Ivysaur

Why, now you can't get to sleep? XD

Hi! =D What's up? : 3

WHO IS NEAR?!??!



In Death Note, Near is the younger of L's two successors raised in Wammy's House, Watari's orphanage for gifted children, in Winchester, England, United Kingdom. Of the successors, Near is the more level-headed, calmly assessing the situation, while the other, Mello, is more emotional and quick to act. Much like L, Near shows various odd behaviors during his normal life. He is usually seen hunched over rather than sitting. He also constantly plays with various toys, which he uses in his theories, as well as idly twiddling strands of his hair. He shows a great respect for L, basing much of how he solves crime on L's methods, even to the point where he only takes cases that he is interested with rather than trying to pursue justice. Near uses the Wedding Text font "N" and "L" to represent himself and the fake L, respectively. But later in the aftermath, he used Old English font "L" like the original L did. He is voiced by Noriko Hidaka in the Japanese anime, and Cathy Weseluck in the English dub.

Sometime after L's death, he works for the United States under the SPK (Special Provision for Kira) team that is established to investigate Kira without the help of "L". He soon manages to deduce that Light Yagami, posing as L, is actually Kira. After he finds that Teru Mikami is Light's proxy and Mello kidnaps Kiyomi Takada, Near is able to switch Mikami's Death Note with a forged one, allowing him to set up a final confrontation that leaves Light exposed. Ryuk kills Light soon after. Near says that neither he nor Mello could surpass L alone, but have managed to do so by inadvertently working together. Near soon takes L's alias, and keeps on the surviving members of the SPK as his subordinates.

Tsugumi Ohba, writer of Death Note, said that Near "becomes less likeable" as the story advances, citing Near's plan to take the notebook at a later point in the story. Ohba said that a negative reaction originated from "the difference in their attitudes" and that people may have viewed Near as "a cheat." Ohba added that Near's "cheeky behavior," intended to "reinforce his childishness," had been construed as "annoying."[2]

In the final chapter Near brings finger puppets to the Yellow Box Warehouse. Takeshi Obata, artist of Death Note, said that Near first bought the Kira finger puppet and drew on it with a magic marker. Obata then said that Near must have created the other puppets afterwards. Obata views Near as not liking L much so Obata had Near depict L as "ugly", and that Near "worked hard" on Mello's puppet as Near "liked Mello."[2]

Obata said he enjoyed drawing Near and that Near is also one of his favorite and his least favorite characters,[2] considering him to be the smartest character in the manga "because he cheats."[3]

When asked about which character was most similar to himself, Ohba indicated Near and "maybe Light." Regarding Near, Ohba said that he does not leave his house often.[4]

[edit] Conception and development of Near

Ohba said that he introduced Near and Mello together as L individually could not defeat Kira. Ohba felt that introducing one character individually would produce a "repeat" of the struggle between Light and L, so he instead wanted a story involving three combatants fighting each other. Ohba said that he let Obata create the character designs and asked him to make both characters look "a little "L-ish"." Ohba said that he "wavered" in their ages and considered making the characters the sons of L. Ohba added that he did not initially develop their personalities as he wanted to "reveal" them through their actions.[5]

Ohba said that he gave Near a hobby of playing with toys stacking "things" as a development from L's hobby of stacking sugar cubes. Ohba included the match and the dice towers in his thumbnails. Ohba said that he thought about Obata encountering difficulty in drawing the dice towers and felt surprised when he saw the dice towers in the final work.[6]

The given name "Nate" comes from the word "natural" and "River" is to symbolize that Near's talents flow from L. Therefore Near is the natural successor to L. The name is "supposed" to show that Near is a "natural genius blessed from above."[7] The nickname Near is composed of the first and last letters of Nate River, then swapped around to make a recognisable word.

