DN Q&A

Literally just a sideblog geared towards answering smaller questions people post in the Death Note tag.

[alscalaviccis]

death note coulda been over in seconds if someone had just brought out some of light’s homework and compared handwriting

[dnanswers]

Light removed all pages he had written on from the notebook before giving it away to Higuchi!

[carmenpeach]

light is so stupid if i were him i would have misa write in her death note like "light yagami dies as 107 years old in his sleep" so i dont have to worry about being murdered. fucking idiot.

[dnanswers]

You can only set a death up to 23 days into the future! If Light wrote this he would die immediately due to having given impossible instructions.

[absolxguardian]

I wonder if you can make the details of one's death in the note be an if-then statement? I have no idea if this is addressed later or in eu content, but we do know that if the condition is impossible the death just happens. Could you write, instead of time of death "if they do [condition], then they die"? That would be useful if Light was less punitive. He could make it so criminals who got off would die if they tried to hurt anyone else, taking advantage of the note's omitpotence.

[dnanswers]

Unfortunately, you can't! Once the name is written down, the person is absolutely guaranteed to die regardless of conditions added later. Impossible conditions just lead to a plain heart attack.

[midpoosimmerr]

What keeps me up at night??

Light Yagami’s name is Raito, which is how a Japanese native would pronounce a western world “light”, but it’s not until Misa Amane sees him, and since she has a death note of her own, she’s able to see his name and she makes a comment that the kanji used for his name is the same one as the one used for “light”. And while he is essentially called Light, HE’S STILL JAPANESE, LIVING IN JAPAN, NAMED BY JAPANESE PEOPLE, AND IT’S PRONOUNCED RAITO GODDAMNIT I HATE THIS DAMN LIGHT NONSENSE 

[dnanswers]

No, his name is actually Light. That is how it is meant to be spelled in Western letters and Japanese merch and information consistently does so:

His name’s kanji is the kanji for moon and not for light, too. But in name reading, you can play hard and fast with how to pronounce kanji, leading his parents to decide it should be pronounced as Light. Which yes, in Japanese transliteration would be RA-I-TO, which is the closest approximation to the syllables that Japanese has. Said out loud, it’s literally only the word “light” with an accent.

If it’s spelled out in anything other than kanji, it is spelled in katakana, which is used to spell out foreign language words, most commonly English ones.

Yeah, Japanese people named him - and they named him “Light”. Isn’t it kind of weird to insist on spelling out their accent, when their full intent is to use the English word? 

The manga even goes so far as to point out when characters can’t pronounce his name correctly. When his mother calls him, his name is spelled as the kanji, but when his friend Yamamoto does, the name is spelled in Katakana (as ra-i-to) - this is done to empathize that his pronunciation is off.

[multifandowut]

Okay, but why didn’t L check if there is a match in the handwritings in the Death Note with Misa’s or Light’s? Like… this would’ve been so easy. 

[dnanswers]

Light removed all pages he had written on before given the notebook away!

[wingsoffirescience]

Hey i just had a thought ,so with the death note you can be specific about when people will die so what would happen if you were like “[name] will die at the age of 200 after living a happy life” what would happen then? Would you be invincible until that date? Why didn’t light try that?

[dnanswers]

The rules state that the influence of the Death Note only extends 23 days.

If you write, die of disease for the cause of death, but only write a specific time of death without the actual name of disease, the human will die from an adequate disease. But the Death Note can only operate within 23 days (in the human calendar). This is called the 23 day rule.

But even if that wasn’t the case, the rules also state you can’t extend natural lifespan.

In the Death Note, you cannot set the death date longer than the victim's original life span. Even if the victim's death is set in the Death Note beyond his/her original life span, the victim will die before the set time.

[atlas-tries]

Okay but if Light Yagami was so smart, then why didn’t he just, oh, I dunno, actually write in the mode of death instead of just leaving it to heart attacks? I feel like he could’ve avoided all suspicion by listing the deaths under opportunistic causes, like a riot or freak accidents or a serial killer on the loose or someshit. I mean, come on man, step up your game if you’re gonna play it

[dnanswers]

It’s because his goal wasn’t simply killing. The plan directly involved his presence as a killer being noticed.

Light’s whole idea was that by killing criminals in a way that makes it abundantly clear that someone is picking them off one by one will discourage future crime. He wasn’t all about punishment, his idea was prevention.  THAT is what he means by becoming God of the new world - he wants to change how people think from the ground up and he can’t do that if nobody knows he’s even there.

Sure, killing in different ways would have been less suspicious - but it would have also been an entirely different story, with a different main character.

From chapter 01 on, Light wanted to be noticed.

It’s not a bug in his plan, it’s a feature.

[listeningboy]

Do stamps work in the death note? Could you mass kill people at the same time by using a stamp with all their names?

[dnanswers]

You can’t, the rules state that you have to write directly into the notebook.

The instrument to write with can be anything, e.g. cosmetics, blood, etc. as long as it can write directly onto the note and remains as legible letters.

[listeningboy]

Technically the ink is still directly on the notebook?

[dnanswers]

I was thinking more about the verb - stamping isn’t writing. 

[listeningboy]

Hm. Well in that case, would a typewriter work? It uses the same kind of thing but the verb for it would be writing.

[dnanswers]

That one, I really don’t know. Since it’s still a human manually putting letter by letter onto the paper, it might work? But maybe it doesn’t because it is not the person actually forming the letters line by line…. 

