Gaze (Death Note episode)
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| Gaze | |
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| Episode Length: | 24 minutes |
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| Episode Code: | 08 |
| Episode Airdate: | November 21, 2006 |
"Gaze" (「目線」 "Mesen"?) is the 8th episode of the Death Note TV series aired in Japan on November 21, 2006.
While piecing together the clues from security camera footage of Raye Penber’s fated train ride, L notices that the envelope Raye was carrying disappears sometime from when he got on the train to when he got off an hour and a half later. L also sees how Raye is looking at the train when he’s dying, which could mean that Kira was aboard. As morning approaches, L gets a call telling him about Raye’s fiancée disappearing. The others think that it might have been a suicide resulting from of Raye’s death, but L thinks otherwise. Her name sounds familiar to him because he worked with her on an FBI case in Los Angeles, and the Naomi Misora he knows is an excellent FBI agent with a strong heart. This leads him to decide to narrow the search to the families that were being investigated by Raye Penber: Light’s father’s and sub-chief Kitamura’s. For these two families, L wants wiretaps and surveillance cameras installed. The detectives are worried getting in trouble for violating civil liberties, but L points out that they’re already putting their own lives on the line for this investigation. When Light’s father asks for the possibility that Kira is one of the families, L thinks that it’s around 5%. The others feel that 5% is low, but Light’s father believes that they’d have to investigate if there were even only a 1% chance, so he agrees to have the surveillance put in.
Back at home, Light has been busily spending his time writing names into the Death Note for future weeks so that people won’t notice the lack of deaths of criminals if he gets hospitalized or something. He then gets to making sure that no one can trace what he’s done with his computer. Light also cuts up pieces of the Death Note and hides them in preparation. It’s not until he returns home from school sometime later that he notices something strange. By this time, L and Light’s father have put the house under camera surveillance and see Light go to his room. Ryuk tries to talk to Light, but Light has stops responding. After lying on his bed for a moment, he goes back out, remembering to reset the paper slip trap on his door as he leaves. Light’s father wonders if his son is hiding something, but L finds that that kind of behavior normal for a 17-year-old.
With Ryuk still pestering him to respond as he walks outside, Light first checks to his clothes to make sure they’re not wiretapped. After he’s confident that they’re not, he tells Ryuk about the surveillance. Ryuk remembers that the door was trapped with the piece of paper to indicate that someone opened it, but that trap hadn’t been sprung until Light entered his own room moments earlier. Light, however, reveals that that piece of paper was only a fake - the first real trap had been the door knob. Light explains that he purposefully keeps the handle about 5 millimeters lower than it normally sits. When he got home earlier, he noticed that the handle was sitting in its normal position. However, that alone isn’t enough to determine that someone entered his room. That’s why Light also has a piece of mechanical pencil lead hidden on the door’s hinge that would break when the door opens. He would normally take this out before opening the door, but today it was already broken. Ryuk then suggests that it might be Light’s parents who entered his room, but Light refutes that because neither his parents nor his sister would have noticed the slip of paper and purposefully put it back. Having made this conclusion, Light is now going to buy books on wiretapping and surveillance.
On the way back home, he reminds Ryuk that the Shinigami won’t be able to eat apples anymore because of the cameras. Unfortunately, apples are to Ryuk like alcohol or tobacco are to humans, and Ryuk claims that his body will get screwed up without them. For Ryuk to be able to eat apples under the current situation, Light says that they first need to locate the positions of all the cameras because there might be a blind spot. Ryuk agrees to find the cameras, saying even that it’s another interesting thing to do.
That night, Light pretends to look at magazines while Ryuk searches through the room. With Ryuk discovering cameras in multiple hidden locations, Light thinks that L must be behind all this and suspects the people Raye Penber was investigating. But Light also assumes for now that he’s the only one being suspected. He then goes downstairs for dinner where his sister reads out a TV bulletin saying that the ICPO is dispatching 1500 agents to Japan because of Kira. Knowing that L has the living room bugged, Light says out loud that this announcement has no significance because a real investigation would be conducted in secret. He reasons that all the police are doing here is exaggerating a report to scare Kira. As he watches all this, L remarks to Light’s father that Light is clever. In any case, Light brings a bag of potato chips upstairs with him after dinner as a study snack. In his room, Ryuk has finished the search and has found all 64 cameras.
Since the entire place is covered, Light enacts a plan where he has hidden a tiny television and a piece of the Death Note inside the potato chips. Using his body to shield the TV from the cameras, Light is able to get see the criminals and write them down, all under the guise of snacking while studying. Once Light is done, he simply throws the bag of chips - with the TV in it - into the wastebasket.
At the hotel, Watari reports of some new deaths of criminals who were featured on the news. L had seen Light’s mother and sister watching a drama and then turning off the TV, and he saw Light studying all night. Since Kira needs a face and a name to kill, then those who didn’t watch the news can’t be Kira, or so he reasons. Light’s father thinks that this clears his family, but L finds it strange that today’s Kira killed minor criminals fairly quickly and that the Yagami family was cleared on the first day the cameras were used. The next morning, as Light’s mother takes out the trash with the potato chip bag still in it, Ryuk comments on how the small LCD TV cost Light 39800 yen ($360 US) [1].
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