Matt

Brown-haired with deep blue eyes, he cuts a distinctive figure in the anime: amber-tinted goggles pushed up over his face, a striped long-sleeved shirt in red and black, blue trousers, and brown boots. Black gloves climb past his forearms, and at times he layers a fur-trimmed, sleeveless cream vest on top. The video-game rendition swaps his hair for a bluish-grey shade but otherwise leaves him much the same.

Ranked the third brightest child to pass through Wammy's House, he sits behind only Near and Mello and counts as the third potential heir to L. Technology is his domain, and Mello tasks him with keeping electronic watch over Misa, Mogi, and Aizawa. He shares Mello's deadpan streak, cracking jokes even with a gun pointed at him, though his easy confidence at the keyboard occasionally makes him careless.

By temperament he is a homebody who would rather game than step outdoors, his hideout strewn with snack wrappers and a box of cereal, a cigarette rarely far from his lips. His artist once summed up the concept as a young man absorbed in games and indifferent to the wider world.

He first turns up as Mello's accomplice, shadowing Misa Amane and reporting back by phone, then monitoring Mogi and Aizawa through hidden cameras. After briefly losing his targets when they slip away inside a delivery truck, he trails Mello all the way to Japan. His decisive moment comes during the abduction of Kiyomi Takada: Matt hurls a smoke grenade to scatter her bodyguards so that Mello can seize her.

When the guards corner him soon afterward, he attempts one more smokescreen, then calmly surrenders, only to be riddled with bullets. The escorts, fanatically devoted to Kira, had never intended to take him alive, insisting that death is the sole fitting penalty for crossing their god. Watching a news report of his friend's killing, Mello, who had not foreseen it, voices his regret.