hi luna, i've seen someone say before that near couldn't have killed mikami because if he did, he would have lost his memories of the death note when he burned the notebooks. what do you think? is this true?
This is a tricky scenario, and it could go either way!
How To Use It XXII states that you lose your memory of the Death Note when you lose ownership of it. How To Use It XLVII specifies that you only lose memory of the Death Note if you killed with it.
Here's our datapoints:
Near did not have ownership of any Death Note at the point in time when he would have written Mikami's name.
He'd have written Mikami in the notebook that Mikami himself owned and then burned it in the warehouse, while Mikami is still alive, thus never gaining ownership of the specific Death Note he used.
However, he is likely to have gained ownership of Light's notebook in the few minutes between Light's death and the burning of the books.
In the rules, it specifically says: "You will not lose memory of the Death Note, for example, if you merely owned it and had not written anyone's name."
Near has used a Death Note, but not owned it. Near has owned a different Death Note, but not used it.
So how do you interpret the rule? Our options are:
A. ) If you do not use the specific Death Note you own while you are in its possession, you do not lose your memory upon losing ownership.
B.) You do lose your memories if you have ever killed somebody with the specific Death Note you own, regardless of whether this was before or after you came to be its owner. You do not lose your memories if you have not used the notebook you own at all, regardless of whether you have used different notebooks.
C.) You lose your memories if you have ever killed somebody with any notebook, regardless of whether you were its owner, as soon as you obtain and then lose the ownership of any Death Note, regardless of whether or not you have used that specific notebook.
In cases A and B, Near does not lose his memory. In case C he does, but I think that one is overall the least likely scenario.
The matter is up to interpretation though, there is no clear answer!
im thinking some thoughts. inspired by this tiktok.
i’m thinking yandere!jungkook full of longing for oc but oc isn’t gonna be all that soft. maybe she likes his obsession w her and does things to piss him off?
im asking you all before i start something im gonna regret… maybe two chapters series?
(i literally have so many ideas. we can skip this one unless…)
It's 8.10 am but I just got a French Frye thought ( ' ' )
Remember when Arno in Unity comes home, looked at Elise portrait and starts talking to her? Tbh he looks like its not the first time he does so! I bet my ass he actually finds comfort in feeling the person he loves even if it's just a picture.
So now imagine French Frye!
Arno has a photo of Jacob, one he keeping inside of his watch! Why there? Because his watch now symbolises 2 people he truly loved. His father and his beloved.
Arno sitting by thr window, looking at the heavy Rain, while his finger gently brush the photo of Jacob. He looks at it, worried expression all over his face as he whispers "come back to me my love".
Arno and Jacob having an ugly fight, Arno storms out of the home, needs to unwind. When he calms himself he sits down somewhere, games of his watch, looks at photo "Dont look at me like that. You know i was right..." He pauses as he realised he fucked up. "merde". And he goes back home to make peace with Jacob. also sex after fight to make it up him
Generally having a photo of Jacob helps Arno copy and carry on when Jacob is away. Does Jacob know about it? He probably caught Arno doing this, but knowing how difficult it is for Arno to love and trust after Elise, Jacob simple pretends he doesnt know. But maybe... Just maaaaaybe... He set everything up so they could actually make a few photos together.
i truly feel like i'm failing everything. life, writing, work. like everything's collapsing over my head and i'm too weak to stand up. im just sick of everything.
After 12 years, I have finally had an epiphany that made me understand the basic character themes and parallels that the whole core of Death Note is based around
Would Light's new world be a good place to live in?
Absolutely not.
The idea of a world without crime and war is superficially very appealing, but the trade-off it comes with in the case of Kira's rule is huge. Kira's new world is absolutely insidious.
On the most basic level, Kira doesn't address socioeconomic inequality at all. Those more likely to fall into a life of crime due to poverty are not less poor now, they are just more likely to die of a random heart attack. It is not a quality of life improvement for those who didn't already have a decent quality of life.
But it goes further.
