Behind the Creation of L - Death Note Series

Death Note is one of the most successful manga's of a detective genre. The main protagonist of this manga is L. Here is the story of the creation behind the most cleverest detective in the world. The story writer of Death Note Tsugumi Ohba says that L was created to represent justice and as an equal force to oppose Light and Light's goals. Ohba assumed that the story would not be very interesting if L was significantly older than light so with that thought in mind he created L as a young adult. For the name L, Ohba wanted to use a single letter with a lot of significance; he considered "I" and "J" but decided that they were not as good as L and so chose L after careful consideration.

L's alias of Ryuzaki was given to him because of a pervious murderer that L had captured who went by the name of Rue Ryuzaki. Ohba said that he left all of L's character design to the artist of the series Takeshi Obata. Obata asked Ohba if L could be "unattractive." Afterwards Ohba included several ideas about L such as his mannerisms, the way he sits and his interest in sweets. Obata said that L's possible designs by Ohba had no bags under his eyes and that L had a "plain face with no expression" and found it very useful. During the early manga development stages, Ohba feared that L would appear to be "so suspicious that Light would know instantly it was L if they ever met." And so when Obata's editor told him that he wanted L to have a face "looking cool" and so Obata added bags under L's eyes which he cited from Devilman's Akira Fudou saying that he believed that black bags were appealing. They also had potential ideas of giving L black eyes but they thought this would make L seem too goofy and that the bags under the eyes "sharpen the character's gaze."

Obata believed that the design of the black bags under his eyes evoked a feeling of mystery and by giving of such a feeling it would make the reader unsure about what L would be thinking, again adding to the mysteriousness of L. The bags under L's eyes also attract curiosity about the lifestyle and past of L.In terms of clothing Obata gave L simple clothing which were a white long sleeve shirt and jeans this showed that L did not put thought into choosing his clothes. L's habits were decided best to be reveled gradually after his face was shown as if the reader was to see L with a mountain of sweets then the reader would question if L was a super detective and whether or not he was crazy.

Both Ohba and Obata stated that their favourite character to design and their favourite character in the series was L.