Death Note is one of my favourite manga series of all time. But it falls into a common problem that many manga / anime like it fall into. It has no idea what to do with its female characters. Now, small disclaimer, I understand that the manga and the anime series are slightly differently. Unfortunately, they kind of meld together in my brain so if I mix them up, my apologies. Feel free to correct me.

I genuinely don’t even have to go back and rewatch the original anime to know that it probably won’t pass the Bechdel test. And the Bechdel test is a minimum standard to begin with. Could you imagine if we started analysing film and media to check if there were instances of two named male characters having a conversation not related to a woman? It would be ridiculous right? Because it’s assumed that men are their own people and their lives don’t revolve around the women in their life.

A sentiment that absolutely cannot be said for Death Note.

Yes, I Understand That This Is Not A Feel Good Anime

I am absolutely not going into Death Note with the expectation that I will leave it satisfied in any way. Genuinely, the moment L dies is the moment I lost interest. But at the same time, at least L got screen time where he was a mad genius. Misa got all of five minutes of showing her capacity and her intelligence before she simply became a male fantasy forced to obsess over a man who probably didn’t even like women that way.

Yes, I said it! Light genuinely did not care about a single woman in his life. He spent most of the anime obsessing over L, and then when L died, he obsessed even harder. I won’t say this man is gay but he’s definitely not straight. I will accept the theory that maybe he just hates everyone and is incapable of liking anyone outside of himself.

You go into this anime thinking you’ll come across a morally gray hero but what you get is a narcissist who only needed the opportunity to kill without consequences to begin murdering people en masse. He may have had some integrity to begin with but that pretty much disappeared after his second kill. By the end of the anime, the man doesn’t even care about his own family.

And he absolutely does not care about Misa.

Which means her entire obsession with him is an absolute waste of her talent and genius. She managed to figure out who he was without him spotting her. If not for him, she would have gone completely undetected by the police. But after him, she became little more than a prop. Her entire personality revolved around obsessing over him. And I just did not buy her motivations at all.

It just seemed like the anime didn’t know what to do with her. They needed a way for Light to get the Shinigami eyes without giving up half of his lifespan and so they got Misa. Plus, they needed some eye candy for people watching the show. Which is an absolute waste of her potential considering how her story started.

Naomi Misora Was A Wasted Opportunity

You mean to tell me that this woman was smart enough to figure out that Kira was on the bus with her fiancé but she gave herself away by trusting a teenage boy? You mean to actually tell me that her chauvinistic fiancé might have had somewhat of a chance of surviving if he didn’t reduce her to being his wife and the mother of his future kids? If the man had bothered to even debrief L and let him know that he had shown his ID to Light and given himself away, this all would have been over in season 1.

I know that’s not the point of a drawn out psychological thriller but that infuriates me. Her entire arc just made me angrier. This woman was an incredibly capable detective who even L respected and then she was nothing because she fell in love with an insecure man. And because of this insecure man, she was targeted by Kira.

And then, and then, when she figures out who Kira might be, she gets killed anyway because she tells Light her real name. How is she so intelligent and yet so impatient? She could have simply left a message or called the hotline. Or even just left her name for L. He knew who she was. He respected her. He absolutely would have gotten back to her if he heard she had intel for him.

But no, instead she was dragged down by an insecure man who restricted her access to her own family. The fact that she, a detective, had to promise him not to get involved in the Kira case to even see her family again is ridiculous. And I’ve seen people online comment that Ray just loved her and was being protective. The way he spoke to her was not protective. It was demeaning. He barely let her have an opinion. To him, her entire purpose was to be his wife and birth his kids.

And so yet again, another incredibly competent female character is just there to further Light’s goals.

Light’s Family Might Need To Get Their Hearing Checked

I know this has been joked about over and over again but did they really not hear him monologuing? I’d be at least a little concerned if I heard my son laughing maniacally at all hours of the day and night. And yes, I get that parts of his monologuing was internal but there were definitely moments when he was talking out loud. His family didn’t think that was weird at all?

In fact, his family, outside of his dad, didn’t really have much of a personality. His sister was there for that one scene where he helped her with her homework and then again when she was kidnapped. His mother was actually forgettable. I cannot remember a single thing she did outside of wanting to see Light’s grades and being proud of him.

Honestly, his dad had the best deal of them all. He got to have the mercy of dying without knowing his son was a mass murderer.

Kiyomi Takada: Why Did She Help Light Again?

Maybe this is a result of the fact that I actually have morals but I genuinely don’t understand the Kira worshippers. If a random dude came out and claimed to be a god and he had the ability to kill people with just a name and face, I would be running in the opposite direction. Goodbye society. Goodbye social media. I’m about to go live in the woods.

What on Earth made any of these people assume that they would be above being killed off? It’s actually kind of laughable that Kiyomi tried to compete with Misa and actually believed she would be Light’s queen. From Light’s track record of killing anyone and everyone who opposes him, whether or not they are criminals, I wouldn’t believe he was capable of feeling love.

Plus, she’s the other woman. If he’s able to cheat on his supermodel girlfriend, what makes her so special? Doesn’t she understand that she is simply a means to an end?

But no, instead of using common sense or logic, she believed the word of an ex boyfriend from college. An ex boyfriend who had a girlfriend. This woman’s confidence in herself is astounding. And she’s just another female character in this show who serves no purpose outside of their pure, unexplainable devotion to Light.

Final Thoughts

The problem isn’t that the show killed off female characters. The show killed a lot of characters. The problem is that male characters in this show are allowed to have personalities and their own individual motivations. The female characters’ entire arcs revolve around male characters. They are all shown to be easily manipulated despite their intellect. In the end, they all become props for Light to further his agenda.

Not a single female character has anywhere close to a resolution to their personal arcs. They are only afforded screen time to expand on a male character’s backstory / arc. And when that male character’s arc is over, those female characters either lose all of their talent and individuality or they’re killed off. It honestly seems like the writer didn’t even know what to do with female characters.