Tear Jerker / Death Note Series

Being Kira comes with a heavy price.^note Or did it?

All the sadness of the anime series involving a death-inducing notebook is now on the silver screen. Enjoy.

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Death Note

• Both the manga and film had Kira being born the minute Light picked up the 'Death Note'. But, whereas the manga had Light being bored with his life, here, it started when Light ended up being held at knife-point by a criminal at a bar. After Light frantically leaves, he angrily throws away a book in a bin, which was 'The Compendium of Laws',. You can just sympathise with him over his disillusionment over the biased justice system.
• Raye's death. You thought it was sad in the manga? Well, this version added one more emotionally devastating detail: Naomi ends up seeing her fiancé die of a heart attack incurred by Kira, right in front of her. She ends up screaming his name over and over, as she holds his corpse.
  • An extra thing: what was Raye's last words before the heart attack ended his life?
    Raye: Naomi?
• Shiori's death. In a hostage situation at an art centre, she takes the opportunity to distract her captor Naomi, so that she can get to Light's safety. However, Naomi fires a warning shot that critically wounds her in the chest, and she dies in Light's arms, but not before having a Last Kiss with him. Light's grief and anger at Naomi for doing this, followed by Naomi shooting herself out of shame and horror as the police frantically tell her to stop, will make you cry.
  Light: Why?! WHY DID YOU SHOOT HER? TELL ME!
  • Then, it becomes worse with the ending. Light reveals to Ryuk that he wrote both Naomi's and Shiori's names in the 'Death Note' beforehand. The entire art centre standoff only happened because Light wanted to stop Naomi from finding about his identity as Kira, and gain a motive for joining the Investigation Team. The nonchalant and proud way he reveals how he did it is soul-punching, because when you saw him cry and cradle Shiori's body, you fooled yourself into believing that he has a heart, even as Kira. And with this reveal, any sympathetic traits for Light immediately go down the toilet.
  • There is also this exchange in the conversation between Light and Ryuk.
    Ryuk: Shiori truly loved you. Didn't you love her at all?
    Light: (With watery eyes) I don't know.

Death Note: The Last Name

• The entirety of the finale.
  • As L fakes his heart attack in front of Light, his last words are "I've made... a mistake...". Seems insignificant, but when L reveals that Watari's death was never a part of his gambit to expose the two Kiras, that line becomes Harsher in Hindsight.
  • When Light and Misa believe they've finally killed L, Light decides to do one last thing: write his father's name to give him the second 'Death Note'. Misa is begging Light not to do this, knowing full well about losing a parent. But Light doesn't care about what she says, believing it's necessary to cover his tracks. What makes this hit harder is the fact that Misa's family was killed by a murderer, and Misa loves Light for killing the murderer. She was supporting a person who was willing to kill a member of his own family to cover his tracks as Kira, and that would leave her devastated, since Light is doing the same thing to his family that the murderer has done to her's.
  • Light's speech to his father, as the latter is seemingly at death's door. You can feel the sorrow and guilt in his words, as he is basically attempting patricide to finally become the "God of the New World".
    "Father. I've always been proud of you. You hate injustice, and try to be a good example to others. I still respect that. So I know... that you'd understand what I'm about to do. Father. (Looks at his watch) I'm sorry. Your time's up."
  • Then, there is the emotional punch in the gut when Light and the audience realise that the Death Note didn't work on his father. Although the audience may be cheering at Soichiro being Spared by the Adaptation, this still meant that he heard enough to prove that his son is Kira.
  • When L reveals that he is alive, he muses on how he thought Light was starting to become his friend.
  • The look of absolute horror and heartbreak on Soichiro's face when Light demands that Ryuk kill the Investigation Team and L. Kinda makes one glad we didn't see his reaction when Light wrote his name in the Death Note. It couldn't have been pretty.
  • Light's death in the movie. Dying in his father's arms, still claiming he was justice. The arms of the father he'd tried to murder only minutes before. Oh, Soichiro...
    "Father, you've got to understand."
  • And immediately after Light dies, this is when Soichiro fully breaks down.
    "You damn fool!"
    • The English dubs somehow make this worse: instead of "You damn fool", he instead says "how could you?" Chris Britton delivers some of the best performance he ever gave as the character, and there's no way to get away from that scene without crying.
  • L had to write his own name in the Death Note to prove Light was Kira. He eventually dies of a heart attack in an empty hotel room, when even his anime counterpart had people crying out for him and doing what they could to find his murderer. The last shot of him is his corpse slumped in his coach, just seconds after he said his last good-bye to Soichiro and told him he was a good father. And when L finally dies, the chocolate that he was eating falls from his hand, and lands next to a picture of the late Watari.
  • The one-year Distant Finale, where Soichiro tries to remind a crying Sayu that Light died trying to find out who Kira was. This means that he had to lie to his family about Kira's true identity, which they will never know.

L: Change the WorLd

• Maki, one of the kids L has to protect, decides not to kill the villain (who is also her father's murderer) and ends up crying as L holds her and says "You're a good girl. I believed in you."
• There's the bit at the end: L takes the other child, a little boy, to Wammy's, and finally give him a name: Near. He then hands him a bag, the newly-named Near looks inside and pulls out the toy robot he had liked in a store. Several moments later, as L leaves, his voice-over reveals that he's not ready to die; he wants to live longer. This was the culmination of L's Character Development: from someone who was relentlessly focused on solving his case into a man who had learned to care and appreciate life.
  • It is not helped by this song accompanying L walking off into the sunset.
  • Finally, the end credits have the song "I'll Be Waiting" by Lenny Kravitz playing, possibly symbolizing that L is there if someone is in need.
• The Stinger: It's just a scene of L eating a chocolate bar wrapped in golden foil, as he closes his case book. He then gets up and leaves. What's so sad about this seemingly unimportant scene, you ask? The chocolate bar was the exact same one that he was eating before his last meeting with Sochiro, and immediate death on the written 23rd day in Death Note: The Last Name. To make things worse, as the screen goes black, some text appears:
  L Lawliet
  Rest in peace

Death Note: Light up the New World

• Matsuda's death.
• After being told that Light may still be alive, Misa writes her own name in a Death Note, specifying that she'd die in his arms. As Light is without a doubt dead, she dies alone and with a sad look on her face, most likely having known all along that the possibility of Light's survival wasn't true and that she'd see him in death instead.
  • The kicker is the flashback in Death Note: The Last Name, where Light was hugging Misa. Her smile in that scene just showed how happy she was with Light, even if he was Kira. And then it cuts back to the present, with her unchanged, saddened expression as she sits there dying.
• When Nanase threatens to shoot Mishima, Arma writes her name down and saves his life, causing her own death. Ryuzaki bursts into tears and futilely calls out her name, knowing that there's nothing he can do to save her.
  • This becomes worse when you realize that this is the first time Ryuzaki expresses horror and sadness in losing his friend, in contrast to him being a playful joker throughout the movie.
• Ryuzaki dies exactly the same way as L did: writing his name down in the 'Death Note' to die in 23 days. But unlike L, who died in the comfort of his own tower, Ryuzaki dies on a prison toilet. And just to rub salt in the wound, L passed away in his usual sitting position, while Ryuzaki's corpse just falls to the floor.