Character · Death Note
Mello
Second place at the orphanage, first place in stubbornness, and never on screen without a chocolate bar.
In Otakana the clue reads: Successor in leather who eats chocolate
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Death Note
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Mello grew up at Wammy's House, an orphanage that raises gifted children as possible successors to the world's greatest detective. He was told he ranked second. Rather than share the job with the boy ranked first, he walked out, joined the American mafia and started building an approach to the case that involved kidnapping, explosives and very little sitting still.
The chocolate is less a running gag than a tell. Obata put a bar in his hand in nearly every panel, snapping off squares while he talks, and the habit reads as an appetite that cannot be satisfied by winning politely. His leather, his scar and his temper all point the same way. He is the half of the legacy that takes risks.
His real name is Mihael Keehl, which the story keeps back for a long time, since in Death Note knowing a name is the same as owning a life. That is the reason the successors use aliases at all. Mello and Near are two answers to one question about how you beat someone you have never seen.
Spelling MELLO
MELLO ends in O rather than OW, and it carries a double L in the middle, which is the pair guesses miss. Think of the word mellow with the W removed. The Japanese is closer to Mero, so the doubled L is a localisation choice made in English. Five letters, two of them L, one vowel repeating at either end.