Production Notes

How to Read 13 >> Production Notes

Thank you Kuwamatsu-Aki for Mello, Near, and Matt’s Translations.

NEED: All other people. Most of this is not done. So its only partial translation.

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Design Concept of Mello & Near
Because they’re L’s successors, my impression of Ohba-sensei’s order was to “leave traces of L’s image/traits.” I designed them with remnants of L’s eccentricity and dead eyes, but for me L’s existence was overly empowering, so they resembled L a bit too much…in any case, it was very hard. And then, when I started imagining on my own how the two of them might work together, I drew them with the impression of twins in my mind.

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Mello

Visual
Mello, in contrast to Near, I imagined him as bright/cheerful. In the beginning, I made his hair straight, but in the later half, I absolutely felt that disheveled hair gave more of a fearless feeling. And then, I felt that I could draw him much cooler if he had a scar on his face, so I thanked Ohba-sensei, “Ohba-sensei, I’m glad that you gave him a facial scar on the way.” But then, it was sad that he died soon after that.

This is what I drew of Mello before he appeared in the manga. At this stage, I wonder if it’s because of his clothes, but he gives off a more cheerful impression than in the manga.

Clothes
Mello’s clothes are from my own interests. I really like drawing the highlights on leather. It’s not that I like wearing these western-style clothes myself. I just really like drawing this type of clothing.

(left pic is when Mello first appears. Right pic is when he appears again.)

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Near

Visual
In the beginning, I thought I’d give Near a high mental age and a cool image.

Conveniently, I had my visual image from the time when I thought I’d draw L very cool. I took that image and drew a younger version of it. But then, I had another draft of L’s original draft, an innocent, super cheerful character. I thought it’d be nice to draw Near like this too. But in the end, I discarded the draft of that cheerful character from my mind.

Before entering Page.60, the Near I drew was a bit adult-looking. His hair, in the beginning, was a remnant from L…?

Clothes
Around the time when Near made his first appearance, even I thought that Near’s clothes hadn’t changed at all (laughs). I kept thinking “how do these clothes go together?” so it made drawing very hard. But somewhere along the way when I decided that those clothes were “pajamas,” it suddenly became very easy to draw.

(left picture is when Near is opposing Light. Right pic is when Near first appears.)

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Death Column
The two who were reversed in the stages of design.

Actually in the beginning, in my designs for the two, Near and Mello’s visual images were the the exact opposite.

In reality, the Near of the present was Mello and Mello was Near. I always thought of it that way, but when I gave it to the person in charge the names were written in reverse…(laughs). In that time, Ohba-san replied with an OK, but afterwards I didn’t hesitate to say “actually, they’re reversed…” Because of that though, in my mind, in the initial phases, Near had more of a bad guy image while Mello had more of an adult-like and more feminine image. But in the end, I now think that this reversal was a good thing.

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Matt

Design Concept
His image was that of a young person who doesn’t really care about all that goes on in the world and only likes current games. When Matt was supposed to appear, I didn’t hear anything about it. I just saw his name and thought “Who’s this, this character?” and asked the person in charge and then remembered (laughs). Just from the name, I get the image of bobbed-hair and round glasses, but in the end I just drew the image that I wanted to draw. In companion to Mello and Near, I gradually read him as “this guy is probably not that lively,” and then I was able to draw him naturally.