تَنسيقي وآعدآدي 
 "It's not just the notebook I'm after. I wanna eliminate my competition. I will be the best. I don't care what it takes. I'll beat Near by any means necessary." Mello (メロ, Mero)  , is the oldest of L's two successors, raised at Wammy's House—Watari's orphanage for gifted children in Winchester, England. When Roger decides that Mello should work with Near to capture Kira, he refuses, citing an inability to work with somebody he is considered "second" to. He leaves the orphanage soon after, stating "I'll find my own way," and eventually seeks help from the Mafia. Mello has blonde hair and blue eyes. He later gains a large scar on the left side of his face, after initiating an explosion of the mafia hideout in order to escape being captured. Mello is usually seen wearing dark leather clothes. The manga depicts him wearing a red colored rosary and a cross-adorned bracelet. In the anime however, the cross has been edited to be a stick (the horizontal portion of the would-be-cross in not present). He also carries a gun that, in the manga, has a cross attached to a chain that hangs from its handle.  While Mello is certainly a genius and more intelligent than most people, the concept of being only the second most intelligent person in Wammy's, behind Near, fuels the inferiority complex that defines Mello's character.[1] Mello verges on being immoral in his obsession with being the one to take down Kira and is willing to do "whatever it takes". Tactics which include kidnapping Director of the Japanese Police's daughter (Sayu Yagami), and having a member of the mafia write down most of the SPK member's names in Sidoh's Death Note. In the manga, after Mello has successfully stolen a Death Note, he even goes so far as to attempt to blackmail the President of the United States via telephone into giving him funds and resources to aid his hunt for Kira, threatening that if his demands are not met he will use the Death Note to force the president to launch the United States' nuclear missiles and start World War III. Arguably, Mello isn't even trying to defeat Kira out of a sense of "justice", but because capturing Kira will prove to the world that Mello is indeed the worthy successor to L as the world's greatest detective, and not simply runner-up to Near, or as Mello describes his goal in his own words, "I will be the new Number One!" The artist of Death Note, Takeshi Obata points out in the book Death Note: How To Read 13 that Mello's envy and hatred of Near was only one-way, and that Near "honestly liked Mello". The book states that Mello isn't purely evil, citing his apology and genuine care for Matt's well-being, as well as earlier in the series when he apologizes to Soichiro Yagami. It also states that Mello has an excellent mind and that he sometimes lets his emotions get in his way. Tsugumi Ohba, the writer of Death Note, stated that Mello works hard for everything. Similar to L's fondness for sweets, Mello often eats bars of chocolate, even when talking. In the manga, Mello is often seen licking the chocolate before eating it. Mello also has a habit of bending his right leg up while sitting, often with his left leg turned outwards. He tends to alternate between that pose and simply crossing his right leg over his left leg. Another thing about him that is very like L is his tendency to take drastic strategies to confuse and force the hand of his opponents.  Mello is first introduced to the story as a young teenager at Wammy's House. After playing outside with some other children (and hitting one in the head with a soccer ball), he goes inside and is found by Roger. After taking Mello's hand out of a young boys hair, Roger brings Mello to his office, along with Near. Roger informs the two children that L has died, gaining an emotional reaction from Mello. Mello quickly asks if L chose him or Near as the next L. Roger informs them that neither had yet to be chosen, and asks if the two could work together. Although Near agrees, Mello finds it impossible to work with Near. Mello then states that Near should be the next L, citing Near's ability to stay calm and use his head. Mello tells Roger that he is leaving the "institution", being almost fifteen and capable of living on his own. He then leaves Wammy's House. Mello decides to find Kira his own way, and nearly two years after leaving Wammy's House he joins the Mafia, which accepts him as its major adviser because it has the shared goal of taking down Kira. Mello proves his ability to them by tracking down a rival mob boss of whom even Kira could not discover the identity.  