#the way soichiro‘s htr profile lists criminals as his dislikes and wedy’s profile lists cops as her dislikes lmao #i hate everything you stand for and you hate everything i stand for but goddamn if this isn’t a really good opportunity to jump in front of #a loaded gun (via @theoldworldsrunnerup)
re: this post death note tries to criticize the wammy kids especially mello and L for the shit they pull but finds it difficult because they are supergeniuses and so they are always right. and this goes hand in hand with the whole kira thing actually working in the universe of death note even though it does at least have all the negative side effects one would expect of a regime of fear. and of course you can argue this is a good thing thematically because it narrows down the moral of death note to being "even if murder/torture gives you the results you want it's still not okay because you are murdering/torturing somebody" without trying to tack on the more difficult argument of "also it wouldn't work anyway". but it annoys me regardless because now we're dealing with people saying L was justified in torturing misa because he was right and also people saying light was justified in killing hundreds of thousands of people because it did end wars. and i can't go That would not work in real life, because it DOES work in death note, and that doesn't make it less wrong but [screams into the wall] [stops] [drinks water] it makes arguing on reddit harder and that's the worst crime of all. also the misa torture literally did not work anyway he did all that for nothing lmao
oh this is such a good question let me see if i can do it justice.
two of my favorite themes in anything are
characters who are performances
what if love was not good
and misa is basically like if you took these two and smashed them together in a way perfectly calculated to obliterate me
like she's so! our first introduction to her is her pretending to be someone else (the first kira) so well that she even fools the audience. our second introduction to her is rem telling her that she is only alive because someone loved her, someone was killed by their love for her, and misa looks down for a second — looks almost sad — and then smiles and immediately starts scheming to kill her too.
who the fuck does that? what is wrong with her?
i think what misa understands fundamentally is that love is a weapon. if you asked her she'd laugh and say that's silly, she's a romantic after all! but she knows how attraction works and she uses it like a physical object with rem and higuchi and her jailor (when she thinks she's being tied up by a stalker and she starts offering bits of herself in order to get them to give her more freedom. mr stalker, the video won't be interesting if i can't move. oh, i'll give you an autograph, i'll shake your hand…)
and like, sure, that's how any femme fatale works, but crucial to the entire act is that misa doesn't admit it. she acts stupid on purpose! she's a cute little girl, she's misa-misa! all of this is literally in the text but she is just so good at acting that people forget about it! she isn't your usual scheming seductress character (also a character archetype i'm obsessed with, incidentally) because she knows better than to let anyone see her scheming.
look at this bit where she's specifically trying to get sidelined and successfully gets light to sideline her
+ i literally just posted about it but this scene where she decides to go behind everyone's back to uncover higuchi as kira drives me up a wall. the way she immediately covers it up with asking light to come to bed to her. i've seen so many people just screenshot that last part out of context because it really does look like a normal misa thing to do, haha misa and her conviction that light is in love with her, so funny! and that is the exact thing she is relying on to make sure they don't catch onto her. she pulls the same trick on the reader that she does on the characters. isn't that! insane! and it works every time!!!!
and of course talking about misa is never really complete without talking about her and light. it is my personal belief that she has a bpd favorite-person fixation on light that she convinces herself is actually romantic, but mental illness headcanons aside i am obsessed with the way she conceives of their relationship? on their first meeting she says out loud that she doesn't care if light just plays the part of her boyfriend ("i'll work hard to make you love me") but she doesn't want him to date other girls in public. she doesn't actually mind that he doesn't have feelings for her (yet!) but she cares about the appearance of their relationship. about the facade. she keeps putting both of them in danger by showing up to see him when he's told her not to. she gives up her actual memory of light but is relieved that she doesn't have to give up her feelings for him, specifically. she is over the moon when L and rem say she's in love with him (not the other way around!). and this
this fucking scene added a decade to my lifespan
rem: you tried to kill yourself over this boy
misa: (sincere) that's awesome!
like she isn't actually enamored with him. she's enamored with how in love with him she is
oh that reminds me. addition to my favorite themes in anything list:
3. SUICIDALITY
misa halves her lifespan twice. risks her life to catch kira multiple times in yotsuba arc. as aforementioned goes to meet light even though it threatens both of them. literally says aloud i'd rather die while i'm still young and pretty
her parents are dead. she is nineteen years old and incredibly traumatized. the conclusion here is very straightforward.
