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Death Note Tarot Tales V: Kira's Magician Versus the Wammy's Magi - Divine Wisdom and Poetic Justice in Death Note
Every epic journey must begin
with a step upon its routes, roads and Ryuk directed by-ways.
Every great destiny must have a destination.
Explored against
the back-drop of Death Note,
the Major Arcana Tarot cards
feature the realm of The Magician
~ written by our guide into
all things esoteric
Tarot Mikami
Welcome seekers after sama, kana and qi! You won't be the first to want to reverse your life's fortunes; otherwise embrace words to change the world; take steps to transform yourself into a hero; divert humanity away from its current perverse course; perfect its core that all may sing together - refraining from discordance, aligned in peace and harmony; gain insight into the working of the universe; realize your dreams; reach for the stars; sail across the cosmos and converse with the divine; enchant and charm Kannon at the gates of wisdom; seize manna from the Gods; invoke matter from the kether; traverse the mysteries and become God of this New World.
It's not unknown.
But no matter what foolish idea inflames your passion and ignites your will. Before you take your first steps onto the path of making it real, you will need some guidance. Sound the intro, maestro! And enter The Magician.
The Many Roles of the Tarot Magician
The second card of the Major Arcana starts the story proper. It stands at number one, as The Fool is zero. Without meeting or becoming The Magician, the Fool is merely a broiling mess of notions, running around like a headless chicken with no direction in which to pursue them.
If nothing else, the Magician is a doorkeeper - providing access to another (or the wider) world, opening a gateway onto an appropriate path, or acting as a way-marker signing the route to take. Usually this role contextualizes the bigger picture and sets out the destination. The Wise Man is concerned with destiny. Though the advice should be taken indiscriminately.
The Magician isn't necessarily on your side. The guidance given or the way forward illuminated might be a service provided in all innocence and altruism. Nevertheless, he/she has an agenda of their own and the knowledge to manipulate others too.
They may play a dual role - making Mafia profits sky-rocket, whilst diverting its resources into capturing a Death Note - and could as easily be trickster instead of consigliere.
Or a charlatan. This all-knowing being may present themselves as God, then turn out to merely be a man and a murderer at that. Worse still, a serial killer implicating you in the guise of the great detective L.
But the differentiation isn't always that clear cut either. Nothing so black and white.
The Magician juggles many roles, generally playing all the same time; multi-tasking meaning depending upon who is being addressed. One person's terrorist being another's freedom fighter and all that, while the manipulation might be to save yourself from yourself, or to aid a greater cause.
Either way, The Magician will certainly give our hero something to ponder and a route (or twelve) to take next. There's the potential for destiny-laden adventure and opportunities lessons to be learned here, if only never to be that gullible again.
The Meaning of Magician in the Major Arcana
Christians are most familiar with The Magician as the Magi - Three Wise Men in modern versions of the Bible; twelve Pharisee priests in the closest we have to the original - who visited the newborn Christ with gifts.
For everyone else, the name has largely denigrated to the level of sleight-of-hand illusionists and tricksters on stage, or grown fantastical in figures from stage or literature like Gandalf, Merlin and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
It used to mean so much more. The hints of it permeate our lexicon. We glimpse their greatness in words sharing the same root, like magnate, mega, magnitude, magnus, magus and majesty. That last also containing a hint of their skill as spokespeople, mediators, lecturers, teachers and orators - 'gest', as in 'jester', 'gesticulate', 'gesture' and the 'gist' of a story. It comes from Middle English 'to recite a tale', originating in Latin 'geste' or 'gesta' 'to perform deeds; to act'. By the time it hit 13th century France, 'geste' meant to 'narrate an heroic tale'.
Stories could (and often still do) command the will of a people. Which is why governments today are so keen to pressure the press into toeing the party line. In Medieval Italy and France, which is where our earliest extant tarot cards were made, the majesty of magicians led to them adjudicating in delicate matters, acting as counsellors or speaking on behalf of less learned individuals.
The Magicians as magisters, in fact, or magistrates. That 'gist' sometimes turning into its other form of 'iurare' to bring us to jury, and conjurer; or 'joculate' as joker or juggler. Wise counsellor or trickster indeed. Furthermore, the French word grammairien referred to 'learned men; magicians', whose ability to know the power and perfect usage of words gave us 'grammar'.
But akin to magician is also master, maestro, mahatma, maharaji, maharishi, yogi, guru, the one who knows. The Japanese would call them dai-sensai, or O-sensai, doshi, Rōshi, or know them as sifi. In addition to great wisdom and skill, The Magician brings into play the tools that the Fool might need t0 embark upon their journey.
In ancient Persia, the Magos were the learned members of the priestly caste, adept at astrology. They could give you the overview of your life and destiny, as it was written in the stars, taking in the knowledge of what constellation was on the ascendency or ruling within a certain house. It was up to you what you did with that information and how you let it guide your lives.
Over the centuries, their spiritual descendants have been known as the adepts in a variety of other fortune-telling, mind expanding, soul perfecting or perception enhancing skills. For example, those magnificent seekers delving into the Kabbalah/Cabala/Qabala as scholars, scryers, practitioners, occultists, alchemists, diviners, philosophers, Hermetic code-breakers and ceremonial magicians.
Enlightened beings who know The Way and what it might mean for you. But if it's shared - and done so entirely, selectively or else strewn with misinformation - and how that translates into relevancy for your own life's destiny, only a Fool can know in passing through the realm of the Magi.
The Magi In All Their Guises: Major Arcana Death Note's The Magician Card
The Death Note itself can be seen as falling right into the realm of The Magician. In fact, it's practically the Three Magi represented here in the notebook, as its role is considered in relation to Light Yagami.
Firstly Light has to find the shinigami's notebook, which serves the dual purpose of opening his eyes to the existence of a world beyond his own and highlighting its possibilities. Hitherto unconsidered (or disbelieved) realities are presented as a pathway upon which to forge his own destiny. It's the Tarot Magician as gatekeeper, signpost and luminary of higher knowledge.
However, its also the Trickster, or Charlatan, insofar as the falling Death Note serves Ryuk's agenda first and foremost. Its presence on Earth is set to alleviate the shinigami's boredom. Light will pick it up and, primarily believing it an elaborate prank, use it to the detriment of his own future. Not only will it curse his living years, but condemn his eternal being into the dissolution of Mu. This ultimate destination for Death Note users means that a destiny is foisted upon Light Yagami, manipulated by ignorance and curiosity into foolishly using it without fully translating all of the rules beforehand.
The Death Note wasn't on his side, nor against him. It's an item; a thing without judgement nor partiality. It serves an agenda encapsulated by itself. ('I am that I am' is the So'ham Sanskrit manta; also viewed as the Word of God in Christian mysticism; or 'As above, so below; so below, as above' in Hermetic teachings. All very much part of The Magician's inner knowledge, and here beautifully descriptive of the Death Note too.)
Secondly, Light actually reads the rules written inside the Death Note. Here the shinigami notebook becomes The Magician as a teacher; illuminating the arcane knowledge needed to utilize this supernatural tool. The rules themselves inspire possible ways in which Light may now traverse in order to fulfil his projected destiny.
Even more dramatically comes that third moment of the notebook of death as The Magician in Death Note. That's when the touch of it allows Light's mind to access his memories, previously locked away through rejection of the artefact. Perhaps it's not quite what the ancient Magos would view as accessing the higher self, but it serves the same purpose within the storyline. In an instant, Light Yagami's ignorance is dissolved, when the doors of perception are well and truly opened upon his past. His destination now reached, just as planned.
The Magician as Death Note's Gatekeepers and Arbiters of Destiny
Ryuk is another obvious contender for The Magician's Death Note tarot representative. His appearance directs the plot in a myriad of ways, not least because it clarifies Light Yagami's overview and destiny.
Just like his notebook, the shinigami confirms the existence of previously unknown layers to reality, broadening Light's horizons and information base.
Ryuk stands as guide and gatekeeper to the shinigami realm. Not only can he speak for and translate the Gods, he is one.
Whilst denying Light access to any such services, unless the whim of the moment takes him. Because he can.
The shinigami also acts as arbiter of knowledge concerning eternity and deals available to human users of Death Notes, which he does deign to share. Albeit selective in his choice of snippets to pass on, and deliberately obtuse in the timing of all such communication.
It's too amusing for him not to cause maximum frustration in thus trolling his human Death Note user.
Which all fits in completely with the reason for him being there, performing his role as Earthly sage and sometime mentor. Openly not on anyone's side - but that of his own amusement - Ryuk is the Trickster Mage personified.
His entire performance is dedicated to his own agenda, aligning with those of others only where each party's motives/tactics run in tandem. Or he's persuaded that the potential for entertainment is strong.
The Death God is, after all, quite bored and he's here to alleviate said tedium. Everything that occurs must factor that in first, as top priority, because it's certainly the only reason Ryuk is acting in any capacity right now.
L's Messenger Mage Watari: Herald, Spokesperson and Point of Contact
As gatekeeper to L, Watari's intervention at the Interpol meeting is pure Magician territory.
Not only does it alert all present to the avenue of inquiry now opening up due to the detective's interest in the Kira case, but it allows Matsuda - thus us too - to discover L's existence in the first place.
Thus the Fool takes the first step out of innocence, ignorance and a lack of context for the world.
For the veteran law enforcement agents there, Watari represents destiny in a very practical sense. They don't need to discuss the way forward in their investigation now, because L is involved. He IS the way forward; an option for the situation to be passed up to a higher authority.
(Sneak preview for a later major arcana card - The Hierophant describes L for those with knowledge and experience of his work.)
For Soichiro and Matsuda, Watari's position is doorkeeper to destiny in a much more ethereal way.
To one it will prove downright Fateful, while the other will reach the proposed destination (catching Kira) changed beyond recall.
Destiny's Magister: Roger Ruvie, The Wammy House Ringmaster Tolls Part Two
One day, Wammy House warden Roger Ruvie will be Watari too. His role will encapsulate The Magician in just the same way as Quillsh Wammy, as described above.
Nevertheless, in that Fateful moment imaged as tarot arcana (left), Roger already illustrates several aspects of The Magican card. Each face or facet exhibited simultaneously.
For a start, he's a messenger, delivering the news that the children's idol and surrogate father are both dead. Divining correctly the information received from a transmission's ending. Liaison, wisdom, enlightenment, all wrapped up in that single act.
He's doing so as Wammy's House administrator - which has its root in 'ministry/minister' and from there becomes entrenched in symbolism linked with The Magician. Minister meaning to 'act on behalf of a higher authority', hence a minister of the state in politics or the church (it literally meant 'priest' in Medieval Latin). It gets its secretarial sense from the French, where it became 'servant; overseer; watcher; manager'.
But may also relate to inspiration of a more tuneful note, hence minstrel and musician are both cognitive words. Each obviously pertaining to The Fool, yet The Magician too, as the latter can be former in receipt of self-awareness, context or knowledge, thus driving their own actions.
It all becomes much more blatant, when another cognate is brought into the mix - magistrate or magister. One who directs or adjudicates; making decisions; laying down the law.
Roger is authorized to tell a twelve and fourteen year old that their idolized foster sibling and beloved guardian are dead. Yet nothing of sentimentality here. His job is to collect children from around the world, bring them to The Wammy House and train them as potential successors to L.
His results are majestic. After coldly dismissing Mello's emotional outburst, the first question asked was which of them was chosen as heir. No querying the fact that kids are about to be sent into an arena which killed two adults, one purportedly the world's most genius detective. No options considered.
This Wammy Ringmaster magisterially sends both kids to fight round two; their destination seeming less destined than Fated, with such news extolled like passing bells, louder than ever tonight.
Mello the Consigliere: Death Note Mafia Mage with a Dual Agenda
Mello exemplifies The Magician with a dual agenda, while acting as consigliere within the Mafia family headed by Rod Ross.
It's similar to the previously examined outlook of that other magnate Ryuk, but Mello's motivational duality holds some important differences.
The Magician acts by manipulating an individual's lack of essential knowledge or wisdom. However this doesn't necessary occur every time, only when it suits our canny counsellor's alternate agenda to do so.
Sometimes the concerns will align for both advisor and their directed individual; sometimes not. Regardless, the interests of the latter do not factor into the guidance given by this Mage - whether in counsellor mode, or as councillor representing their client's views and speech to others.
Consigliere (or consigliori) - Mello's position in the Mafia - meant both by the way. Though technically describing solely the counsel given to the Don, consiglieri (in manga and in life) also fulfil many other roles ruled by The Magician. Including, but not limited to, mediating in conflict; liaising on the Don's behalf with important contacts and/or authority figures (judges, police etc.); and keeper/archivist of secrets for the entire Family's, so to retain an overview and warn if trouble may be caused, for example, by a capo acting rashly through ignorance of matters concerning another.
Mello seems to be a good consigliere. At one point Rod Ross is moved to comment that the genius teen has never been wrong in any decision made since joining their Family.
However, no-one should lose sight of reality. Mello was just using the Mafia to achieve his own goals.
The wisdom imparted by Mello as consigliere causes Rod Ross's profits to sky-rocket. Yet those and all other available resources are soon diverted into serving Mello's ambition to secure a Death Note.
After Mello achieves his goal, thus placing a shinigami notebook in the hands of his Mafia family, all agendas probably fell in line, shared and indivisible. For a moment, indeed it seemed to Ross et al that they had absolute power.
And then, in the next moment, they ended up dead. Mello using the lives of the last ones standing to make good his own escape.
Sakura TV as the Charlatan: Showmanship Masquerading as Wisdom
When Sakura TV appoints itself as the voice of Kira, it's an attempt to appear as The Divinely Ordained or Enlightened Magician.
As studio boss and anchor-man, Demegawa's overall aim is to trick unsuspecting individuals into believing the station has some conferred higher knowledge. Therefore attempting to gain the same trust or power given to The Magician.
Or in this case, boost ratings.
The Magician can well act as spokesperson for the people/individuals in dealings with authority, or magistrate dilemmas and/or direct juries. They can certainly translate the divine for those less versed in the sacred mysteries. However, its beholden upon us all to beware false prophets.
In its more negative (or domineering/pompous) aspect, our spokesperson Mage might not say what we wished them to convey.
Think politicians declaiming sentiments which make us cringe or cry, all in our name; or the journalist who twists your words, yet 'quotes' you all the same, in pursuit of a sensational story bearing no relation to what actually occurs; or the parent/guardian/teacher expressing their own views as if they were automatically shared by yourself, ignoring or over-riding any attempt at dissent.
While Kira may experience Sakura TV's antics (in the persona of Demegawa) as the above, every other viewer is watching a charlatan or mountebank in action. A pseudo-priest or trickster mantis preying upon the gullibility of their television audience turned congregation.
On the flip side, even the False Magician may inadvertently act as teacher. The lesson today from Sakura being not to believe everything you hear on TV.
(Particularly when tabled as a Trump; donkey imagery warns us off, as seen below The Magician's board in some ancient tarot decks. Mistake the babbling showmanship of this charlatan for wisdom, and your only sure destiny is to be made feel like an ass.)
Kiyomi Takada: Enlightened Divine Messenger of Death Note
I don't remember who said it, but the quotation snagged in my mind.
Someone was told that David Icke - the footballer turned commentator and write - was now telling all and sundry that he was the Son of God. There was a pause in which the informant gleefully awaited the witty put-down that was sure to follow concerning the subject of their gossip.
"Well?" The other slowly asked. "Has anyone checked if he is?"
And therein lies the rub. How does one verify such a claim? And if we can't, then how do we know for sure whether they're a mounteback babbling lies, or insane, or someone Cassandra cursed to be disbelieved in all the divine truth they tell?
The Magi would know. It tends to be them. Whether reading the portents in divination; searching arcane knowledge to uncover higher truths; or acting as intermediaries between the Gods and us, as the priestly caste or ministering on career paths.
Just occasionally, we get the real thing. Magos aglow with the numen nod - enchanters, prophets, seers, the chosen and invokers; attuned to the Great Music and entrancing with utterances lifted from source; merely mediums through which the universe flows.
Or television anchor woman/newscaster, who just happens to be the right person, at the right time, with a matching warped sense of morality and all the right contacts to be the Messiah.
The divine intermediary aspect of The Magician is represented quite literally by Death Note's Kiyomi Takada, twofold.
She performs her role as Messenger of the God(s) in that Takada is the actual, publicly appointed spokesperson for Kira; while also being the conduit that allows both Kiras - Light Yagami and Teru Mikami - to communicate in open conversation.
