Welcome to Manga Cum Loudly Presents: Death Note, Vol. 1, Chapter 6: “Manipulation”! In the previous installment, Ryuuku spends a lot of time flapping his spiky-toothed gums about the overwrought Shinigami rules for Death Noting, including stuff like a human being sucks but a Shinigami is awesome. They know people’s names just by looking at their faces. They get to siphon some extra years from their victims to add to their own lifespans.

Humans can get some of dem Shinigami powers too! It just costs half the rest of their lives, that’s all. Then they can get some Shinigami Eyes. Raito’s gonna do it because he’s an idiot. And now he’s going to start killing people just by looking at them. Probably.

Death Note, Vol. 1, Ch. 6
Written by: Tsugumi Ohba
Illustrated by: Takeshi Obata
“Manipulation”

Raito mulls this over. The whole “cut my life in half and go on a rampage” notion.

“Ryuuku, this deal…” starts Raito, and Ryuuku’s reaction is all “!”. It’s all “!”. He does a “!”.
“…is out of the question.”

Welp, that settles that! Let’s go hit the hot tub!

“I’m supposed to create a utopia without any criminals, and as God of this utopia, I have to maintain my reign for a long time,” concludes Raito Almighty. So, no shortening of lifespans. CLEARLY, Ryuuku should have already known this about him! I predict that he really will seek to lengthen his lifespan at this time. Fingale some Shinigami life-sucking powers somehow. And then he’ll turn Ryuuku into a human and kill him for even suggesting the lifespan-shortening proposal. Good god, man.

Ryuuku was just being forthcoming, is all! Don’t come crying to him later when you need to know L’s name and kill him quicker than you can find your little Jerkoff Book. Just remember, “we can make the deal at any time, as long as you own the Death Note.”

Cool, fine, cool, cool. What’s next on the agenda? We need to plant tomatoes, and– WAIT A MINUTE! IF THIS IS SO IMPORTANT, WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME WHEN EVER FIRST MET? Huh? Huh? Well? Do you speak English? Do you speak English? Answer me.

Ryuuku stares at this fucking psycho. He just can’t believe he’ll brazenly question and berate a Shinigami without a second thought. Amazing. Wonderful. He knew he liked this little sprat.

Arms folded, Raito continues staring the God of Hot Topic down. “Is there nothing else to tell me, Shinigami Ryuuku?”

Nice going, Mr. Omniscience. Mr. Know-Nothing.

BrrRRRtt! Better answer correctly. Boss is gonna be irritated if he finds out you withheld other information up to this point! Here’s hoping there are no more Shinigami Laws of the Land!

Luckily, Ryuuku told him everything! …he thinks. That’s too bad, though! Raito was hoping for some bitchin’ wings. If you could get some cool Shinigami wings, you could soar through the air like a godly dumbass albatross!

Ryuuku is like “BUUHHH, WHAT ABOUT THE POLICE?!”, and Raito’s like “you’re an idiot”.

“But you know what? If I did make those deals, I’d end up becoming a Shinigami just like you,” the kid muses. I’m not sure where he gleaned the idea that making these deals would turn him into an actual Shinigami. I missed that part. I heard the part about cutting his worthless life in half. I heard that part.

“There’s nothing to worry about there,” says Ryuuku, puckering up for a little ass-kissin’, “Raito, you’re already… A FINE SHINIGAMI!” Pfft, calm down. Say it, don’t spray it, and whatnot.

Funnily enough, the kid considers this an insult. I mean, from what he’s heard, Shinigami are a bunch of do-nothing trashy bums. Layabouts. Deadbeats with their faccid dicks in their hands! “Don’t compare me to the Shinigami. I’m using the Death Note as a human, and for humans!”

Good idea, Sparky. Those guys sure are worth your time and effort.

Raito cracks open his rag and studies the instructions that are inexplicably written within it. A “description” of the Death Note. Like, this thing was invented and there’s this whole how-to-use section like you can buy a bunch of them at Target. Anyway, Raito figures out how he can get the name of the guy who’s been following him for the last couple of days. So he can crush him like a gnat in his tender little fist. He checks the time: not even 6pm. And tomorrow’s Saturday! Perfect! Sounds like Raito is gonna pull an all-nighter here. Maybe it’s gonna be a big creepy seance with pentagrams and goat’s blood and spiky wide-eyed gods with studded belts.

…or not. The time and the fact that tomorrow is Saturday are INCONSEQUENTIAL to the next events. “If you write the reason of death, you will have an additional six minutes and forty seconds to write the specific details of death,” he recites from the book, “First I have to test how ‘specific’ these details can be.”

Luckily, Raito amassed a collection of convicted felons he can test this kind of shit out on. A bunch of arsonists and murderers and embezzlers and anime fans. It’s like baseball cards that double as voodoo dolls. Collect them all! Stick them with pins!

I gots me the Shirami Misaaki rookie card! “Burning down of family housing”. He’s an up-and-comer for sure.

He intends to make the guy following him think he’s squeaky clean and uninvolved. It sounds like he’s going to finagle himself an alibi while being watched to throw off the scent.