misa calls kira her savior even though she knows kira isn't the one who actually saved her life with gelus. kira doesn't even save her parents, just avenges them by murdering their killer. so why is he her savior? because kira gives her a reason to live again. her goal now is to meet him, and then after she meets him, get him to fall in love with her. this is impossible because of the way light is and in some ways i think that is ideal for misa: there's always something to keep going after, some reason for her to not die yet. but she keeps throwing herself at death anyway in the meantime because if she's going to die then she wants it to be for love. i did all that for light? that makes me so happy!
the two times i think misa is completely entirely honest with the audience are when she's in confinement and when she's in the forest alone, right after getting her memories back:
christ.
this is imo why she sides with light over kira in the yotsuba arc. because what she actually wants is to not be alone, to have a reason to live, and kira helpfully provided that for a while but now that she's under constant surveillance to make sure she's not siding with kira and now that her boyfriend is also trying to catch him, she's going to side with the boyfriend so that she can keep light by her side.
what i really like about this is that it's so… amoral? misa does think kira is doing good for the world but she personally doesn't care, she just wants to be loved. she will twist her morals into whatever necessary to make sure that she is loved. she really doesn't care about anything else. she frames her good friend for the kira tapes. she places zero value on her own life and by extension zero value on anyone else's — even light's, to be honest, see above about how she's willing to put them both at risk to see him — and it's the most entertaining thing in the whole world! it's so awesome! she's so awesome!
and the best thing is that this comes back to bite her so hard in the second arc because now that she's lost her memories she can't remember why she's with light in the first place but just like in yotsuba arc she understands that this person is the only reason she is still alive, that she has to be in love with him, that he has to be in love with her, and it doesn't matter how either of them actually feel because that is How The Story Goes for a cute little girl. it doesn't matter that she's canonically developing alcohol dependence issues (see her dinner with kiyomi) or that she never sees her fiance anymore. she's still misa-misa. she's still everything.
her trick folds in on itself. she's been pretending to be a good non-murderous girlfriend for so long that when she loses her memories and her internality she has to believe herself. she becomes the shell she was putting on for light
where's the post. here. [light, about misa]
like isn't that the coolest thing in the world! she's been acting for the audience both in- and out-of-universe for so long that she has nothing else to believe in! becoming the mask is a form of ego death! isn't that the most meta thing ever! i love her so much im going to die
oh god this is getting long. umm. conclusion
there's this framework i like to think about characters with that i call zoom-in and zoom-out, where the zoom-in focuses on their internal life and conflicts and feelings etc. and the zoom-out focuses on their role in the narrative, outsider-pov style. the best characters are the ones that are compelling both zoom-in and zoom-out style.
zoom-in: misa amane is a deeply lonely and deeply suicidal teenager who latches onto the first reason she finds for living and clings onto it (him) for the entire rest of the series while constantly putting on a moe act for the sake of survival and then just because she has nothing else
zoom-out: misa amane is the second kira, stalks a high school boy to his house, kills over a hundred thousand people at his command with the same bright smile, and is such a good liar that people still come away from this show calling her stupid.
Thoughts on canon vs fandom treatment of female characters? Like the source material not having much in the way of female characters in general (at least relatively in the sense that I can count significant/developed female characters on one hand compared to the much larger number of important male characters) and how that translates into fandom treatment of female characters (misa and kiyomi being treated like shit in fanfics, ect). Sorry this is vague I just like your spicy opinions lmao
That’s a very interesting question! …Also a topic I’m very careful with but I do have some thoughts I would like to share nonetheless.
I completely agree that it’s quite obvious that Ohba cares more about the development of his male characters, about making them more unique in their motivations. Large parts of Death Note are about Light manipulating people (not about being accidentally successful and smart because of his ~magical powers~, that’s such an annoying take, honestly). And when you look at how he treats female characters, starting with Yuri, later Naomi, then Misa, Rem and Kiyomi, it becomes pretty clear that both he and Ohba always use the same tactic. Yes, because while writing a sexist character doesn’t make you or your story sexist per se, it’s just the sad truth that Ohba wrote it that way for a reason. (From what I’ve heard about his other works, DN is comparatively mild in the sexism department though)
If you compare that to the much more complex ways Light manipulates male characters, you can see very easily how they’re more developed by default. Not only has Light a much harder time with them, he evades characters like L and Near or even Aizawa, who isn’t a certified genius, by, well, not getting caught until the end.