No charlatan this. Blessed Takada performs with gravitas; notably refined before this even began. Now perceived by the ever-growing faithful as gentle, radiant, the real thing and absolutely full of grace. Buying into and believing all Light says; mind mired and amazed beyond all rationality.
But then it was always thus:
Quem Deus perdere vult, dementat prius; quem di diligunt, adolescens moritu.
Those the Gods will destroy, they first make mad; and whom the Gods love dies young.
Le Bateleur Matsuda: Sleight of Hand Illusionist in Death Note
Le Bateleur is the aspect of The Magician most familiar to us in the modern world; give or take a few fantasy movie mages, and their counterpart skills offered as an option for gamers.
This is the stage magician; the conjurer; the sleight-of-hand trickster; the illusionist; the abracadabra, now you see it, now you don't, bateleur drawing in crowds and thrilling them with misdirection, misinformation, smoke and mirrors distraction, before delivering all enrapt and gasping with awe to that climatic moment of The Prestige.
Le Bateleur - and its cognates Il Bagatto, El Bagatella, Bateleuse - refers to this tarot figure's stick, rod or, ta-daaaa, wand.
This aspect of The Magician appears throughout the Death Note series. There's even a whole chapter, in Death Note 13: How to Read, devoted to explaining all of the tricks inserted into the storyline by Tsugumi Ohba.
The Death Note Magician tarot card we've chosen to depict Il Bagatto in action features Matsuda faking his own death. Before a stunned crowd of Yotsuba corporate executives, he pulls off The Prestige in garnering their belief that the dressed up Aiber far below on the ground is Matsuda's mangled corpse. Meanwhile, Touta sits safely on a mattress a mere one floor below.
However, we could just as easily picked any of the dozens of scenarios, whereby Death Note's conjurers wash over truth with a new reality, attested by witnesses swearing on oath that they watched throughout.
Like when Light becomes aware he is being watched by surveillance cameras. He quickly acts to manipulate the evidence by a tricky sleight-of-hand illusion.
To the onlooker, it would appear as though he was only studying, while taking those potato chips and eating them. The reality being that Kira was killing criminals with a piece of the Death Note hidden, alongside a miniature TV, inside the chip bag.
Even L was fooled by that one.
So what's your favourite showing for the tarot Death Note Bagatella? Just to check that you kept observing, through all there was to see.
The Three Wise Men (Wam-Magi?)
In the time of Watari, after Kira was born in Japan, wise men from the Wammy's House in Winchester came to Kanto, asking, "Where is the murderer who has been born God of the New World? For we observed his kill count at its rising, and have come to take him down."
When Takimura heard this, he was frightened and all world leaders with him; and calling together all the Kira Task Force and NPA public relations officers, he inquired of them when the Kira was to be arrested. They told him, "In the Yellow Box Warehouse; for so it has been written by Near: 'And you, Takimura, in the land of Japan, are by no means going to know a thing about it, because Mello would have got you killed by then.'"
Then US President David Hoope secretly called - via Watari - for the wise men and begged each in turn to stop threatening to control him into doing worse than Kira, whenever any of them get hold of a Death Note. Then he sent them to Kanto, saying, "Go and search diligently for Kira; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage."
When they had heard the POTUS, they got him killed and replaced with George Sairas; and there, ahead of them, went the star Misa Amane that they had seen rising as Second Kira, until she stopped because L had her tortured. When they saw that the Japanese idol had started begging to have her life ended, they were overwhelmed with joy.
On entering the Warehouse, they saw the megalomaniac with Mikami his worshipper; and Near knelt down (the other two forced to too, as they were now dead and puppets). Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of cake, Transformers, and chocolate.
And having painted a vivid picture for Ryuk warning of a future bound to a Death Note now stuck in Near's vault - while Light languished in a prison for the criminally insane for life - Near successfully manipulated the Death God into taking out Light before returning to the shinigami realm. Then the Three Wise Wammys left for their own country, where verily two returned to the toy box and Near took L's Code for himself. And probably Mello's too.
Hold on! One missing from this listing of The Wam-Magi as read from the Book of God's New World:
Bored out of his mind, Il Matto stayed put in Winchester, playing SuperMario and thanking the Gods of the Internet that Kira never came with cyber-terrorism on-line. Else he'd never have been able to get away with hiding behind his lazy, mad, wise Fool routine; playing Tetris instead of getting himself killed in someone else's war. So wise he only ever ranked third and remained forever Il Matto. He probably wouldn't have amounted to much anyway. Beep, beep, lulwut, nub?
Ok, I've stopped now.
As if by Magic - More Death Note Tarot Tales
Posted as Part of
Watari's Moment: Poignant Wammy Fan-Fiction Penned by DeathNotegirl3675
Fan-Fiction writer DeathNotegirl3675 hails from the USA. As the moniker may have already implied, she deems herself 'obsessed with Death Note'. Originally her Death Note Watari stream of consciousness drabble was posted on DeviantART, where she wrote, 'I know its quite dark and sad, but I really hope you enjoy anyway!'
Watari's Moments by DeathNotegirl3675
He's been having this feeling for days now.
The unshakable, unmistakable feeling of dread, creeping up like a looming shadow.
Watari takes out his pure white handkerchief, and lightly dabs his forehead as he rests on the kitchen table. The friendly and inviting aroma of freshly made cake wafts around the room, making his dark premonitions something of a ridiculous thought.
His grey moustache furrowing into something of a half-hearted smile, Watari looks around the room.
All This.
L what a wonderful man you've turned out to be.
My prodigy.
My son.
What a crazy life you've lead.
Watari remembers when he first found L that fateful day. With a messy head of raven hair, and grey eyes that stared into your soul.
Yeah, Watari remembers.
He remembers the way he stood, with a grubby lollipop in one hand, and a coat that was too large for his small body. He remembers the half-hearted, sad, broken smile that was on his face.
Yeah, he remembers.
He remembers the day when the little prodigy finally opened up to him. The day when they connected. The day L put all the trust his tiny little body could muster into the palm of Watari's hand.
Such fond memories...
He remembers the heartbreak. He remembers the trial and error, and the strength that pulled them through, together. They were a team, though all of their problems. He remembers their cases, and L's genius.
As time ticks by, Watari knows.
He knows its nearing the end..
The end of such a beautiful journey...
Then he feels it.
That thud within the burrows of his soul that stops his heart dead in its tracks.
Oh God please no...
Let L be ok.
As his handkerchief floats delicately to the ground, and Watari is brought to his knees,
He knows.
A smile forms on his face; a knowing, wise smile.
Thank you for the memories...
Thorns of Death: Wammy House Fan-Fiction by Aerial Sky, Plus Advice on How to Write Watari in Death Note Stories
Multi-talented Aerial Sky has shown up in a variety of guises for our Death Note Month of features. Last time, it was as a cosplayer for Matsuda month. This time she's sharing her Watari fan-fiction and talking us through the process of writing it, all as her contribution to Month of Quillsh Wammy. Discover more from Aerial Sky at her DeviantArt AerialSkyCosplay account.
Thorns of Death by Aerial Sky
- Watari Death Note Fan-Fiction
"What's wrong with her?" L questioned, frowning as he sat on the bed beside A. "Watari, why won't she wake up?"
But Watari hadn't spoken in hours. Ever since he had brought A from the coffee shop to the hotel, he had been silent. Did he know something? Had he known this would happen?
"Watari. Why won't she wake up? Is she dying?" L had an excellent poker face, but it was so tempting to let it fall. But he hadn't cried in years. Not since he was younger... He had built walls to protect himself.
The elder man sighed audibly, causing L to glance at him curiously. "She will be okay for now."
L paused, waiting for him to say something else. But he didn't. "For now? So she is dying?"
Watari's face was grave. "I was anonymously informed of this event beforehand. I thought it was some practical joke, but now I see he was being truthful."
"What are you talking about? Who called you?" L had never yelled at his father before. Not once. But it was hard not to. He had known that A would collapse like this, and he had done nothing to stop it from happening. "Who called you, Watari?" L's voice rose.
Watari had never seen this side of L before. It was hard not to be intimidated. He seemed... different. Evil. Capable of anything. "I could tell it was a man, but the number was untraceable, and I couldn't tell who it was."
"When did he call? What did he say?!" L was getting desperate.
"He simply said that A would be delivered to us in a few days time. He said her mind wasn't in the right place, and she wouldn't get better. He said she had the Thorns of Death."
"Thorns of Death?" L asked questioningly. What in the world was that?
"He said she was not who she seemed, and she was dangerous."
Dangerous. A. Dangerous. Those two words didn't go together. A would not even hurt a fly. "You're wrong. She's still the same. Just a bit more anxious and paranoid. Watari you didn't talk to her. She's still the same."
"Ryuzaki, she needs rest. Whatever this is that's hurting her, we need to leave her be for now."
"I'm staying with her. I'm not losing her again."
And Watari didn't argue, for as much as L tried to hide it, he saw that streak on his cheek. He knew L was serious. He never cried, so this had to be important.
"Tell me when she wakes up. I will do some research."
Aerial Sky's Tips on Writing Wammy in Death Note Fan-Fiction
Aerial Sky in her usual guise - cosplaying Death Note's L
Do you/have you written fan-fiction about Wammy now or in the past?
Sort of - I'm working on one right now
If yes, any anecdotes/background info about your experiences as a Mr Wammy fan-fiction writer?
I have included his character to build the story and suspense, but I am mainly wanting to make Watari as close to the manga and anime. I want him to be as accurate as possible, to avoid confusion and plot gaps later in the story.
Regardless of whether you have done this, how would you go about writing Mr Wammy fan-fiction?
Depending on whether it is a serious, dramatic, or comedic story, I'd say think about how you imagine Watari acting. He is normally a polite butler/father figure for L, but he has another side to him that is dangerous. For suspenseful or dramatic stories I would like to see his dangerous side.
What attributes, scenarios and/or characteristics are essential for bringing Watari to life in story-form?
His personality is interesting. Usually he does what L wants him to, and he protects L to make sure he is safe. In that sense, I take scenarios from the actual manga and anime and put it into the story to fit it.
How do you go about teasing out the fine detail in characterising Wammy, so to seem realistic to readers?
I take how he acted in the manga and anime and use that information to imagine him as accurately as possible.
How do you go about finding plot bunnies and beginning your Quillsh Wammy story?
I try to detail almost everything in the story, so that later the reader doesn't ask themselves "Where did that come from?"
In your experience, what are the common mistakes made by fan authors writing about Watari?
I think they make Watari out of character, which is something I try hard to avoid. When he does something that I don't see him doing, it's hard for me to see that scene play out in my head.
Any last tips for anyone reading, who wishes to start writing fan-fiction about Mr Wammy?
Always write things that interest you. If you aren't interested and care about it, then the reader won't either. Just be yourself, and express your feelings in your words.
Death Note Fan-Fiction Writers!
Would you like to contribute Death Note fan-fiction to one of our character monthly events?
And/or complete the questionnaire giving your take on how to write Death Note characters in fan-fiction?
Check out our Fan-Fiction Author Questions posed with you in mind.
And thanks in advance!
Watari Letters: Death Note Canon Alphabet of Wammy Kids: L-Z
"Watari, from now on you must safeguard the world with the other Letters."
~ L, L: Change the World, p 17
Welcome back to our ABC list of known canon Wammy kids alongside the letter to which they were (or most probably were) assigned.
The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans is the intriguing institution which features so prominently in Death Note, or at least its alumni form the centrepiece of the war against Kira.
Each genius child raised there is afforded a bespoke education, side-stepping the normal system of classrooms, with professors, researchers and other experts in their field brought in for one-to-one demonstrations and tutorials.
Graduates get to enter The Wammy Foundation, a shadowy organisation founded by the man who raised them - their childhood benefactor and adulthood allocator of a single Letter which meant so much - Quillsh Wammy, aka Watari.
This alphabet of Letters from Wammy's House investigates the ethos and histories of each recipient for clues as to the character and motives of Wammy himself.
Death Note Wammy Letters' Alphabet Pt 2 - L-Z
Read the first part: Wammy Alphabet A-K
Watari, also known as Quillsh Wammy, had used the enormous earnings from the patents of his many inventions to establish the Wammy Foundation, an organization dedicated to building orphanages around the world.
Among them, one orphanage took in highly intelligent children from around the world without regard to nationality, race or gender and provided them with a specialized education. The orphanage was called Wammy's House.
There was no formal school or academic departments at Wammy's. Instead university professors, researchers and top specialists in their fields from around the world were invited to give individual instruction to the children according to their abilities and potential.
~ L: Change the World, p13
L - Wammy Kid The Last One, or The Lost One - True Name L Lawliet*
* This is the name that features upon a collectors' card fitted as a bonus gift inside the back fly-page of manga manual Death Note 13: How to Read. It's also the name recorded in a Death Note, as seen in the Japanese live-action films.
However, in the novel Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases, narrator Mello wrote that L was in possession of well over 3,500 names and pseudonyms to hide his personal identity. Mello postulated the theory that even L didn't know his own true name any longer.
... the name L was, for him, just one of many. He never had any direct connection to that identity, he never thought of himself as L... L had a real name that nobody knew, and nobody will ever know, but a name which only he knew never defined him. I sometimes wonder if L himself ever knew exactly which name was written in the Death Note, which name it was that killed him.
~ Another Note, p43-44
Though M (presumably Mello again) subsequently contradicted himself one book on - in the novelization of the movie L: Change the World - when he casually informed the reader that only L and Watari knew his real name. Thus able to facilitate the key plot-line underpinning this variant of the story, wherein L won his war against Kira effectively by committing suicide via Death Note.
However, this was an alternate universe to that recounted in the manga and anime, wherein M as Mihael Keehl's Mello never existed, begging the question as to who is writing this novel now. Unless it's Maki, grown a little older and brought furthermore into the Wammy House loop. The fourth generation Wammy to be assigned that code-letter M, in lieu of poor, lost Mello, omitted unmade and erased from the record for this telling.
Anyway, onto the plot.
He wielded incredible power, was able to mobilize every investigative bureau in the entire world, and was applauded generously for his efforts.
~ Another Note, p10.
L is the one about whom the whole of Wammy's House, its founder, staff and children, plus its attendant Foundation revolves. He was the first of those genius orphans afforded special attention, a tailored education and a letter to use as his name and his calling code.
By accident, precedent or design, he set the standard whereby all other Wammy kids are measured. They are supposed to be precisely him and if they best him, they get his code.
But that's highly unlikely to occur.
As Beyond Birthday found out, beating him is one thing; it's quite another to persuade Wammy to relinquish his obvious favourite, so to divert resources and his personal support towards a more worthily ranked ward.
That was a pattern which began on day one, when Wammy brought the tiny orphan L into Wammy's House and left him with his peers in the ornately stained glass windowed main hall.
The other children rushed to give him a hug - cute, new, big-eyed boy and all - but that panicked L. He was only about eight years old, but managed anyway to beat up and floor boys and girls much bigger than himself.
Instead of reprimanding him and ensuring that he apologized to the kids and teens groaning against the floorboards all around, Mr Wammy thought this rather fabulous. Presumably the other orphans were shortly deprived of familiarity, friends and home by being relocated to sister establishments in the chain of Wammy Orphanages. Meanwhile, L got his own room, a computer and plenty of cooing fuss.
L managed to redeem his anti-social behaviour - if such was needed in Wammy's eyes - by perusing stock markets and advising the old man on what to buy and when to sell. In that way, the profits poured right in. That was the year that the eight year old took on the Winchester Mad Bomber and averted World War III.
Marking the moment when Wammy vowed to accept L's every decision and support him wherever possible.
From now on, the child, not the adult was ostensibly calling the shots; Watari would make good each hefty choice and passing whim spoken aloud by the eight year old.
Nor apparently was there any disapproval expressed for the dodgier demands, let alone censure or out and out refusal to comply. Watari just did it, trusting that L was clever and would be right. (Giving him just enough rope hang himself? Or truly in perfect trust of the child's truth and sense in all things?)
Therefore leading to a situation - so a canon Omake tells us, authored by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata - wherein the adult L cannot dress himself, or attend to his own ablutions, without Wammy assisting with the fundamentals. L seen now as so intelligent that he's become downright infantile.
An absent-minded genius trope too far, or some manner of control/avenging the loss thereof/kicking back against too much of the same, or someone severely upon the autistic spectrum? Frankly it's way too tempting to assume the former, though the other options have their resonance in all other of L's famous ticks, quirks, eccentricities and prolific sweet consumption.
The latter also keenly enabled by Quillsh Wammy in butler (more like carer at this point) mode. Along with a pop, pseudo-scientific rationale that such quantities of sugary things are needful in order to keep L's brain whizzing along.
