Mello

Golden-blond hair cut to about chin length frames his blue eyes, with bangs that drop just to his brows; his build is roughly average. A long scar eventually marks the left half of his face, climbing from his jaw to just under one eye, left behind by an explosion he triggers to break free. He favors dark leather and accessorizes with crosses, sporting a red rosary, a cross-studded belt, and a holstered gun. The manga's heavy crucifix imagery is toned down in the anime, where the cross is reduced to a plain bar.

Though undeniably brilliant, he is gnawed at by the knowledge that Near always ranked just above him, and that festering inferiority drives nearly everything he does. His fixation on personally bringing down Kira pushes him toward outright villainy: he abducts a police director's daughter, engineers the deaths of most of the SPK, and even threatens an American president into bankrolling him, dangling the prospect of a notebook-triggered nuclear war. What motivates him is less a hunger for justice than a need to prove that he, not Near, is L's rightful heir, to stand at last as the one on top.

For all that ruthlessness, he is not heartless. He genuinely treasures his friend Matt and is stricken by guilt over the deaths he causes, including the wound that kills Soichiro Yagami. Like the detective he idolizes, he subsists on chocolate, gnawing a bar even mid-conversation, and shares something of L's hunched, restless bearing. His creators note that, unlike the naturally gifted Near, everything Mello achieves is wrung out of sheer relentless effort, and that his bitterness toward his rival runs entirely one way.

He enters the story as a teenager at Wammy's House, summoned alongside Near to Roger's office and told that L has died without naming a successor. Unwilling to play second fiddle, he rejects Roger's plea to cooperate, flatly states that Near should take the role, and bolts from the orphanage. Three years on he resurfaces in America, winning the trust of mob boss Rod Ross by eliminating crime figures even Kira could not name. Tipped off about the Death Note by a mole inside Near's SPK, he first kidnaps the NPA director, then Soichiro Yagami's daughter Sayu, ransoming her for the notebook, which the Mafia spirits away aboard a radar-proof missile.

He slaughters most of the SPK, blackmails the president for surveillance and funds, and weathers the arrival of the shinigami Sidoh. When the task force storms his hideout, he detonates the explosives he has rigged, escaping with the scar that will mark him thereafter. Sheltering with SPK agent Halle Lidner, he eventually forces his way into Near's headquarters to reclaim the only photograph of himself, trading away his knowledge of the fake notebook rules in the bargain, a gift that sharpens Near's suspicion of Light. His final gambit is the abduction of Kira's spokeswoman, Kiyomi Takada, but it unravels: Matt is gunned down, and Takada, who knows his true name from Light, scrawls it on a hidden scrap of the notebook and kills him. His death is anything but wasted. By forcing Mikami to break his careful routine, it leads Near's agent to the genuine Death Note, and in the closing reckoning Near names Mello the single most decisive figure in toppling Light. Whether he engineered his own end to make that happen is left deliberately unresolved.