Hitoshi Demegawa

Demegawa is a short, stout man with narrow eyes, brown hair, and a mustache, frequently seen behind tinted yellow glasses. Early on he favors casual dress topped by a varsity jacket marked with a large letter H. Once his program Kira's Kingdom begins airing, he switches to a flowing white robe that suits his self-styled role as a holy figurehead.

Greed defines him. Demegawa exploits public emotion for the sake of Sakura TV's numbers and shows little concern for who gets hurt along the way. He is willing to broadcast deadly material, and when Soichiro Yagami comes to collect the Second Kira's tapes, he clings to them until a gun is leveled at his head. After the timeskip he begins building a grand temple supposedly in Kira's honor and solicits donations from viewers, a venture Matsuda dismisses as little more than a scam.

Demegawa first surfaces when Misa Amane mails four videotapes to Sakura TV to draw Kira's notice. He is eager to broadcast them, but Soichiro Yagami rams a police van into the building and seizes the tapes at gunpoint. Following the timeskip, Demegawa whips up a mob of so-called Kira worshippers and sends them to storm the SPK's headquarters, only for Near to scatter cash from the upper floors, leaving the crowd to abandon the attack and scramble after the falling bills. He then settles into the role of Kira's televised spokesman and devises new programming in the killer's name. When his appetite for money steers him away from Kira's wishes, Teru Mikami kills him, and Kiyomi Takada inherits his position. In the live-action film Death Note: The Last Name he is reworked considerably, surviving the story while remaining every bit as venal.