Kira's world is one of constant mutual surveillance among the people living in it. During the timeskip L (Light) bans the media from revealing the faces of criminals - leading to the internet doing the work of leaking people's appearances instead. This is a world where a false accusation online could be a death sentence. (Light tries to take care to research cases, but he is human and fallible, and also not the only one acting as Kira - his coworkers are far less scrupulous.)
The anime directly addresses this in one of the few added sequences I genuinely love:
Kira's world is a world of everyone spying on everyone, everyone posing a mortal threat to everyone. If that reminds you of the state of being in various historical fascist regimes, it's because it should.
It is a world in which deviating from the moral ideology posed by an unseen ruler (who cannot be held accountable) means death.
Remember that "crime" is a man-made category. What is a crime depends on the society and the opinions of the people. For example, Japan has extremely strict drug laws. Legalization of weed is nowhere near being in the cards, a lot of common medications in the West are extremely illegal in Japan. Is dealing weed worth death? Kira decides and society has no choice but to fall in step. And even if Kira goes by local laws, that still means that people who commit the same 'offense' in one place live while they die elsewhere. Is that fair?
In-canon Kira focuses largely on "unambiguous" crimes such as violence and property damage, but for how long is that the case? We know Mikami wants to go after "lazy" people and Light only thinks that it's "too soon" not that it shouldn't be done. Who is lazy? What disability is 'real' enough to be a 'good reason' not to work?
Where do we cross the line into eugenics?
"But these are far down the lines considerations", you might say, "in canon it isn't that bad yet, right?"
Well.
It took only half a decade of Kira to turn the world into one in which public lynching is thought of as morally correct.
Japan is a country with very few gun deaths. The police can carry gun but the amount of police shootings nears zero per year. Carrying firearms for civilians is illegal.
Matt gets shot over and over after seemingly surrendering, in public, by people who are NOT police or any kind of government official. Takada's bodyguards are civilian security forces. Matt received no due procedure. He was gunned down just like that.
Kira's world is a society of total conformity built on terror of god and fear of your neighbor. It's rotten to the core.
Assuming "I am a good person, so I would be fine" is shortsighted.
2nd ask: and wasn't it only in the extra near chapter that L said he doesn't care about justice? isn't he seemingly very gung-ho about (his brand of) justice in the manga? saying this to ask, do you think every single adaptation has made L too 'I CARE ABOUT JUSTICE' compared to the manga, or does he actually come off that way originally, until he tells the kids in the extra chapter 'hey yo, actually i don't care'? every adaptation dotes on L, i've noticed, but on this point, are they justified?
It is only made explicit in the bonus chapter, that is true!
But honestly, I never felt like it was inconsistent with how L was portrayed in the manga. He does throw the word justice around very weightily, but there is never a strict moral code behind it.
There is very little L isn't willing to do in the pursuit of 'justice'. We know he keeps high profile pet criminals out of jail for his convenience, unlawfully spies on private citizens, unlawfully arrests and tortures suspects, is totally willing to let a number of innocent people die in order to further prove a hypothesis...
His brand of 'justice' in the manga boils down to 'arresting the criminal eventually' - you don't really see him draw any other line in the sand about what is 'good' or even 'justifiable'.
L's scruples are just absolutely nonexistence.
So what do we make of his proclamations of justice then?
Straight from the horse's mouth.
One thing that Light often emphasizes is that 'justice' is decided by the winner. The one who gets to make the rules in the end, that is the person who's morals will become the accepted general 'goodness'. His whole Kira plan banks on this malleable nature of justice that is determined by shifting social opinion and power structures.
I'd argue that that's the concept of justice the whole series works with, obviously including L who is Light's counterpart for much of the story. L is justice because he is the one with authority on the rules so far - playing by them sometimes, often bending them.
He's justice because he is part of the power structure that decides what is justice - shown pretty clearly in him shielding Wedy and Aiber from punishment arbitrarily. 'I am justice' is literal, not ideological.