[listeningboy]

If it worked, would that mean that you could use single letter stamps?

Also, would the way the death note worked change depending on if a language calls that type of thing writing organically?

[dnanswers]

I GUESS.jpg

... and I am personally saying it wouldn’t change, but we are SO far beyond what can be constructed from the rules we have that I have no idea anymore ahfhhg

[listeningboy]

Do stamps work in the death note? Could you mass kill people at the same time by using a stamp with all their names?

[dnanswers]

You can’t, the rules state that you have to write directly into the notebook.

The instrument to write with can be anything, e.g. cosmetics, blood, etc. as long as it can write directly onto the note and remains as legible letters.

[listeningboy]

Technically the ink is still directly on the notebook?

[dnanswers]

I was thinking more about the verb - stamping isn’t writing. 

[listeningboy]

Hm. Well in that case, would a typewriter work? It uses the same kind of thing but the verb for it would be writing.

[dnanswers]

That one, I really don’t know. Since it’s still a human manually putting letter by letter onto the paper, it might work? But maybe it doesn’t because it is not the person actually forming the letters line by line.... 

[listeningboy]

Do stamps work in the death note? Could you mass kill people at the same time by using a stamp with all their names?

[dnanswers]

You can’t, the rules state that you have to write directly into the notebook.

The instrument to write with can be anything, e.g. cosmetics, blood, etc. as long as it can write directly onto the note and remains as legible letters.

[listeningboy]

Technically the ink is still directly on the notebook?

[dnanswers]

I was thinking more about the verb - stamping isn’t writing. 

[listeningboy]

Do stamps work in the death note? Could you mass kill people at the same time by using a stamp with all their names?

[dnanswers]

You can’t, the rules state that you have to write directly into the notebook.

The instrument to write with can be anything, e.g. cosmetics, blood, etc. as long as it can write directly onto the note and remains as legible letters.

[tekka-dan]

you know what was never addressed in Death Note? the fact that some people….could have the same first and last names….Light could write a criminals name and that person as well as four or five other random people with the same name drop dead the same day…

[dnanswers]

Actually it is addressed, since you need to visualize a person’s face as you write them down to avoid multiple people being affected!

[oracle-nila]

Hey.

Hey hey hey hey.

SPOILERS.

In the manga (haven’t seen the anime yet) someone killed themselves by writing their own name in the notebook.

BUT.

The very first chapter (chapter 00) it says

So. What? What’s going on?

It looks like different people made the very first and very last, so it could just be that the newer people forgot this rule (I remember it because my thought was: damn shame) but Matsuda was talking about Near using the notebook and Midra said that this person got pale and stuff. I think it’s a hint to something.

So either someone controlled and killed him, he killed himself, or Midra decided to put him out of his misery.

This thing bothers me so, thoughts?

[dnanswers]

Chapter 00 was a Pilot written to test if the concept would be popular. It has no continuity with the main series at all and the rules have been changed for it.

[mayopugs-deactivated20180822]

I’ve been into this fandom in like 3 months and I’m still trying to figure out what the fuck is Matt’s hair color

[dnanswers]

It's never colored in Obatas illustrations but the anime, trading card game, line stickers and official full color manga all color his hair as a brownish green. The video game is an outlier that makes it light blue.

Red is never used in any official media, it was a fan color from before the anime came out. People liked it so it stuck around.

[llawlietofficial]

Listen listen I know that it’s 1am and that it’s been a while since I’ve actually watched this anime all the way through but it’s 1am and this thought hit my head and won’t go away, so like, if L’s so smart why didn’t he recognize Light’s handwriting in the death note or at LEAST realized it changed halfway through the book because now that I thought about that I can’t stop thinking about it and it’s making me mad. Someone please answer this as soon as possible I need to sleep and I don’t think I can until I’ve got this worked out so am I missing a canon explanation or what I’m so tired guys help me out please help help me pl

[dnanswers]

Light removed the pages as well as cleaned the note etc before confinement, which is also why he's holding the note in a rag as to not ger his fingerprints on it in the forest scene.

[biyondo-basudei-deactivated2018]

i think one of the things that cracks me up is that i’ll see some professional lookin fanart of light with a six pack and it never ceases to amuse me

like c’mon guys he wasn’t that ripped take a sip

[stvlti]

The who would win meme except it’s fanart of ripped Mello vs ripped Light

[biyondo-basudei-deactivated2018]

at least mello’s potential 9 pack is in official art so it might as well be the you vs the guy she tells you not to worry about meme but with light and mello

[stvlti]

Hmm I thought the 9-pack Mello artwork is also fanmade. @dnanswers please help

[dnanswers]

Yeah it's fanart, I don't know of any official source for it.

[main-exam]

Ryuk was hot, that’s not a rumor or misinformation

Full offense but the creators of Death Note did design Ryuk at first to be a gorgeous human-esque God of Death and Rock. The original Ryuk design is in the general section of Blanc Et Noir because it was left unused.

They thought he took the focus away from Light too much.

In How to Read Ohba suggested the ugly Ryuk we see is potentially a mask.

[kiranatrix]

Also ain’t it grand how they unzipped his pants enough so you’d know he had a purple d*ck? Yeah hot!Ryuk has a purple d*ck y’all

[dnanswers]

This isn’t Ryuk’s original design.

This is an independent ilustration Obata did for the f-erotics magazine.

Though Obata did suggest the idea of Ryuk being humanoid or his face being a mask, no images of the design exist for us to see.