Obata said that, since Ohba wanted to "include a little L" in Near and Mello, he tried to keep "the weirdness and the dead eyes." Obata added that since L was an important character he felt that he made Near and Mello look too much like L. He described the character designs as "a major struggle." Obata said that, when he first heard about Near and Mello, he assumed that Near and Mello would join as a team and work together, so he envisioned the two as twins when he created the character designs.[8] Obata stated that he originally thought about creating Near as "a bit more mature mentally." Obata said that he created a "cooler looking version of L" design and considered using a younger version of that design. Another design Obata created for L included a "really innocent and cheerful character" and he felt that the design could work for Near; he said that he "quickly abandoned" the idea.[9]

Obata said that when he first saw Near he "didn't even know what the heck he was wearing." He said that "it was tough" drawing Near's clothes as he did not understand the assembly of his clothes. Obata said that he settled for pajamas and "things got a lot easier."[9]

Obata added that the designs for the characters became switched at the design phase; the final Mello had Near's design and vice-versa. Obata said that when he created a depiction of the designs his editor wrote the wrong names accompanying the designs; then Obata received approval he could not say that the labels were incorrect. Obata said that, for him, Near was "more evil." He felt that "it's better" that the switch occurred.[9]

Obata stated that as he drew Near the concept of his immaturity became "stronger and stronger" as he believes that such traits are best revealed "gradually." Obata cited the fact that in the beginning Near's sole toy consisted of darts.[10]

Ohba said that the finger puppets used by Near in the final chapter did not exist in the thumbnails and that he felt the final scenes "looked cooler" with the presence of the puppets. Obata said that he felt he could express "negative" parts of Near with the puppets. Ohba added that one could see "his dark side in his kind of puppets he used."[11]

I disappointed me too. ;_;

Also, Nica's a bad influence. :x

Hi there Went, good evening! wassup? :D

WENTTTTTTTTTT

Where have you been like the last few days? or where have I been, which ever. XD

It works :x
Maybe you hid User Customizations D:

Omigosh... uni? Advanced thingy, man. What kind of things will you be reading then? I'm into science studies. Not at a university yet though.
No, guess it's bad drinking. But do go with your friends, it's nice there 8)

Hey went, nice Goomba plushie xD, i want one xD

I have befriended you, you dun have to accept if you don't want to but you seem cool so i added you xD

A Goomba plushie, probably gotten from the web, or, do you really have one?

wentis pantis, how goes you?

Haha aaw, but at least you've got a beach than, that's more than most of us. Praha is the wonderful world of cheap beer! Gosh, I miss it already. Wanna go back with me?
If you're 17, then you're in school, right? My school starts in less than a week... but the upside is that I probably can't be any more inactive at PC than I already am... XP

XD

Thanks. I've always thought that the rules needed some more loving.<3 And it's true, NewsBot is the coolest member on these forums. (Should so be member of the month) It's just too bad he won't friend me. D: *Shot*

And true, RPing is something that eats up a lot of time and effort if you want to do it properly, if you struggle with getting a paragraph it will likely become a huge pain. x.x But you know, you've already got the average RP section n00blet beat for actually having realized that this standard even exists. Oh, and I have a huge monitor too (plus, I'm using Blossom Shower layout so it gives me no lenience in that regard) so I know what you mean. I used to struggle with that a lot when I first got into RPing, but then one day something just klicked and I've never had the problem again. Weird. x.x Anyway, the monitor issue is precisely why the new paragraph system (one set block of text which is used as the minimum, regardless of what settings you have, meaning it's the same amount for all) is set up, though ironically it's earned a new score of whining from people because they now can't hide behind the 'oh, it's four lines on my monitor' excuse. Figures. <<

And nah, it wasn't a boarding school (Would have been funny if it had, though, seeing as how it was only a half-hour's brisk walk (or some ten to fifteen minutes on bike) away from my home anyway XD); it was more like a subsection of a regular high school in the same building. The only difference was that we got all the cool teachers (like our economics teach, who is a Scotsman and actually wore a genuine kilt for festive occasions XD)...and of course a whole crapload of work that the regular line didn't have to put up with, including the lab reports. (I screwed up with those big time, so in the end I had to a mad, 24-hour writing spree on the last weekend to avoid losing my diploma XD). And yeah, social services indeed...I did my time as a daycare assistant, which - ironically - has a lot more in common with modding on PC than what I thought it would. o.O Anyway, it's called CAS (Creativity Action Service), and not only did you have to actually do 50 hours of those, but you also had to write a journal entry for each one of them, explaining what deep insight into the meaning of life you had gained from thrilling activities like teaching a seven-year old how to write the letter 'B'.