Actually, I think it’s pretty interesting how characters deal with the fact that Light is Kira. The only female character who figures out his identity on her own is Misa, and she mostly manages that due to her special powers (the Shinigami eyes). Of course Misa is never praised for that and she’s routinely portrayed as dumb, while most of her character is about her obsession with Light… which only poses a problem for a few chapters.
Very popular fanon but fanon nonetheless: Naomi figuring out Light is Kira. She didn’t; Light told her himself and she’s in fact more than a little shocked by it, and of course, already doomed when she finds out the truth.
Kiyomi is told as well, and she’s a Kira supporter anyway, in love with Light, and relatively easy to manipulate - even though we see her struggling with being ordered to kill people. What’s apparently more of a problem is her questioning Light about Misa, but really, he’s mostly just annoyed and her jealously is something the narrative actively makes fun of (confirmed by Ohba himself).
I think some more reasons ppl view Misa as more innocent are 1) she's acting all cute/ditzy most of the time (as you said), 2) even tho she forces herself on Light/stalks and threatens him, Light immediately twists the situation around and I feel like more emphasis is put on Light using Misa and Misa's behaviour is never really called out 3) maybe her motives are more relatable? i guess ppl think that acting out of 'love' is automatically more 'pure' and selfless than attempted godhood...
Yes, I definitely think all of that plays into it as well! Seeing Misa as “pure” (not just as less bad than Light) is still difficult for me to understand, since I don’t really get how you can just… forget (?) that Misa is a serial murderer who always 100% supports Kira even without her DN related memories, but yeah. Oh, I guess the fact that Misa is thankful towards Kira for avenging her parents makes her a bit more sympathetic too.
But I find phenomenons like that pretty interesting, and it’s fun to try and find out what makes fanon interpretations that gloss over important characters traits or key scenes popular.
And completely adopting a character’s point of view/opinion regarding another character seems to be widespread thing in fandom spaces for sure. I think Rem’s mere existence makes it very easy to view Misa a certain way, because her love for Misa is the only thing that makes her relevant.
It’s quite ironic, actually, because Misa never likes or appreciates Rem, she admits that she wants to find out how to kill Rem right at the beginning, the fact that Rem loves her makes her uncomfortable and she’s completely forgotten about after her sacrifice, haha. It must suck to relate to Rem.
But yes, even though I find neither her nor Misa even relatable, I still can kind of understand why other people would.
What makes me uncomfortable about this, though, is when people give Light shit for not reciprocating Misa’s feelings, because that’s unfortunately something I’ve seen more than once as well.
I have a doubt, was Light cheating Misa with Takada? They meet in a Hotel room and they spend all time together until morning (but they are under surveillance).
Well, if you’re asking if Light slept with Kiyomi, I think that’s pretty subtly implied. Not outright “canon” but you could certainly make a case for it (and I think someone did? I’ve read meta about this here on tumblr I vastly agreed with, but I don’t remember who wrote it, sorry) (I just remember that they explained it better than I could, haha).
It’s not just that they indeed spent some nights together:
Light also very clearly tells the task force that he’s going to pretend to be her boyfriend, Ide is impressed about how close they seem and Matsuda says they’re like “a couple of newlyweds”, which makes me believe their relationship is at the very least more intimate behind the scenes than what Ohba shows us.
Also:
After Mikami calls Kiyomi at the hotel, Light has only one hidden wire on him and I honestly can see him discussing with the task force beforehand that he might do something with Kiyomi they won’t get to hear. Or something like that.
Anyway, I don’t think it matters that much if they had sex or not, since this would be cheating either way. The manga even makes light of this:
I'm so interested in your view on yagami's family, so I would like to know how would it be if Light don't have the approval of his father.
Well, Soichiro obviously deeply shaped Light’s world views and ideals. We can see on several occasions that his approval means a lot to Light,and his family is definitely a special case when it comes to their opinions on Kira and how he reacts to their disapproval. Normally he’s quick to deem someone evil, quick to justify killing someone simply for defying him.
But even though Soichiro openly says this about Kira:
Light never thinks of him as his foe. Instead, he sees him as just another victim of the rotten world they live in. Even at the warehouse, after Soichiro’s death, he still calls him earnest and just:
Of course he’s trying to manipulate Matsuda here as well, but I don’t think he’s lying. It actually just shows that Light twisted himself and his ideals into something that doesn’t align with his original goals and morals.
