Touta Matsuda

touta matsuda

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omg YES ty! This is gonna be a long, disorganized ramble, so bear with me!

Touta Matsuda. My blorbo, skrunky scrimblo, love of my life, etc.

There are so many things about Matsuda's character that I could talk about. His impulsivity, his loyalty, his uncertainty... All of it makes a very real and very interesting character. And I think that a lot of his traits shine in one of the most horrifying scenes from his perspective: the Yellow Box Warehouse.

Like, let's take a step back and look at the numbers here. On one side of the warehouse, we've got a guy claiming to be L, and the three members of the old Kira Task Force that he brought with him. On the other side, we've got a different guy claiming to be L and three members of the SPK that he brought with him (oh. and the guy from the Task Force that got kidnapped in the mix). Outside, Kira's accomplice is lying in wait. So we've got ten people in all who are ready for the final showdown. The reveal. The evidence that will finally end this years-long nightmare and point to the true identity of Kira.

And of those 10 people, only one of them doesn't have a clue who Kira really is.

Light is Kira. Mikami is X-Kira and finds out who Kira is as soon as he looks in the room. Near and the SPK are all on the same page. Mogi and Aizawa know. Ide's a bit more on the fence but he wasn't completely in the dark. So Matsuda is the only one who goes in totally blind.

If anyone were to re-write Death Note purely from Matsuda's perspective, the Warehouse scene would go from tense to horrifying. To (nearly) everyone else there, this confrontation isn’t meant to reveal an unexpected truth, it’s to confirm something that they already know. But for Matsuda? Near's request to meet at the warehouse is, at worst, a tactic to once again frame Light. Because Light obviously can't be Kira, right? Light will show Near that he's wrong, and the investigation will continue as normal until the real Kira is caught.

But then Near presents that irrefutable evidence, and everything that Matsuda knew for over five years comes crumbling down. Light starts monologuing about how the world had to be fixed and how no one could ever make it as far as he did. Kira and Light are one and the same. Matsuda always thought that Kira was a well-intentioned person who was helping change the world. Ide and Aizawa and Mogi believed that Kira was evil, they were much stronger in their resolve than Matsuda ever could be. But Light had confessed to him once that he too questioned if what they were doing was right. If Kira was doing right.

Light has always been Kira.

And then comes the absolutely tasty part where Matsuda shoots Light. I love how chapter 106 is called "Intent to Kill", because it reminds me of how Matsuda and Light are foils to each other. Better yet, they can be compared against a man they both held such deep respect for, Soichiro Yagami.

See, Soichiro threatens to kill people a good couple times, and even holds a gun to his son's face, but he never has any intent to kill. In fact, he's never killed anyone, as (I think) Mello points out. It's almost kind of silly. Like, Soichiro draws the line at firing bullets or writing full names in the Death Note, and that's it? Everything else is fair game? Weird line to draw, but go off I guess.

Light, meanwhile, justifies killing thousands. But only with the Death Note. With the Death Note, his intent to kill becomes a righteous one, another step on the path to becoming God of a New World. The criminals deserved to die. Those who get in Kira's way deserve to die. Because Light isn't a serial killer. He's doing the right thing! Crime is going down, war has stopped, and Light is the only one who could have possibly gone this far and done this much good.

And then we're back to Matsuda. I believe the mafia raid is the first time we see Matsuda using a gun, and we see that he's damn good at it. So good, in fact, that he's able to fire only non-lethal shots to get the Death Note back. (Also, fun tidbit: I'm pretty sure he's the only one who doesn't go into the raid with a rifle, he's just got like, a standard-issue cop pistol with a light on it.) The same thing happens in the warehouse, at least initially. He fires at Light's hand to get him to stop writing. Then he and Light yell at each other for a little bit about (who else?) Soichiro. Light demands that Matsuda shoot the others, because he's the only one who understands Kira. When Matsuda hesitates, Light resumes writing Near's name. Then Matsuda fires again and again and again. Anything to make Light stop. Anything to make it all stop. But it becomes obvious that he's not just shooting Light as a deterrent. What does Matsuda say as he's doing it?

"He needs to die!"

The others literally have to drag Matsuda away before he can execute Light on the spot.

Matsuda is a character full of contradictions. He dedicates over half a decade to fighting Kira, but he doubts the whole time. He tries to follow in Soichiro's footsteps but in the end makes the same justification that Light did when he first started writing in the Death Note. This man is a criminal. He deserves to die. The Yellow Box Warehouse not only exposed Light's true colors, but Matsuda's as well.