thinking about Matsuda in the epilogue. The manga epilogue chapter, set a year after yellowbox, where Matsuda and Ide discuss Light and Kira, even though the world’s mostly gone back to pre-Kira. And it’s clear from Ide that Matsuda’s theories around what happened on the 28th come up a lot. Matsuda thinks that Near used the notebook on Mikami, and that he fed Mello the information he needed to manipulate him into kidnapping Takada and proving the notebook as fake. And it’s so, so painfully clear that Matsuda is desperately clinging onto anything that would make Light seem more sympathetic. That all the cards were stacked against him, that Near was secretly evil and self-serving too, that maybe Light didn’t even have a choice in what happened at Yellowbox. Because, as Ide said, Matsuda cared about Light. More than the others. He’s wracked by guilt over what happened- who wouldn’t be? Matsuda’s light-hearted, optimistic personality he even managed to keep during the whole Kira case is reduced to a facade, a mask of his old self. He’s depressed. He’s angry. He’s grasping at straws to justify the past five years of his life spent devoted to and admiring a serial killer who saw him as nothing more than the dirt beneath his boot. Someone he thought he could trust. Someone he literally risked his life to protect, when he told Mello he was acting as L, so prevent Soichiro from having to expose Light’s identity as L. Kira may be evil, but Light was good, right? So Kira couldn’t be truly evil, because Light wasn’t; couldn’t be.

Death note “Vines” (2)

Much less depressing episode 35 thoughts, light looks like aizawa and ide’s petulant son strapped into his booster chair in the back seat