I do think Light is a bit more cynical, arrogant and more sneaky than Soichiro even before he found the Death Note, but he’s still learned about right and wrong, good and evil, from his father. He’s used to be the son his parents can be proud of, used to not only meeting all expectations but to exceeding them as well.
It would certainly be interesting to find out how a direct confrontation would have been like. Because if Light is anything, it’s stubborn. I doubt even Soichiro could change his mind on the whole Kira thing (also because what he did is quite extreme and definitely not something you could just leave behind, haha), but I believe it would have been a very emotional scene. Light would most likely direct his anger to the world at large, maybe to Soichiro’s stubbornness, but I have a very hard time imagining Light denouncing his father of all people. Because as I said; he’s who shaped Light’s views of good and bad in the first place. His family is what comes to his mind when he thinks about the people he wants to protect, how he imagines the people of his New World should be.
Open disappointment from his father definitely wouldn’t sit well with him. You know, I don’t think Light wants to be 100% like him and he probably wouldn’t see anything wrong with hiding small and rather unimportant things from him (for example, I think he doesn’t care all that much that his father now thinks that he’s reading porn magazines, lol), but it’s obvious that he always respects him and his opinions.
I’ve seen people portraying Light like a rebel who deliberately goes against Soichiro and people portraying Light like someone who basically would only buy socks his father would approve of. And I disagree with both. I actually think their relationship is one a lot of people can relate to; most people know how difficult it can be to try to make your parents proud while still staying true to yourself. It’s challenging for sure. And disappointment from a parent who sincerely and openly trusted you… hurts a lot.
Ohba didn’t make Soichiro the head of the Kira task force for no reason. There’s meant to be conflict here and I think for a story who’s allegedly just about entertainment, they did a great job here.
do you think there were ever genuine feelings between l and light? not necessarily romantic ones but at least friendly?
My main issue with this idea is that I don’t see any solid reason why they would come to like each other.
Yes, they’re aware that they’re both roughly at the same level intellectually, and yes, they worked well together as a team when they cornered Higuchi. But only focusing on that completely disregards context.
Light sees L as an obstacle, sometimes as an entertaining one, but there’s little room for him to be genuinely fond of him. He feels at times humiliated by L and his defeat, in his mind, validates him and the righteousness of his goals. When Light relinquishes his memories, L becomes someone who wrongs him again and again just by suspecting and investigating him. And that’s not even taking into account the methods L uses to investigate him. It’s also obvious that Light has no qualms about orchestrating L’s death.
And as for L... he sees and treats Light as his main suspect almost as soon as he’s on L’s radar. He might not be the most moral character, but I still very much doubt he would want to be friends with someone he thinks of as serial killer. There’s also the fact to consider that L shows little to no interest in either social or emotional relationships of any kind. The closest we got is L saying he “trusts” certain people... in a professional context.
That said, I’m, like many of us, fascinated by Light’s and L’s dynamic and the occasional playfulness of it.
Most of this is of course pure smugness, so it doesn’t make anything between them more, uh, friendly. But I personally wouldn’t even want there to be something more positive in canon. It can be nice in fanfics (although I am, as I said many times before, more interested in heavily AUish Lawlight stories anyway) but I think it would just distract from the plot. Light and L are to me very clearly written as adversaries that are meant to entertain us with all their schemes and mind games. I think it’s quite straightforward.
Seeing your post about “how could light be an incel?” made me think about the take I see a lot that Light is a misogynist? Because I can see where it comes from, but Light used both men and women to his disposal. Would you personally label him as a misogynist? Just curious on your insight.
Above everything I think that Ohba is misogynistic. It’s even more obvious in his other works, but still pretty apparent in Death Note:
Because the truly frustrating part about scenes like this is that the story always proves Light right. He does manage to wrap Kiyomi around his little finger, and whenever a female character poses a threat to him, he turns the situation around to his benefit quite quickly. We’ve seen this happen with Naomi, Misa and Rem.
But he still has some undeniable sexist views. It’s true that he successfully manipulates and uses male characters as well, that he looks down on most characters he interacts with... and yet he still views women as "easier”.
The only notion I take issue with is that Light is some kind of violent misogynist surrounded by male feminists. I’ve seen this way too often, and it just doesn’t hold up when you look at DN more closely... Mello and Near see Halle as the easier target because she’s a woman, Mello seems in fact rather fond of kidnapping women in general, and Misa and Kiyomi especially are constantly belittled by basically everyone. Mostly for things we’re meant to see as typical female behaviour, like being “obsessed” with romance or one’s appearance.
