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I was trying to pin down just what was so great about Mikami. Specifically, what makes him attractive (because I am analytical enough to want to try to put words to that). And I came across a few aspects of this that I'd like feedback on. First, he’s the sort of character that people can feel virtuous about liking. He does bad things for noble reasons. He has an incredibly sad, tormented past. He has a profound capacity for emotion that he generally keeps under wraps. Mikami all but has DAMAGED stamped on his forehead, and it’s really easy to feel sorry for him / laugh at his neuroticism / want to make it better. Also, despite his flaws, he has a lot of potential. We really get to see him at his most appealing, with the open, almost obscene devotion he has for Kira. Crazy, yeah … whatever. My point is, everyone likes having someone who will look at them that way. It’s incredibly affirming to have someone who loves you, and most guys are way too self-conscious to be as blatantly taken with anyone as Mikami is with his god.
Also, there’s a certain amount of wish fulfillment. The female characters in Death Note are fairly limited to begin with, and Light is sexist enough that even the intelligent ones don’t have a chance in hell of being taken seriously by him. So, for everyone who is holding out for a character that won’t be automatically written off as an idiot for worshipping Kira, Mikami is perfect. He’s a bit more unhinged than even the most ardent Light fangirls. But for the same reason, he says things that no one else dares to admit they’re even thinking. Plausible deniability, if you will. He’s that nut in the front row who says “I’ll do anything,” and means it. What makes it even better is the fact that he’s about as respectable as it’s possible for anyone to be. Mikami does all the things that sane, sober people are supposed to do. He combs his hair, brushes his teeth, eats nutritious food, exercises regularly, has a high-status, well-paid job which he obviously studied and worked and strove for … you see what I’m getting at? This is someone who can’t be accused of needing a life, lacking discipline or maturity, being overemotional or hopelessly naïve, or really, anything else. The simple-minded dismissals that other Kira supporters have to deal with (including Light’s blanket assumption that they’re weak, cowardly, and dumb) just don’t stick to him.
Mikami is, in a word, different. But unlike Takada, he isn’t … well, let me re-phrase … we don’t get to see as much of his arrogant, self-righteous side. What we do see is that he has risked himself for what he believes in and gotten severely punished for it. Repeatedly. And instead of becoming cynical and telling the world to go fuck itself, he is *still* the sort of person who will do whatever it takes to make things right. Even if it costs him everything. Which it does, in the end.
My point is, you can love Mikami on a lot of different levels; some of them deep, some of them decidedly not. I just felt like teasing apart some of the inherent contradictions in that –like the fact that we care about him, and still call him things like “freak” and “nutcase”. It amazes me that his fans need that much self-reassurance; that Mikami is waaay over there, around the twist, nothing to do with us completely sane people, really. Then again, until I actually thought about it, I used to call him things that emphasized how utterly beyond the pale I thought he was. So I’m not pointing fingers here. More … reflecting on the different facets that make up my enjoyment of him as a character. Some of them are extremely presentable, while others stick self-consciously in my throat, but I’ll try to put them all down. Might as well start with the parts that are trying to hide.
Empathy, gratitude, and pity
Okay, to begin with, I empathize with Mikami; with his sharp-edged awareness of right and wrong, and his need to do something about it when people are getting hurt. I respect him for acting on his principles. For confronting bullies even though no one was backing him up. For making himself a target. For hurting, enduring, striving, and putting himself out there, despite the fact that it was just him. With no authority behind him, and no external merit to be gained, he still looked at the world with the eyes of a person who was willing to be responsible for it. As a whole, I didn’t act that way, when I was in school. But when I did, I was proud of myself. And when I look at someone who had the integrity to do it all the time, regardless of how much it cost him personally, I have to admire him.
To put it another way, Mikami thought Light was a god because he was righteous; not because he was powerful. So apart from what I think of Light, I have to acknowledge that Mikami followed him with the best of intentions. It had to be hard, for someone who dedicated his life to enforcing the law, to deliberately break it when it conflicted with (what he thought) was the greater good. People refer to Mikami as a follower, and talk about his inability to think for himself, but Mikami never really let any authority dictate to him what justice was. Not his mother, not his teachers, and not the law. Of all Kira’s supporters, I’d say he’s the only one with enough backbone to challenge Light when he’s doing something immoral, specifically because it’s immoral. I will admit that initially, Mikami doesn’t have the perspective to judge anything Light does for himself; he’s dazzled by the fact that Light is changing the world in ways that he believes in. But I feel like his primary loyalty is to the world they’re creating –not to the man at its helm who aspires to be God.
That said, his devotion to Light is staggering, and the better part of it seems to be motivated by gratitude. Mikami, judging from his present state and his extensive back-story, has always been moved by a need for acknowledgement. Part of it may come from being a “fatherless” (is that a polite term for illegitimate?) child. But why he initially felt that way is a separate topic. By ‘acknowledgment’ I’m not really referring to the fact that his classmates thanked him, when he defended them, though it was obvious how much their appreciation meant to him. I mean, more pervasively, that after being systematically hurt, humiliated, ostracized, and deprived of his mother, I think Mikami needed something, anything, to press to his heart and say “it was worth it”. Something less distant than the abstract comfort of believing that what he did was right. An ideal can bring you peace, but it can’t hold you when you’re crying.
