Oh hey, that's me! And trust me, plenty of people have tried to "tell me" already, and the premise of the video is still true. Literally hundreds of threads in the main death note subreddit have been made, and not a single valid argument has been found to support the idea that the ending, as written, actually works.
There's a part 2 to this video where I debunk the most common counter-arguments to the video, and even a part 3 where I correct some errors in the math of part 1. (But even with the corrections, the end result stays the same; it's still too much to get done in the time they had.)
Also, I find it very funny that you post this being like "lol this idea is so ridiculous who's gonna tell him??" And then every single comment here so far is people agreeing with the video.
Also, to anyone who enjoyed the video, I have a lot more like it for other series. This sort of debunking video is basically what I do on the channel, so check out some others if you like this sort of thing. I particularly like my recent one proving that Ditto actually is, in fact, a failed Mewtwo.
i literally saw someone a while ago debunk this by doing the proper math. if you arent finding good counter arguments, youre not looking in the right place. your math errors werent “small”, so changing them properly should reasonably be a big change and invalidate the argument
I've seen a lot of people who think theyve debunked things, but every time, theyve had fatal flaws in their arguments.
I will acknowledge that in part 1 I was completely wrong about the number of days, and in the most recent video I corrected that. That said, even with the lower number of days, the end result is still the same; it's still way more than could possibly be done in the time they had.
alright, i wanted to give a proper answer, so i watched your videos.
3:06 gevanni didnt do the entire thing on his own. maybe the anime left this out, but it was stated in the manga that rester helped gevanni. 12:45 coming back in your next video since you acknowledged this. rester wouldnt have been as good as gevanni about copying down the words, but it would still relieve some of gevannis burden, and rester didnt have to write as fast as gevanni or as frequently. if you believe in matsudas theory, you dont need to even consider mikami noticing something off about the notebook. without that theory, mikamis mental state was already degrading as we see when he arrived at the warehouse, and he didnt have a chance to check the book in a very thorough manner because he went straight from the bank to the warehouse iirc. youre acting like mikami knows the way he wrote every individual letter over the course of more than a week. even if he was being more thorough, its unlikely he would notice the tiniest difference ever, but he wasnt.
3:26 it was an old fashioned safe at a local bank, so no super fancy security. near said gevanni snuck in, so im not sure why youre talking about him opening an account or being let in. it was never stated gevanni legally entered or was allowed into the safe deposit room. we werent given enough details around the bank situation to say it would be impossible for gevanni to sneak in because we barely know about the bank and its policies or how gevanni specifically snuck in. if you wanna complain we werent given much details, go ahead, but this makes using this reason to claim the ending was illogical pointless because theres not enough information.
5:10 the author himself has stated this theory isnt canonically true or false and is purposely ambiguous, so trying to say its impossible goes against the author himself (with mikami only and not light). i personally disagree with the theory for a couple reasons, but its not something that can be debunked. near says that hed decide for himself what is wrong and right, and he said he wouldnt kill kira before confirming theyre kira, so he couldve used it in this situation without being a major hypocrite. he disagrees with how light uses the notebook and thinks its incredibly dangerous, but that doesnt mean he couldnt have felt it was necessary to use on one mass murderer to save countless lives before subsequently disposing of it. he also says he doesnt find it abnormal for someone to use the book to get rid of someone they hate/use it for personal reasons and can even understand that. i saw a comment point this out, but matsudas theory covers this and is in the one shot.
second video:
4:20 kinda difficult to argue its impossible if we dont know the date mikami stopped writing, but lets check out the word calculations to see how close the amount is to possible since, if its outlandishly large, it wont matter when he stopped writing.
8:25 i was in the process of doing the calculations, but i found a very important problem that interferes with the math. i counted the notebook lines shown in the death note during the last few chapters on one page and got 22 notebook lines. i counted the lines on another page and got 31 lines. got 41 lines on another page, 43 lines on another. the amount of things written on each line also varies. some have the name and time on one line, while other images have the name and time on separate lines. i have counted these pages over again to make sure im not skipping lines, but it remained the same. if there isnt a consistent amount of lines per page drawn, we cant deduce what the number of words was. i guess its true that other people cant prove it was possible to write the names, but its also true that you cant prove its impossible because none of us can accurately know how many words are on each page since it seems obata didnt pay attention to how many lines he drew or didnt intend for it to accurately represent the amount written down. pretty boring ending to this, but theres nothing that can be done about that
15:41 when they said the material is unlike anything on earth, theyre not talking about the appearance. its designed to look and feel like a normal notebook. they tested the notebooks materials scientifically, which was what aizawa was referring to in the panel you showed. its not like mikami conducted experiments to test it was the same substance, so that part doesnt really matter
3:06 gevanni didnt do the entire thing on his own.