Being handed such freedom on a plate, with adults to order about too, would be heady stuff for any child. Pair it with extreme wealth and the ear of world leaders and suddenly even societal boundaries are non-existent. The possibilities are limitless, with even torture, killing and the ordering of a condemned man onto live television for his execution are not only on the table, but Watari's logistical and sniping skills will ensure all continues quite smoothly.
With a seeming lack of constriction akin to a juvenile Roman Emperor, it's little wonder that L emerges into the Death Note story with a personality self-confessedly childish, but also spoiled and cruel.
However, a thick layer of covert constrictions hide just beneath the surface for the detective. He's been told from childhood two things - there are those in the world out to kill him; and world peace hinges upon his living in a state of constant, active and demonstrable investigations.
While the world leaders should make efforts to ensure the safety of all the finest minds... the current societal systems do not allow for this, and L believed he had no choice but to protect his mind under his own power... For a detective of L's ability, self-preservation and the preservation of world peace were one and the same.
~ Another Note, p 69
Ergo, his life is in danger, but he can't stop to save himself without imperilling the world. Not that most of the potential killers with him in their sights are that far from home.
Depending upon whether Beyond Birthday ever met L or not, it was either now or five years later - when L was thirteen - that The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans was established with Roger Ruvie at the helm. Employed by Wammy not as warden per se, but as a trained psychiatrist there to gather parentless, genius kids from around the globe, and to reshape them - body, personality and mind; self-identity changed as standard - into clones of L.
In a rare moment of introspection, L saw clearly what manner of man he considered himself to be - both inspiring and imbibing the Wammy ethos, as the one most influenced by its engineer. Amongst them all, L had the most direct, one-to-one contact with Quillsh Wammy, who set up the system and let it evolve that way. The current crop of Wammy orphans gathered together to learn what their privileged, pressurized upbringing was urging them to become.
L laid it on the line in his famous 'monster' speech. To be L was to embrace the monstrous. Just like him.
There are many types of monsters in this world, monsters who will not show themselves and who cause trouble. Monsters who abduct children, monsters who devour dreams, monsters who suck blood, and monsters who always tell lies. Lying monsters are a real nuisance. They are much more cunning than other monsters. They pose as humans, even though they have no understanding of the human heart. They eat, even though they've never experienced hunger. They study even though they have no interest in academics. They seek friendship even though they do not know how to love. If I were to encounter such a monster, I would likely be eaten by it because, in truth, I am that monster.
~ L, Death Note Relight: L's Successors
Driven home in the hearts and minds of his back-up foster siblings, over whose lives L is able to exert absolute control. Wammy, L and Ruvie colluding with potentially sociopathic abandon, in what can only be deemed 'experimental' upbringings for those children subjected in generational waves to that institution. No soaring IQ necessary to foresee tragic results in such child-raising methodologies, centring around rehumanisation at its core.
From suicide to serial killing through to the attempted pathogenic extinction of the human race, via joining the Mafia and martyrdom, Wammy kids answered their psyche's refashioning en masse.
... just as the greatest of detectives makes the greatest of criminals, a specialist in investigation is also a specialist in murder. From this perspective, this was nothing but a detective war. Beyond Birthday challenged L. And L accepted the challenge.
To put it bluntly, the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases were nothing but an internal struggle, a civil war within hour home, sweet home - Wammy's House.
~ Another Note, p106
Even Naomi Misora knew what had happened to detectives falsely identifying themselves as L, and B was from Wammy's House, so he knew better than anyone - so this choice suggests the strength of his decision. He never once intended to survive.
... it would certainly seem odd if (K), who was threatening the President posing as L, asked him why the US hadn't moved to kill L.
~ L: Change the World (novel), p140
In the end, it didn't matter how many Wammy kids strove to murder L. He beat them there too. No matter which version of Death Note is consulted, L kills himself. His suicide is either openly stated, as per the live-action movies, with him writing his own name in a shinigami's notebook to beat Kira; or else it's so subtle as to be barely acknowledged, hidden beneath an overlong stare at Light Yagami, circa Kira's 'just as planned' exclamation of victory.
That L had worked it out is confirmed conversely by his statement of the precise opposite. He dully enunciates that Light is not Kira, and should in fact be the next L. The mystery was solved; the game was over. Though to admit so was to lose the fun. The clash of minds that had begun with a challenge to Light Yagami, which was answered in kind. Without it, L could foresee the futile vastness of his life without that battle enriching all.
Already depressed, L said nothing, just concurred with the sentiment of Light's innocence.
It prolonged their cerebral sparring a little while longer, but it would kill L soon, as he well knew. It seemed worth the cost in the banishment of tedium and onset of fascination alone. Just to see what Light would do next, and to end the life that kept L trapped - 'a reclusive sociopath' - in Wammy's world of responsibility, self-protection and unceasing investigations. Now doomed to tedium post-Kira, plus the unsolvable crime because he would never catch Kira. He'd already let him go.
L's manga suicide was his silence. A final act of justice (belatedly) for his Wammy House brethren was in taking Quillsh Wammy with him.
M - Wammy Kid Mello - Mihael Keehl
I'm always number two… no matter how hard I try…
Mello, Death Note manga, chapter 61 (Number Two)
It's not just the notebook I'm after. I wanna eliminate my competition. I will be the best. I don't care what it takes. I'll beat Near by any means necessary.
~ Mello, Death Note anime, episode 27
In Another Note, Mello calls Wammy's House 'home, sweet home' and describes it as the place 'which raised me until I was fifteen'. (p11)
Between real time scenes from the manga (Zero) and anime (Renewal), plus flashback scenes from Near's memory in Death Note Relight: L's Successor's (and the one-shot manga), we have a fair bit insight into Mello's experience and behaviour during that time at Wammy's House.
Just as you'd except from a teenager who left the institution to join the Mafia, young Mello is shown to be a bully at while he was still there.
We see him kicking a football into another child's face. On another occasion, he's clutching another boy's hair and pulling his head down, whilst walking up the corridor.
He even attacks Roger, bunching fistfuls of the warden's lapels and half dragging him across a desk, in response to news of L's death.
None of this is reprimanded. There's no adult response at all from the first incident. In the second, Roger merely captures Mello's hand and holds it whilst untangling his victim's hair. No words are spoken about it.
During his lunge at Roger, all the older man can summon up is a vague, world-weary 'Mello', uttered like a sigh. Imagine behaving like that with your own parent or guardian, would you have received the same lack of passion in their reaction?
But apparently this is the Wammy's way and Mello is perfectly at liberty to use violence, intimidation and fear as part of his life strategy.
It's also semi-rewarded, insofar as the goals of the institution are concerned. L names Mello as one of his chief candidates for succession due to 'a nasty look in his eyes' rather than anything related to grades. While Roger follows up both latter acts of aggression with encouragement and/or expectation that the fourteen year old before him take the deceased L's position in the world, at least jointly with Near (a twelve year old).
Can we say child soldiers?
The bullying isn't all. We also view Mello as a Wammy boy apparently isolated amidst his peers. During L's 'monster' speech, Mello stands alone, away from the children excitedly grouped before the laptop through which L chats with them.
When he hears about L's death, Mello's mind flashes back to a moment in receipt of grades (pictured right). All of the other kids are flocking to read Near's paper and see his mark. Mello is left lonely and anxious reading his own. He also apparently studied alone, as the following panel demonstrates.
Probably because he's the Wammy House bully and this is the best that his foster siblings can do in their own defence and/or revenge.
Not all of them though. Near was quite happy to work with Mello, when their warden Roger suggested it, regardless of the look of utter horror twisting Mello's expression at the same time. Later on, Matt appeared from the peer-group at the Wammy House to partner Mello in the final hunt for Kira. So two people at least could have been, or were, Mello's friends there. That said, even bullies have confederates and/or a gang.
Mello goes for the biggest and the best (or worst, depending on how we're phrasing it) gang after leaving Wammy's - the Mafia. Wherein his admittance was assured despite his lack of Sicilian ethnicity (which kept Al Capone out); his posh Winchester/English accent; his youth; and his effeminate attire. All this was over-ridden by his demonstrable intelligence and the fact that he brought, as an entrance present, the head of a Mafia Don whom even Kira couldn't touch.
How literally should we take that 'bringing the head' tidbit? Are we actually talking the decapitated article in a box? Or information thereon? An alternative translation states it in the plural - 'the heads of Mafia dons, who even Kira couldn't touch'. Maybe this is the source of those skulls, with which the teenage Mafia era Mello likes to surround himself.
Nor is this the worst that Mello feels justified in ordering during those days. He arranges for the abduction of Japanese police chief Takimura, followed by the same for Sayu Yagami, both as bargaining chips to be exchanged for the Death Note in Japanese police custody. Takimura is killed by Kira in a pre-emptive move; Sayu is left catatonic with trauma.
No end of Mafia associates are killed, or pressured into giving up half of their lives to acquire shinigami eyes. Drug routes established. The President of the United States of American coerced into suicide in order to prevent Mello using the Death Note to force his hand. Like making him launch nuclear bombs around the world, thus causing World War Three. The theft of a missile. All but three of the SPK massacred as a test of the Death Note, falling around Near, probably as a show of strength for his benefit.
Therein lies the rub. It's all about Near, ergo all about Wammy's House, not really about Kira or Rod Ross's prestige and profits at all. When the pair finally confront each other face to face, the background fades to exhibit instead the stained glass windows from the institution which raised them, and continues to cast its pall over their lives right now.
For Near and Mello, the battle to become L is all. Both are willing to pull out extremities in action, thought and deed to secure the prize Wammy and Roger left dangling for them. Ultimately, Mello will give up his life simply to make it onto the final score-sheet as joint first, once he realizes that the end is nigh and he'll be second in perpetuity.
N - Wammy Kid Near - Nate River
I've wanted to make him taste his own pathetic failure with all my heart.
~ Near, Death Note manga, chapter 90
Don't worry, Commander Rester, making assumptions is part of any investigation. If we're wrong, all it'll cost is an apology.
~ Near, Death Note anime, episode 30
Giovanni: If there are shinigami, I might die, right?
Near: Yes.
Giovanni: ...
Near: If you are scared, I'll ask Lester to go.
Lester: ...
~ Death Note anime
Of all the Wammys - with the possible exception of Beyond Birthday and his peer, the institution's first child suicidee A - Near seems to have taken the directive to become L's clone most keenly to heart.
He never met his idol, so any physical emulation of his idol was accidental, or an inadvertent consequence of both boys being raised within the same system. This didn't matter. The purposes for which reprogramming children to match the prototype was deemed necessary didn't involve B-like cosplay antics. Before Kira, no-one outside the Wammy Foundation met with L face-to-face, therefore would be hard pushed to identify him in a line-up. There was a brief interlude with Naomi Misora, immediately prior to the Kira case, but L never actually introduced himself. Perceptive Naomi guessed anyway, but she had the huge clue before her of Beyond Birthday making an indelible impression whilst copying L in costume, aspect and stance.
Near's task was much more insidiously wrought than just dressing up would have been. He sought to think like L. Submerge his own personality beneath a persona modelled upon that of his predecessor, as Near believed him to be based on this own observations and insights gleaned from L's electronic address to the fourth generation Wammy wards en masse. Near didn't even ask him any questions. They never had a conversation.
Scant enough hints around which to mould a credible likeness in continuation of the L Code. Especially when it has to be enough to to fool world leaders, and high-ranking contacts - networked to no known degree in the past - drawn randomly world-wide from government, military, legal/law enforcement, intelligence, secret services and other offices. Plus those within the private sector, researchers, consultants and experts in fields raising across the academe.
With whom did L share a confidence? Who did he know? Detest? Exchange now impenetrable dialogue in language encroached in private in-jokes? All of which Near must know in order to pull this off, or else his failure is outright and absolute. 'Just a loser' in all he worked hard and aspired to be - surviving his nearest rivals; out-ranking the rest - the only source of meaning for his life. He was told. And equally raised to fear, as catastrophic on a global scale, being exposed as a fake L, alongside the real L's death now leaked.
World War III would start. Only the actual Lawliet held its inception in abeyance. Crimes rates everywhere would soar, in figures projected to make the upward surge post-Kira seem like an insignificant bump beside the inevitable spike post-L.
Near must have spent an inordinate amount of brainpower and time pondering all L was or seemed to be; imagining his world-view and thought processes; researching by whatever means may come every snippet of information truly known about his idol; deducing what triggered every known pattern in behaviour, decision-making and everything else besides.
Then Near would have to expend yet more energy, resources and concentration in seemingly endless hours perfecting his carbon copy role-playing of the same.
Allowing another man's self in totality to imprint as a mask over Near's psyche. To suppress his own as worth much less than this prototype soul; as he alone won the right to exhibit L in de facto possession.
Yet some part of Near's genius must be twitching rebellion in a dark, cerebral recess. As early as twelve months prior - to the day - Near espouses rhetoric about how he (in union with Mello) surpassed L. However, it's spoken hesitantly, with many pauses for reflection in its delivery during Near's final confrontation with Kira in the Yellow Box warehouse. Nor does his conclusion appear to have lodged inside his own mind, beyond a theoretical concept to mess with Light's mind.
A year later, Near's faded from his own world; withdrawing into isolation as a hermit obsessively constructing a whole city out of tarot cards, paranoid about the fragility of his finely balanced reality. One draught of wind or an unwary boot upon Rester's foot might bring whole sections of the edifice down. Near's obvious depression surely a consequence of his attempt to obliterate his distinct and natural self, in lieu of fulfilling his Wammy given destiny to become L. Lawliet.
All of this after several years in pursuit of Kira - as the L defined arena in which his prototype Code's pretenders must battle to the death for the right to claim it as their own. Not to mention that it followed on top of a childhood raised in the Wammy House, with its petty rivalries, academic expectations, competitive rankings and presumed early exposure to graphic evidence from crime scenes, as part of the endemic brainwashing forging a strong desire to become L, should a back-up be required.
It takes a retracing of his steps back to the start for Near to even grasp the issue. The return sparked by circumstance - a prospective new Kira appearing on the scene - coupled with the urgent messages forged in his own subconscious - Near's arranging for all previously present to reassemble in the Yellow Box warehouse on the first anniversary of Light Yagami's denunciation and death. Another confrontation in the offing, this time with a crime syndicate dealing in drugs.
That hardly seems worth the while of a Wammy kid, except that it puts altered realities in Near's frame of introspection.
In the midst of that mix, experienced after twelve months spent dissembling, something had to give. It seems to begin with the sequence shown in the panel above, whereby Hal Lidner affirms to Near that he doesn't need to become L. 'L is L, you are you,' Lidner tells him and Near is momentarily at a loss for words to say in response. He mentally assesses her wisdom in taking such a perspective and is forced to conclude that she is quite correct.
I wonder if it's deliberate or coincidental that Hal's further comment - 'we can handle it our own way' - apes Mello's upon leaving the Wammy House - 'I will find my own way'. Near would have heard such echoes of sentiment anyway.
Later in the conversation, Hal says quite pointed that Near is trying to think as L would think. Near, who had just accidentally knocked over a section of his tarot card city, asks the pair to leave. He telling adds that they shouldn't topple his towers on the way out. In tarot, The Tower is a card of necessary destruction in the major arcana. It wipes away the old that the new might flourish.
What we then see from Near is a breakthrough moment of self-awareness, in the most literal sense.
At first Near appears dwarfed by the spectre of L. We're still in the same location, but his own world torn down to facilitate a new configuration of tarot card towers.
Each one spells out the single initial L. Near's own figure is almost completely lost amongst them.
Meanwhile Rester speaks from a monitor above, peering down like God Himself, or an Orwellian 1984 style Big Brother. The message he has to convey could have been uttered by Wammy. It certainly encapsulates the Zeitgeist of Wammy's House - the methodology can be as awry as it needs to be in order to solve the puzzle. The method justifies the means.
Near meekly replies that he'll embody L, doing only what it would be natural for L to do.
He goes on to broadcast globally in L's name, with a speech that includes elements from the only one he ever personally heard L declaim. Near addresses the 'new Kira' situation with utter disdain, stating that he won't be getting involved, because it doesn't interest him. Just as L told the Wammy kids in Near's own hearing that he chose his cases solely if they piqued his interest.
However, Near's concluding statement in the L speech was a denunciation that was never heard from Lawliet's mouth, nor anything akin to it. But it mirrored entirely that famously enunciated by Near to the first Kira - 'You abominable murderer'. It was Near's personality emerging in full strength t0 wipe away the vestiges of Lawliet.
This time, when Rester repeats Hal's assertion that Near is L, Near does not hesitate to concur. We get the wide view and see that the Towers of L aren't so much zones of intimidation. It's Near demonstrating full well his altered world view. He doesn't have to be Lawliet, because he's Near.