I’m not implying that Mikami was undisciplined enough to feel sorry for himself, or even admit that his useful, structured life lacked humanity. I think it’s precisely because he was so tightly wound, so unwilling to tolerate faults or allow himself to express emotion, that he related to Kira with such vehemence. Superficially, at least, he and Light have a lot in common. They believe in many of the same things for very different reasons. But what Mikami showed openly, even when he was addressing Light as “God,” was just the surface of an affinity that ran very deep. Though Light’s emotions have the same blinding ardor about them, under a similarly thick sheet of self-control, they’re consistently focused inward. He cares, first and foremost, about himself. Whereas Mikami’s zeal for justice is balanced by an equally monumental capacity for reverence adoration love. The first Kira would throw his father under a train, if it came right down to it. The fourth … has an unfortunate habit of putting everyone else’s wellbeing ahead of his own. And a vast, mostly unacknowledged capacity for connecting with other people. He doesn’t have Light’s effortless social skills. But in a lot of ways, he is what Light pretends to be –caring, thoughtful, innately and unassumingly moral. There’s a spectacular sincerity about Mikami. When he doesn't decided his feelings are inappropriate and reign them in, they drag him forward. And they put a tremendous amount of momentum behind what he's doing.
Further, though, he's ensuring that Light never has to go through what he went through. Mikami projects "I see what you're trying to accomplish. It's monumental and terribly important. And as long as I have life in me, you won't have to try to do it all alone." He understands what Light is risking his neck to bring about in the world: the idealistic, 'protect people' side of it, and not the egotism and power-hunger. He gets it so much that he can't just be a bystander. He can't watch Light succeed or fail from the safe distance of not attracting a supernaturally powerful murderer's attention. He has to support him. From the outside, circa Death Note part 2, it must look like Kira is unstoppable: how many governments had already buckled and sworn allegiance? How much was the world already turning around to accommodate him? And yet Mikami was watching him closely enough to realize that Kira was a person, and the logical result of that, for him, was feeling like it was his obligation to help. I think that's rooted in years of Mikami playing the hero himself and ultimately failing because he was just one person. The people who appreciated what he did always did so without putting themselves at risk. He didn't have the support he needed. And eventually he had to integrate himself into the scaffolding of the legal system because that was the only way someone like him could keep fighting for the downtrodden and directly confronting their tormentors without being considered crazy; meddlesome and troublesome. But Kira wasn't "fitting in" with anything. He wasn't letting received wisdom about what couldn't be done or wasn't realistic deter him from trying to create the world he thought could exist, and I think that - the sheer courage of risking so much for an ideal - was what won Mikami's loyalty. Kira made him feel like maybe it was possible. Kira gave him his dreams back. And when you look at it that way, Mikami's reaction to Light makes perfect sense.
From a fan’s perspective, gratitude takes on several, considerably less lofty meanings. Starting with “I am so glad nothing that traumatic ever happened to me in school,” and culminating in the odd realization that this handsome, mature, responsible guy ended up at the very bottom of the social heap, thanks to his stubborn adherence to principle. Due to that, I think Mikami also appeals to people who don’t think they’d have a chance in hell with someone confident and unbroken, like Light. Or L. There’s a cold, calculated sense that this is someone who can’t pick and choose their partners; someone who is used to being avoided when he isn’t singled out for humiliation and abuse. Mikami’s reaction to his God is itself attractive. It makes it very clear just how desperate he is to feel wanted. And because he picked a complete bastard as the object of his adoration, nearly anybody can feel justified in fantasizing about Mikami. It’s unlikely that you’d treat him any worse than Light, or care about him less. I’ve yet to meet a fan who is willing to admit this. But the more people overdo their declarations of affection, the more I wonder just how much guilt they’re compensating for. It all fits. The abuse, the humiliation, the endless made-up cycles of hurt/comfort that are somehow alright because he will never break altogether, and never be whole regardless. Even those of us who know better than to mistake him for a kicked puppy, have a hard time not putting the best and worst of our traits on Mikami - and pointing and laughing. He has a thing for routine and order, which fanfic often turns into a full-blown case of OCD. He treats Light like the best thing that ever happened to him. But until fans got their hands on him, he wasn’t anywhere near as stalker-like; or for that matter, flamingly gay for Kira. You see what I’m getting at? We make him noble and self-sacrificing to the point of being downright comical, and utterly batshit in his fanaticism. Because he’s us; and yet not. He’s the hastily-quashed attraction to Kira, allowed to unfold into a full-blown passion. He’s the aggregate of every dutiful, responsible should, carried to an extreme that borders on outright caricature. He’s the essence of projected strength, though it only just masks a gaping abyss of vulnerability, self-doubt, and loneliness. He is very much a reflection of us; what we are, what we think we aught to be … and what we’re glad we aren’t.
Which, of course, brings me to pity.
Mikami is a chew toy. He’s a tragic figure who ended up committing horrible atrocities with the best of intentions, and lived just long enough to realize he’d done irreparable harm. He’s a sociable, honorable person who was completely isolated by his uncompromising sense of right and wrong. He loved someone with all his heart and all his soul, as if he’d never been hurt before, and his disillusionment crushed him all the harder because of that. It’s easy to feel bad for Mikami, because he put so much of himself into what he was feeling and doing. He’s exposed because he’s genuine. And although he did a lot that required strength, altruism, and courage, life repaid him with absolute ruthlessness. There’s injustice in that. He can accept his guilt with something resembling dignity, but some fen can’t help but speak up for him – to point out, at least, that he was wrong without being immoral or malicious.
As fun as it is to mock his rigidity, and roll our eyes at his artlessness, all of that is covering recognition and pain. We know what’s likely to happen to him. We see it coming because Light is a bastard, but also because most people have made much less explicit declarations of affection and had them rejected, and even as a calculated risk, that hurts. So “Mikami, you idiot,” is often covering for a much more personal “fuck, I pity you. That must have hurt so much.” Out here, it’s not like we can warn him. But it’s hard to just stand by and watch him break. Mikami really took to heart the idea that people are supposed to help each other, but when he needed it, no one was there to help him. So there’s a sense of unpaid obligation; of watching the demise of someone who always gave more than he took.