Raito’s father, Mr. Director of MURDER CRIME INVESTIGATIONS, gets a call on the official Murder Crime phone. SIX more heart attacks have been reported, and something funny is going on! THREE of them did something before dying!

The first guy, he goes by the name Shirami Misaaki. You may know him as Mr. Cuddly Arson Man, he drew a pentagram on the wall of his cell.

This other guy, Yadanaka something or other. Yadanaka Papadopolous McGillis. He wrote a dang suicide note! A cryptic message referencing Kira the Killer! Whoa baby, this is some juicy stuff.

This third guy, “Yoda”. From jail, he escaped. Collapsed in the bathroom, he did.

Watari wastes no time relaying this info to his butt buddy L. Even L is slightly unnerved by the strange behavior of these three suckers right before they ate it, but he takes a logical step back and QUICKLY SURMISES that, since Kira can control the time of death, then he can also manipulate his victims’ actions before their deaths as well. He decides this within three panels. So that was anticlimactic.

L gets Mr. Director on the horn right away! Don’t say anything other than “died of heart failure”! It sounds like Kira is testing some new waters here! Over and out! *bzzzt* *glub*

“Toying with people’s lives? I will not allow it!” says the Director, and I shall remind all of you that this stuffed shirt is Raito’s dad. He’s going to send Kira to bed without his dinner.

Ryuuku is always just chilling in Raito’s room like he’s a bored little brother.

Raito hacks into Director Dad’s database and sees the fruits of his labor already uploaded into the system. It worked! Everything he jotted down had happened right down to the last minute detail. Some real bonkers shit. It’s like, after all these chapters we still can’t believe everything the Death Note does! It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

So we heard details about the first three of the six heart attack deaths. What about the other three? Raito tried some impossible ideas, such as “die at 6:00pm in front of the Eiffel Tower” and “draw a picture of L’s face” and “write ‘I know L distrusts the police’”. The first two are obvious. Raito explains them to Ryuuku because Ryuuku is a moron, but YOU, loyal reader, I know I don’t have to insult your intelligence! The third one, as Raito explains it, supposes that the victim is unable to write anything about thoughts he’d never have about someone he doesn’t know about in the first place. Those three jailbirds just died of simple heart attacks with no strange circumstances accompanying the deaths.

So the Death Note isn’t as completely batshit magical as one would hope. Oh well. Guess we have to stay constrained to reality then. Like sitting ducks.

I’m beginning to suspect that this Ryuuku cat has some really fucked up brain damage.

These six victims, though, that was just a warm-up. Here comes the really fun one! “The next test will decide everything. The outcome of this test in the morning will be enough. L and the police won’t see this one at first,” Raito mutters as picks his mark and jots down some notes.

“And even L will never discover my true purpose,” he adds, snickering to himself like a mongoose-faced snake in the grass! He’s going to fabricate some nonsense words and drawings for the victim to draft up, leading the police on a wild goose chase based on something completely meaningless!

L, meanwhile, pores over the suicide note in an attempt to pinpoint Kira’s reason for experimenting with the victims in this manner. The fake suicide note is just a bunch of purple prose that projects the dead guy’s alleged fear of Kira. “Definitely for Kira I am just…literally a prey.” Thanks, literally a broken English translation.

While inspecting the note, L spots something curious in the corner…

The next morning, Raito comes down for breakfast uncharacteristically early for a Saturday morning. That’s because the little masturbator wants to check the newspaper to see what’s what. He grabs the paper and sneaks back into his room with it.

“And the result?” Ryuuku eagerly asks, practically bouncing up and down in his 40-buckle goth boots. The victim was a convenience store robber who was stabbed with his own knife by the clerk. It was caught on the security camera, and ruled as self-defense.

“This Death Note is incredible,” Raito says in awe, “for my directions to be carried out in such detail!” You can see his chicken scratch in the book laying out the details: death from blood loss, stabbed at 1:30am by his own knife in a convenience store, yada yada yada. I don’t have to tell you again.

Raito is 100% sure he’s going to be tailed again today, so he sets up one more trap to further throw these investigators off. He’s going to use a guy he saw on the news last night who attempted bank robbery and ended up killing a teller and a customer, then he fled before the cops showed up.

“Nine o’clock…a bit early, but it should be fine. Let’s try a few people,” Raito flips open his 2003 cell phone. It probably has Snake on it. That was a fun game.
“Try a few people?” ponders a bewildered Ryuuku. His smile doesn’t even look that smiley.
“You know I’m pretty popular with the ladies, Ryuuku,” grins Raito. I don’t believe that for a goddamn second, kid. This 17-year-old still pulls pigtails of the girls he sits behind in class.

His phone call wakes up some girl in her bed. We don’t know who she is. We don’t know why he’s calling her. And that’s the end.

Final Thoughts

Man, I really want to see the police face-fuck this kid. Are we supposed to be cheering him on? He’s so smarmy and cocksure. Makes me want to write his stupid name down in a notebook of sorts!