All of this is a far cry from the Death Note anime, which simply skips over the issues Near endures post-Kira. Or the Death Note movies, which only features Near in the third film (L: Change the World). There he's a very young child when L dies, delivered to Wammy's House as L's final act of salvation before the detective dies. It will be a long time, if ever, that Near will have to take on L's mantle in that alternative timeline.
Or you can opt for the timeline altered once more in the novelization of L: Change the World, which omits the Thai boy entirely, to reinstate a more commonly rendered Near in cameo as the end. Only this one doesn't have self-identity issues, nor any compulsion not to tell the US President that L is dead, and he is now L. This telling establishes L as a team effort rather than investigated in one figurehead, albeit one with the same initial as the overall group. Here Near comes across as Puckish, in fact almost angelic.
"Mr. President, this is L... The L organization has captured L-prime and recovered the Death Note. We will eliminate L-prime with the notebook. You can confirm the body in one hour at the Kira Headquarters in Japan."
~ Near, L: Change the World, p186
"By the way, Mr President, would you mind if also issued you a threat?... You will ensure a future where children can go on smiling. Will you promise us that? If you should break that promise, we will not hesitate to use the Death Note."
Well, angelic only if we recall that Lucifer was also an archangel; that Gabriel's horn topples city walls; that Samael was an Angel of Death and Destruction; and that Michael wielded a fiery sword to wage war on God's behalf. Near stating that he'll murder a man, then destroy the Death Note in one breath, followed by a threat to kill the President via it, sometime in perpetuity, seems nothing next to all that. Even if he did get caught in a lie from his own tongue within seconds of stating it.
Then you get the Near characterisation - the latest incarnation at the time of writing - wherein the Puckishness and violence have come utterly to the fore. Though in this case it's stated that Near has dual personalities and it's the Mello persona sharing their body who has the capacity to kill.
None of which strays too far from previous canon, nor the attributes with which Near was originally created by Tsugumi Ohba.
Even in the manga, Near has no problem causing the death of others - or else placing them in potentially fatal peril - if it assists him in solving the puzzle. Thus Kira is led to Mello's Mafia family hide-out; dollar notes worth $10m are dropped on a square in Manhattan causing a stampede; Gevanni is despatched to recover a Death Note's pages, despite instant death if Near's deduction is wrong; and Near psychologically shifts Ryuk into a position whereby the shinigami is keen to kill Light Yagami ASAP.
If Matsuda's theory is correct, then Near went much further than what was less than subtly implied in the pages of the manga. The new L was a serial killer, whose victims could well have included Mello, and whose continued possession of the Death Note AND the L Code makes him a dangerously all-powerful influence upon the modern world's movers and shakers.
Just as he learned at Wammy's House.
O - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon
We don't currently have a canon assignation for the Wammy group letter O, just the usual known candidates: Matt and Linda, plus Wammy House created and raised L clone Ryūzaki (from Death Note: Light Up the New World).
P - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
Wammy letter P is known in canon only through being shown on L's call/mailing list in the movie L: Change the World.
These are the individuals who make up the Wammy Members' Group to whom L breaks the bad news via email that Watari is dead. The Wammy House crest, their knowledge of Mr Wammy (and the fact that they'd care about his death) and that they are all designated with single initials renders it certain that they are active members of the Wammy Foundation.
Though we know nothing about P, it can be guessed through the precedent of the rest that he/she is probably a detective, scientist or excelling in the arts. Aizawa and Matsuda reported in the manga that most Wammy alumni fit into those three categories, and the known alumni have followed suit so far.
Of course, there's nothing stopping these letters also possibilities for being assigned to the like of Matt and Linda, though the timeline makes it unlikely to be Ryūzaki's letter.
Q - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; Unless Strong Probability: Q - Wammy Kid Matt - True Name Mail Jeevas
The hacking defence system, developed by Wammy's House's Q and given to him by his personal friend Watari, had identified the perpetrator who had cleverly routed through several servers all over the world on its way into the lab's system. "Accessed from inside the lab..."
After sending one email, he deleted all his files using the emergency system created by Q.
Q's letter is seen in the call list of Wammy's kids glimpsed briefly upon L's screen during the movie L: Change the World (see P).
Unlike most on the list, this individual is also mentioned in the novelization of the same, where it's revealed that (s)he is some kind of computing genius.
For this reason, Wammy's Q is most likely the letter assigned to Matt, aka Mail Jeevas, named in canon as the third ranked Wammy kid of the fourth generation (i.e. next in line for L's succession after Near and Mello).
It is a truth universally known and recognized throughout the Death Note fandom that Matt is good with computers. On his Death Note Wiki page, where cited facts tend to be cross-referenced back to source, we're told '(Matt's) specialty is technology, and he is tasked by Mello to monitor the activities of Misa, Mogi and Aizawa.' The information is devoid of citation.
Matt's geek prowess in computing and 1337 cyber skills are implied in canon. Nevertheless it may surprise most to realise nothing in manga, manual, anime or elsewhere explicitly states anything of the sort. Unless we're missing some reference somewhere, Matt's technological genius is pure fanon.
What we are told - or shown - by Death Note's creators Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata is that Matt likes video games. He's rarely seen without a PSP or Nintendo DS in hand, and/or other consoles trailing in the background, unless he's driving a car, wielding a gun, watching Kira over the road through a camera or chatting to Mello over his phone about Misa, boredom and the unchanging nature of brick walls.
However, there are quite often computers in the vicinity too. Multiples thereof. Whole reasons in fact why fanon latches onto this notion that Matt is Wammy's technological genius, not least because of the sheer amount that surrounds him at every (woefully scant) view we get.
It may have seemed that all (Matt) did was play video games, but his existence itself was important (laughs).
~ Tsugumi Ohba, How to Read: Death Note 13 p 69
His character concept was a young man who loves video games and doesn't really care much about the world.
~ Takeshi Obata, How to Read: Death Note 13, p136
Monitoring multiple screens, (Matt's) cockiness leads him to make a few mistakes.
~ How to Read: Death Note 13, p27
Whether the case is made for Matt being Q or not, he's likely to be the figure behind a Wammy letter. This correlation between implied official/widely accepted fanon facets of Matt with those known about Q is as close as canon has come to assigning him a letter thus far.
A major insight into the mores of Watari is afforded us through the added information about Q . The Wammy House computing adept has created at least two highly useful programs. They belong to him/her - unless the geek's own Hacker Ethic has seen them released as freeware online - and could be patented for personal profit outside the Wammy Foundation orbit.
Yet they have not. Moreover, Watari feels warranted passing those scripts onto a personal friend as a gift.
There could be quite innocent and laudable reasons for this, or it could be that all those high flying skills possessed by Wammy letters are never quite their own to utilize. Their gained wealth and honours fly straight into the Wammy coffers to be used as a common treasury for all within the House and its Foundation. Fuel for fan-fiction writers anyway.
As for Matt himself, he's yet another letter coming from the Wammy House into that deathly battle against Kira. After assisting Mello in some surveillance work in the USA, Matt flew with him to Japan. There he further helped out, this time firing a CS gun from the driver's seat of a red muscle car, creating a smokescreen to facilitate the abduction of Kiyomi Takada.
Matt was killed shortly afterwards, when cornered by Kira supporters and shot dead. He was nineteen years old.
R - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
R is amongst those Wammy Letters known only from a glimpse of L's computer monitor in the movie L: Change the World.
Those listed there were on the Wammy Members' Group. Each identified by just a single initial, alongside the Wammy House crest. Most were e-mailed by L that he might alert them to the death of Watari.
Only there's something different about B, R, V and T to all those mentioned from this source previously. They weren't in receipt of the missive, and their letters were blocked out grey with a line voiding the box to select them.
The implication is that these are Wammy kids who are no longer alive. A kind of confirmation coming in the inclusion of B there, assuming that this movie exists in the same timeline as the novel Another Note: The Los Angeles Murder Cases.
Beyond Birthday would indeed be dead this close to the end of Kira's reign. He was killed on January 21st 2004 of a heart-attack probably during one of Kira's purges of international prison populations.
S - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon
To date, there is no known Wammy Letter S in canon, which isn't to say that one doesn't exist. The usual candidates apply here too.
T - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
T is known only from his/her entry on L's call/mailing list in L: Change the World live-action movie. However the initial is faded out to grey, implying that T is dead (see R.)
U - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon
There is no Wammy U letter assigned in any canon source to date.
V - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
Another included on L's Wammy Members' Group mailing list in the film L: Change the World. V's initial is greyed out, it's owner presumed dead.
W - Wammy Letter for Watari - Quillsh Wammy Himself
It's difficult to know the motive for Quillsh Wammy in creating The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans in Winchester. Mostly in manga, anime, novels and live-action adaptations of Death Note, the altruism is played up in the persona of L's handler (as Tsugumi Ohba described him).
But the Death Note author also stated that Wammy cultivated those kids as detectives 'for fun'.
Even if Wammy's orphanage and the lettered foundation to follow were established for the best of reasons, gathering genius children from across the globe - for the most part relocating them to another country - then stripping them of their names and other indicators of self-identity robs all concerned of their birthright. Held up to the light of the UN's Rights of the Child (international law) and Wammy's House is shown sadly lacking for all its wonderful provision.
That document was certainly ratified in England, where Winchester is situated. Some government officials, and those in the local authority too, must be turning quite a large blind eye, or else Hampshire Social Services would be traipsing all over the premises. Closing it down too because, for all its bright and glorious intentions, Wammy's House is an illegal concern by universally declared human rights laws.
Obviously those politicians in Winchester, Westminster and in the offices of other world leaders too consider it expedient to let the institution continue existing - taking the Stalinesque position that the ends justify the means - but that's by the by. The question here is what Wammy himself thinks he's up to, and how he's squared it with his conscience (if, of course, he knows his operation to be criminally negligent and cares about that).
The hints from the manga are inconclusive to bordering upon the disturbing.
We never hear Wammy's own thoughts on what he's established, just catch an undercurrent of Aizawa's unease, as he reports back to Light what he find in Winchester.
Plus How to Read: Death Note 13's note on Roger Ruvie, that he was employed to collect children internationally and bring them to Wammy's House to train as L's successor. Watari employed him to do that. He pays his wages too.
The anime continues on along the same theme, adding nothing directly from Wammy's mouth, but providing us with snap-shot flashes of the orphanage with sobbing infants and bullying in the corridors.
Not to mention the strange spectacle of Roger telling Mello and Near (aged 14 and 12 respectively) that they now have to take L's place in the struggle against a mass murderer of global proportions.
And incidentally, their guardian is dead, along with their idol. The one they were raised to emulate to the point of becoming in a very literal sense.
Its director's cut movie length double bill - Relight - adds the darkest element yet in L's 'monster' speech, as recalled by Near. Whatever else anyone thought the Wammy Foundation to be, L was in it for the lulz. Apparently. Then Mello, as narrator in Another Note, takes the matter of Watari's motives and the institution's reality plummeting to whole new levels of criminal insanity and horror. Herein, Quillsh Wammy emerges as a mad inventor, dehumanising children to the level of machines, psychologically repackaging them as carbon copies of his prototype child. Then placing them on a conveyor belt onto martyrdom or becoming L mark 2.
Thereafter, things lighten up considerably. Wammy suddenly transforms into a kindly benefactor, personally concerned in realising the potential in each of his wards, coupled with a genuine zest to save the world - or change it, as the movies and their novelisation strangely phrases it.
Though this overtly compassionate soul doesn't stop L, to all extents and purposes, committing suicide by writing his own name in a Death Note; F dying with a smile on his face in Thailand; and K building a biological contagion to wipe out all humanity. All directly or by proxy sent into the situations that killed or unhinged them by Wammy himself or one of his assistants at Wammy HQ.
Not one of them elicited a word of censure or damage limitation from their guardian either; nothing of consolation nor urging them to put their own safety and well-being above the perils of the case.
F's death 'couldn't be helped' (L: Change the World movie). K was never approached with the key information that she'd been assigned and kept not only her letter, but Watari's own esteem (L: Change the World novel, p 176-177). While sight of L's name in that Death Note almost prompted words in reaction from the man who'd raised him and continued to be a constant presence catering to his every whim. But Wammy stopped himself speaking 'and closed his eyes to contain his feelings' (ibid, p 16).
For that matter, though L was on the trail of Beyond Birthday enough to contact and advise Naomi Misora, Watari did not take the first available flight to Los Angeles in an attempt to calm his wayward, suicidal ward. With all L's considerable sway upon the movers and shakers of most nations - the USA topmost on the list - no apparent intervention was made on behalf of the badly burned Beyond Birthday. He was left to languish in a LA prison, until Kira killed him. (Nor then had the Wammy Foundation ensured his anonymity regarding face and name, as Near did for Mello. B lost and thus was excluded from the fold.
It's unlikely to be an appalled father figure washing his hands of the 'back-up'. Watari covers up or fixes the carnage from no end of criminal acts, up to and including murder, as enacted by his other wards. Like Near/Mello, in the Death Note TV drama (2015), phoning to announce that he's just killed Yudagawa. Wammy's reaction being to retrieve Near from the scene, arrange the clear up and cake. Near's favourite at that.
Finally back to the manga's original story and timeline, wherein Watari, firmly entrenched in the perils at the front line of the Kira case, never once thought to phone home to tell Roger, "You know, this might be too dangerous for the kids. Plus they've got the onset of puberty looming on the horizon, which is going to play havoc with their thought processes and deductive reasoning. If anything happens to me and L, be sure and keep Near and Mello safe indoors, eh?"
Instead, he doesn't even deign to indicate a name for L's successor - news which every child there spends every second of their existence in conditioned striving to become - partially because he knew L had already named Light (more important information for the cohort in Winchester, perchance?), and also because Wammy's own death was so sudden.
Yet surely this ultra-efficient man had made provision? Given his wealth, responsibilities and current condition in risk of sudden death by Kira, it seems the most obvious rolling course of action for the Wammy House founder and father figure.
The only insight we get to the mindset of Quillsh Wammy, in regard to the ridiculously short life expectancy of those in his care, comes from his musing in response to the fait accompli of L's suicide - deferred by twenty-three days as per the extremities of the Death Note's limitations. In the knowledge that L would have contemplated every move available to himself before acting thus to checkmate Kira, a conclusion is reached - 'this was the choice L had made. How could Watari object?' (L: Change the World (novel), p17)
How could he not? When each tragic loss to the Wammy House cohort, met without comment, reaffirms the normality/inevitability/expectancy of such choices made, his objections should be paramount. Especially as L - with his own demise fixed and irreversible - instantly acted as though a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. A burden that the novel later articulates as,
... L did not and could not forget the face of thousands of victims... The chronically rounded shoulders, the inevitable dark circles, the eccentric tastes - L suppressed the pain of being a champion of justice, but the evidence of the pain was molded into his very body. L tore out his hair and howled at the sky, unleashing the agony inside his soul.
It's a life that Watari chose for his favourite ward to live, when the boy was way too young to know what it could possibly entail. A whole Foundation was constructed around facilitating and perpetuating it, complete with staff-members tasked with replicating L upon the raw matter and vulnerable psyche of a steady procession of living children. The majority of whom L, at just twenty-seven years old, has already out-lived.
His guardian, mentor and carer Wammy hasn't left his side in over twenty-one years. Two decades of reaffirming to L that what he's doing is necessary and the only thing he could be doing. Acting like this is normal and right. Intimating that L perhaps owes him something for this relentless support and companionship, with so much time, wealth and world peace tied up in the detective going on as before; his burden bending his shoulders and adding dark pits around his eyes.
L looked up suddenly... with the worried expression of a child. "Watari, have I fulfilled you expectations?" Watari answered with his usual serene smile and uttered one simple unerring word: "Fully."
- L: Change the World, p188
X - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; Y - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; and Z - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
... I heard from L: the story of the detective war between the three greatest detectives, all solving that infamous bio-terror case, with guest appearances from the last of the alphabet, the first X to the first Z from Wammy's House.
X, Y and Z were all Wammy House children who assisted L, as he battled for supremacy over the original Eraldo Coil and Danuve.
Emerging victorious, L wasn't content to merely take the top spot in investigative global ranking. He took their detective codes too, hereafter able to call himself by their names; as evidenced in the battle against Kira, when he announced to the task force that he was in fact all three detectives now. Aiber was able to pose as Coil, in L's stead, when the Yotsuba Group hired the supposed 2nd placed detective in order to investigate the first.
