#or that one interview in htr13

[quicktimeeventfull]

i really think we need to embrace death note as a work of children's fiction for a number of reasons, one of which being that it's quite simplistic in its morality because it needed to be comprehensible to twelve year olds

[mikami]

I believe that Light loves his family but I want to clarify one thing: did author really said that he wouldn’t kill his father over 13-day rule? I heard it but I can’t find where he said it

Ohba didn't phrase it like that, no!

He said that he wanted to avoid having Light commit patricide in his HTR13 interview, but whether that is because he felt it would be OOC for Light or that he just didn't want to put something like that in his JUMP manga... Unclear!

In the manga, Light trails off in his thoughts when he thinks about the matter... so it's left open whether or not he'd have done it, or have kept finding excuses to make Soichiro keep writing names. I personally believe the latter based on the rest of the evidence in the manga, but there is no hard Word of God backing it up.

[13eyond13]

hi! i saw one of your posts (or maybe it was @mikami ‘s) saying that L: Change The worLd was not part of the manga DN universe and just wanted to ask if the case was the same with the labb murder cases, I’ve always assumed it was canon due to the fact that beyond birthday’s serial killings were mentioned in the manga

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.

But that being said, I do like the novel, and I love B as a character. I like imagining it as part of the storyline too, and so do a lot of other fans. It does somewhat create plotholes for the manga timeline and make Wammy's edgier than it originally appeared as well though, so I don't necessarily take it all that seriously. I always prioritize the manga's version of characters and rules and events over the novel's, and if the novel ever conflicts with the manga I usually ignore the novel's spin on things in favour of the manga's. To me the novel is more so the canon source for stuff about B himself than for stuff about Wammy's and the other previously established characters, if that makes sense. In my eyes it's like a fun additional thing you can look to when creating fan content, but the main source of material for when I do critical analysis of the original story and so on is just the manga itself.

[eyecicles]

did Ohba try to make Near a likable character? or did he know fans wouldn't like him all that much?

Oh, Ohba definitely knew that Near would be controversial. He's very clear about that in is HTR13 interview.

He also left certain important things about him in Obata's hands—who dislikes Near—and while we don't really know how he feels about that, I doubt that he minds what Obata did with him (much).

Death Note is not known for its likeable characters, haha. You don't have one or several characters you obviously have to root for. Soichiro probably comes the closest, but he's not one of the main “players” in the story, but instead someone who’s essential to Light's character.

Still, Ohba also claims Near (plus Light) is the one he relates to most. He says it's because he doesn't leave his house often, but I think you can also tell by his little speech at the of the story, because those are his personal views.

But yeah, they were aware that same readers would see him as little more than a bad L copy.

[t4tlawlight]

u know L is .... like 3/4 white right? 1/4 English, 1/4 Italian, 1/4 Russian, & 1/4 Japanese..

Sorry i fucking forgot that there’s a magical percentage of Nonwhite Blood you need in order to qualify as a Real Person Of Color and the moment you drop below that number it doesn’t matter how culturally involved you are in your nonwhite ancestry, everyone will just view you as white-- Oh wait. You just invented blood quantum laws again. Fuck off.

Ignoring that there are plenty of ppl who are “only 1/4th” of any given ethnicity who look more like a person of color than they do white because genes can do that, including several of my mixed japanese friends who i’ve talked to about this and think that the “he’s only 1/4th japanese” crowd is racist as hell, sure, let’s get into this.

1) You’re not even accurate. You got that from HTR13 (which is notoriously inaccurate, btw, the heights for characters change between the japanese and english translations for instance, and it’s literally just a noncanon interview half of the time. It’s as canon as, idk, anything JK TERFling ever said about wizards shitting themselves.) the ACTUAL quote is “a quarter Japanese, a quarter English, a quarter Russian, a quarter French or Italian, like that”. this is just ohba pulling shit out of his ass in the moment, It’s not nearly so clear what he’s “supposed” to be he literally doesn’t know if he wants L to be french or italian. Also nationality =/= race anyways lol

2) HTR13 is about as canon as LABB (dubiously so), and LABB has naomi say that Beyond looks japanese and then later mistake L for him, so people whitewashing him so completely in art and then pointing to a dubiously canon source for justification is racist 