It’s probably reasonable to assume that every DN character is at least casually sexist, like most real people unfortunately are as well.
While there are many fascist movements, that differ from each other, I wouldn’t say Light is fascist, because:
He’s not nationalist (yes, his ideals are influenced by his own culture, but he does not attempt a Japanese hegemony or anything close to it). No part of his plan involves supremacy of his culture.
Similarly, autochthony doesn’t seem to play any role in his world view at all.
He does, in fact, not spare any thoughts on culture and tradition, and I can’t think of anything that makes him reactionary, either. He thinks the world is “rotten” (and that humanity is regressing), that someone has to do something about that, but he doesn’t blame modernity/modern politics for the current state of society. “Politics, law, education” aren’t doing enough, in his mind.
Kira doesn’t technically act as a Führer. He doesn’t attempt to govern Japan or the world; he wants to be the global, absolute authority on criminals (or people he deems evil in general). But, again, he’s not anti-democracy in general. While Light does see himself as someone special, he never uses blatant Social Darwinism to justify his actions. He thinks anyone should try to be a good person and generally judges people based on their actions, not their background.
He does have some anti-pluralist tendencies, but only when it comes to Kira, and even then only to a degree. There’s a number of people who disagree with him, he doesn’t want to silence or get rid of. The most obvious example would be his family, who he considers to be good people.
Light obviously isn’t Marxist, and his ideals and methods are almost the opposite of dialectical materialism, but I don’t think he would attempt to strike out against Marxists as a group. The same goes for liberals (I can even see him supporting some liberal ideas, like equality of opportunity). He does try to extinguish every person or group that acts against him, which includes police forces. Even though he essentially wants to make the police more effective and radical. But as I said above; Light never blames any political or philosophical movement in particular for the problems he wants to fix.
Throughout the story, Kira and his followers are described as a movement, but interestingly enough, there’s no evidence of them ever trying to form a political party (though we see a glimpse of a pro-Kira cult after his death, it’s not something he ever encourages). Light himself certainly doesn’t. Personally, I think he accepts the existence of various parties with different views, and that he likely wouldn’t attempt to interfere with their actions—as long as they tolerate Kira.
Stuff like economic systems do not seem to interest him, and neither does the nature of the conflicts wars are fought on; he just seems to be anti-war in general.
Really, Light is surprisingly status-quo. Death Note tries very hard to be 100% apolitical, but of course nothing ever is, so we end up having a character who mostly tries to enforce the already existing laws even harder (mainly the death penalty for people who are deemed “criminal”). He of course uses murder, blackmail, etc., to achieve this, but he sees that as sacrifices he has to make for the sake of his mission.
One scene where the story comes quite close to making a more clearly defined political statement is here:
Now, you could interpret this in different ways, because “people with an ability who do not use that ability for the good of society” is pretty vague. It mostly seems to be about “lazy” people, but how Mikami or Light would intend to identify those, is left open. Realistically, how would you even test that? They don’t tell us. (Though I want to note here that if someone would say this in real life, I would see this as a massive red flag. It’s terrible in the context above as well, but the vagueness serves a different purpose than it would in RL. Here, it’s not about covering up what group of people they actually want to target.)
But the thing of note here would be that if Light thinks unemployment, for example, equals laziness, it would be very easy for him to spot how that tends to be more frequent in certain families and other groups of people. This still doesn’t mean he would become full-on pro-eugenics, but it could be a slippery slope.
Even with such a…problematic statement, the story shies away from becoming intentionally political.
Regardless, fascism is not just eugenics, or flirting with eugenic ideas, or killing people an authority deems bad. And while I absolutely think there could be good arguments for how easily Kira’s reign could become fascist later on, it’s clearly not what the narrative is trying to do.
Well well well, if it isn't me again, using this site like an actual blog and writing goddamn essays for an audience of like 5 people because I don't understand how Tumblr works.
I've just been thinking recently that it surprises me a bit when people see L/Misa as an implausible crack ship, especially compared to the much more popular ship of L/Light. I mean, I get why people like Lawlight. I went through my own Lawlight phase, and I still read fics about them sometimes. The homoerotic subtext between L and Light is pretty obvious.