Yet none of this explains what happened to X, Y and Z afterwards. Mello never tells us in Another Note; nothing more beyond that snippet quoted above. Nor do they turn up in the B case, or the fight against Kira which follows on.
Then again, that quotation can be read another way and perhaps they weren't assisting L at all, despite their Wammy House credentials. It seems unlikely that one or two WERE the original Coil and Danuve, challenging L for the chance not to be his backup nor copy. That would place them centre-stage, not cameos.
But nothing there says that they weren't the instigators of the bio-terror case under investigation. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that something like that was spawned from the dark corridors of the Wammy House to be unleashed upon the world.
In which case, all precedent says they're now tucked up safely inside their laboratories within the confines of the orphanage, welcomed home with an attitude akin to respect and a jolly well done. But for the fact that none of the trio factor upon L's calling screen in L: Change the World - plus Mello refers to all as 'the first' of their names in Another Note.
The implication being that these three Wammy kids no longer exist, even within the institution out of public view. Moreover, those who supplanted them in their allocated initials potentially were lost too. That is if we're taking all Death Note stories as one amalgamated canon, even where their time-lines clash.
The Wammy Alphabet of Death Note Letters
Those names greyed out are already dead by the end of all iterations of the Death Note canon. Those inverted represent Letters whose allocation is currently unknown. Leaving just D, E, G, H, K, N and P still alive.
However, this is just one run through from all known canon data. We have indubitably got a mix-match of generations here. A, B, X, Y and Z are known to have been amongst the first. M and N were definitely fourth. L, H and W held their letters throughout. K's letter survived at least two generations in its allocation. It has to be assumed that for a letter to be reassigned (four times for four generation of alphabets filled and started again), the previous recipient is dead.
How many Wammy kids must have died then, for the latest as semblance of Wammy Letters to exist? A vague straw-poll based on the configuration seen above suggests that, of the overall proportion, 73.1% are dead.
It may be presumed that Ryūzaki, Linda and those nameless Wammy kids in the background of flashback scenes all bore an initial apiece. A single letter displayed upon a white screen when they called - stark black in an Old English font, in lieu of a real name.
And where were J, X, Y and Z on L's calling screen in L: Change the World? A possible 4-7 more dead or disappeared. J to a burning ship in the middle of a pixel ocean; the latter three implied dead by Mello's comment 'the first to hold those letters'.
And of the remainder, one planned to destroy all humanity but was brought back into the Wammy fold. Not before K had already killed thousands, obliterating whole villages along the way. While, if Matsuda's theory was right, another is a secret serial killer in possession of a Death Note's great power, in addition to holding the L title that every one of Wammy's children coveted.
As L's successor, N beat them all to what amounts - in practicality, wealth and influence alike - to world domination.
What Consent the Children of the Wammy House? (Analysis by Lua Cruz)
It's difficult to argue Quillsh Wammy isn't morally questionable.
We know he is willing to assist with the imprisonment and torture of people that he, at that point of the story, has no evidence of being guilt (which still wouldn't excuse things like torture but could explain his willingness to comply).
He has L's word for their guilt and one could say he trusts L to be right. Even if that's the case, Watari arranged for the death of a criminal to be on television so L could conduct a test.
Just through examples from the Kira case, one cannot say Watari only does what is right and good in the eyes of common sense morality.
Knowing Mr. Wammy established several orphanages, it's easy to think, like Matsuda says, and say Watari was a great man. Someone who is a brilliant inventor and who uses their wealth to house orphans around the globe doesn't sound like a bad person.
Death Note TV drama photogaph courtesty of NTV
But what do we know about those orphanages?
If they were like Wammy's House, they were spacious, barely furnished places. One could argue the children there required rooms with little to no furniture as they would use the space to play like Near does by building card towers. It's interesting to notice, then, that the rooms don't have chairs or even cushions for the children to sit in when they are expected to do so (take for example Mello and Near speaking with Roger and the children speaking with L).
The adults responsible for the care of the children seem to care very little for them and Roger allows a fourteen-year-old to leave his care.
The children collected and taken to his orphanages are gifted and they are trained to become the next L. Those children are raised in a competitive environment for no reason other than Mr. Wammy decided they should.
Wammy dons his white gloves to leave no mark
Given how Watari acts in the Kira case, we know he has no issues with doing questionable things in order to accomplish a task.
In this case, could Watari be stealing geniuses for his project? The children at his institutions are supposed to be orphans but it's clear he isn't doing this out of kindness in an attempt to provide them a loving home.
If they are orphans, not only they have nowhere to go, no one to reach out to, and are forced to stay, but they have no ties holding them back.
The children are taught to look for what entertains them, but they are also given a fake choice as they grow up. They are raised to compete with each other in order to become L's successor and, for that to happen, they have to learn to want to become L's successors.
It doesn't matter they may choose not to become L as long as they want to have the skills required to still be an option. The objective of the orphanages is not to house orphans but to house gifted children who have the potential to be L's successors.
The autonomy of those children is denied from a very young age in such a way they grow to believe the way they are guided by beliefs they were manipulated into having are actually an expression of their own independent self.
The system in place to control and raise the gifted children at Wammy's House does not care for the children's needs and desires. In fact, it makes it so the children are led to believe their needs and desires are the ones the institution expect them to have, aka to become L's successor.
If someone looks closely at Watari's work, he doesn't seem to be such a great man.
Article by Lua Cruz
What is Meant by Death Note Watari's B Blood Type? (Article by Renchan)
Blood types in Japan happen to be incredibly popular, to the extent to where in a character biography, the blood type of a character is often shown last in order to tease the fans.
Blood types are associated with numerous personality traits, often giving just as much information as Western horoscopes.
In many shows, characters are sometimes given personality traits due to their blood type before they are even given a character design.
It is entirely unsurprising that blood types are such a fascinating topic in a manga called Death Note, centering around quite a bit of forensics and police action.
In this case, however, the meaning is a bit less literal and more analytical.
What, exactly, does it mean that Watari was assigned the blood type of B?
Personality Traits Associated with Blood-Type B for Wammy:
Stubborn
Hyper-focused
As it turns out, it means quite a lot. Characters that have a B blood type tend to be the most practical of the blood types. This is certainly true in a character like Wammy who, though pragmatic, has shown to be quite practical in his execution of tasks.
B-type characters are also known to become specialists in whatever they become interested in, and a few examples of this include Wammy's great skill with cooking and his perfect marksmanship.
An interesting piece of information is that B-type characters tend to follow their own rules and prefer to be their own bosses. That most certainly sounds like Watari, as he basically formed his own empire and is his own boss. He is a very independent man that basically does what he likes, including abducting children and turning them into terrifying detective geniuses (sorry, couldn't help myself).
B-types tend to be the Genki-type characters, as already stated in the Matsuda article about blood types. For the sake of recap, a "genki" character is a cheerful, well-meaning character. Genki could be translated quite well as hyper, or impulsive, or even cheerful.
At first glance, this does not sound like a blood type that should house a character like Watari, but on the other side of the personality spectrum, B-types could also manifest as characters who are very thoughtful, to the extent to where they do not express emotion easily. Many people would describe them as 'cold', or 'analytical', which is an interpretation that suits quite a bit better.
I would argue that Wammy is a very impulsive man, as you do not entirely plan out a career as varied as his. You have to be somewhat impulsive to decide to run an Orphanage for Gifted Youth. They are also known as being unconventional to a degree that is not accepted widely by the public, and as stated, I believe that Wammy is unconventional in a way. Because of this, the B-blood type suits him.
A man like Wammy, who in many ways played a large background role in the story, would not at first glance appear to be a B-type character. That is part of his charm, I believe, because in many ways Wammy is not a character who you can judge upon first glance. I remember being a thirteen year old girl and my first impression of him was of a butler who would not matter too much to the story. That is part of his disguise, and why he is such a fascinating character. He plays a very large role in the series, even if it is only a background one, and he is a very unconventional character.
Do you agree with the classification of Wammy as a B-type? Or would you argue for the even more unconventional AB blood type, as it is more of a mixed bag? Definitely share your thoughts.
Watari's Indoctrination of Wammy Kids in Death Note (Analysis by Lua Cruz)
There is little to no question about the unethical basis of the system behind Wammy's House.
We are shown a place with barely any adult supervision in which the children are allowed to be aggressive or behave however they please, with a warden who seems to care very little for the children under his care to the point of simply letting one of them walk out and expecting another to do the same.
Not only that but the house itself seems to have almost no furniture.
In the story, it may not seem so odd since, by the time we are introduced to Wammy's House, we are aware it isn't just a common orphanage housing children. But that only makes the existence of such place even more disturbing.
Here is at least one house for gifted children, assumed to be orphans, who are raised in an unfriendly and competitive environment for no other reason other than Quillsh Wammy thought this was an important thing to do. Those children are taught their skills should be directed to a very specific goal: becoming L. L is a detective so the point of collecting those children is to groom them into becoming detectives. More than that, they are trained to be confident in their own reasoning, their own methods of doing what they enjoy.
If the children are taught to find a hobby and to find their own way of achieving the goals of said hobby, can we talk about indoctrination in Wammy's House? Considering John White's definition that indoctrination takes place if the intention of the teacher is to make it so that "(t)he child should believe that 'p' is true, in a such way that nothing will shake this belief" (White 1972a, 119 and 1973, 179), it could be said the point behind Wammy's is to make sure the children believe their goal is worth everything.
If they want to solve a case, anything they do to accomplish that (be it breaking the law or putting themselves at risk or indirectly getting people killed or cheating) is worth it. Their conclusion is absolute to the point their actions are justified as if they are justice.
It's important to point out that they are not acting for the sake of justice or in the name of justice. They act as if them themselves are the embodiment of justice.
In this sense, they can do no wrong because their actions are just, they are right because they are their actions.
For example, to sacrifice the Mafia in order to get a chance to capture Kira was a selfish action; Mello wasn't acting in the name of justice. And it was because it was a selfish decision considering his own goals that he acts as if he is justice. Those lives are worth less than capturing this criminal.
This is an educational system Watari established for a reason canon doesn't explore. Why would he want to indoctrinate children to believe their own conclusions and decisions, even when perceived as selfish ones, were right not only to themselves but to the world?
None of the Wammy's kids wonder if Kira could possibly be right as we see Matsuda doing. They know he is a criminal; they know they have to stop him.
If we consider they are meant to solve crimes, it could be Watari actually had an altruistic goal in mind such as world peace. But there is no interference from him in the direction those children take, and, in fact, quite a few ex-Wammy's kids are willing to become criminals in order to achieve a goal or prove a point.
Mello joins the Mafia, K joins a bio-terrorist group, B becomes a serial killer, L himself admits to being a criminal by current laws and is willing to use torture against Misa. Letting them do as they pleased, confident on their own skills and conclusions, seemed to be a pretty chaotic project.
As it is, Watari died before his experiment was complete and we only have bits and pieces of it to try and make sense of his project. But why was it important to Watari to create a group of people with that level of confidence in their own reasoning? Why was it important to let them loose in the world with no guidance or direction?
Bridging the Watari Flow and Cherry Blossom Quillsh Wammy: Name Meaning and Symbolism for Death Note's L Handler
No-one looks for meaning much in manga character names, at least insofar as they relate to foreigners. By long standing tradition, as long as it sounds about right, it'll do. Which is why the Death Note universe brings us such corkers as Ill Ratt, Backyard Bottomslash and any number of others.
So looking for the meaning behind the name Quillsh Wammy, Watari or any other moniker linked with Death Note's L handler would, on the surface, seem futile. But maybe not, and since when has that ever stopped us anyway.
Let's start with the easy one - the name meaning of Watari.
Wandering Across the Watari Bridge to L
Watari is a pseudonym taken by Mr Wammy whenever he represents L publicly: acting as his spokesperson or point of contact generally; else wise conveying a laptop in order that L might communicate with the rest of the world.
Watari is a Japanese word. There's even a town called it (Watari-Cho), within a district of the same name (Watari-Gun) in Miyagi. Not to mention the phenomenon of omi-watari, breaking up and carrying sharp-edged ice floats across a nearby lake and away along its river. Plus the Japanese bird Watari Dori, literally 'bird of passage' and the words for tight-rope walker - tsuna watari.
By now, a few common denominators should be presenting themselves.
Watari means flowing, gliding, travelling across, migratory, passing, wandering, crossing. It can also relate to a small bridge, passage or being in a state of transition.
In the case of Death Note's Watari, the name symbolism seems obvious. Watari is the point whereby information flows towards L and outwards again back to the world. He bridges the gap between the detective and all else. Wandering about liaising with personnel, enacting logistics as directed, negotiating as needed, then disappearing into the ether for the next case with L.
In short, a narrow and migratory access point to reach L.
Cherry Blossom: Manga and Anime's Pathos Petal in Tragedy and Romance
Japan's iconic national tree, with its hints of youth and patriotism, permeates tradition and culture; and the symbolic cherry blossom has long been a staple of manga and anime.
Fine, delicate and highly beautiful leaves form and fall like a cloud in April, inspiring Japanese picnickers everywhere to spread a blanket underneath and celebrate hanami. Basically a feast in appreciation of the sheer transitory beauty of the petals all about them, fluttering down to carpet the ground en masse.
To mangaka and anime makers, this is romance at its finest, erupting in the flower of youth, but soon gone. No doubt due to some tragic element in the story about to be inserted by its author.
The theme continues, as a knock on effect within the genre, into a touch of poignancy at the graveside. Those pale pink petals cascading gently down to cover our heroes final resting place, turning red as they land upon such grief-laden ground. Pathos thus induced so ubiquitously, that it's now become an anime trope. Therefore defeating the purpose entirely.
So what has this got to do with Death Note? To our recollection, there's no scenes of canoodling under cherry blossom trees for Misa and Light, nor a drifting red petal alighting upon L's secret tomb.
Ok! Perhaps one or two cherry moments. Bring them on! What else did we miss? And anyway, this is Death Note and the seam of symbolism runs much deeper and darker here than in most.
Cherry Blossom Symbolism in Death Note - Sakura
Cherry blossom in Japan is called sakura. A common enough name for Japanese women, and one about to take its place in the pantheon of Death Note owners and serial mass murderers in the persona of Sakura Aoi.
A character in the forthcoming movie Death Note: Light Up the New World (2016), Ms Aoi is advertised as being the most deranged and deadly Kira ever to have scribbled monikers in a shinigami's notebook.
She has no ideological standpoint, just to kill, kill, kill, which means that her victims can't even console themselves with the fact that they're improving a rotten world, as per Light Yagami's justice ridden Kira. Not that any of them were probably thinking that anyway. They were just getting on with the dying in agony of a sudden onset heart attack.
There's nothing romantic nor symbolic of the doomed lover/tragic hero killed too soon in Sakura Aoi's terror reign of indiscriminate slaughter.
Previously, the main showing for the name Sakura was the TV station of the same name, wherein support for Kira was swift from the start, and Kira's Kingdom was founded.
Moreover, Sakura TV's mob rallying nearly got Near killed and did indirectly cause the death of police officer Ukita.
Death Note's Sakura Aoi
Death Note Pen-Name for Quillsh Wammy... from the Fandom
What does Quillsh Wammy's name mean? Nothing. It was made up and has no correlation in any language, let alone the English of his presumably native Winchester.
However, it's also not the name given to L's handler by his creator.
Tsugumi Ohba named the old man キルシュ・ワイミー, and there was never an explanation in text about how the fandom should translate it into Romanji.
Somewhere along the way, some bright spark probably looked at it and noticed that 'quills' (an implement for writing) could be made out of most of the first part. It seemed appropriate for Death Note, so they ran with it. It turned into one of those avalanching fanon things which overtakes the canon to become set as fact.
A process helped enormously when foreign language translations - particularly in English - picked it up and printed it as interpreted canon.
But more precisely, the kanji reads Kirsch (or Kirushu) Waimi (or Wye Me).
Sakura Kirushu Waimi: Cherry Picked Wammy House Teacher
Kirsch and Kirushu are easy to translate. They both mean 'cherry', or more precisely the dark cherry brandy that you get from double distilling the Morello cherry. It turns up in Japan as Kirushu Sake.
Known throughout its homeland of Germany and Switzerland as Kirschwasser (Cherry Water), and often used in Swiss fondue or German Black Forest Gateaux to give them that tart cherry taste.
When we embarked upon our dead end quest to find the origin of Quillsh Wammy's name, the closest we came to the surname was its match for a family living in 19th century Prussia (modern day Germany).
With a fan-fiction writers penchant for free association, that pretty much confirms Quillsh Wammy's origin as German, or his ethnicity at least.
