Let’s see, I’ll list the main characters’ zodiacs first and then discuss my thoughts! ^^ :
((Under ‘read more’ because it’s long .o.))
omfg this makes me so happy!!
i agree with you on light, but with L i think that poised can be applied if you think of it in the meaning of ‘composure’ rather than just being fancy and what not. and he obviously can make himself act however he wants to act (weird, like most of canon, but also totally normal and dumb, like on his phone call with matsuda, etc.) i think one of his defining traits is that he’s so in control of his outward appearance, while making it look very unstudied and natural. and with jealousy, the ‘childish and hates to lose’ thing comes in. like, he has to be the top dog in his field and he’s bothered by kira not just because he’s a murderer, but because he’s essentially usurping him as the ‘king of justice’
also i looked up misa’s sign and she’s a capricorn, which is kind of really incompatible for her (it’s technically my zodiac sign, or it was before the switch, and it’s totally wrong for me too.) it’s about being traditional and hard working and very cool and collected in temperament - which is not misa at all. alternately, takada’s zodiac sign - cancer - fits a lot more for misa, than capricorn does - which, coincidentally, would work well for takada
Two things I want to add to this, if I can.
About the original question: The Western Zodiac signs of characters from Japanese canons are almost always irrelevant. Blood type is the thing to pay attention to and is usually used in a similar “personality profile” way.
Nobody asked me, but I’m pretty sure that L’s birthday was just “lolhalloween” and not “let’s make him a Scorpio”—he’s honestly very Virgo, which is not his sign at all. He was intentionally not given a blood type in How to Read, which I think was probably a riff on his “mysteriousness.”
About the answer here: I think you’re on the right track with “bothered by Kira not just because he’s a murderer but because he’s usurping him as the King of Justice”… except there are a few things that I think are worth considering there.
One thing is that, regardless of how languid he tends to be, L has worked tremendously hard for many, many, many years. He doesn’t have a normal life… he doesn’t really seem to do anything but work. His collars are well and truly collared, to the best of the audience’s knowledge.They probably don’t need any further attention.
L seems to care more about having more work to do in the future—it’s never stated outright, but it seems to almost be an addiction for him—than about being “King of Justice” per se. But at the same time, he has worked so hard and put everything he is into his work, and then someone, who he quickly decides is probably a teenager, starts running around killing criminals. It’s not just competition, it’s shoddy competition from someone who cannot possibly have put in the hours! If the business is justice, Kira is cutting corners.
(I mean, I could go on for a while here acknowledging that, yeah, L typically directs people rather than doing the investigations himself, but Light is basically getting his info from the media and from his unwitting dad. There’s no implication that he’s even been involved in any police-style investigations of the people he kills in the first year, in spite of his history of being helpful on a few cases. L has done all the work; on some level, Kira must seem like such a poseur to him.)
This facet of L’s personality is all underlined by the “deals harshly with impersonators” thing in Another Note… Nisioisin seems to have been riffing on the same idea and taking it further.
(ETA: I had to run AFK, and while I was away, I thought of another way of putting this. Even though L’s methods are not considered ethically “professional,” he’s still definitely the pro in the story. To him, Kira is an upstart amateur with particularly objectionable methods… not just destined to be ineffective in the long run, but something he sees as evil.
So I think his fascination with Kira, past “how the hell are you doing this?”, is based largely in contempt.)