3) L, when he’s afforded the choice, uses nothing but Japanese aliases. We hear about other ones that he’s taken from people, but in canon standalone (i’m ignoring the “ryuzaki-is-from beyond” retcon for a moment but beyond taking a japanese name to imitate L when LABB is set in America and there’s no “need” to go by a Japanese name is.... telling) he takes Ryuga, he takes Ryuzaki, he takes Suzuki... he knows Japanese, he knows Japanese traditions, Watari goes by Watari and he’s KNOWN as L’s Proxy Watari outside of Japan so you KNOW it’s not just They’re In Japan So They’re Using Japanese Names, and people’s responses in-text to L are “You look weird” and not “You look like a foreigner, should I be speaking English to you?” the man is clearly connected to his japanese heritage and stripping him of that? IS racist

4) Literally the only indication that hes mixed in-text even is that he was raised in britain which is pretending that there are no people of color in europe. Which is wrong. And used to whitewash history. people just jumped to whitewash him the moment they read that Ohba considers him mixed and then they read that his last name is “lawliet” (and then butchered the japanese pronunciation that he uses.) Newsflash: Japanese people can have white-sounding names, esp mixed japanese people, esp Japanese people living in the West where they face discrimination for not having white-sounding names. (This is also true of Watari...)

all of this is not to say that L being mixed isnt true because being mixed is an important part of someone’s identity and i believe that L feeling somewhat disconnected from his heritage (both as a white brit AND japanese) because he’s mixed is excellent and plays into him being so socially isolated. i love L being mixed. this doesn’t mean that i erase his japanese ancestry though. and doing so, which is what i was talking about in the first place, is racist. Point blank.

[trueffelmaiden]

Can you tell me what does HTR13 say about Near in regards to his motives and of L?

In one of the later interviews, Ohba and Obata talk a bit about Near’s ‘dark side’ and how that is expressed through his finger puppets (that’s also where the famous statement that Near doesn’t like L so he made his puppet ugly comes from, although to be fair that is mostly expressed by Obata, Ohba seems a bit surprised by that). They don’t talk a lot about his motives i think, but they do mention that Near’s even more against Kira than L was and that he’s a bit of a cheater...

Basically, I get the feeling that they might not have known what to do with Near so the Near we get and the Near they’re talking about are quite different... also, Obata seems not to like Near that much, he says he’s “his least favourite character, but fun to draw” lol  

[casuistor]

ok this is comparing apples and oranges, but didn't Ace Attorney stem from a parody/critique of the imbalanced Japanese legal system? (Prosecutors with high conviction rates, understaffed/overworked lawyers, the death penalty, culprits with higher chances of walking free). I wonder how Death Note compares in exploring these themes, whether they came to similar or different conclusions about the justice system...

Huh…that’s an interesting question. You’re right that Ace Attorney was meant to be a parodic critique, but I don’t actually get the impression that Death Note was intended to be a criticism of the criminal justice system. If anything it has a bit of a conservative bias between the lines, imo. 

 I’ll put the rest under a cut because this is a bit wordy. Please keep in mind that I’m not a legal expert so if anyone has any further insights or corrections to offer, I’d genuinely love to hear them. 

To start with the most obvious point, Death Note famously just runs with the conservative talking point that the death penalty serves as an effective deterrent to crime. Within the world of DN, Kira has the miraculous effect of suppressing crime 70% and ending global warfare, which, frankly speaking, isn’t remotely realistic. But by treating it as “fact” in its own universe, it shifts the Oveton window to the right by making the discussion “Was Light justified given his results” instead of addressing the realities of the death penalty and its practical value by assuming the conservative talking point is accurate. 

A few of the uglier facts about the Japanese criminal justice system are touched upon in DN. For example, the fact that L was able to detain and essentially try to torture a confession out of Light and Misa for over a month without either of them getting any legal representation or counsel? That’s not an uncommon phenomenon in Japan. Part of the reason that the high conviction rates of Japanese prosecutors exist is that they use extended periods of detainment to interrogate suspects in order to try and extract forced confessions. The suspects are legally supposed to have a defense lawyer, but that’s often ignored outright. Defense lawyers really have limited power, and are not required to be present for an interrogation. 