As an aside, a similar sounding word to his first name in German is 'kursus' meaning class or lesson. Not really relevant here, other than as a play on words for Wammy House's founder and benefactor to be its main teacher too. Beautifully accurate in regard to Death Note's Wammy kids.
What is Wammy? The Origin of Quillsh Wammy's Surname
Only slightly less tenuous, it's amusing to note though that one of the world's premier nurseries for cherry morello trees - whereby kirsch is extracted - is in Waimea. Though that's in Hawaii, not Germany.
Despite the fact that Waimea is also home to an annual Cherry Blossom festival honouring Japan, it's unlikely to be the surname source for Mr Wammy.
Waimi is a Japanese word too. It can be a personal name - usually for girls - translated awkwardly as 'ties feathers to ideas'. Let's smooth that out as 'one who gives flight to ideas' or 'one who turns the idea into reality'. Even more simply, 'the one who deals with logistics', which describes L's handler perfectly.
However, there was another intriguing entry in a Japanese-English dictionary, whereby Waimi was listed as 'to be' within the context of entering a garden. Unfortunately, the digital formatting was so messed up as to be nonsensical, hence the full definition couldn't be extracted. A quick asking around produced only the vague notion that 'waimi' could be 'something Zen' to do with 'niwaki'. That is the pruning of trees to enhance their general essence.
Again very nicely Wammy House related, though the fullest translation would be more useful here in properly pinning it down.
However, Wai seems to be a word with connotations with flow; air; wind; breath; speak; inspiration; the fact of being; part of; better; above; external; changing; and, of course, an ancient name for Japan itself. While 'mei' means a first name. Could Waimi simply be 'speak the first name'? As in Kirushu - cherry blossom.
Sakura Quillsh Wammy Kamikaze Maestro
Which brings us to the other cherry blossom inured individuals out fighting a war to the death - just as the Wammy kids were raised to do - namely the kamikaze pilots of World War Two.
Japanese fighter planes often had cherry blossom painted on the outside, while setting off to sacrifice themselves in suicide missions sometimes carried cherry branches abloom in the cockpit with them.
n addition to evoking a sense of national spirit - cherry blossom as the kana of a nation - there was plenty of propaganda (political speeches; popular songs etc) which likened the valiant war dead to that intensely flowering, swiftly falling bloom.
An early sub-unit of kamikaze bombers was actually called Yamazakura - wild cherry blossom.
Yama... Waime... it's difficult not to think of the Wammy Foundation as sharing something of the ethos involved in those suicide missions. When you consider the number of Wammy letters dead in the name of whatever almighty cause concerned them at the time, they do seem very much akin to the Yamazukura, flying their planes into targets in honour of their Emperor.
Indoctrinated with the notion that it was right and inevitable to do so.
Or perhaps we should return to kirsch as a double distilled cherry brandy, or a nice kirushu sake? Then drink a toast to the Wammy dead - who fell like sakura killed by Kira and L.
What Were the Stakes for Watari in Death Note? (Analysis by Lua Cruz)
Quillsh Wammy as L's aide Watari in Death Note
While canon doesn't linger on Quillsh Wammy on his own, Watari's existence on itself is implied to occupy a much bigger role than what we actually see.
We are introduced to him as the connection between L and the outside world, and, as the story progresses, we also see Watari is responsible for carrying L's orders as well as taking care of L himself. We see Watari as the liaison, the butler, the bodyguard and the assistant but we aren't given a reason to explain this renewed inventor taking on those functions.
We are told, both in the original manga and in the L: The Wammy's House One-shot, that Quillsh Wammy is a man of wealth. There is no reason keeping him from paying someone to look after L other than he chose to do it himself. And as we see when L arrives at Wammy's house, he makes that decision soon after he is introduced to L. That is a choice we are left to explain on our own.
L hoarding toys in L: The Wammy House Death Note one-shot
It could've been boredom. Watari is shown to be an old man; it's possible he has seen what he wanted to see and has done what he wanted to do. He's an inventor, a creative mind, and he could be following this unpredictable child to see what he would do. Surely, boredom could be a motivation.
But what does it say for his morality that he allowed a young child to go unpunished for beating up his house-mates and hoarding toys meant to be shared?
More than that, he actually rewarded L's behavior, showing him attention and giving him whatever he asked for even when that meant taking a monetary risk.
Although curiosity born out of boredom could be the reason Watari singles out L, it doesn't explain the reasoning that created the circumstances that allowed him to find a child like L.
The orphanages weren't created out of altruism and kindness. When we see one of them, we see a place with barely any furniture and a warden who cares so little for the children he's responsible for that he doesn't mind handing over private information he knew could endanger them. It's not a place for children to grow up happily and safely, neither it is a place for children to be adopted.
After L, the point of, at least, Wammy's House was to produce a successor and there is no explanation as to why the orphanages were meant to produce something in the first place. In that case, it's more likely L was what they were looking for and not a random child Watari decided to entertain.
Considering Watari made the decision of establishing several orphanages after World War II, his motivation could've been to prevent another war, to find the one mind capable of intervening and putting a stop to such horrors. If L was the answer to the question he was trying to answer with his orphanages, Watari was looking for a kid capable of saying their own methods, their own morals, were just.
The idea behind his orphanages was grooming children who met a certain standard to become the moral compass of the world, and, by choosing this particular child to become the standard the other children should follow, Watari himself chose this child as the ideal one.
To make a choice like that, Quillsh Wammy had to be particularly confident on his own morality, his own sense of justice and his own intelligence. He had to be sure he was right, that was he was doing and the possible grief he would cause was worth it.
If Watari set out to find a child who could become Justice in the world, his resolve was not to raise children nor was it to provide them a loving home.
He established a system that allowed him to find someone he considered capable of being justice and provided this person with all resources required. He modified the system in place just enough to create another person based on the standard is first choice produced.
That being the case, we can say Watari considered the common good to be indubitably more important than personal well-being.
Death Note Near hearing L talk about justice and his cases
In fact, we can go beyond that and consider Watari didn't change his methods after finding L as much as he was lucky enough to find a child who already did and strongly believed what he wanted the children under his care to do and believe.
Watari forced the children under his care to abide by his own moral inclination despite their own desires but to do so believing in their own deductive skills. They were indoctrinated to believe they, too, could be justice, but only if they were the very best. Personal safety, personal happiness, mental health, physical well-being, etc… were not as important as the good of the majority, but the good of the majority was taught to them as a consequence of their own actions, their own inclinations, their own search for answers.
Not only was Watari morally irresponsible as he allowed L to do as he wished (choosing the cases and methods he pleased under the pretence of representing justice), he was also morally wrong on the orphanage system he created. If he thought the world needed a moral compass that he could provide, he, at least, knew his methods were condemnable enough he should keep them hidden.
On This Day in Death Note: April 29th
Watari Letters: Death Note Canon Alphabet of Wammy Kids: A-K
Quillsh Wammy, the genius inventor who founded Wammy's House... looking at L's incredible talents from
the perspective of an inventor - of course he wanted to make a copy, of course he wanted to create a backup.
Anyone would feel the same.
~ Mello, Another Note, p104
Little is known about Quillsh Wammy the man, nor what he truly intended for the children in his care. Though intriguing clues litter the canon sources with enough material to keep the fan-fiction writers going for an age. Often, if you can't see the thing itself, then observing the ripple effect provides a proxy view enough to hazard a guess at what lies beyond.
What remains mysterious about the benefactor of that strange chain of orphanages established in Death Note manga, anime, novels, movies, TV drama and games, might just show in the Fate of orphans raised within their alpha home - The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans.
Each child within the Wammy system assigned a single letter. A calling code. Something by which they could identify each other, if no other code-name was available.
Genius minds afforded specialised training; then sent out into the world, apparently to change it. Though what precisely that means never is quite explained, beyond a vague pandering to the word justice.
As defined by the Wammys, especially L.
More often leaving the House to engage in petty rivalry and combat with each other; and woe betide any who get in their way - for to destroy the world is just another way to change it.
... what if they could copy (L)? What if they could make a backup?
That was us.
L's children, gathered from all corners of the world.
Children gathered together, never told each other's names....
List of Wammy House Letters Discussed in General Terms
We cannot reconstruct the whole canon alphabet of Death Note letters, even via our current ploy below of amalgamating disparate versions as if they were one cohesive and extant source. However, it's not bad how few Wammy letters exist without a known correspondence or link in any canon Death Note universe.
There's just a handful assigned without furnishing the fandom with clues pertaining to the person here represented. Even then they may be discussed in general terms, applicable across the board. Not least the assumption might be made that someone raised or based at Wammy's House in Winchester was, is or will be in possession of the code required to utilize all that this letter represents.
Not anonymity in public communication - no matter how much it's used for that, such usage is just a bonus - but access to The Wammy Foundation, its administration, resources and infrastructure.
Doors don't open because someone sat in GIMP messing around with Cloister fonts and single letters centred in Old English. If they did then I'd be L by now. Government offices allow access to restricted lines; military manoeuvres are initiated by request; Interpol meetings are infiltrated; and intelligence agencies are directed or else willing to share classified information, because that Wammy letter alphabet gets used set within a certain context.
Further codewords or numbers may allow verification of its user's authenticity.
B infiltrates Yotsuba corporation; N elicits the US President's help; F directs a child into calling Watari to get lifted from Thailand.
A call from a Death Note Letter to Wammy Headquarters (i.e. the Winchester orphanage in which they were raised) could summon the word spoken into an ear, heavies, intel or finance to oil passage into a myriad of locations, ways, clubs or meetings, as necessary to solve the mystery at hand.
It could rescue that clever detective from dangerous places, or let him/her secure whatever was uncovered that now needs safeguarding. Sensitivity in no questions asked, efficient fixing; unlimited funds able to be wired wherever a masked voice asks for such to be. Plus so much more besides.
It's not each iconic initial that's key in those calls. It's the apparently boundless support and open doors that such icons represent.
Wammy's Foundation has an incredible reach throughout the planet and into the hidden powerhouses unknown to most. Where global movers and shakers meet with their identities gleaned incrementally on a need to know basis. Where influence is strong and disagreements could potentially cause or avert World War III. Yet none more able to direct the flow of world affairs than Quillsh Wammy himself.
The many powerful faces of Wammy
Then if all else fails, those clever and dangerous Wammy Letters - living so far beyond any laws to proscribe their actions - probably know where to find and press the requisite levers to get blockages removed.
No doubt such reminders prompt the machinery of co-operation into instant, unfettered movement by any given government and their agencies, accompanied by renewed guarantees that this status quo will remain so indefinitely. Uttered upon expensive, elite lips belonging to those who know they can keep their promises.
Just as Mello did in the Death Note manga, compelling an American President into acting in accordance with that Mafioso Wammy's will. Threatening to use a Death Note to gain US compliance anyway, with its President's actions subject to unstoppable remote control, until his inevitable death a few days on.
That wasn't the Mafia man talking, however close the sentiment might seem. It was the Wammy speaking as Mello this time. Another day it could have been L or Near, as also happened in canon, outlined as dialogue in the novel L: Change the World. And THAT has to be how they were raised for President Hoope seemed to expect it. Evidently he's dealt with Mr Wammy and his alumni many times before.
Wammy Letters seemingly above the law: (Clockwise l-r) Televised death of Lind L Taylor (L); NYC stampede for $10m (N); Misa Amane tortured (L); US President David Hoope driven to suicide (M); NPA President Takimura abducted and tortured (M); lethal pathogen unleashed onto colleague, then the world (K).
Which makes you wonder what else we can see in the stories of the rest; to illuminate the inner workings of Quillsh Wammy's mind and the processes underpinning the ways in which his Winchester institution is run.
A great man, as Matsuda once said, or the monstrous child-thief - as he's intimated to be by L, Mello, B and Near's testimonies? Hinted in separate instances, dotted about various canon sources - Watari brainwashing proto-detectives, from kids raised in his care, to enter into deadly games of rivalry and puzzle-solving, all for fun.
More of those children's stories might provide some insight into the manner of this man, whom even Tsugumi Ohba his creator called 'terrible'.
Death Note Wammy Letters Alphabet
The designation of a letter in Wammy's alphabet held a special significance for those who graduated Wammy's House. It signified that they were charged with changing the world. There were only twenty-six letters to exist every generation, and these young people were part of an illustrious list of past letters who had time and again been instrumental in saving the world from catastrophe. Above all, the designation signified Watari's trust.
~ L: Change the World (novel), p 176-177
Watari's Character? He's a guy who cultivates detectives for fun. That's kind of terrible, isn't it? (laughs)
~ Tsugumi Ohba, Death Note author, How to Read: Death Note 13 p 60
A - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
... even for a genius like Watari, creating a fake L was easier said than done... I hardly need to tell you what it was like when Wammy's House was first founded, when he was still experimenting. The first child, A, was unable to handle the pressure of living up to L and took his own life...
When Quillsh Wammy determined that he needed to 'copy' or 'back up' L, he chose a live child to mould into aping his prototype model.
Imagine that for just a moment - someone, anyone, being taken into strange premises and told that all you are and were no longer matters. You have no name, or purpose beyond becoming somebody else. Not in the military we-will-make-you-action-man sense, nor in any manner of self-improvement, like going off to university, or training to run a marathon. This isn't even the refining of a Swiss finishing school.
This is taking a presumably orphan child and stripping him of all form of self-identity. Not a name to call himself, just a letter. No personality traits that can't also be found in L. No lesser intelligence than what that incredibly once-in-a-lifetime type genius mind than attain. Telling a boy that everything about himself is so worthless that nothing will do but to reject it all and become the clone of another boy deemed more valuable.
And they wonder why he committed suicide.
B - Wammy Kid Beyond Birthday - True Name Unknown
... the second child, Beyond Birthday, was brilliant and deviant. B stood for Backup...
As long as there was L, B would never be L. As
long as the original existed, the copy was always a copy.
That B had been a candidate to succeed L, and that the pressure of that had driven him off track... Beyond Birthday's quest to surpass L. It mattered more to him than his own life. Perhaps he was less intent than desperate. Nobody could have stopped him.
After attempting to imprint L's whole being cookie cutter style upon poor A's flayed psyche, Quillsh Wammy then turned his attention onto a second child for experimentation. He was seeking the same result. He got it.
By which is meant that Watari's zest to 'copy' L drove another orphan in his care to conclude that the only way out was suicide.
Only Beyond Birthday didn't attempt his own end with the supposed quiet lack of drama that beset the tragedy of A. (At least Mello didn't deem it worth gossiping about the fine detail later.) B opted for self-slaughter in perhaps the most dramatic, loud and all encompassing manner he could stage manage. Downright theatrical in fact, in that he performed it in costume, caked in thick make-up, complete with props. Assuming a role in scenes orchestrated and arranged by himself.
The part that Wammy had always wanted him to play. Indivisible from L; a carbon copy. Albeit with a few heart-breaking, pointed and rather grisly differences in the reality that played out. Not least that Beyond knew that L could count on the support of Wammy's House, and he could not.
... he had always disguised himself with heavy make-up while he was with Misora, and he had never left a picture behind.
He knew that the moment he took action Wammy's House and Watari would alert L, so he did not even bother trying to stop them.
Our mental image of B - repeated endlessly in fan-art and fiction - depicts him fixed in cosplaying L. Cosmetics to recreate the sleep deprived pallor, hunched over in walking and folded, knees up in sitting.
There's no telling whether the crawling on all fours isn't just a parody of L's burden bent back, nor if the jam eaten with his fingers straight from the jar might not be a clown-like standing for L's endless array of sweet confectionery. He even quotes L's habitual lines, about how hot beverages brimmed into slush with sugar boost his energy and awaken his brain, while sitting in that famous stance raises his mental faculties by 40%.
Beyond Birthday copies L, just as Mr Wammy demanded of him, but only to break him in a desperate challenge - choosing death in order to commit an unsolvable crime. Viewing serial killing and his own horrifically agonizing mode of ending himself as reasonable prices to pay if he ultimately got to beat L. It didn't matter that B wouldn't be there to see it happen. The victory was all.
Well, in theory, give or take Naomi Misora being more intelligent than any Wammy credited those outside the institution as having any right to be.
Hence B ended up terribly mutilated, surviving in the knowledge that L's proxy - a civilian! - had bested him even when he threw in such extremes. Serving a life sentence inside an LA prison for the murders of three people pretty much used as props to destroy L's mind, pride and reputation. Until Kira killed Beyond randomly (so it's implied) during one of his Death Note purges of evil-doers inside.
Nor do we see any evidence that Watari intervened, though with his connections it's probable that Beyond could have been released into Wammy's House custody. There's not even a hint that those who drove B into such desperation and madness so much as visited him behind bars. Then he was dead before Mello moved into the same city.
