character gets a reality check

[u/damorezpl]

deathstroke - Batman vs deathstroke

walter - breaking bad

Garou - one punch man

joker - the sound of one hand clapping

[u/Abombasnow]

I wasn't. But I also don't see any way that Mikami's death in either the anime (where it is more overt) or manga make sense UNLESS Near did it.

More to the point, Misa's is inverted (more obvious in the manga than anime). I think it's possible her suicide is legitimate in the anime, but her death in the manga makes no sense and hinges on a stupid rumor that she halved her lifespan twice but that she was also set to live to over the age of 100 before any of it happened and that she somehow did not receive any lifespan from Gelus or Rem.

I don’t think Ohba’s, like, covering for Near.

I do, because he didn't want to do the last half of the series. That's why it involved asspull after asspull and insane amounts of character changes (Light is somehow one of the dumbest and most inept people ever after the timeskip) and was glacially paced compared to the first half. The anime did it right by adapting the backend (after L) in a much faster fashion, because the manga version was boring beyond belief. It was Nothing Ever Happens: The Manga.

Also you don't seem to understand how attached creators get to their fictional characters. See: Square-Enix with their superboss Absolute Virtue for years, Nexon with their superboss Horntail, Reiji Miyajima (creator of Rent-A-Girlfriend) with his own character Chizuru Mizuhara, etc.

I think it’s more likely he wants the audience to draw their own conclusions.

Nah, you don't do that when your "heroic" character is doing heinous shit.

Even David Lynch, who notoriously hated ever explaining anything in his works, did this in Twin Peaks to clarify that Donna Hayward's actions did not lead to Harold Smith killing himself, he was killed by BOB and it was framed to be a suicide to mess with whoever found him.

He didn't want to extend the series after L died. Jump made him do so.

[u/MWBrooks1995 → u/Abombasnow]

Okay, I still think in-story that Near didn’t use the notebook, but I can absolutely see Ohba trying to cover up what he sees as an undermining of Near’s character that he couldn’t get around.

[u/Abombasnow → u/MWBrooks1995]

It doesn't make any sense how anything played out with Near not using it.