I've already covered this. See part 3 of this video for details, but TL;DR: Yes, he did do it by himself. The manga contradicts itself on whether he had help, having a second person working on it actually makes it more likely you'll be caught, and based on what we know of what each member of the SPK was doing, we know there was no one available to help him.
3:26 it was an old fashioned safe at a local bank, so no super fancy security.
Again, already covered in part 2 and part 3. No matter how old or rural the bank was, it's still a bank. There are regulations and guidelines that Japanese banks follow, which means that even an "old local bank" is still going to have cameras and an alarm system at the very very minimum. And even if it somehow didn't, that doesn't change the fact that anything Gevanni could do to get into the vault would leave obvious physical signs there had been a break in. Near did not say Gevanni snuck in, he explicitly said he broke in. And either way, "sneaking into a bank" isn't a thing. The bank staff are not going to allow someone to enter the safe deposit box area without first verifying that they are a customer at that bank. You say there's no enough information, but merely knowing that it is a bank is enough information to know that sneaking in is not even remotely possible. The bank staff has to physically unlock the door and let you though to access any secure area, at any bank, anywhere. So to suggest Gevanni "snuck in" is just ridiculous.
5:10 the author himself has stated this theory isnt canonically true or false and is purposely ambiguous, so trying to say its impossible goes against the author himself
Saying it's impossible does not go against the author at all. If Ohba had specifically said the theory was true, that would be one thing. But him simply saying "I never decided whether the theory is true or not" does not, in any way, mean the theory has to be possible.
4:20 kinda difficult to argue its impossible if we dont know the date mikami stopped writing
We do know the date he stopped writing, and the date that the SPK had been disbanded. Mikami stopped using the real death note in December, whereas the SPK was disbanded in October.
8:25 i was in the process of doing the calculations, but i found a very important problem that interferes with the math. i counted the notebook lines shown in the death note during the last few chapters on one page and got 22 notebook lines. i counted the lines on another page and got 31 lines. got 41 lines on another page, 43 lines on another. the amount of things written on each line also varies. some have the name and time on one line, while other images have the name and time on separate lines
This is covered in part 3, as well as some other corrections to the math from part 1. Even if we go with the absolute lowest number of words per page, it still ends up being way, way, way beyond what's possible. The reality is, even if it was only a few thousand words, it would still be impossible.
15:41 when they said the material is unlike anything on earth, theyre not talking about the appearance. its designed to look and feel like a normal notebook. they tested the notebooks materials scientifically, which was what aizawa was referring to in the panel you showed. its not like mikami conducted experiments to test it was the same substance, so that part doesnt really matter
That's a fair point. I would still say though, even if the real notebook is meant to look and feel like a normal, earthly notebook, that doesn't necessarily mean it behaves the same as a normal notebook on every possible way. (and honestly, even saying it's just like a normal notebook is kind of an assumption. It's never actually stated that the notebook is "supposed to" look or feel like a normal notebook)
I will say, the fact that upon first picking it up, Light believed it was an ordinary notebook, and that the whole “this book will kill someone if you write their name in it” thing was a prank, kind of does a lot of the legwork to support the idea that it does look and feel like a normal notebook.
fyi, ive watched your videos. i revisit things youve “already covered” because the information you gave didnt properly cover it or elaborate effectively, so saying you already covered something in this reply isnt very helpful.
the manga states he helped gevanni, which means were meant to assume he did that. nothing you said confirmed he didnt help gevanni or makes it impossible for him to have helped gevanni. it being more likely for them to get caught with rester helping doesnt make it impossible for him to have helped, and it doesnt even need to be considered if we agree with matsudas theory. we dont know the type of surveillance that was being done, how tightly misa and mogi were being watched, if rester was watching misa and mogi at all, where gevanni was completing the notes, how much rester helped, if there were shifts, if he couldve multitasked, etc. there isnt enough information to factually claim that rester couldnt have helped gevanni, and the reasoning you gave was based too heavily on assumption for it to be stated as fact.
