My name is John McEnroe: Episode 27

Saints and angels preserve us from this arc.

Roger, the administrator of Wammy’s House, informs two young boys of L’s death: hotheaded Mello and coldblooded Near. When Mello asks which of them L chose to succeed him, Roger says that L never made the choice. There’s some wrangling, but eventually Near is selected by default; Mello, who hates his cuter rival, chooses to defect and pursue the case separately.

Over the next few years, the boys investigate. Near hooks up with the American government, while Mello joins the Mafia, develops or affects chocoholism,  goes punk, and kidnaps a high-ranking member of the Japanese police, holding him hostage in exchange for the notebook. When Light manages to off the cop, Mello abducts Light’s sister Sayu instead.

There’s also some political shifting, and the Americans openly try to wrest the anti-Kira investigation from the Japanese. A special agency called the SPK is formed around Near. Meanwhile, L is dead.

1. Mello and Near’s introduction is very poorly written — it’s a surprising fumble, given the clarity, economy and brilliance of Light’s and L’s first appearances.

We learn their basic traits. Mello even describes them. But there are important questions which neither this scene nor any other bothers to answer; the manga helps, but not that much.

Here’s what I’d really like to know:

-How did Mello and Near feel about L before he died? Was he their friend, their distant idol, their mentor, or their hatefully overachieving older brother?
-Have they even met him?
-What involvement did L have in their training?
-What precisely is their training?
-How well do they know each other?
-Why is Wammy’s actively searching for L’s “successor”? Did they truly expect L to die so young? What are L’s duties, that he must be replaced immediately?
-What the fuck is up with Wammy’s House — a factory for making troubled orphans into detectives, which apparently has no qualms about allowing children as young as ten to begin working independently on the serial murder case that just killed an ultracompetent adult? Why are the Ender’s Game implications game of this never taken up in the primary canon, especially since the series is about deduction, and should take place in a remotely reasonable world?

This is a very strange hole in the characterization, and thus the plot. If the boys’ primary motivation is to succeed and avenge L, then we need at least a vague idea of how they felt about L. Is he a hero to them, or do they resent him, or is the succession just a MacGuffin, the prize in their competition? These decisions should drive the plot; instead, they’re stuffed into the trunk.

2. I do get the basic intent behind these characters. Light tends to lure his enemies into a cozy Cold War intimacy, and then eat them alive. No one who understands his thinking can defeat him. Hence, something radically different — children, who have different thought processes, different social ideas, from adults. It’s just that it’s not done well.

3. This deleted scene (from the second DN director’s cut) would have done an enormous amount to rectify the above (see the bottom of this post for a transcription; I know the subtitles are very hard to read):

I wish they’d sacrificed L’s clipshow for it. The art installation with the dominoes really establishes Near — it makes him funnier, and more villainous and extravagant, which (perversely) tends to make him more sympathetic. L’s “idiot” speech, likewise, is a good piece — a litany against superhuman pretensions, pitched to a child’s level — and Near’s mute disinterest in it says a good deal about him. He’s an absolute cynic; he finds L both dull and disingenuous. Most of all, he despises the same human weakness which the more experienced L has learned to value. L’s death only confirms his opinion.

Conversely, we have Mello, listening with interest, but trying not to look interested.

4. Both Mello and Near have lovely character designs; Mello’s relentless Norma Desmonding (you know the pose: face up, eyes down, crazy mouth) is a bit of a detraction, but they have expressive faces and are believably young. I just wish I knew what was going on with their costumes. Is Mello’s style meant to evolve slowly, from inexplicable jumpsuit to strange vest, and eventually to more mature punkwear? Or is that just tin-eared art?

And I wish they’d stuck with the pajamas Near wears in the manga; in the anime, it’s like they’re saying “look, this kid’s not L — he wears a white button-down.”

