Daisuke Matoba

Matoba serves as the secondary antagonist of the live-action Death Note film series, surfacing only in L: Change the WorLd and its novel adaptation. He heads Blue Ship, a bio-terror cell, though his interest leans far more toward profit than toward the cause he champions. A blind, pale left eye marks his face, the surrounding skin scarred as if by fire, and he carries himself in a businessman's suit. Masanobu Takashima plays him on film, with John Murphy and Julien Chatelet voicing the English and French dubs.

On the surface Matoba is calculating and avaricious, the way he usually reads to those around him. The novelization keeps that core intact but shows him playing warm and encouraging to lift his followers' spirits, a performance meant to keep them loyal to a cause he privately scorns. He introduces himself by knifing a subordinate who dares accuse him of caring more about money than purpose.

Matoba accompanies Kimiko Kujo to seize the antidote, but Professor Kimihiko Nikaido destroys it first. Believing Kujo's lie that a cure still exists, he stays the course. The deception unravels aboard the getaway plane: as L closes in, Kujo tears an IV from Maki Nikaido, and a single drop of the girl's blood lands on him, seeding the infection. Bleeding and panicked, he begs Kujo for rescue and wails in terror at the prospect of dying, then erupts at her once he grasps there was never any cure, snarling that he had meant to sell it for millions and laying his greed bare. He is eventually dosed with the genuine antidote and survives, only to be taken into custody soon after.

Matoba sits at the head of NPO Blue Ship, the eco-terror group whose membership includes the manipulative Kimiko Kujo, who proves the real power behind the scheme, along with the timid hacker Asao Konishi and the violent Hatsune Misawa. According to intelligence compiled by the operative F, Matoba hails from Kanagawa, stands five feet eight, and is single. His quoted creed, that his recruits are chosen members destined to change the world, captures the false idealism he uses to bind them.