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midsummer-afternoon · 1 year

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꧁Kyosuke Higuchi Analysis꧂

This is an analysis about Kyosuke Higuchi, the 3rd Kira we are introduced to in the Death Note series. I’d like to make it clear from the start that this is not a post to condemn him or justify his actions—the main idea is to better understand his motives and who he is as a person by analyzing the things he says and does. Understanding Higuchi provides striking insight into other characters and the story as a whole.

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Okay, I should mention from the start that I will not be analyzing every single scene Higuchi is in, that will be too time-consuming and not really necessary. Instead, I've handpicked the ones I believe are most important to offer perception into who he is. The majority of this analysis will focus on the manga, because the anime does not cover as much detail about Yotsuba and some outside sources.

Higuchi makes his debut in Volume 5, Chapter 36. His features were probably obscured because we're not supposed to know which one of the Yostuba men were Kira yet. But can we just appreciate how funny (in an inappropriate way) this looks?? He's literally got the classic bad guy appearance being this figure in a dark room doing evil deeds. Also, I apologize that the manga caps have to be in Japanese, it's the only version available to me at this moment. However, I will provide translations and explanations.

So, just to summarize what's going on in the first two scenes, it's when Rem approached Higuchi. He's seems to be asking Rem to be precise that he can freely use the death note as long as he kills the criminals broadcasted on tv and she agrees. In the second cap, Higuchi says something along the lines of "This is a good trading business for both Rem and me."

From these first two scenes, we know Rem chose Higuchi to be the person to continue the Kira killings and use the death note selfishly as Light requested. We see Higuchi performs these killings without second thought or remorse, in fact, he's quite content with the circumstances going as far as to call this a "good trading business." We understand from the Yotsuba arc as a whole that Higuchi did not only target criminals but important figures in the business world for personal advantages. We can pick up from this that Higuchi is cruel, greedy, and has little to no respect for human life. He values attaining wealth and power to the extent he doesn't mind killing people who have done him no wrong. We get further insight to his motivations through things Light, Namikawa, and Mido will say, but more information on that later.

I'd like to bring up Halle Lidner here because during the time Higuchi takes over as Kira, he kills Halle's friend which eventually leads to her joining the SPK. This gives us some potential clues about Halle as a person too...Was Halle's friend an important figure in the business world? Was he or she Japanese because Higuchi's in Japan and the majority of his victims probably were? Personally, I believe Halle has connections to Japan. This could explain why Halle understands the language and seems to function well as Kiyomi's bodyguard. This allows us to come up with our own interpretations for her past that are not without basis. Alright, back to Higuchi.

The next scenes I've included are one of Yotsuba's meetings where the men speculate one of them must be Kira or have a connection to Kira because last week and the week before that, the murders decided in the meetings came true. Takahashi questions why did Kira start taking on murders like this instead of just judging bad guys? And we see here, Higuchi essentially tells him that Kira's doing this because it benefits Kira and calls Takahashi a fool. With this little scene we can pick up that Higuchi has no problem with being rude to people but this is perhaps one of his lesser bad qualities when you consider this is a man who kills for benefits and without remorse. Another factor to keep in mind is in a future scene Mido explains that Higuchi only forced Takahashi to join the Meetings of Death because he was considered less sophisticated than Higuchi and Higuchi needs someone like that to make himself look and feel better. So, it's fair to say Higuchi's an insecure person.

Here are some screenshots I took of Higuchi's page on the English Death Note Wiki. We're given a little background info about him which I'm going to try to use to gain better understanding about his history. My initial thought before I checked this was that Higuchi rose to a high position within Yostuba through underhanded tactics and/or he happened to have a connection. We get to see here that Higuchi does in fact have a connection through his father who's the president of Yotsuba Heavy Industrial. It seems Higuchi was probably able to become the Head of Technology Development through this connection and his abilities, I guess. Despite we know that Higuchi tends to be considered one of the less intelligent and less capable folk, he can't be completely incapable in the brains department since he does have 6/10 in his Knowledge Stats.

Now I want to talk a little bit about this scene, when Hatori fearing the potential reality of ending up in jail says he wants out of the meetings, to this, Higuchi assures Hatori he'll be dead by tomorrow with a creepy smile on his face. Let's face it, the other Yotsuba men probably figured out Higuchi was Kira right here, because he's able to say this with such confidence. This scene reiterates Higuchi's cruelty and lack of respect for human life.

So, this is at scene when Namikawa makes the point about how Kira desires status to which Higuchi claims that's 「くだらねー」 which translates to "crap" in Google Translate but in this context, it probably means something along the lines of "how stupid/dumb." This is important because Mido does make a point about this later...which you will find out when we get there. 😁

And now we have a scene with Shingo Mido's look alike Light Yagami (or is it the other way around? I mean, Mido is older than Light, but Light is the MC of this story...) Sorry for the lame joke lol. But anyways, I want to show these two manga caps where Light notices the difference between the Kira killings from before and after he was confined. When Light was Kira, Kira did not kill criminals who had no intention of killing, those who accidentally killed someone and those who had room for extenuating circumstances. To put it simply, Higuchi kills criminals without taking into account if the criminal really deserves to be punished...I hope I explained that well?