To be honest, I think the biggest amount of creativity we had was put into filling out all that total nonsense we wrote into those journal entries, or - in the cases of some - forging in a few extra hours here and there. XD

And I didn't get no *** laude. No fair. >O I did get my fancy, schmancy IB diploma, though, but annoyingly I lost out on my sole perfect grade (A2 English) because the moderator for second test paper of our finals was batshit crazy and downmarked every paper he got his hands on (heard this from my English teacher, who was also on the marking team for those exams), leaving me one point short of that 7 (highest grade in the system). D: Looking at my grades for the individual papers, it was a full seven for paper 1, but measly 5 for paper 2, handily rounding it to a 6 for the lot, because me and the moderator had a difference in opinions. <<

Oh, and to be fair we had quite a bit of reply quotes in that conversation, hence why it eventually hit the cap, but it was still kind of cool to see that message flash on my screen. x3

Also, yeah, punishing the underperformers of posting is my sworn duty. Already had a whole threadful to deal with today, one of whom ended up temp-banned for the infraction they got (Ironically, when looking at their infraction record, all their offenses were 'insufficient length' save for one which was for having a too big signature; yay irony. XD). That gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.

And see how these messages have grown already? That's what RPing at length is all about.

Well, sort of...if we don't get into the whole quality debate, anyway. xD

Hearts are the new pink. :D

You're at the beach? Fuuun~ : D
X3

Wenty-kun! =DDD I'm a bit down, but other than that, fine. ^.^ You?

OMG Really? =DDD Eeee~ Thank yoooou~

Hiyaaa Wenty!! :D (luv your profile pic btw)
I'm grrrreat! I went to Prague for a week and had lots and lots of nutricious beer... So now I've been rather tired and ill for some days ^^" mwuhuhu. How you been? Sunny days over there? :D

Sadly, it's not as common among RPers as I'd like it to be. *Has just come back from infracting two dudes for terrible, sub-length RPing D:* But...I do try my best to compensate. xD That being said...yeah, thank goodness it's not word counting around here yet. (though if a few people around here got their way it probably would <<)

As for the IB...that would be referring to the International Baccalaureate (fondly referred to as Intelligent BS among IBers). It's an international high school-level education program that's being run in schools all around the known world, with the idea of creating an internationally accepted standard for education. Haven't put it to the test, but my diploma from there should be just as good in, for instance, South Africa as it is here as far as job and university applications are concerned.

So anyway, the way I saw it it was basically like regular high school except it had better teachers, though in retrospect I've begun to realize just what kind of huge gap in the levels there is. (Our maths teacher, for instance, used university level exams for our tests xD) Also, if there is one thing the IB values, it is the ability to say awfully much about terribly little. I mean, not only did we have ginormous essays to write in virtually every subject, we also had to keep two separate journals, one for the extra-curricular activities (50 hours each of supervised sports/physical activity, creative work, and social service, all which we had to arrange on our own free time to earn the diploma) and one for our Theory of Knowledge class. That and we had to do independent research on a single topic and write a 5000-word essay on it, not to mention those countless icky lab reports we had to do in Physics. (and the far more fun labs about which said reports were written) To put it shortly...once you've made it through the IB, not having anything to say about something is a very rare problem. xD

Plus, I've always been kind of loquacious to begin with. I remember one time when I and good RPing friend of mine had a contest over who could write the longer IC. By the end of it, those posts were...just huge, to be honest. XP

We broke the upper character limit for PMs once too. Good times. XD

So yeah, wordy is what I aim for. I'm writing a guide about it with regards to RPing, actually, because there are lots of people in the section who can't string a proper paragraph together. For shame. :<

When I photoshopped him doing it. :3