Amazing episode! Second only to mind games, another great thing about Death Note are the sometimes ridiculously perfect plans that they come up with, like Light’s master plan or Higuchi’s capture. Although you have to suspend your beliefs as to how perfectly they work out sometimes, but when considered in ideal situations, they’re works of sheer brilliance.

Episode Rating: 9.5/10

Despite being exposed as a fake L and a new rivalry with N, Light’s team is given full control over the kidnapping and proposed exchange for the death note. With Sayu as the hostage and the death of the police director, Yagami-san can’t sit around idly. He decides to go to LA and negotiate, Light agrees but turns on his nice guy act and tells his father that if the time comes where he has to make a choice, to choose the one which will bring him and Sayu back alive.

Light’s plan of action is to track Yagami-san’s movements, waiting for a chance when they know Sayu’s whereabouts so they can rescue her without giving up the death note. However, nothing goes as planned. Yagami-san is approached in the airport and told to board a different flight, which is scheduled to go to LA but instead diverts to the desert and drops Yagami-san off. There he is lead into an underground enclosure, rendering satellite surveillance useless. With the investigation team already in LA, there is absolutely nothing they can do at this point.

In the tunnel Yagami is greeted by one of Mello’s men, holding Sayu at gunpoint in a strange contraption. The device is designed to provide a foolproof method of hostage exchange.

There are four chambers, two for the people doing the exchange, one for the hostage and one for the item being exchanged for the hostage. The chamber for the item has an opening on both sides, one so that it may be placed inside and another for verifying its contents. Once the item is placed inside, the chambers rotate so that the hostage can leave and the kidnapper can take the item. The whole thing is made with bullet proof glass to prevent a gunfight, and the hostage chamber has an opening so the kidnapper can shoot the hostage if anything goes wrong with the exchange.

Taking Light’s advice, Yagami-san makes the decision that saves the life of his daughter and gives up the death note. The death note is placed inside a missile which is fired, and Mello’s agent escapes in a helicopter. Near tries to track both the missile and the helicopter, but shortly after, the helicopter explodes and the missile signal is lost. Mello wastes no time in using his new toy, wiping out the known members of the SPK.

The whole ordeal ends in pretty much the worst case scenario for both Near and Light. Near loses almost his entire task force and with that, most likely the support of the CIA and FBI. And Light now has to worry about an unaccounted for death note with a mastermind owner, the L-like Near and maintaining his duties as Kira. However, as grim as the situation seems, Near acknowledges that it would have ended the same way regardless of who was in control, and suggests they work together from now on. Also, Near tells Light that he is almost certain of who carried this out, being Mello of course.

The episode ends off with yet another complication, a shinigami in the other realm reported a lost notebook, only to be told it was the one that Ryuk dropped. So the shinigami who it supposedly belongs to leaves for the human realm to get it back. Should he manage to do so, it will weaken Light’s strength as Kira, more on this later on in the thoughts section.

Thoughts

While I still hate Mello’s personality and ideals, I have to admit, he’s certainly on par with Light, L and Near. His plan was brilliantly thought and perfectly executed, and despite what I’ve said about third party interferences before, the shift in power it brings about it works rather well.

However, not only was Mello’s plan near flawless in thought and execution, Near and Light’s responses were rather pathetic. They both employed a “wait and see” attitude in regards to the situation. In other words, their actions were dynamic, responsive to the changing situation. As we’ve seen numerous times before, this never works. It’s always the plan that is thought out beforehand that will prove successful, while I admit that they weren’t in a position to control the flow of events, to literally sit there and wait for things to unfold was a tactic doomed from the start. But it just goes to show how capable Mello is, not to mention the amount of influence he holds.

I wonder how Light will cope with this failure. From what we’ve been shown, it’s the first time he’s screwed up so badly. To be fair, he’s been sitting around with little resistance for the past four years, so it’s understandable that his senses have dulled. But if you look at the situation a little more closely, it wasn’t necessarily a bad outcome for Light. He may have lost the second death note, but with that, the majority of Near’s team was disposed of and his support shattered. Also, Mello’s game of catching Kira leaves him in the most powerful position among the three, much like how he was able to manipulate L, he should be able to influence Near and Mello in their investigations, even more so since they don’t suspect him of being Kira. (or do they o.O?)

Still much hate for Mello though. Near and L have competitive natures that overlap with a sense of justice (albeit a little warped). Light has a really warped sense of justice, but it is undeniably effective. But Mello takes the worst from all of them, ridiculously competitive with absolutely no sense of justice, literally willing to do anything to win.

As for the introduction of the new shinigami, this has a multitude of possibilities. The first thing that we have to do is account for the death notes currently in the human world:

i. Jealous’ death note; formerly with the Japanese police, now in Mello’s control
ii. Rem’s death note; in Light’s control
iii. Ryuk’s primary death note; in Ryuk’s control
iv. Ryuk’s secondary death note; in Misa’s control

The one that the new shinigami is after should be the one that Misa is using (iv). Meaning that if she were to lose it, she’d lose her memories and more importantly, the shinigami eyes. But then again, if the new shinigami doesn’t have a death note himself, what incentive would Light have to just hand one over with no gain. If I were Light I’d tell him to go get Jealous’ notebook, a two birds with one stone deal.

But then again, these are just my (often insane) theories, most of which are thought up in the wee hours of morning in a sleep deprived state. It’s likely that none of these are even close to what will end up happening, but they’re still fun to come up with XD

So I’m left with nothing to do but wait until next week to see if my guesses are anywhere close to actual events, all the while dodging spoilers like the plague T_T

~ Shirukii ~