It’s a bit of a vicious cycle because there is a lot of pressure on prosecutors not to lose court cases (b/c obvs that’s seen as incompetence) so they cherry pick cases they feel have a higher chance of conviction – which effectively means they take the cases where the suspect has confessed to the crime… either willingly or forcibly. It’s not that uncommon to hear of inmates on death row in Japan that claim they were forced to confess to crimes they didn’t really commit. This actually gets glossed over by the actual narrative of DN as it’s kind of taken for granted that other than the obviously innocent people (Naomi, FBI agents, etc) that the criminals that Kira targets are definitely responsible for committing the crimes they were accused of committing. Probably because the story mostly features detectives and this was published in Shonen Jump. Can’t lose the kiddies on complex social problems when you want them to focus on people trying to kill each other or something. 

But that’s a bit of an aside – the normalcy of L’s unlawful and unconstitutional tactics is highlighted in how the task force is more or less complicit with L’s torture sessions. Not once is the subject of a lawyer ever brought up. Nobody tells L he’s taking things too far when he subjects Misa to water deprivation. There’s some vague notion of “feeling sorry for her” but nobody actually thinks its unwarranted. …And why would they? The task force members know that having a confession on file will make it more likely that Kira is tried.

Now in the actual story itself, I don’t see a clear tell that suggests Ohba condemns OR approves of L’s use of torture as it’s really presented as “this happens and then that happens.” But because Light and Misa were indeed guilty, the net effect is that it causes people to defend the abuse of authority and treating people as guilt until proven innocent. Again, I can’t speak to that being Ohba’s intent, but given that this tends to be brought up as anecdotal “proof” that torture should be allowed, I’d personally count it as conservative bias. 

Further, Death Note also plays up the other side of the cherry picking by showing that there are plenty of people who do get away with crimes due to the flaws of the system. For instance, the robber who kills Misa’s parents never gets convicted because of “insufficient evidence” despite the fact that Misa witnessed the crime. The man Light murders in Shinjuku station to prove to Raye Penber that he is Kira is also a serial rapist who never got convicted for the same reason. (As another aside, sexual assault tends to go underreported in Japan due to stigma and shame for the victims, which is probably what partly feeds into Mikami’s zero hesitation over killing the guy who was trying to flip up a girl’s skirt on the train. Probably figures that the guy is a multiple time offender who’ll only keep doing that b/c nobody will speak up and report the guy otherwise). Anyway, it does highlight that there are flaws in the criminal justice system, but the way its framed the implication almost seems to be that the problem could be fixed if only the state had more authority and/or manpower to investigate, though I can also see how it can be inferred that the criticism is directed at prosecutors/law enforcement for not doing a proper job. 

I mean tl;dr, Death Note largely presents the events as “this is a thing” without taking a side on it….. for the most part anyway. Ohba did state in one of his interviews in HTR13 that he didn’t want to focus on the morality/social issues, so much as moving the plot after all. 

Keeping in mind that I haven’t actually played Ace Attorney past Apollo Justice and may very well be missing a couple of point the new game might’ve made past that, I think the AA series by and large takes more issue with suspects not getting adequate legal representation and abuse of state authority than Death Note does by highlighting cases where the defendant isn’t actually guilty. But at the same time, I don’t think AA argues the death penalty ought to be abolished either – between the lines, the goal is always on making sure the right person gets the death penalty. It’s just kinda assumed that if you definitely committed the crime and are handed a death penalty sentence, that’s a job well done. In the context of AA, I don’t think that’s really a suggestion that the death penalty should be kept because it deters crime, but it’s a built in assumption that the death penalty definitely has a role in the correct instances. 

Ofc, it’s also a video game and playing a defense lawyer taking on an appeal case for sentence reduction to life imprisonment w/o parole for a convicted criminal just isn’t as ~dramatic~ as saving a totally innocent person from the gallows; the game was never going to be that nuanced by design, haha. 