In light of all his canon behaviour, the panel above can really read as nothing but blatant emotional manipulation. L is motivating the Task Force on the level of a kid's show pep talk. He knows this.
hey there!!! i was thinking lately about the possibility of misa's way of perhaps relying on her cutesy/pretty/sexy aspect as a conscious or unconscious act of survival.
we know about the concrete traumatizing life changing experiences she's lived through. i wonder how safe it is to especulate what else she has gone through as a young woman who is a model.
& im curious abt your understanding of this aspect of her-- how do you think the way she presents herself to the world & others (both in personality & appearance) relates to her job? to the construction of the self as a product of consumption (especially w like i said, misa being a woman)?
does misa perform these things as a way to neutralize the harm of violence at the hands of men?
I'm not sure I would call it 'survival' exactly, but oh my god, Misa and gender performance is such an interesting topic.
I personally wouldn't headcanon further active violence into her backstory than we have been shown - I feel that if we're shown a characters formative traumatic experience (family death, stalking) that it's to give us a fairly complete picture of their life and motivations.
But at the same time, society is full of what I will now arbitrarily call 'passive violence' in the way women are put at a disadvantage. And definitely, her whole cutesy persona is in dialogue with that hostile world, navigating it and taking advantage of it.
I think Misa is an interesting case, because she is somebody who both entirely internalized gender roles for herself unquestioned and is deeply aware of how being perceived as a woman hinders or helps her in any given situation.
Like, on the one hand Misa is sexist society's wet dream. She is somebody who very sincerely believes that her place and fulfillment as a woman is at the side of a prince charming. She is completely convinced that her purpose lies in a relationship with a man.
Even though she's not the 'good wife' stereotype due to being a fashion subculture kind of girl (see: the Yagami parents' disdain of her), she's still holding these values close to her heart.
On the other hand, the way she weaponizes the perception people have of her is immediately front and center in her intro scene.
The VIZ translation here drives me mildly insane because the Japanese term she uses to describe herself here is "純粋な子" which in this context should roughly translate to 'pure young woman'.
It's not "Kira is nice to his supporters" but more along the line of "Kira is nice to good little girls". Misa knows she seems harmless on first sight. She knows her existence as a pretty frail teenage girl makes her an object of protective instinct to most men. But at the same time she juxtaposes it with the knowledge that she isn't just what she seems - as much as she adores Kira, she is perfectly confident that on the Death Note user power scale she's higher up.
Misa is fully aware that as an idol, she's a product to be sold. And that is where she personally finds her power - she doesn't protest female stereotypes and prejudice, she acts within those parameters to grab power from men unnoticed.
We see this most in her interactions with the Yotsuba Group, particularly Higuchi. Misa is aware she is desirable and she weaponizes that desirability against him. Presenting as cute, naive, soft and thoroughly attractive gives her power of manipulation. It is the capital she is used to bargaining with at all times.
In response to a world that is predisposed to take her less seriously because she's a dainty pretty girl, Misa has decided to intentionally curate that exact reputation for herself - only to then be able to use it to get her way. She's cute because men who want to get into her pants will do her favors. She's cute because how could anyone be mad at such a cute young woman acting selfishly?
I feel like we see that in her body language with Light - when he doesn't react as expected to her coming to see him against his wishes, she doubles down on the sweet body language and the "teehee, I am just an emotional little girl, you can't be mad at my pure lovey dovey feelings" act.
It's a neat mix because on the one hand: she clearly believes this about herself. She genuinely does think being a cute lovey dovey girl is her biggest purpose on this Earth. She genuinely enjoys being an attractive young woman (we see her dress up and act cutesy when she is by herself in her apartment after all). This is the self that she sincerely wants for herself.
But on the other hand she is so clearly aware of its impact. Her status as a product to be consumed is a constant bargaining chip.
Most heartbreakingly and extremely seen in the time after she loses her memories of being Kira and desperately attempts to buy her freedom by promising parts of herself to the assumed stalker.
Less heartbreakingly and more girlboss-y in interaction with the Yotsuba Eight, as mentioned before:
Self-objectification is an active practice of subverting power to Misa - exercising power without being seen as powerful and thus escaping the watchful eyes of those who could feel threatened by her.