Wammy's experimentation went on.
C - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon
Although nothing is known about this individual at the present time, it doesn't necessarily follow that we do not know them. Some characters associated with Wammy's House never had their call code letters made public. This covers Matt, Linda and Ryūzaki from the forthcoming movie too.
D - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
D is known only from an entry within the Wammy Members' Group Mail, glimpsed upon L's computer screen in the live-action movie L: Change the World.
However, it might be surmised that D has been in possession of his or her letter for quite some time, as those listed aren't alphabetical and D is at the top.
That may be a false premise nevertheless, as L himself only appears halfway down the list and he was the first Wammy in possession of a letter.
L doesn't hesitate in sending the communication to D, nor indeed anyone else on the list, with the exception of K who gives him pause. For all else, its implied that they are trusted, worthy recipients with no bad blood between themselves and the Watari Foundation, as represented here by L.
Beyond that, nothing else is known. Nor is every letter displayed, as the scrollbar alongside the list of Wammy letters hints at more unseen before the camera drifts away to focus upon the e-mail's sender instead.
E - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
E is another Wammy letter assignation known only from L's mailing group in L: Change the World. (See above)
F - Wammy Kid F1225 - True Name Unknown
Wammy letter F is known to us entirely from the movie L: Change the World. He doesn't even turn up in the book of the same name. In the movie, he is portrayed by actor Kakuzi Namioka. Wammy F's character name in the credits is displayed as エフ Romanised as Efu.
We first see F peering through the slats into a rural home in Bangnum Village, Thailand. He is observing a whole population stricken by some unknown pathogen, all dying horribly and in agony with sores, blisters and frothing mouths. It appears to have been quite a sudden onset with a 100% mortality rate, and the scientists have just turned up to investigate.
They are exempt in theory from contagion, clad from head to foot in bright yellow protective clothing. They speak with American accents and seem unsympathetic to the suffering of victims all around them. Moreover, brutal in their dehumanising pronouns - 'deal with that', one says, indicating a man nearby. Another pushes a mother surrounded by four dead children roughly away from him.
F flees. There is no explanation as to why he was there. Nor why he's so certain of his immunity from contracting the unspecified pathogen, that he's willing to risk exposure to it.
The only clues come from a future scene, wherein we're told he was working undercover for the Watari Foundation near Bangnum Village, and that the biometers aren't responding. Though whether that fact pertains to F's presence isn't clear from the context. He was certainly there 'in the line of duty'.
However, he's presumably on some kind of Wammy House directed rescue mission, as the child waiting at the location F flees to - in the ruins of ancient architecture just beyond the village - is Near. Though evidently Thai, Near does not appear native to Bangum. "This village is over for us." F tells the child, interrupting him mid-mathematical flow, with formulae chalked all over the mossy stone walls.
They have perhaps gained sanctuary there with Near seemingly unperturbed by events. Abandoning his calculus without fear nor apparent regard for the destruction down below, in order to join F in flight via the older Wammy's Land Rover.
The instructions F gives to the boy focus upon how to contact Watari. This transpires into a moment of sheer delight and wonder for Team Wammy Death Note fans everywhere - F gives us the Watari phone number: 0105928147218. Whereupon we are directed to tell them F1225 told us to ring it.
So, has anyone done so yet? To whom does it connect? Are they very sick of random people calling from all over the world, demanding to speak with Watari?
"Watari will protect you," F informs his young charge, wearing an ethereal kind of smile as he says so. The future Near, it has to be said, surveys him right back with the world's most dubious expression over a long, drawn out stare. Already too clever for his own good, that one.
But a look which surely seems like presentiment when, in the next instant, an American military helicopter arises from the bushland track behind them and starts shooting holes from the road in front.
F steps on the accelerator of the Land Rover he has weaving all over this Thai dustroad-turned-Formula-1-racetrack. Yet a close look at him reveals the sudden appearance of lesions on the side of this face. Not so immune to disease after all, though Near is in the clear and remains so. F knows that he's personally not going to survive this flight through the bushes, thus in a poignant moment takes the necklace bearing his Watari letter F from around his neck and places it around Near's instead.
Back behind the wheel, with an expression of sheer determination, F hurtles along the road in his Land Rover, leading the military away from the spot where he abandoned Near. But he knows he can't out-drive them. He has to have known he was due to die as soon as he couldn't shake them off before.
This race away from Near is deliberate though. Himself less important than the child left behind, despite F's presumably high intelligence and top class education rendering him a supposed benefit to the whole world as a Wammy letter. Surely more so in that horrible choice between himself and an untutored youngster with much potential. Because whatever Near is, or may become, right now the boy is an unknown quantity.
Yet somebody somewhere within the Watari Foundation judged it worth risking F's life to send him into that dangerous situation in order to extract the kid. By his actions, F certainly concurs.
The helicopter descends before the Land Rover, blocking all egress. F stops the vehicle and surveys in horror what waits ahead. There's momentary horror and fright for F. Not ready to die. Then he is, eyes closing and a tiny smile touching the corner of his lips. Like this is acceptable.
We watch the Watari prodigy F die by proxy - a close up on the missile emerging from the helicopter's launcher, then a long shot of Near witnessing the blast from around the corner, expressionless and wearing F's letter necklace. Another Wammy kid dead. Another left knowing from the onset what the far future has in store for him, though also still lost in the immediate sense.
What's interesting about F's reaction to all of this is that undying faith in Wammy and the Watari Foundation. Adamant to the end that Watari protects his wards, a sentiment spoken even as the patently unprotected F remains trapped in an environment rife with pestilence and bombs.
He's not going to survive this, yet surely it was Watari - or a representative thereof - who sent him there. Nevertheless, F will ensure another child follows in his footsteps and smiles as he dies. Some inner conviction sated in the certainty that his premature demise was worth it.
Perhaps the ethos wherein this genius Wammy House orphan was raised. One we'll return to time and again in the biographies of Wammy kids. Dulce et decorum est pro Watari mori...
G - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
The Wammy letter G is another whose canon existence consists solely of an entry on L's email list in the movie L: Change the World. (See D.)
H - Wammy Headquarters Letters - Roger Ruvie (presumed)
Wammy Letter H may be seen representing Wammy Headquarters in a scene from the live-action movie L: Change the World.
That this is also The Wammy's House may be determined by comparing the avatar crest accompanying the moniker Wammy Headquarters with the same already displayed on Watari's desktop underneath the call alert.
As warden of Wammy's House, it must be assumed that Roger Ruvie is the individual in receipt of this letter. The H reflecting that element of his job description that involves liaison between Watari and the rest of his wards - HQ rather than headmaster.
This would explain why Roger Ruvie sticks around as overseer of an orphanage, when his pet hate (according to How to Read: Death Note 13) is 'children'.
It also chimes nicely with the warden's role within the original manga and anime Death Note stories. He was the recipient of L's alert pertaining to the detective's own death.
Moreover, Roger was the one to inform Near and Mello of the same, and would have been the one told if Watari/L had chosen which of them was to succeed their idol. Roger also felt able to make a suggestion regarding the succession himself - the futile interjection that the pair should work together.
In short, Roger had long since been the nexus for internal Watari Foundation communication. The manga has him eventually becoming Watari, when Near takes the Letter to continue as that detective code.
Death Note's H calls W: Wammy HQ (Roger Ruvie) mails Watari
We see more of what Roger's position at The Wammy's House - Wammy Headquarters - constitutes in this same scene. Following immediately on from the death of F, Roger calls Wammy to inform him of their ward's death. Though cut off, his text communication is curt, emotionless and to the point.
This isn't a telegram, yet it seems like Roger goes out of his way to conserve characters in his abrasive wording. F's death is afforded equal precedence to HQ's report about the biometers being out of commission. His main concern seems to be who to send out there next. No waxing lyrical in commiseration and regard for a young man killed, whom both must have known intimately, as a boy raised by themselves and for whom responsibility did not stop in adulthood, as he remained one of their lettered agents.
It's a similar pattern of feeling - or lack thereof - as seen in the manga, whereby Roger's first act upon hearing the news of L and Wammy's demise is to call in Mello and Near, thus to settle the succession. No question that such a continuation must occur.
Nor apparently did he race after Mello, when the boy announced his attention to leave home and work alone in catching Kira. This is a fourteen year old stepping out into a frigid December night, in a barely adequate jacket, yet his guardian did not shift in his recall.
Back to F and the news of his death. It's never clarified who alerted Roger to that particular tragedy, though we do get to see Wammy and L react to the same. Wammy's look of sadness and shock tips off L, who gently enquires if it is bad news? His guardian answers in hushed tones that F was killed in Thailand. There follows a pensive moment, wherein the old man sadly states, 'It was in the line of duty, so it couldn't be helped but...'
But what? The sentiment is never answered verbally, nor addressed by the creator of this system at all. The contemplative silence draws out for both with the sentence never actually finished. Left lingering in the air as simply that - something which couldn't be helped - while H's missive remains on the screen focused upon who to send in next.
The answer to F's death comes in reality from L's actions. This is the final piece of information to push the detective into writing his own name into Misa's Death Note, thus effectively committing suicide. Why? 'To take control over my own Fate is the only way to outwit Death.'
A reaction echoed in part by Mello's own reaction to the compulsion to take L's place jointly with Near, as Roger's major consideration upon the loss of L. No doubt feeling similar pressure to surrender all say in his future to those willing to sacrifice it, Mello - like L - had the knee-jerk reaction of yanking control of his own destiny back from Wammy HQ.
"I'll do it my own way!" He bellowed in retort, a fourteen year old leaving the sanctuary of his childhood home in the dead of winter.
The only facet not being questioned by anyone was why two boys (Near not even a teenager) suddenly had the burden of stopping a global killer. Children asked to assume such responsibility as duty, in lieu of, say, any of the world's governments, military, secret services, not to mention their associated law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
Neither did L feel able to just walk away. At least in the minds of themselves, as nurtured in Wammy's home by Watari and Ruvie, this was their inevitable duty. As unfortunate as any death might be in the line of such duty, it couldn't be helped. An ethos surely carried by the warden, as Roger swapped his letter H (Wammy Headquarters) for a W (Watari in his turn).
I - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon
Though again there are candidates, as Matt and Linda remain unassigned letters in canon too. Ditto Ryūzaki, who will appear in Death Note: Light Up the New World in October 2016, and has already been named an alumni of Wammy's House.
J - Wammy Kid Pseudonym Unknown - True Name Jeffrey Miller
The Wammy kid known as J is an elusive quantity.
In fact, we're not even 100% certain that he was Watari raised, trained and assigned a letter. The only clue to that is his name - the letter J - as given in the only canon source in which he turns up.
J is a character in the Konami DS game L: The Prologue to Death Note: Spiralling Trap, which was released in Japan on February 8th 2007. It's never been translated into any other languages nor made available anywhere else across the globe.
Game-play is text based problem solving, wherein you are a rookie FBI agent knocked unconscious to awaken in a locked room. Your environment is booby-trapped with explosives, with antagonists presumably out there primed to set them off.
However help is at hand in the shape of a communication device and L at the other end. The detective will advise on solving puzzles to open the doors, as long as he's adequately provided with sweets, cakes and other confectionery. You will eventually traverse all of those dangerous rooms in order to encounter the baddies.
Enter J. Apparently another Wammy kid turned murderous in pursuit of L. Now ready to engage you in a boss fight.
The image (left) is a screenshot from the trailer for L: The Prologue to Death Note (above), which features around the 1 minute 46 mark.
As the game was only issued in Japanese, with no English transcript to be found on-line, it's difficult to analyse the dialogue for further clues to J's identity, motivation or the influence upon him from his supposed Wammy House education. Beyond what might be surmised by the fact that he's attempting to blow L up.
Though he is wearing a lab coat, hence probably falls within the science spectrum of Wammy alumni specialities.
All that can be said additionally (until our Japanese translators turn up and, of course, assuming any of them have actually played this game) is that our last glimpse of J seems to be aboard a stricken cruise ship, which L has just caused to explode extensively right across its middle section. Presumably then J is now lost, presumed drowned or else caught in the ensuing inferno.
About par for the course for a Wammy kid.
K - Wammy Kid Keep Your Way - Dr Kimiko Kujo
"Please understand, Watari. This is the only way I believe I can change the world," she said, as much to convince herself.
L: Change the World, p 121
On the subject of serial killing Wammy kids, they don't get more potentially destructive than Watari's own destroyer of worlds - K.
Perhaps Kali might have been a better pseudonym for this lady, rather than the poignant sobriquet Keep Your Way afforded to her by Mr Wammy himself.
She certainly seemed convinced that the only way to change the world was to wipe the human race from the face of the planet.
In true mad scientist mode, when we first caught up with K - real name Dr Kimiko Kujo - she was busy cultivating a swift-acting, 100% fatal pathogen in readiness to unleash upon all hated humanity.
Her story forms the central backdrop of L: Change the World - movie and book both - with L spending his last twenty days on Earth in a bid to halt her crazy antics in a laboratory.
The premature release of her deadly virus upon test subjects in Thailand had already led directly to the demise of another Wammy letter - F. She would have taken out Near too, before he even made it to Wammy's House, had the wonder-boy's natural immunity not kept him safe from contagion.
"Dr Kujo, is your time at Wammy's House perhaps a cause of your despair toward mankind?"
"You knew?"
"One can always tell a Wammy's student, even if they do change their face and hide their past," L said.
L and K, L: Change the World, p175-176
So what went so badly wrong with this one that global genocide seemed the only answer?
Surely even Roger couldn't have been so tactless that her natural response was to sequence a virus to push her own species into extinction. Though granted, it would have constituted one method of stopping Kira, which was what most of her peers were concerning themselves with at the time.
It transpires that K's role within the Wammy Foundation had been to '(mobilize) the law enforcement agencies of the world'. During an operation, she had successfully rescued a child held hostage by terrorists, only to discover that had been her adversary's plan all along. The kid was a suicide bomber, who detonated the charges as soon as they were in the other camp.
After witnessing the 'many casualties', K ran from the scene never to return. It wasn't the failure of the operation per se that was the problem, but the notion that she had betrayed Watari's trust in her capabilities as a Wammy letter.
Nothing to do with the power and influence that comes with that designation either. It was the personal censure invested within Wammy the man that she most feared evoking. He'd brought her out of herself and believed in her abilities following the death of her parents. He'd been kind and caring, with a warm smile and sage advice, making K feel like she counted, even amongst all the rest of the clever, little Wammys around her.
She couldn't stand to see his face again, knowing that she'd let him down. That he'd be disappointed in her. It was that personal for the Wammy kids raised to become Letters within the Wammy Foundation. Away from Wammy's House and the man at its helm, K's 'soul had grown darker than the world around it'.
A darkness that she couldn't hope to assuage without the total destruction of humankind, wiped from the Earth in order to save the planet.
Not that K had any cause to worry. As L informed the dangerous Dr Kujo - once he'd located her at the centre of the pathogen outbreak - blowing up her team wasn't any deterrent for her beloved Mr Wammy. He'd assigned his letter K to her anyway, coded with the last message he'd conveyed to Kimiko Kujo before her flight from the Wammy fold - Keep Your Way.
Astute words in retrospect, though perhaps Watari should have clarified a 'way' amongst the sane options open to her.
Moreover, L continued - breaking her heart in knowing this only now - "Even after you left Wammy's, Watari refused to give that designation to anyone else." Awwww! If only she'd grasped that Wammy still loved her, K wouldn't have had to turn Thailand into the vast killing fields of her unleashing viral mass murder.
As it was, L promised that she could resume her place at Wammy's House, letter intact, even now, after whole populations lay dead. What was a little genocidal slaughter amongst Watari's kids? When they stood to ensure justice would prevail and the world could be changed. K vowed to do so, returning to Winchester just as soon as her life sentence was done in prison.
No doubt Watari - whomever that was likely to be forthwith - would soon intervene and get that time served down to, say, a week. After all, foiled architect of humanity's extinction aside, Kimiko remains a Wammy kid, in receipt of the letter K.
Read On: Alphabet of Wammy Letters L-Z
Join a Pinterest Community Group for Wammy and Wammy's House!
A whole group of us are already pinning our Wammy's House and Mr Wammy related items of interest over on Pinterest. You can too!
We have a community Pinterest Board for Death Note's Wammy cohort, which anyone may join and contribute what they will.
It's part of a whole collection of character or other subject specific boards created and maintained by Death Note News.
So click away on the follow button, wait for your invitation to be added to the board - prompt us with a comment here* containing your Pinterest name if you want to hurry us up with that, though we will try to be quick with the Wammy additions during this Month of event - then pin, pin, pin all you've got on Watari and his wards.