[quicktimeeventfull]

with death note in particular, i think a lot of people also get confused about what is/isn't canon because people just don't know where certain pieces of information come from. this happens in all fandoms but it's especially bad with death note because relatively few people have read the entire manga as their primary source, so it's easy to assume that extra-canonical material comes from there when it actually doesn't. you can kind of make an argument either way about whether or not labb or htr13 or the short story comics should be considered canon, but there are a lot of things being passed around as canon when they just unambiguously aren't. for example: L's monster speech is from the alternate canon relight series, the line about L and light waiting for each other after death is from L change the worLd, which is a novelization of the japanese movies rather than the manga itself, mello finding soichiro cute is a quote from ryuk in the htr13 'ryuk's observation journal' (ie ryuk is the one saying he finds soichiro cute), misa's suicide is from an o&o interview where they speculated about what they might have written if the story continued. it isn't an alternate interpretation, they're literally just not from the series

[mikami]

This is pretty random but do you know if Ohba said something about why Light was so cold towards Misa? I heard something like this in fandom but I don't know if this is a rumor or not. And if it's true, can you tell me what Ohba said?

There is one interview quote from HTR13, yes!

Q: So why didn't you have Mello kidnap Misa?

A: There was a danger that Light would have just killed her (laughs). Light loves his family and only wants righteous people in his new world. Though his desire to become God has twisted his views, he's still trying to make a better world. But Misa is a murderer in his eyes and thus evil, so he treats her coldly and takes advantage of her.

[eyecicles]

I sometimes wonder if Ohba wanted to kill L off from the beginning or not. when did he came up with it do you think?

Well, in his HTR13 interview he says letting Light and L's battle end where did was one of several ideas right from the beginning. And that he decided on it during Misa's confinement

[mikami]

is there anything especially interesting in the anime guidebook that you could share with us? :-]

I'm not sure what is most interesting here, so let me sum up what it is in the book! It's a pretty slim 160 pages.

It starts with some pretty barebones profiles of the characters, with the basic data points from HTR13 and few-line summaries.

Then it goes through every episode with screencaps of it and summaries. There might be a little commentary there that isn't just summary, but since I haven't read it properly... I am not sure.

Strewn in between are design arts of the various locations in the anime, which is probably my favourite part of the book. I will share those under the read more at the bottom!

This is followed by an interview with the voices of Light and L, and then another joint interview with the voices of Misa and Rem.

Then we get staff interviews with Tetsurou Araki (director), Toshiki Inoue (main writer) and Masaru Kitao (animation director).

Much shorter few-question Q&As with the voices of Mello, Near, Takada, Mikami, Soichiro, Sayu, Ryuk and... Jealous follow. Why Jealous?? I'm not sure.

There's also one-page interviews with the bands that performed the two opening themes: Nightmare and Maximum The Hormone.

Ohba and Obata also each get about a page of interview.

The book is then concluded with settei art for the characters and important objects. Nothing there is much of a revelation.

... so yeah, you'd have to read the text to see just how interesting this could possibly get, and I have yet to try and stumble through.

LOCATION ART BELOW THE READ MORE NOW~

[mikami]

Is it true that Ohba had the ending of death note planned around mid series but had been forced to continue it by publishers because of it success and money? If it's true did Ohba said anything about what kind of ending they had planned?

He has not made any such statements. I think this rumor comes from speculation based on the statements about the industry made in Bakuman, which is a manga about writing for JUMP. 

What he has said about the ending in HTR13 (which is pretty much the one big body of interviews we have available, really) is this:

He initially played with the idea of having L win and Light die, but then decided against it. He says he was able to publish the series “pretty much as he envisioned it”.

Having L die midway is one of several ideas he had at the very beginning of publication - he finalized that it would happen at the time he wrote the chapters with Misa’s arrest.

While he planned to have Light die and end on the “all people go to MU (nothingness)” thing from the start, the exact specifications of how that happens kept changing while he wrote - at a point, he thought to maybe let Mello be the one to defeat Light but then discarded the idea in the name of keeping up narrative tension.

So there really is no “true” ending that was an initial idea, just “Light dies” and a bunch of constantly shifting ideas around it until we got what we have.

[mikami]

What i really hate about dn fandom is everyone here are at war about "whose the smartest character" and forgetting about all other important things of the story and characters. First time i watched the death note i got the impression that L and Light are intellectually equals, but after joining the fandom I'm not sure if i think this way because it would be more satisfying for me if they were equals or they are actually equals. Since you're one the people who hate this arguments (you're not biased) and you know a lot about death note, you think my impression can be correct? And is there any canon data we have that Obaha saying something in contrary with this?

There is contrary data but there is also contrary data that is contrary in the other direction, so in my opinion it cancels out, haha.