But L's sexual interest in Misa isn't even subtext. It's literally just text. Yes, you can argue whether it's real or just an act. But in canon, every single time we see an unambiguous expression of sexual interest from L, it is directed towards Misa. (By "unambiguous" I mean "this dialogue/action is clearly intended to be sexual," but that doesn't make it necessarily genuine, since L could be lying). I'm putting the rest of this under a cut cause it's long.
The funny thing is, though it contradicts the way L is usually interpreted in fanon, out of all of the main characters, Misa and L are probably the ones who display the most sexuality. Whether L's displays of sexuality are an act or not, he's much more likely than Light to make comments about sex or to do shit like this:
And then there's the fact that L and Misa's interactions are often sexualized, even when L's actions have logical explanations. For instance, L touching her butt to steal her phone, or restraining her in an unnecessarily fetishy sort of way (she could've been held captive in the same way Light was if Watari had just worn a helmet every time he entered the room). A reader might believe that L doesn't see those situations as sexual at all, and was just doing what was necessary to catch Kira. But it was an active choice that Ohba made, to make L's actions in investigating Kira "just happen" to require sexualized interactions with Misa.
My friend @litterateur97 (who I also have to thank for reminding me about the above panel) has made some good points about this as well: as they said in a post the other day, "I noticed in the manga and in the anime that most of the time when L and Misa argue, they lean in towards one another, as if pulled towards one another. He is also often seen watching her, on cameras and in person, in a manner that looks sexual to me." This gif I stole from them illustrates both points, not only showing them getting in each other's personal space during an argument, but also, as they pointed out, L begins by looking down at Misa's chest before making eye contact with her.
Besides that, L and Misa have a tendency to be playful with each other in ways that could be interpreted as flirtatious. Compared to L and Light, who tend to be more dramatic and serious, Misa brings out L's more childish and teasing side. She pulls his hair, he bonks her on the head with a megaphone and threatens to kick her, etc. They have a very different type of chemistry than L and Light, more fun than serious, "opposites attract" as opposed to the intellectual match that L and Light have, but to my eyes, the chemistry between L and Misa clearly exists.
I've been wondering why people seem so quick to overlook this, or to brush off all of L's interest in Misa as purely an act and think of L as basically asexual. I think part of it is that Misa's role in Death Note involves personifying the romance/sexuality that is mostly omitted from the plot and the other characters. (Which is a pretty classic thing for a sexist author to do: Misa is our Token Woman, and women are identified with sex and romance, thus Misa must be.) She's sexualized in many of her interactions with the other male characters, though to a lesser extent than she is when she interacts with L.
So it seems to me like people attribute the sexual nature of their interactions to Misa, not to L. It's seen as an extension of Misa being the Sexy One, not as a true expression of L's sexuality. I personally have some ideas as to why so many of Misa and L's interactions in canon were sexualized; I think that L is used as a surrogate by which the authors can sexualize Misa.
One interesting thing is that, despite sexuality being such a fundamental part of her character, Misa isn't actually sexualized in the art very much. Compared to other manga, even other shonen manga, her artwork doesn't feel that male gaze-y. We don't get many cleavage/upskirt shots of her; even when she's wearing lingerie, she's drawn pretty neutrally, with a few exceptions. We can see that she's trying to look sexy, and that many of the characters find her sexy, but they're not especially trying to excite the reader. My guess is that Obata and Ohba purposefully avoided fanservice because they felt it would make the manga seem less serious.
But despite the lack of fanservice, they still wanted to convey that Misa was the Sexy Character. How to do this, if not through art? They used L. Compared to Light, who takes himself seriously and is more composed, L usually behaves in socially inappropriate ways. So they use L's behavior towards Misa as one of the main ways of indicating to the reader that Misa is seen as a sex object.
This especially stood out to me in the omakes (4-panel comics). There's the whole joke plot where it's implied that L is trying to figure out whether Misa's "carpet matches the drapes," only for it to be revealed that he's actually wondering about her sock color (which is a case where Ohba is injecting the concept of sex into their relationship even if L's actual intentions are innocent). There's also this moment, where L makes a totally unprompted sexual comment about Misa:
Another reason I think that people see L/Misa as a crack ship is that L's sexual interest in Misa is pretty much always played for laughs. Ohba seems to find it comical to consider L as a sexual being at all (apparently he considered making Near and Mello L's sons, but decided against it because he couldn't picture L having sex). In much the same way that L is used to draw attention to Misa as a sex object, Misa's sex appeal is used to give Ohba a reason to allude to L's sexuality, which is mostly done as comic relief. But the fact that it's portrayed as comical doesn't mean that it's "crack," or that L's attraction to Misa isn't a real aspect of his character. After all, L's obsession with sweets is similarly used for comedy.
