Wammy’s lore that is widely accepted now which wasn’t in the manga originally at all, if you think about it.

Hi dude, sorry it took me a little bit to get around to answering this! 

To be honest, the lifespan/eyes thing often confuses me, too. It can be hard to write Beyond Birthday POV fanfic because of this (in my first attempt I just took away B’s understanding of the lifespans altogether to simplify things, but that proved to make his character a lot more shallow/less likeable, so I wouldn’t make the same mistake again). 

Characters seeing the lifespans of people while also murdering them raises the whole question of fate/predestination: namely, since B deliberately chose victims whose numbers indicated they were to die at that time anyway, then were these victims only fated to die that day because he chose them? Would their lifespans have been any longer/different if B hadn’t been born, or he hadn’t murdered anyone at all? That kind of thing. 

It’s impossible to say for sure, but I’m fairly certain that these people B killed would’ve died at that time no matter what. I say this because according to the manga/anime, it seems that people’s numbers can only be changed by Death Note interference, and that the numbers always show that person’s fated lifespan, NOT the one they’d have from being killed by the Death Note. 

For example, Rem says this to Light when Light threatens to kill Misa:

So the Death Note is seemingly the only way to “cheat” this preset lifespan, and kill people before their time is actually up.

Canon B also believed that nothing could ever be done to change the numbers, and he’d seen a lot of death in his day, what with his parents dying and all. His mother died in a train accident and his father was murdered by a mugger, neither of which are “natural causes,” but apparently he saw both of those death dates coming beforehand and still couldn’t change them. He rightly assumed when he attacked Naomi with a blackjack that she would be able to successfully dodge his attack; he could see that she wasn’t fated to die that day, so he knew she would be unharmed, and he just wanted to test her dodging skills (I guess?). B didn’t know Death Notes even existed, so seemingly this is further evidence for the numbers normally being unchangeable without one. 

Hi Anon! Good question!

I actually haven’t given this aspect of B much thought yet, but I think there’s a ton of potential for fans to come up with interesting theories about his eyes. All Mello said about it in the novel was: 

(1) that B had the eyes since birth

(2) that nobody knew how/why B got the eyes, not even B 

(3) that maybe if there were death gods dumb enough to lose their notebooks, there could be death gods dumb enough to lose their eyeballs, too. Which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but okay.

I personally wouldn’t come up with a theory like a death god breeding with B’s mother to explain his eyes, because the DN canon explicitly states that shinigami can’t have sex, and I very much prefer the death gods as non-sexual characters. 

I do remember seeing a comment somewhere once a long time ago where a fan was saying that they associated Beyond Birthday with the shinigami Nu, as in Nu had something to do with it, because that death god basically looks like a big rock covered in a bunch of eyes:

And I just loved that idea! So I guess that’s about the closest thing I have to a headcanon about this? I think it would be super fun to come up with a creative origin story that starts in the shinigami realm, which involves Nu somehow, and explains how B possibly gets his eyes. Maybe it is a bet or an accident or a curse or an experiment gone wrong or something?

I’ve never even considered those other things you mentioned yet, like it running in families and/or having something to do with traits and genetics. That human side of it would be a whole other fascinating aspect to explore, too!

So I was looking for a pic of the character in blue because I remembered they were blindfolded when we saw them briefly, then I noticed the Shinigami in red also seems to wear some sort of mask, and then there’s Rem who covers one eye, and Gelus who has only one eye, so maybe it’s a common bet in the Shinigami realm, though if that’s the case Nu totally has an unfair advantage.

@tingl10 Yes, I made screenshots from the English translation of the book!

Here is the link for the PDF of the Another Note novel in English: (X)

SCREENSHOT OF PAGE 48, in which Mello states B’s shinigami eyes were the reason he was taken in by Wammy’s House:

SCREENSHOT OF PAGE 56, in which Mello states B never told anyone he had shinigami eyes:

SCREENSHOT OF PAGE 61, in which Mello explains that B’s real name was unknown to Wammy’s, and that L only ever knew of B vaguely and impersonally:

BONUS: SCREENSHOT OF PAGE 75, where Mello claims that Naomi never found out about B’s shinigami eyes, then states nobody knew how B got the eyes, not Naomi or L or Mello, or even B himself: 

All of this makes you wonder, where is Mello getting his information about Naomi’s perspective, the inner workings of the case, and B himself? 

I don’t think Mello mentions ever meeting Naomi, and he says he never met B and is often just speculating about him. 

Naomi only met L personally that one time after the case ended, when she kicked him down the subway stairs, so she didn’t tell L about her experiences to fill in the gaps for when he wasn’t there. 

And if all of this information about the case was relayed personally to Mello by L, as Mello claims, then where did L get all the facts about the case that he wasn’t present for, or all of the personal information about B, if he never knew him personally at all? I very much doubt L would have gone to meet B in prison after he was caught, or that B would want to tell L any of this information after he failed. 

Hi Anon. That’s another good question!

See, I find the way L is characterized in Another Note to be a bit more… heartless toward his successors than I think he would actually be, perhaps? At least going by how the fourth generation successors like Near and Mello clearly look up to L a lot in the manga and anime. L doesn’t involve himself in B’s case personally at all, and he also takes B’s “Ryuzaki” alias after beating him (which seems to be a direct reference to how L steals rival detectives’ aliases after defeating them, such as the “Eraldo Coil” and “Deneuve” ones). These actions both seem like blatant middle fingers pointed at B, as he knows full well that B’s biggest wish is for L to personally take him on as an opponent. Granted, this could be because B became a serial killer, and L probably found that to be despicable and inexcusable. But if L had any sort of compassion for the child B once was, or any sense of responsibility for the bad way B turned out, it’s not shown at all in the LABB novel.