Character · Death Note
Watari
The old man who carries the tea is also the reason the world's greatest detective exists at all.
In Otakana the clue reads: Elderly handler who speaks for the detective
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Death Note
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Watari appears on screen as a gothic W, the same trick his charge uses with the letter L. In the room he is an elderly Englishman in a hat who brings the sweets, hands over the equipment and talks to police forces when L would rather not. Everyone in the task force treats him as staff. He is closer to a founder.
His real name is Quillsh Wammy. He made a fortune as an inventor and spent it on Wammy's House, an orphanage in Winchester for gifted children, where he found L and later raised the successors who would carry on the work. Every detective who matters in this story came out of that building, paid for by a man the police cannot identify.
He is also the single point of failure, and the story knows it. Watari holds the keys, the money and the connection to the outside world, and he is the only person alive who can put a face to the letter. Ohba built an entire investigation on one loyal old man with a briefcase.
Spelling WATARI
WATARI is six letters, three of them A, which makes it one of the friendliest rows in the game once the first A lands. The name reads as watari, a crossing or a passing over, which suits a man who carries things between L and the world. No long vowels and no doubled letters: W, then a strict consonant and A pattern to the end.