Nearly four years after L's death, Mello learns about the Death Note from Ill Ratt. Ratt, a member of the newly formed SPK, begins leaking information to Mello soon after the SPK first meets. Mello obtains one of the Death Notes from the Japanese Task Force by having the Mafia kidnap Soichiro Yagami's daughter, then exchanging her for a Death Note. Mello is then successfully able to retrieve the Death Note by fooling the police into thinking it was being transported away from the exchange via helicopter, until revealing that it had actually been loaded onto a missile, which was too fast to be tracked once launched. Having successfully outwitted Kira, Mello's men retrieved the Death Note, and he began planning how to use it. However, Light Yagami discovers the location of Mello's Mafia hideout by having Misa Amane use her Shinigami Eyes to discover the identity of one of Mello's Mafia accomplices, and then uses the remaining Death Note to make him mail Light the Mafia's location. The indirect result of this is that the Shinigami Sidoh, who is the original owner of the Death Note Mello now possesses, also finds out Mello's location and is able to get there first. Sidoh briefly strikes up a loose alliance of sorts with Mello, revealing to him (in exchange for some of Mello's chocolate) that two rules in the Death Note—particularly the one saying that "if the user does not kill once every 13 days, they will die" -- are fakes. Mello begins to theorize that whoever Kira was, he probably used that rule to fool the Japanese police into thinking he was innocent. Mello appears at the home of Halle Lidner, who has been passing information regarding the Kira case to Mello. Mello forces an entry into the SPK while holding Lidner at gunpoint, intending to retrieve the one existing photograph of himself from Near. After Near states that Mello has been a big help in Near's investigation, Mello becomes enraged and turns his gun on Near, saying that he isn't Near's tool to solve a puzzle. The SPK members all draw their guns on Mello, though Near orders them to lower their weapons. Lidner tells Mello that if he shoots Near, she well have no choice but to open fire on Mello. She then states that it won't do any good for the investigation if both he and Near die, to which Mello finally lowers his gun. Near gives Mello the photograph, and Mello says that he is going to repay his debt to Near. As payment for the photograph, Mello gives Near the information from Sidoh about the two fake Death Note rules. Each wryly promises the other that the race is on to see who finds Kira first, and Mello leaves. This meeting between the two successors has a profound impact, as the information Near receives from Mello drastically sharpens Near's suspicions on Light Yagami. Mello enlists the help of his friend Matt to spy on Misa. After learning that Light is Kira and Near was going to attempt to apprehend him, Mello kidnaps Kiyomi Takada, by having Matt attack Takada's motorcade with a gas grenade. Mello then drives up on a motorcycle, while wearing a helmet, and offers to take Takada to safety. In the confusion, Takada agrees, not realizing it is Mello until it is too late to get off. After a chase, Mello is able to evade Takada's guards on his motorcycle, and lock her in a shipping truck. While driving her to a different location, Mello sees on his portable television that Matt was cornered by Takada's guards and killed in a hail of gunfire; Mello then apologizes for Matt having been shot. Mello forces Takada to strip in order to get rid of any tracking devices, however, he allows her to cover herself with a blanket. This proves to be his undoing, as she had a piece of the Death Note hidden in her clothes, and the blanket allows her to hide it. Takada uses the hidden piece of Death Note paper to kill Mello. This action causes Teru Mikami to expose his own Death Note to kill Takada, not realizing that Light already killed her (by having her set herself and the truck on fire, in order to destroy all the evidence), using another piece torn from the Death Note, which secretly carried with him. This alerted Near's agents to the location of the real Death Note, hidden by Mikami, which then leads directly to Kira's defeat by Near. In the end, Near tells Light that Mello realized neither of them could live up to their predecessor, L, on their own. Therefore, Mello worked with Near up to his death - and after. Near reflects on this during the final showdown and credits Mello as the single most pivotal person in discovering Light's plans. Halle Lidner further believes that it was Mello's plan all along that he would be killed, knowing that the only way to reveal the true location of Mikami's Death Note was to force him to immediately need to kill someone, but Near disagrees. BRB |
