A Death Note blog with intermittent activity. My name is Elizabeth, I've been in the fandom since 2007, and I'm mostly interested specifically in DN canon. L is my favorite character, but I also like Misa, Naomi, and the NPA task force members.
What you will see here: only DN content and the rare personal text post. What you won't see here: very much about Light, the Successors arc, or most of the fandom's popular ships, unless someone made something very beautiful or said something very smart. Otherwise, those subjects just aren't my thing, but there are plenty of good blogs out there that cover them.
With this account, I mostly follow blogs that post primarily DN content.
aka why I am absolutely convinced the man on that picture is not B
Obviously, this is still a speculation though. I am not Takeshi Obata nor have I met Takeshi Obata nor have I even met someone who met Takeshi Obata. There is no way to be certain about his intentions.
For my part I can just say, it doesn’t make sense to me any other way than what I am about to detail.
Okay, this is the image, just so we’re all clear on what it looks like. What I love about this picture is that it’s a spoiler for the entire novel - and yet it’s right there at the start of the book.
It also is beautiful because it features all relevant characters of the book - L, Naomi, B and the victims. However, there are only two categories. Investigators and victims. Let’s like about the latter.
I’ve had much simpler reasons for thinking that this illustration was meant to represent L rather than B. The story implies that B only “looks like L” to someone who has never met L, because the book’s central twist relies on giving a description of B which is vague enough that it seems like it could plausibly refer to L, and because B is imitating what he’s been able to learn about L’s mannerisms. (When you go back and look at it again, his L impersonation isn’t very good: it’s intentionally over-the-top, sure, but that doesn’t preclude that it could also be inept.) Furthermore, you couldn’t draw what B actually looks like without giving away the entire plot, which hinges on the reader thinking that Rue Ryuzaki is probably L.
The breakdown of the symbolic meaning of the “eyeball tree” is a really astute catch. I’m impressed!