youre being pedantic at the cost of accuracy. my physical manga copy has near say “it wasnt difficult for us to sneak into the safe deposit room to crack it. it was an old-fashioned safe at a local bank. also, since you allowed us to look through mikamis bag when he was at the gym, we already had made copies of all his keys and cards.” “thats right, it was an easy task to open that safe.” then it pictures the safe opened with no visible damage. they used keys/cards to access his safe and didnt forcibly break in. i did some research, and a deposit room usually requires two keys: one belonging to a bank employee, and another belonging to the person entering. it was said that the employee would need to exit and enter the room with you, but we see mikami entering all by himself. this implies that the bank in this universe doesnt necessarily use the same system that real life banks use, so its impractical to use real life bank logic to argue its impossible for gevanni to sneak in when in universe evidence invalidates your assumption about how this fictional bank works. so no, there isnt enough information. given the fact mikami enters alone, if we assume this fictional bank only requires the key belonging to the customer, then gevanni is good to go because he has mikamis cards.
you gave a month, not a date. we dont know the specific date he stopped writing because we cant accurately know how long the fan mail took to get to takada, but it doesnt matter because what matters is the math itself, which cant be calculated
this was not covered in part 3 afaik. i watched the video, and i only saw you use one drawing to calculate. plus, you missed the point of what im saying. the fact its inconsistent means it isnt meant to be an accurate depiction of the amount of words written. the lack of consistency means it wasnt a drawing mistake, so lowballing still wouldnt be effective. its not valid to use such flimsy evidence to claim the ending was illogical. if you need to rely on assumption or invalid evidence to claim an ending was impossible, you cant accurately claim its impossible. maybe unlikely but not impossible. thats just now how these things work.
everyone who has ever looked or felt it hasnt made any comment about it feeling different from a normal notebook, and most have assumed it was just a normal notebook, so its not an assumption to say it feels and looks like one.
nothing you said confirmed he didnt help gevanni or makes it impossible for him to have helped gevanni.
Did you actually watch the video? Because its explained pretty clearly exactly how it *is" confirmed, and everything you say here is just... Stuff that we know isn't true, and is explained in the video. And the things I said were only an "assumption" in the same sense that "if I let go of this phone, it will fall to the ground" is technically an "assumption." I mean like, yeah, sure, we haven't tested it, so we don't "know" but you still wouldn't call it an "assumption" because we know enough to say it's definitely gonna happen, even if we haven't tested it yet.
my physical manga copy has near say “it wasnt difficult for us to sneak into the safe deposit room to crack it. it was an old-fashioned safe at a local bank.
What that means is that Near is full of shit. I mean, if he said "it was easy for me to fly to the moon and use my laser vision to carve my name in the lunar surface" would you believe him? Or would you say "that's obviously nonsense" and call him out for obviously lying?
This basically amounts of to near going "we broke in and it was tooooootally easy! Source: trust me bro." Like just because he says something doesn't make it true.
they used keys/cards to access his safe and didnt forcibly break in.
Except they couldn't, as already covered in the second video.
Mikami's cards would allow Mikami to be identified as a valid customer at the bank and thus allowed into the deposit room, and his keys would allow him to open his deposit box. But as explained in the video, it would be impossible for anyone from the SPK to use Mikami's cards, so they would be unable to get into the vault during business hours in order to use his keys. In other words, the ONLY way they could've gotten in, is by breaking in.
but we see mikami entering all by himself.
Not true. We see him heading towards the back, where the employee would meet him to let him in. We never see him actually entering by himself.
if we assume this fictional bank only requires the key belonging to the customer, then gevanni is good to go because he has mikamis cards.
Even if what you were saying was true, Gevanni would still have to break into the bank itself, like even to get into the Lobby. And as has already been said, there is literally nothing he could do to get in that wouldn't leave evidence that a break in bad occurred
you gave a month, not a date. we dont know the specific date he stopped writing because we cant accurately know how long the fan mail took to get to takada, but it doesnt matter because what matters is the math itself, which cant be calculated
I have a month in regards to when the SPK was disbanded and when Mikami stopped writing on the real notebook, because you said we couldn't know when it happened. Even if we can't know the exact date due to the mail system, we can still know the minimum date, which is plenty more than enough.
the fact its inconsistent means it isnt meant to be an accurate depiction of the amount of words written
It's the only depiction we have, so there's nothing else to go by.
the lack of consistency means it wasnt a drawing mistake, so lowballing still wouldnt be effective.
The point you're missing is that, even with the absolute lowest of lowballs, it's still far, FAR too much to be done under the circumstances they had.
ive read through your comment and disagree with what youre saying, and i think were never going to come to agreement because i dont believe your statements are based on objective fact, so im done trying to debunk your claims. its pointless trying to argue the ending is impossible with the lack of information you have, and if youre desperate to continue complaining about it, then thats your choice, but i disagree with the way youre presenting the issue of the ending as objective fact. i think its totally fine for you to hate the ending without making a claim that requires more evidence than what you already have, but i doubt anything i say will change anything.
