WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the Death Note: Special One Shot, by Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata, Stephen Paul and James Gaubatz, available in English from Viz Media.
Nearly 15 years after the original Death Note manga series came to an end, co-creators Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata are back with an 87-page special. As we're in firm sequel territory, fans of the popular franchise will be unsurprised to hear that the one shot doesn't star the first story's egomaniacal protagonist, Light Yagami, who met his sticky end the very same supernatural way he'd been using to inflict his own brand of murderous justice on Japan with.
That's not to say that Light's presence isn't felt throughout this one-off epilogue, though. Or, rather, Kira's presence -- the moniker that the teen genius used to protect his true identity from the assortment of law enforcement agents and young detectives hot on his trail, as well as the rallying cry that his followers used to worship him as a righteous god of death. The power to kill anyone from anywhere was bestowed on Light by Ryuk, an actual god of death (or Shinigami) by way of a Death Note, where Light could write down the names of those he wanted dead.
The one shot sees Ryuk, in search of -- what else? more tasty apples to be fed -- passing on Light's Death Note to another teen boy in 2013, a decade after Light received it. That boy is the equally studious Minoru Tanaka. Minoru is even more hesitant than Light initially was to accept such an infamous murder weapon, eventually deciding not to use the notebook at all. Instead, he creates his own single-item black market for the Death Note, promising -- through notes held up by an invisible Ryuk during news broadcasts on television -- to award the book to the highest bidder... who ends up being President Donald Trump.
When Ryuk first appears to Minoru, he lets out an interesting insight into the "Kira effect" ten years on when he learns who the Death Note's previous owner was: "You mean the Kira? The Kira who eliminated war and greatly reduced crime rates?" The Shinigami is surprised, perhaps impressed, at Light's legacy. "Wow, really? They treat him like one of the greats, huh?" Minoru then clarifies his comment: "No, no. In Ethics class they taught us that Kira was evil. And in World History, he was described as a mass-murdering terrorist, the worst in recent history. But there are also lots of people who say Kira was a god."
It seems that however extreme Light's tactics were, he's ultimately achieved his goal of rinsing his country of crime, even if the history books aren't painting him out to be the avenging angel he saw himself as. But, by the end of the one shot, public opinion appears to dramatically shift in Kira's favor.
Once the bidding on the Death Note passes the quadrillion yen mark, Minoru overhears his classmates discussing Japan's status as the "most indebted nation in the world." One of them excitedly suggests that they "get Kira to pay off the whole thing." It's never clear what Minoru was planning to do with the money originally, but unbeknownst to his peers, he takes this idea to heart.
Rather than handing the money over to the Japanese government, however, he goes for the Robin Hood method: distributing it amongst every person under the age of 60 with a Yotsuba Bank of Japan savings account in Tokyo. (The name is a reference to the Yotsuba Group, who wanted to use Kira's killings for corporate gain.) That works out to one billion yen per person, or $10 million.
And just like that, Kira's standing in Japan seems to flip from one of the country's most appalling mass murderers to one of its greatest financial benefactors, as cries of, "Hooray for Kira! Kira is our God!" fill the streets of Tokyo. Even Near, the current L, who has been keeping track of events (and neglecting to cut his hair for ten years, it would seem) admits defeat. It's unlikely that this will garner him universal redemption; Kira's slate isn't one so easily cleaned by the sale of the century. But, it's an interesting place to leave things, and one that will no doubt only deepen the antihero vs. antivillain debate about Light that Death Note fans still obsess over to this day.