5. Mello and Near are strangely portrayed in terms of age. Death Note used to be oddly impressive in its age-realism. There were serious questions about Light’s presence on the task force, and he really seemed like a smug, clever, hardworking seventeen; likewise, when L wasn’t goofing off, he acted appropriately twenty-five, which was a conceivable age for someone in his position — not likely, but conceivable.

After all this, it’s odd to see Mello and Near working independently, and demonstrating an adult level of understanding — they aren’t morally adult, but this is presented more as “Mello and Near are problematic people” than “Mello and Near are very young.”

Am I being hard on them? I miss the Yotsuba Eight.

6. The Mafia den is cartoonish and ridiculous. What is that mirror? Why the zebra-striped sofas? Why does Ross hang around shirtless? His hooker is too small. How did Mello meet these people?

Again, who’d give a fuck, it’s a cartoon — except that, once again, it was done so much better in the first arc that you wonder if these are the same artists. The sets in the first arc were great. Light’s spot-on teenage room, with its impersonal magazine holders and cheap TV; the series of dead-eyed hotel suites, clearly seperate, but so generic that they were rarely even given establishing shots; the sad anti-Kira headquarters, largely composed of pegboard and stairs, a depressing glimpse into an atrophied part of L’s brain. And now we have Mello sprawled on a zebra-striped couch.  It’s a comedown. I want to like Mello, and I try, but it’s a comedown. Both he and the spaces he inhabits seem to come from an entirely different show.

7. From this episode on, the series features a number of American and European characters. The art reflects this well. In particular, though “McEnroe” is an overdesigned monstrosity, he does look very American next to the clearly Japanese Chief Yagami.

8. Light’s long-term impersonation of L should have broader consequences.

9. The task force get cute headphones when Light communicates with the Americans. My boyfriend prefers to imagine that they’re not really listening to the conversation; Aizawa is listening to a baseball game, Matsuda to a recording of a sexy woman saying “you’re sexy!” over and over. Mogi and Ide are listening to Mongolian chants. This is the best explanation for their intense expressions.

10. Chief Yagami spends the whole episode making expressions of shock and horror, just like every other episode. The man’s life is a funeral parade of pink, hot pain.

11. In a small bright spot, this episode does introduce Near’s team — all very charismatic characters, largely on the strength of design. This is especially true of Commander Lester, the sharkish, blond Special Forces type; he always looks properly worried about the fact that his job is to buy toys for a small child with no obvious guardians.

12. It tires me out that we have to watch an investigator figure out Kira’s identity all over again.

13. Likewise, the loss of the intimacy between Light and L automatically makes the ridiculous aspects of this series a lot more ridiculous. L was an ironist; we could count on a nod from him, and a twitch from Light, when things dissolved into Tennis With Kira. Now that we’re meeting the President and landing planes in the Arizona desert, and Light’s in a largely reactive role against two distant enemies, that ironic layer is gone.

***
THE “IDIOT” SPEECH
***

L is addressing a group of children through his laptop.

L: “You know, this investigation, it’s like when I get up in the night to look for the light switch, and I hurt my foot every time. Because I am an idiot.”
(Laughter.)
L: “Are there some questions?”
Kid A: “Yes! Is there anything that frightens you?”
L: “Things that frighten me?”
Kid B: “Huh? L isn’t afraid of nothing!”
L: “It’s because I’m an idiot, isn’t it?”
(Laughter.)
Kid C: “Me, too. I am like L.”
Kid D: “Idiot, you’re nothing like him.”
L: “Well, there are things which an idiot has to fear. An idiot is afraid that he’s being made fun of. Of his childhood. Of his dreams. Of the things to which he holds dear. And finally, that he’s being lied to. L doesn’t like being lied to. An idiot is always submitted to the fear, because he is honest with himself. The idiots are also the humans that submit to their desires. When they are hungry, they eat; when they want to read, they take a book; when they cry, they go for comfort. I am the type of idiot with all these desires and these fears. And I am proud of being an idiot.”

(This is very clumsy English, but I’m sure the gist is clear enough.)

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