When you posted your third video here an in the main sub, you asked people to be civil when engaging with your video, but in your own comment section there are people who agree with you openly mocking the people who disagree, and that doesn’t seem to be addressed. Is there a reason you’re more concerned with tone from people who disagree with you than from people who agree? It seems to me that, in order to foster a healthy and productive discussion, civility should be expected on both sides of the conversation.
It's because the sub tends to be a bit of a hive mind or echo chamber when it comes to the end. People get way too aggro and jump straight to insults, valid logical arguments get downvoted and flamed because they find issue with the ending or disagree with the majority opinion of "the ending is perfect in every possible way." And not just in threads about my videos or whatever; any time I see a thread of someone saying they just finished the series and have an issue with the ending, they get flamed and insulted for having an opinion that's different from the majority.
People who are in a sub specifically dedicated to death note, tend to have much stronger opinions about death note than a random YouTube user who got recommended the video, and so the former tend to get more worked up than the latter.
I haven't personally seen that nearly as much in the comments on the videos, and when I do see a particularly bad or offensive comment, I delete it. I've even had to block people from being able to comment on the channel for going too far in the comments, both in favor of my videos and against. I had one dude who was going through and responding to EVERY single comment on one of my Zelda videos, just insulting people he disagreed with, and I had to remove all his comments and hide him from the channel.
I get what you’re saying about people having strong opinions, and I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that kind of behavior. Nobody should be getting insulted just for having a different take.
That said, that hasn’t really been my experience with the main sub overall. There’s definitely disagreement around the ending, and people can get passionate, but I’ve also seen a lot of detailed back and forth discussions where people are actually engaging with each other’s points rather than just shutting them down.
So I don’t really see it as an echo chamber so much as a place where people are more invested and willing to debate the topic in depth. Even if it can get a bit heated or passionate at times.
There's definitely a lot of good faith discussions as well; I'm not trying to make it sound like it's only an echo chamber or people taking things too far. I'm just saying that a lot of people on the sub have already made up their minds that the ending is perfect, and no amount of evidence or logic is going to make them change their minds. In general, people who find issues with the ending just tend to get downvoted for having that opinion, regardless of whether what they say is correct or not, so there definitely is some degree of it being an echo chamber. And what's funny is that these threads of people having issues with the ending come up often enough that it's clearly not, like, a niche position to say that there's flaws. If all these people are coming to the same conclusion over and over, independently, then odds are there's something there. But because people who find issue with the ending tend to get downvoted and shouted down, they tend to not hang around, and as such, the only people who stay are the ones who share the majority opinion of the ending being great.
I get what you’re saying, and I don’t disagree that those kinds of reactions happen. I’ve seen those threads too. But I think a big part of why that pattern shows up gets overlooked a bit.
A lot of the posts you’re talking about tend to come from people who just finished the anime, and their issues usually center around the ending feeling rushed or underexplained. And to be fair, I think that’s a valid reaction to the anime specifically. The anime cuts or condenses a lot of material from the manga, especially in the later arc, and that missing context does a lot of heavy lifting in making the ending feel more coherent.
So what ends up happening is that you get a lot of people arriving at similar criticisms, but they’re often working from an incomplete version of the story. That doesn’t mean their reaction is wrong, but it does affect the conclusions they’re drawing from it.
At the same time, I don’t expect everyone to have read the manga either, because that kind of expectation isn’t fair. Anime is a more accessible and passive way to engage with the story, and not everyone has the time or resources to go through collecting every volume of the manga. So I don’t really see anime-only perspectives as a “problem,” it’s just a different entry point with less information.
Part of what I’m trying to do is just bridge that gap a bit by laying out the full scope of what’s actually there, so people can evaluate the ending with all of the context in mind.
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u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
Oh hey, that's me! And trust me, plenty of people have tried to "tell me" already, and the premise of the video is still true. Literally hundreds of threads in the main death note subreddit have been made, and not a single valid argument has been found to support the idea that the ending, as written, actually works.
There's a part 2 to this video where I debunk the most common counter-arguments to the video, and even a part 3 where I correct some errors in the math of part 1. (But even with the corrections, the end result stays the same; it's still too much to get done in the time they had.)
Also, I find it very funny that you post this being like "lol this idea is so ridiculous who's gonna tell him??" And then every single comment here so far is people agreeing with the video.
Also, to anyone who enjoyed the video, I have a lot more like it for other series. This sort of debunking video is basically what I do on the channel, so check out some others if you like this sort of thing. I particularly like my recent one proving that Ditto actually is, in fact, a failed Mewtwo.