And once you're in, feel free too to invite your friends along. All our members can add other pinners to the group. That's what community is all about!
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The Quartermaster Quest: Death Note Wammy Fan-Fiction by MRSJeevas
Matti might be Editor-in-Chief of Death Note News, but she's better known elsewhere - writing under the unfortunate moniker of MRSJeevas - as the author of the It Matters series of Death Note fan-fiction novels centring upon Mello and Matt. To encourage other fan-fiction writers to submit their stories for these Month of events, she's been drifting out of her comfort zone to write short stories and drabbles on whatever character is our monthly focus. This time around, she's finally back on home ground, writing about a Wammy. In fact, THE Wammy. Enjoy!
The Quartermaster Quest: A Drabble Upon the Dreams of Quillsh Wammy
Everybody wanted Aston Martins these days; all drinking Martinis, shaken not stirred. But they were missing the point. Seduced by the flash and swagger of James Bond, seeing no further than the bravado and charm. Fleming's character had daring, that much was true. Plucky fellow and all that. But it was born of arrogance and the bankroll to fund it. The protagonist's sense that he was too elite to die; not through any true talent. Bond had just enough intelligence to follow his privileged past into an assumption of immortality. False trail. Shoddy thinking.
His imitators thought hedonism set Bond apart from all those other two-bit classy spies - that seemed everywhere from the pulp fiction piles to the silver screen in these days of escalating Cold War news. Ubiquitous in the background; sparking a backlash frenzy of unimaginative fashionable writers pandering to their half-asleep readership. No, the real thing that elevated Fleming's work wasn't Bond himself, but the gadgetry he carried on him.
And that wasn't Bond, James Bond, at all. That was the truly exciting position held by Q. The inventor(s). Bound by nothing but the outer reaches of his - or their - own imagination; boundless really in its lack of brevity. The creative force behind the flashy tapestry of the spy's rich world. Godlike in that way. So mysterious too, that single letter to denote a being controlling Fate from the background.
Q. Like Quillsh. His own first name. Thrilling to it the first time he read Casino Royale - 'see Q for any equipment you need' - twenty-two and suddenly knowing precisely what he wanted to do. Join the British Secret Service Q-Squad and invent things to save the world.
Only the reality wasn't like that at all. He was in. His family connections saw to that. But there was no Q-Squad in MI6 like the novels promised. Just order requisitions in triplicate; more paperwork than vision could withstand. No figure of Q as strode gloriously withdrawn into the shadows of the movie plots inspired by the books. Merely Quillsh Wammy labouring under the surrender of disappointment with petty bureaucrats (and worse, politicians) dictating his work-life with rigid demands. Tedious in their scope. No room for innovation. No Q. Not even a Bond. Just people who wished they were the latter and thought an Aston Martin purchase, celebrated with a Martini, could cut it for themselves.
The field guys called him Q and thought it funny. Wammy enjoyed the shivery honour of the title, at first; then realised the joke was on him and disdained them for it. People whom Wammy wouldn't trust with the key to the office petty change box given free rein with the treasury of Britain. Most of them raised to start wars, not intercept their onset and divert into harmless channels. Playing at national security as they'd arranged their tin soldiers in childhood. Like it was all a game.
It was the way they were raised. Q mused. Those with the wealth and connections to be here weren't those with the common touch to understand why they should change the world. Improve it. Make it safer. Most of them breed out of brain cells several generations back. Too lacking in much beyond what was and what should always be, in their opinion, immutable; and unfair.
In bitterness, Quillsh tried to tip the balance in his own small ways. Bypassing the limitations of that stack of requisition forms by letting his mind soar into the stratosphere of inventive bliss. Becoming the Creator. Q in actuality, not just name.
That earned him a final warning and quite a few dressings down for wasting public funds. So he did it in his own time. Wasting his hours on wandering through ideas, akin to Da Vinci in their scope, and enjoying them immensely. Then finding and patenting one, then more, that stood out as genuinely useful.
Of all the weird and wonderful, it was a tiny stop-lock that made him rich. In his own right wealthy beyond his uncle's wildest dreams. That sour old man for whom money and its acquisition had always taken the place of feeling or reaching further than himself. Who'd raised Wammy in name only as guardian; the reality being boarding school, held back for the holidays, as his uncle found it too distracting to have a child at home. Except for Christmas break, which was achingly boring and way too formal. Quillsh blocking out droning talk of the stock exchange and investment banking with mechanisms of the imagination, built silently as excitement, or diversion to replace the love lost with his long gone parents.
Uncle William was interested in his nephew now. Fascinated in fact, in his prospects and his bank-account. Lectures on the best stock in which to invest at the present time - naturally brokered through himself - didn't get more alluring with adulthood. Uncle William's interest being solely in the interest that could be due.
While Wammy's remained entirely with the Quartermaster.
The first orphanage founded was to thwart Uncle William, and to teach him something too. A little reaching out in assuage of his childhood; plus amusement. So many startled agents learning that power in riches didn't need to come with Martinis on a yacht; the Aston Martin waiting; an endless supply of fine foods and alcohol; the ladies dripping in all they could grab. Power came best in the adulation of young minds under his control, to cater for and educate according to Wammy's wealth and whim.
Such things confused them. Which suited Quillsh just fine. For he was an orphan and so was James Bond. A fact that seemed to miss them entirely. Maybe one day a young Bond might pass within his warden watch; and he could be Q.
For more Death Note fan-fiction by Matti, check out He Moves Me Differently - website for the Mello/Matt It Matters series - and those stories written for earlier Death Note News Month of events: Mu Amongst Fools: A Drabble from the Death of Light Yagami and Matsu's Musing, a Decade on: Death Note Matsuda Fan-Fiction.
Death Note Profile: Who is Quillsh Wammy?
Mr Wammy as played by Shunji Fujimura
in live-action Death Note films
Watari - aka Quillsh Wammy - is L's 'handler' in Death Note. He is also the founder of the Wammy chain of orphanages, including The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans.
Also known as Wammy's House, this was the institution which raised L, Near, Mello, Matt, Beyond Birthday, Linda et al. It is located in Winchester, England.
We first meet Mr Wammy under his guise as Watari, an anonymous figure clad from head to toe in a black leather trench coat complete with Fedora hat. He infiltrated a meeting of Interpol, wherein representatives of the world's law enforcement agencies had convened to discuss the Kira case. Watari was carrying a laptop from which emerged the electronic voice of L to address them all.
Later, as the Kira Task Force are invited to meet L and vetted by the same, Watari appears again, this time in the suited guise of his actual self - Quillsh Wammy, benefactor of the Wammy Group chain of orphanages and the man who trained L to become a detective.
He now facilitates his ward in his work solving crimes, acting as a handler, spokesperson or kind of butler. Noted mostly for organizing logistics of manoeuvres ordered by L; transferring the funds to pay for the same; and bringing copious amounts of cakes, sweets and other sugary things for L to consume whilst puzzling over his cases.
Elsewhere, it transpires that Wammy is a crack marksmanship, as well as highly skilled in espionage. He made his considerable wealth as an inventor.
Killed in the line of duty, during the fight against Kira, Quillsh Wammy is remembered as a 'great man' by members of the Task Force, lauded as the same by newspaper obituaries around the world.
Yet there is a darkness that hides beneath the surface of this seemingly amenable, altruistic man. As author Tsugumi Ohba put it, 'He's a guy who cultivates detectives for fun. That's kind of terrible, isn't it?' (How to Read: Death Note 13, pg 27). Well, in anybody's language, that's child trafficking and rendition, at the very least.
The Names of Quillsh Wammy
Death Note's Watari is alternatively known as:
キルシュ・ワイミー
Quillsh Wammy
Quillish Wammy
Kirushu Waimī
Kirsch-Waimi
Mr Wammy
真名
Wye Me
Originally, Ohba meant to call this character Shadow, as in L's shadow - a moniker with more than one inferred meaning, which fan-fiction writers would have had great fun exploring. However Death Note's editor pooh-poohed the name, telling Ohba, 'No, no! Anything but that!' Hence the author coming up with Watari, which he explained meant 'handler' in Japanese.
Watari's Vital Statistics
5' 7" (170.18cm)
8 stone (112lbs; 50.8kg)
Inventor; L spokesperson; benefactor of orphanages; collector of orphans; educator
Unknown, presumed single
Key Dates for Watari
May 1st 1933:
Quillsh Wammy born
November 5th 2004:
Quillsh Wammy killed
The Auguries of Quillsh Wammy
Born on May 1st, astrologically Quillsh Wammy is Taurus
Wammy's birth date of May 1st 1933 (manga) also factors into Shēngxiào. He is a Rooster in the Chinese Zodiac
However, the time-slip of the anime would have him born in 1936 instead. That means that now in the Chinese Zodiac Watari is a Rat
How to Read: Death Note 13 reveals that Quillsh Wammy's blood group is B
A Versatile Fixer - The Personality of Quillsh Wammy
Death Note 13: How to Read gives us an insight into the character of Quillsh Wammy, at least insofar as his author saw him.
The older man scores highly for versatility, talent, initiative/willingness to act, motivation and emotional strength. Not far behind are his only slightly lesser scores for creativity, social skills and intelligence. That he doesn't reach the topmost figure for creativity is a little surprising, given that Wammy made his fortune as an inventor. The ultimate creator, one might think, this side of actual divinity.
We do get a hint of the kind of things that Wammy invented, when he turns up in the Death Note manga with belts containing panic buttons. Not exactly Bond's Q, but in the ballpark.
As befits a man whose wealth and life has become devoted to raising children, his pet hate is 'dirty rooms'. Presumably plenty of those at Wammy's House. I can't quite see the like of Beyond Birthday, Mello and Near running around with a duster.
This is an attribute taken to extreme levels in the Death Note TV drama, wherein guests are sprayed with disinfection at the door. The interior of L's headquarters is kept pristine in its cleanliness, with Watari hurrying in to exchange L's shirt should a mere splash of food stain hit upon it. In most tellings of the Death Note story, it's also inferred that Wammy is a fabulous cook. At least there doesn't seem to be any travelling caterer providing all that confectionery for L that his handler regularly delivers.
Though it's nowhere stated that Wammy is an Englishman, it's implied in the location of his main orphanage for the training of gifted and talented orphans - Winchester, in England. A further clue is given in his most favourite thing in the world - Earl Grey tea.
It's never truly explained how Watari managed to become such a crack marksman either. His sharp-shooting is such that, in the Death Note manga and anime alike, he's able to fire a bullet which blasts a gun from the hand of Yotsuba's Kyosuke Higuchi, far below him on the ground. Wammy himself hovering over the scene in a helicopter at the time.
Nor do we learn where Quillsh Wammy acquired such skill in espionage, though he puts that to good use in Death Note, infiltrating various organizations to gain or deliver information. Not least a gathering of Interpol.
Nevertheless he passed on all this knowledge, and the thinking/morality behind it, to the children in his care. Maybe more clues to Watari's character reside in those he raised - how they turned out and what became of them.
Complete List of Wammy Kids in Death Note Canon
Genius children taken from wherever they lived around the world and installed in Wammy's House, Winchester. Here their 'special talents' were cultivated with a top class education, whereupon they were sent back out into the world to put those skills into practice. All of these individuals were nurtured by Wammy - or at least had their upbringing and training overseen remotely by him, as warden Roger Ruvie took orders from above.
- Name Unknown
Committed suicide at Wammy's House
(Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Case)
Shown on L's call/mailing list
(L: Change the World)
Appears only as character in
a DS Death Note game.
(L: The Prologue to Death Note)
- Mello (Mihael Keehl)
Joined the Mafia in a bid to catch Kira and succeed to the L title before Near did. When unsuccessful, he gave his life to help Near defeat Kira.
(Death Note manga/anime)
Letter Unknown
- Matt (Mail Jeevas)
Third ranked Wammy kid at the time of L's death. Matt ultimately stepped into the Kira case at the behest of Mello. He was gunned down and killed by Kira supporters.
Shown on L's call/mailing list. However the name is faded out to grey, implying that R is dead. (B's is the same hue.)
Shown on L's call/mailing list. However the name is faded out to grey, implying that V is dead. (B's is the same hue.)
Assisted L in the Detective Wars bio-terror case.
(Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases)
- Beyond Birthday
Tried to lure L out with a series of grisly murders in Los Angeles; impersonated L for Naomi Misora, before setting fire to himself in a failed suicide attempt; imprisoned in LA, where he suffered a heart-attack and died (presumably killed by Kira) on January 21st 2004.
Rescued Near from a remote village, where all were dying in a deliberate epidemic, and sent him to L. F was killed in Thailand when a US helicopter shoots down his trunk. However F was already infected with a deadly virus.
- Kimiko Kujo
Scientist - unleashed a deadly virus in her own bid to 'change the world' by wiping out its human population.
- Near (Nate River)
Mathematical genius, who de facto succeeded L at age twelve, when the latter was killed by Rem/Kira. With clues provided by Mello's martyrdom to the cause, Near was able to finally defeat Kira in the name of himself, Mello and L, ergo Wammy's House.
- Ryūzaki
Cloned from L's DNA and raised at Wammy's House as L's true successor.
(Death Note 2016)
Random Wammy kids
as seen in Death Note: Relight (above)
and Death Note manga (left)
- L Lawliet
Apparently the prototype 'special talent' Wammy orphan, for whom all the rest were raised as back-ups or successors.
At eight years old, L could beat up the other orphans in Wammy's House. He also discovered the delight in solving true crime cases, and thwarted the Winchester Mad Bomber. Beyond that he made his name as not only the world's greatest detective but, under pseudonyms, the 2nd and 3rd ranked too.
He was killed during the Kira case.
Became a successful artist. During the Kira case, she drew images of Near and Mello for the Japanese Task Force.
Shown on L's call/mailing list. However the name is faded out to grey, implying that T is dead. (B's is the same hue.)
Each skilled Wammy kid set loose on the world was assigned a letter by Watari. In L: Change the World, it's stated that this only occurs with the greatest, most intelligent of the Wammy's House outcrop. Kujo is according stunned to belatedly realise that she was afforded the letter K.
Dotted across various adaptations of canon, we've practically got the entire alphabet in Wammy Letters. With Watari himself indicated by the Letter W, only H, I, O, S and U are missing. However, some known Wammy alumni never divulge their letters. We don't, for example, know which Matt was assigned, despite him being third in the Wammy House rankings. Nor yet do we know which letter Ryūzaki will take in the forthcoming movie Death Note 2016, assuming that he takes one at all.
Meanwhile, by the end of the manga/anime Death Note stories, Near interchangeably uses both N and L. The latter earned post-Kira. Thus giving an insight into the fact that letters can be taken from their peers by successful rivals/successors from the same Institution. This is a system that Wammy himself must have set up.
Along with a code of ethics that apparently accounts for serial killers, abductors, biomedical scientists bent on mass destruction and the propensity of Wammy graduates to think it proper to die - or be killed - for want of a puzzle's solution.
The Faces of Watari
Quillsh Wammy Death Note manga
Quillsh Wammy Death Note anime
Quillsh Wammy Death Note Nintendo game
Quillsh Wammy Death Note: Relight
Quillsh Wammy Death Note live-action movies
Quillsh Wammy Death Note TV drama
Welcome to Wammy Month on Death Note News!
Better late than never, it's time to enter the shady world of Quillsh Wammy - sharp-shooter, collector of orphans, entrepreneur, inventor, master of espionage, international crime-fighter and, of course, handler for L.
Great man? Or the dodgiest villain to stalk the pages of Death Note, Kira notwithstanding? Can't wait to see where you leap with this one.
In an altered time-frame from advertised, Month of Watari will run from today until May 5th 2016.
It may cover more than the man himself - Mr Wammy; Quillsh to his friends; Watari to others - insofar as anything connected to or with him is also acceptable for publication during this event.
This means you may dig out your exposes of the Wammy House or contemplate its founder from Beyond Birthday's point of view - or any other of his kids.
Though please do keep it referring back to him if running with the latter. All Wammy alumni are bound to feature in a month of their own anyway.
How to Submit Content for Month of Wammy on Death Note News
You must be used to the form by now, but here it is again for those needing a recap or new to one of these events:
General submission page - various mediums through which you may contact us or send in files;
Cosplayer Questionnaire - for those feeling generous with their tips and advice;
Fan-art Questionnaire - for Watari artists happy to share their craft;
Fan-fiction Writers Questionnaire - for authors of Wammy fan-fiction kind enough to pass on their knowledge to those just starting.
We already have a few items in. As for the rest of you, off you go! Send in your Wammy stuff now!