Obviously there is no real need to justify our ships by canon, or to care that much about the canon take on things. Still, I think it's interesting to consider how much of L's sexual interest in Misa was meant as genuine. My take on canon, which may be very different than others, is that L does have sexual desires, if not any real-world experience with sex. And I think that if we accept that L is sexually attracted to anyone at all, there is the most evidence for that person being Misa.
Does he exaggerate that interest in order to manipulate Misa, or to weird her out? Absolutely. A lot of his socially inappropriate behavior seems like a front that he puts up in order to distance himself from those around him and prevent them from knowing him as a person. But at the same time, I think there is a kernel of truth behind the front. I don't think it goes as far as romantic interest (I wouldn't say that he actually "fell for" her), and it doesn't mean that he doesn't find her irritating and dumb much of the time, but I think that his behavior towards Misa is so consistently sexually charged that I would be surprised if it's 100% fake.
Besides that, even in a reading where L is entirely asexual/gay and only faking interest in Misa to make her uncomfortable, it's undeniable that Ohba is purposefully sexualizing their interactions, likely as a shortcut to sexualizing Misa herself without having to include a bunch of fanservice. So if the people in this fandom like to read into every bit of homoerotic subtext between L and Light (which, again, I am on board with), I don't really see why y'all would be surprised by people choosing to explore the sexual component to L and Misa's interactions that's been purposefully included in canon.
Honestly, I think this is what first got me interested in the ship. When I was a lil preteen in the early Death Note fandom, I, like about a million other people, had a crush on L. And I liked to watch his interactions with Misa. Because sexuality and romance was mostly sidelined in Death Note, and they seemed to have an attitude that serious geniuses didn't care about that stuff, I found it exciting when the show implied that L was a person who felt sexual or romantic desire, and that Misa brought out a side of him that was not seen in his other scenes in the show.
Whether Ohba intended it to be real or not, I wanted to believe it was real, because it made his character more interesting and compelling to me. It humanized him in some way, made him more vulnerable, especially when compared to Light, who always seemed very cold and sterile to me. And because of that, this ship has always had a special place in my heart.
Many people like the idea that Misa realizes that Light does not love her and then she leaves him. Do you think this could be a realistic scenario? I always thought this would be ooc for her. Light tells her at the beginning that he only pretends to be her bf and she even gives him the permission to kill her if he doesn't need her anymore. Apparently she just doesn't care how unhealthy their relationship is.
I don’t think it’s that realistic, no. I mean, this is a situation where I have to carefully split between my opinions out-of-universe and the story as is. Writing-wise, I think that Misa’s story could have been handled way better and wanting her to move on from Light is a valid desire. But on the level of ‘the story is finished and I am examining the characters as they are written in it’, I don’t find this scenario particularly likely. Not impossible, but unlikely.
Misa does very much agree to Light’s play-pretend compromise as long as it leaves open the window of letting her believe that it has ‘become real’. I’d personally argue that whether or not this condition is ever truly met isn’t really important to Misa. She doesn’t care about Light as a person, she cares about the function Light fills in her life. Light’s fully performative boyfriend role is exactly what she wants. She has no interest in getting to know and understand Light on a deeper level - he’s a body, he’s a function, nothing else.
So as long as he fulfills this function, there is no problem for Misa. And he does fulfill it for a really long time.
One thing that I always feel is important to point out is that over the timeskip, Misa isn’t unhappy. Her misery starts in the second arc, when the successors distract Light from playing his part in the ‘happy lovers’ play.
Just showing smiling pictures is of course a super simplified argument, but what it boils down to is just: there’s no evidence of Misa having been unhappy with their situation prior to the timeskip. It doesn’t take much to satisfy her - she doesn’t even falter in pursuing Light during the Yotsuba Arc in which he actively rejects her. During the timeskip, he lives with her, sleeps with her, and gives her the minimum of attention and shared life. She’s fine with it. Her needs are superficial, she doesn’t demand an emotional connection, isn’t equipped to give it herself either because that’d mean actually examining her feelings.
So like… she’s good with this. No reason to step away, she gets exactly what she’s wanted from Light since the very beginning.
