Naomi Misora — An Opportunity That Could Have Made the Anime “Death Note” Perfect
Naomi Misora is a “first rate” FBI agent from the anime series Death Note. At first glance, she is an ordinary girl, but as a matter of fact , it has been said in many instances that this character is one of the smartest characters in the series.
Since we have geniuses with sociopathic tendencies in this series, Naomi seems to get lost among them. This is supported by the fact that she is given very little screen time. However, it is a truth that we must admit that Naomi is also a member of the ranks of geniuses of the series. This is confirmed by the investigation she conducted, in which only she took part, and by which she only herself found out things that L’s working group had no idea about and about which they put much more work and more resources to find out.
As we know Raye Penber, Naomi’s fiancé, was telling her the updates about Kira’s investigation. It was from this news that Naomi recalls the moment her fiancé revealed his name on the bus. As a consequence of this, Naomi thinks that Kira must be sitting in the same bus as her fiancé and it was absolutely true: “My fiancé… and the convenience store robber… and the busjacker… were all used by Kira in order to murder the FBI agents in Japan. I’m convinced of it.”
She actually manages to figure out a few things, which are extremely important in Kira’s investigation whereas genius investigators of the series took an absurdly long time to determine these details. However, the viewers of the series appreciate these investigators much more than Naomi which, even according to this fact, we can say that it should not be so… Reality tells us that Naomi is a smarter investigator than all of them. She has a strong hypothesis with which she can end the series suddenly and very easily with of course Kira’s revelation although it didn’t happen…
Instead, the writer thinks to put forward another example of lying, manipulation and insightfulness from Light when he forces Naomi to tell him her real name. With this, the creator once again highlights Light’s great intelligence, but the show loses a character who is needed like air in the series due to the lack of strong female characters.
How does Light force Naomi to tell her real name? Let’s recall these moments. When Light hears so much information and realizes that Naomi is too dangerous for him, he begins to identify her. He tries to find out in different ways, but Naomi does not reveal her real name, which makes things difficult for him. Eventually Light says that he is a member of Kira’s investigative team and that he is working with L. Naomi is shown to be so emotionally weak that she believes Light’s trick and she gives her driver’s license to Light, after which, not unexpectedly, Kira kills her. When Naomi asks Light why he is doing this, Light says his iconic phrase: ”Kira dakara”- because i am Kira, after which he asks if there is something wrong, but Naomi refuses to talk to him, continues on her way and says: “There is something I’ve got to do,” and then we see how she kills herself…
Naomi is portrayed differently in the live-action series, where she has more of an impact on the plot, although there she is also killed by Light…
What does the manga creator say about Naomi?
Tsugumi Ohba, the creator of the Death Note manga, says that Naomi’s character reveals the entire plot of the series so quickly and so conveniently that keeping her alive would have become a problem in the development of the plot. In accordance with this fear, Ohba decides to end Naomi’s story too soon, even if it was an illogical connection, he “had to do it” as he says. At the same time, the creator notes that this character turned out to be the most difficult character for him in the entire series, which once again emphasizes the complexity of her.
But of course, all this does not change the fact that this amazing character was not given more screen time and was passed so easily when they could have turned her into one of the main characters.
Naomi is actually a very well written character until she meets Light. After meeting Light, it’s like they just subtract 50 points from 100 and start stereotyping her. However, we must admit that she was portrayed with stereotypes even When we were shown how Naomi loved her obnoxious, disrespectful, sexist fiancé because of which Naomi even left her job. In a personality change after meeting Kira I mean, she’s portrayed as an emotional, weak woman who Light manipulates, spins stories on, and then makes her with his skills tell her real name and finally, with the help of the Death Note, he forces her to kill herself. There’s probably no sexist death quite like that!
The funny thing is that Naomi’s character was initially created with the idea that she would have a big role in Kira’s investigation, however, it was a “natural and interesting development” for her to start looking for and investigating Kira after her fiancé’s death. According to the creator, this turned out to be one of the problems with this character. Because of that, they “had to kill her.”
Naomi did not turn out to be enough for the creators, and they again preferred the old “genius games of two men”. With this, the series lost the opportunity to be one of the best, because I believe that Naomi’s presence in all two seasons would make the series doubly interesting.
Long story short, it is a great heartache to see such a strong and complex female character, especially in a series in which there are so few female characters, be killed so suddenly and without logic. It is especially sad when they try to portray such a smart woman as weak. I hope future manga and anime creators don’t repeat the same mistake.