Next, I want to discuss the episode where Misa goes on a date with Higuchi to trick him into revealing he's Kira to help Light return to power. At first, I will admit, I thought Higuchi's actions didn't make too much sense and it was a plot device for the most part. But looking at this from the perspective of somebody who's not supposed to be one of the great brains of the series and taking into account having the death note made Higuchi blinded by power it's more believable that he would start to get careless and make mistakes like this. Also, it has to be kept in mind Higuchi has no idea Misa's in love with somebody else and he probably thought Misa might marry him to be something like an arm trophy wife. Something else I would like to point out is how this scene was slightly altered in the anime. In the manga, we just have Higuchi getting into Misa's face at his most aggressive, whereas in the anime, Higuchi physically took her down and towered over. It almost looks like he is about to r*pe her, thankfully, he does not. But I think it is quite a significant difference, perhaps he's even more of an aggressive pervert in the anime than he was in the manga. Personally, I don't like this change because if Higuchi was not depicted in the style of an almost potential rapist in the manga that should not be so in the anime as well.

Here's another scene we're shown how the Yostuba men in particular Mido and Namikawa (though it's probably reasonable to say Shimura as well) have figured out Kira is Higuchi. In this scene, Mido, Light Yagami's Yostuba counterpart, makes a point about how Higuchi needed Takahashi to make himself look better and of the group Higuchi is the one most obsessed with status. The way he talks about how status doesn't matter to him shows how much the opposite is the truth. Namikawa goes on to talk about how Higuchi makes fun of people but can't use them well and it's caused him to be demoted in the past. Now, one could dismiss these comments as Higuchi's colleagues badmouthing him because they dislike him but I'm inclined to believe this is all true because Higuchi's actions have proven all of this. It also brings us back to the point that Higuchi is not one of the more capable characters in this series.

This is another scene that proves Higuchi's lust for power and status. He's gleefully declaring that he now has the Shinigami eyes because he has stopped the Kira killings for 3 days like Misa requested so that she will marry him. He goes on to say he's going to tell the president (of the company) let's just say "CEO" because I'm about 99% sure this is what he means, that he is Kira, he's going to first get a promotion, then someday become the CEO himself and then those six will be...And then he gets cut off because he gets that call from Namikawa to turn on Sakura TV and the demise of Higuchi begins. Before we move on to the next part, in this scene we learn the more specifics of Higuchi’s motivations all along, he wants to become the CEO of Yotsuba and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to achieve this goal, especially since he was given something as powerful as the death note.

I've fast forwarded to this scene when Higuchi finally makes the Shinigami eye deal with Rem. So we've known this whole time he didn't have the Shinigami eyes which is a lot of the reason he wanted Misa (whom he believed had the eyes at the time) to be his wife. Higuchi didn't want to cut half of his remaining life span for them, and well, it's easy to understand why it's a heavy price to pay. But I guess from this scene itself we learn that if he is pushed far enough between looking at a life in prison and/or death penalty or living a shorter financially prosperous life, he chooses the latter and decides the deal is finally worth it.

I will fast forward once more, to the part here when Higuchi, in a final act of desperation takes himself hostage. We could use this scene as proof of how dumb Higuchi is, but I personally do not think taking this action when under extremely stressful circumstances is unrealistic. People under extreme pressure could do things that could look ridiculous to those who aren't. Even Higuchi in this last panel acknowledges this, declaring that his life is over.

We know after this Watari shoots the gun out of Higuchi's hand and Soichiro and Mogi arrest him.

And then Light got his death note back, regained his memories, and killed off Higuchi.

However, this analysis is not done just yet, you see I would like to now take this opportunity to talk about how in the Death Note films, Higuchi and Kiyomi's characters were combined. And this might be looking too deep into it, but I doubt the choice was completely random because instead of using Higuchi or Kiyomi, they could have just added a new character. I believe this was done because the movie makers (either consciously or subconsciously) might’ve noticed Higuchi and Kiyomi share certain traits in common. They’re both highly jealous people who lust after power. They’re both obsessed with having others envy and admire them, but try to conceal this fact due to their pride. However, I will say I think Kiyomi is not as morally depraved as Higuchi, has a little more respect for human life than he does, and is more intelligent/capable but that’s beside the point.

Furthermore, in my opinion the film creators did a great job with this because they did not simply swap Kiyomi with Higuchi, but rewrote Kiyomi to be a more intriguing villain—that and Nana Katase is a great actress. Kiyomi was different from Higuchi in how she was able to make decisions and take actions on her own when she became Kira. If you haven’t watched the films, I want to encourage you to do so. The female characters are handled much better and Kiyomi easily became my second favorite female character in the movies.

To conclude, I intended to offer some insights into Higuchi's motivations and character while also making a point about how understanding him helps us better understand seemingly unrelated characters like Halle and Kiyomi. There's always so much more that goes on beneath the surface, that ignoring side characters can cause a person to miss out. Higuchi is, to put it simply, greedy, insecure, and has little to no morals whatsoever. He shows us this in how he would kill innocent people to criminals who don’t deserve the death sentence, use Takahashi to try to make himself look better, and would try to take over a company through murder and threats. Higuchi is an excellent example of how power in the wrong hands can blind someone and the chaos they can create due to low moral character. And I’m not exaggerating Higuchi’s actions ruined Yotsuba and took the lives of many innocent businessmen and women. l think Higuchi is interesting, and I can fully appreciate him as a fictional villain. Higuchi is my second favorite Kira, when I say this, please don't misunderstand this as I like him as a person standing in the same room with me or wish for him to be my friend…I bet however, nobody can ever guess who my No. 1 favorite Kira is. 😆 Anyways, thank you so much for reading this post. I sincerely hope it was worth your time. Have a great day/night. 😊💖

#death note #meta #opinion post #analysis post #kyosuke higuchi #light yagami #reiji namikawa #shingo mido #misa amane #kiyomi takada #halle lidner #death note films #sakura babbles #🌸🌸🌸#♡♡♡

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