What she’d need is a catalyst for breaking away.
And while the second arc delivers this in the form of Light just totally ignoring her now… it’s also very late in the game. By this point, Misa has structured her whole life around Light. She evidently doesn’t have friends anymore and during the kidnapping arc, she quits her job and thus gets rid of her remaining social connections. When Light leaves her, she’s alone. More alone than she was at the beginning of the story. There is no support system in place and she’s focused her existence so much on Light that nothing outside of him seems worthwhile to move towards. She’s grown dependent. And being dependent makes it extremely hard to just walk away.
So it just boils down to… the second arc is the only time when Misa has a reason to leave Light, but it’s also the time in her life when it’s the most psychologically difficult thing for her to do. Instead she slips into self-destructive habits like drinking and sabotaging her career by attacking Takada. There’s no healthy coping here. She’d need serious help, at this point.
I don’t think the realization that she really needs is “Light doesn’t love me” though. That one’s like… too easy for her to dismiss. What she needs is the understanding that she doesn’t need him. Which is harder to attain.
So did Misa not care about Rem at all? I remember somewhere in the Mello/Near arc she revealed that she was well aware that Rem existed and died but was pretty indifferent about her sacrifice. Would you agree Misa and Rem's relationship was one-sided?
I would agree, yes.
There is just.. not a single scene in which Misa even hints at caring about Rem in any way beyond how Rem’s actions benefit her. Maybe the face they Misa is more smile-y and cute around Rem than Light is around Ryuk is what people take to imply mutuality in their relation? But I’d say that’s a false conclusion. Misa is smile-y and cute around everyone. She’s an idol and having this kind of cuteness face on is second nature to her. It’s not about Rem. It’s Misa’s MO.
Their second dialogue in the manga is uh… more than telling here.
And then not even 5 minutes later:
Or another highlight:
“Haha, man, you totally got me here, plotting your death :)”
During the first interaction with Light, there is a slight shift in this, but it’s really only utilitarian on Misa’s part.
I'm not sure if you've ever answered this before, but do you think L actually liked Misa? And by like I mean maybe a crush or something. He did know of her as a model and he did have a reaction when she kissed his cheek.
I haven’t spoken about this either, actually! (And even if I had, it’s no trouble for me to link old posts so repeat questions are fine overall, really.)
I don’t think so, no - L is not a character we can take at face value most of the time, since lying comes very naturally to him when it suits his purposes. Especially when it comes to emotional seeming statements, I’d always be on my guard around L. Calling Light his first friend was a lie to throw him off (as confirmed by the author in the interviews) and likewise I think these specific statements about Misa are big fat lies told for functional reasons as well.
Taking a look at the scene on campus, context in the story is important. This scene takes place when L has already established Misa as a firm Kira suspect. He doesn’t know about her model career because he just coincidentally likes her as a model - he knows about it because he researched her for the case.This is easily proven by her being taken into custody right that day, but even without this, L already implies why he is interested in the girls Light is seeing.
Again, L has been looking into Light’s sudden many GFs with the knowledge in mind that the two Kiras have started cooperating and any new acquaintance of Light is suspicious. And he knows about Misa because she went directly against Light’s orders as she came visit him, where she was seen by Mogi.
Then the tape evidence connected to her and bingo. Kira II.So whether or not L is into pop culture (which I don’t necessarily think) is kind of irrelevant to why he knows about Misa - being thorough in research, knowing her debut is really not a big deal and just comes with the job.
So far, there’s no personal interest here. Going on to why he proclaims this at all, I also think this has functional rather than personal reasons. Namely, he does it so he can get close to her physically and gather evidence to incriminate Light.
This:
is merely a lead-up to this:
This move would be super suspicious had he not prefaced it with an exclamation of being into Misa. Light would immediately get suspicious of L touching Misa without build-up. However, considering his social deviant image and the previously introduced idea that he’s a Misa-fan, it’s not hard to imagine he’d do something as cop a feel of her shamelessly. Meanwhile Light’s mind has left this plane of existence at the dumbness of the situation.
As we know, he was not actually into touching her but stealing her phone. Knowing the second Kira can kill with just a look, he can be sure that if Misa is Kira II and Light is Kira I, Light will want to contact her as fast as possible to see to it that he, L, is killed quickly.. Getting Misa’s phone and thus gathering evidence against Light is part of the scheme. Liking Misa as a model is used as a cover-up to this here.
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