According to the databook Light’s intelligence is at 10/10 while L is at 9/10, but the author interview answer Ohba gave when being asked for the smartest character was that it was L. (Obata answered that it’s Near.)

The segment in HTR13 that talks about what would have happened if Light had not found the Death Note states that he would have become a detective working on the same level as L.

So in the end, it is not a question official canon is particularly concerned with. Fandom loves debating it and I suppose that is by design, but I really think that after a certain level of ‘genius’ any comparison becomes null and void. It’s just useless. What there is is different aptitudes in different fields of intelligence and the cat and mouse between the genii in Death Note is primarily about exploiting those biases of the respective other genii. Who is ‘smarter’ depends on the playing field.

I personally would absolutely call L and Light equals intellectually. Any minute differences between them really do not matter.

Really, I do not think you are wrong to think so either - with HTR13 naming each of them the smarter one once, it’s anyone’s guess again.

[mikami]

About the translations in HTR13, in character charts there's "知識" that translated to "Intelligent" (I've seen this been translated to this word in Spanish, Germany and two different translations of English) which I've seen in the fandom people say the actual translation is "Knowledge". And there's another part in the chart i don't know the excat Japanese word, but in some of the translations is "Motivation" and in others is "Emotional Strength". I'm really confused, do you know anybody who knows Japanese enough to say which translations is correct? Also i don't get it why the translations are so different in different languages..

God, I had completely forgotten about this translation controversy, thank you for reminding me! Looking the word up in a JP-ENG dictionary does indeed give you knowledge, but since every professional translation opts for ‘intelligence’ instead I assume there is a nuance that the dictionary doesn’t provide.

My best attempt at figuring it out was to look it up in a monolingual Japanese web dictionary. It lists ‘common sense’ as a synonym and the definitions seem to place emphasis on to know and understand - which leads me to believe the word means more than just plain ‘information you have in your head’. That might be why intelligence gets chosen as a translation? 

The question in the interview segment that asks who the smartest is uses the expression “頭がいい” (lit. to have a good head) so it doesn’t help as reference...

I admit defeat here. My Japanese is not good enough for it and I don’t know anybody who speaks it well enough and who I am close enough to do feel comfortable bothering about it, haha. I have posed the question on twitter in Japanese and maybe one of my Japanese mutuals will swoop in and help, but we shall have to see.

The word for ‘emotional strength’ meanwhile is  精神力. According to Japanese-only dictionaries it means something like ‘mental power to get through something’ or ‘strength of will’, so honestly, I think both emotional strength and motivation are adequate enough translations. Maybe ‘willpower’ would get close-ish to the nuance in English?

But again I am only a girl with a penchant for cross-referencing dictionaries, so anyone who is actually fluent in Japanese, PLEASE feel free to weigh in.

[mikami]

L looks like he'd smell like death incarnate, but knowing him, he's likely hygenic, just very neglectful. It really could go either way, so either: a) L brush teethies and takes a shower or b) L smells like an anime con if it grew legs. Teethies no brush. I love this L hygiene discourse.

Happy Birthday, L. What a good day for this.

Since we’re still talking about this, I’ve actually decided to go back to the interviews and check what Ohba and Obata have to say on the matter.

This is what Obata says in the artbook. In HTR13 (p. 127) he says again that he wanted to represent that L doesn’t care about clothes - and that he probably owns several sets of this outfit. A good point towards “L actually changes sometimes, thank god, it’s not the same outfit through the whole manga.”

This is re-iterated in the “L: One Day” oneshot, which I don’t count as canon but which at least does give some indication on how L’s meant to be seen.....

..... in his human washing machine.

[13eyond13]

I heard the DN manga was originally supposed to last half as long as it did (which tbh kinda makes sense given Certain Events). Do you know if this is true and and do you know or suspect how it was originally supposed to end?

I think that one of the ideas they had in mind for ending the series initially to have it end at the Light and L battle, and that it probably was extended to include the successor arc because the series turned out to be so successful. There are many parts in the behind the scenes HTR13 book where Ohba and Obata both talk about how much they were flying by the seat of their pants with this stuff, how a lot of the story wasn't actually set in stone from the beginning, and how difficult it was to come up with the successor arc so quickly. I have included some of the most relevant bits from their interviews below: