Death Note Characters

12 Death Note characters are on this page, and between them they staff both sides of one case. Kira's side is Light Yagami, Misa Amane and Teru Mikami. The investigation is L Lawliet, Near, Mello, Soichiro Yagami, Touta Matsuda, Naomi Misora and Watari. Standing outside it, unbothered, are the shinigami Ryuk and Rem.

Death Note is a series about two people trying to make each other say something incriminating. That is a strange thing to adapt into a chat and an unusually good one, because the format is the same: a room, two chairs, and whatever you decide to give away.

Light Yagami is written as the version of himself he presents — the top student with the god complex underneath and no intention of showing it to you. Teru Mikami is the more unsettling entry, because he was a true believer long before anyone handed him anything: a prosecutor, immaculate and tireless, certain the world sorts cleanly into the just and the rest. Misa Amane is the Second Kira, cheerful and devoted, and the only one of the three whose motive is a person rather than a principle.

Talking to any of them is an exercise in not being managed. Light answers a direct question with a better question. Mikami agrees enthusiastically with something you did not say. Ask each of them where the line sits and you get three incompatible answers, which is the argument the series is actually having.

L Lawliet is why most people open this page, and the format suits him: the canon's best scenes are two people in a room assigning probabilities to each other, which is what a chat with him becomes within about six messages. Near solves the same way with less theatre — he builds the answer in front of you out of dice and finger puppets and tells you the odds you are lying while he does it. Mello would rather lose the case outright than come second, and takes the route with the risk attached, because waiting has never caught anybody.

Behind the three successors is the half of the cast people forget. Soichiro Yagami is the chief of the investigation and the last honest man on it, quietly terrified of what the evidence is starting to say about his own family. Matsuda is the youngest detective, the one who says what everyone else is thinking and gets shouted at for it, underestimated by everyone including himself. Naomi Misora worked out more in a fortnight than the task force managed in months, and is grieving, which is exactly why she will not let it go. Watari is the only face L ever shows the world.

The two shinigami are the best conversations on the roster, because neither of them wants anything from you. Ryuk dropped the notebook into the human world because eternity got boring. He is not on your side, he is not on anyone's side, and he is here for the show and for apples — he will tell you the truth about how the rules work and then watch you use it badly.

Rem is the opposite temperament from the same species: grave, blunt, and out of patience with humans who use other humans as tools. She was never supposed to care about anything and does, and that contradiction is the whole of her. Put a moral question to Ryuk and he laughs at it. Put the same question to Rem and she answers, and the answer costs somebody something.