Canon Personality, Appearance, and Abilities for L
Personality:
Overview:
L is, first and foremost, a serious, dedicated young adult male of exceptional intelligence. Following on this, he has much more career experience than most people his age, and his effectiveness at his work is profound.
He is a peculiar mix of self-denial and self-indulgence; he loves his work enough that little attention is paid to the sort of distractions that might derail someone else. Where other people might read or watch a film, he'll study case files and news sources. Where they might listen to music, he would prefer not to be distracted. Relationships? He's too busy, and even if he weren't, other people aren't that interesting in and of themselves. He finds his work intensely fulfilling.
In other words, L is a workaholic: his career is his life, absent most normal human ties, and taking time off isn't enjoyable for long. He fell into his career at an early age, as a child prodigy. He is competitive, and he loves puzzles: he sees complex criminal cases as an interesting hobby. A normal life is the last thing he would want.
When he's working, he doesn't like to be distracted, and he expects to be obeyed by subordinates. He will generally delegate responsibilities to skilled professionals: for example, he would rarely want to be at an autopsy, but he will want to go over the report in detail, and may even want to send out his own pathologist.
Everything he does is done for a reason. He doesn't continue to do things that don't work, or try to learn things that he doesn't need to know; his time is limited, and the greater portion of his entire being is dedicated to a purpose. He doesn't like to waste that time on inessentials. He has an impressive level of self-control in difficult circumstances.
Worst Qualities:
L is manipulative, paranoid, and ruthless, a skilled liar, and in the day-to-day, he doesn't care very much about most other people. The ones who are useful are resources; the ones who are not are boring.
This is a detached, clinical indifference, not cruelty or sadism: he does care if someone is alive or dead, but he isn't someone you'd want to come to with the problems of everyday life. The solution to your dilemma is obvious to him, and you're wasting his time; please concentrate on more important matters.
That said, he may listen, in an unemotional and uninvolved way, and even give good advice, if he thinks he stands to gain something from it. But unless you make it onto the very short list of people he actually cares about, he has no genuine interest in anything as unimportant as your feelings (or, usually, his own). They aren't relevant unless they'll help him achieve his goals.
L is driven almost entirely by a desire to win. The flip side of his work ethic is obsessive tendencies. Self-doubt and sulking go along with his competitiveness; if things aren't going his way, he can be a brat.
He picks and chooses cases. It isn't about defending the weak or balancing the scales of justice, though he finds that reputation convenient (and maybe sometimes it is about those things, but he probably wouldn't admit it to anyone else). Instead, he pursues what interests him, an interest that is strengthened if the case has stumped other investigators. His criteria for taking a case is said to be at least ten deaths, or a sum of at least one million dollars at stake, but it's obvious that the numbers aren't set in stone if his attention is captured for some other reason.
He will take daring action to solve a case, sometimes doing things that others would consider beyond the pale (illegal surveillance, mild torture in interrogation, etc.: the placement of surveillance devices and the actual torture are delegated, but he observes and directs them). However, he will not take pre-emptive action in a case until a crisis point. He will allow a few lives to be sacrificed when it means saving many others.
Self-abnegation is the dark side of his extraordinary level of self-control. For most of his life, he tries to live invisibly. He pushes aside his own desires and preferences in pursuit of closing a case; for example, he spends months intentionally chained at the wrist to someone he dislikes, feigning friendship, though he is also open about his suspicions. This must be uncomfortable for him, in physical and psychological terms, because of both the dislike and the proximity.
Finally, he is hypocritical: he hates the noise of others' cellphones, making them turn them off, but he keeps his own turned on. He likes his own personal space, but is not respectful of that of others. He can be messy, on occasion, but sloppiness in others irritates him; he is a direct person who prefers to cut to the chase, unless the misdirection in a conversation is his own. Catching someone else in a lie thrills him. It's his continual pattern to hold others to standards to which he doesn't hold himself; this might be ameliorated by the fact that the standards to which he does hold himself are more strict than they initially appear to be.
Lifestyle:
For reasons of personal safety, and possibly also to protect his image, L has lived in some form of hiding or other since late childhood. He is a private person; details he reveals about himself to others may or may not be true, and the revelations are often strategic.
As a canny adult male with no major physical or mental disorders, L is capable of caring for himself. However, he's used to having someone else handle his day-to-day needs, like laundry and shopping, and in physical terms, he's lazy, even spoiled. His whole life is arranged to maximize his safety, anonymity, and time to think and observe.
Although L has been wealthy for many years, and most of what he has is the best available, he's disinterested in conspicuous consumption or status symbols, and he doesn't own a lot in terms of personal goods. He wants what is suitable, necessary, and functional: whatever is best for his needs. His tastes are generally minimalist, on the classic side, with a hint of luxury. He prefers to be comfortable, but closing his case takes precedence.
His diet is comprised mostly of sweet foods; the majority are fruit-based (anmitsu, strawberry gateau, slices of melon, and so on), though he is also shown to be fond of ice cream.
While it seems that he eats whatever he wants, and that this might be a way of rewarding himself for his hard work, there could be other reasons behind what he finds palatable or desirable. L has been internalizing the details of grisly murder scenes for well over a decade, probably much longer; it's easy to imagine that detailed reports from crime scenes and autopsies, where human and animal bodies are often nothing more or less than mutilated decaying flesh, might have made it difficult for young L to stomach any kind of meat. This disgust could have carried over into adulthood.
L's sleep schedule is a thing of mystery. It gets a mention when he watches the videos taken in Aoyama on the day when he suspects the Second Kira met Kira: Aizawa asks when he sleeps, and Matsuda replies that he saw L sleeping in his chair a few days earlier.
This doesn't indicate that he's an habitual insomniac, or that he never sleeps; instead, it suggests that he will try to forgo sleep if an urgent task requires his attention, then work until he drops. Later, when he and Light are living chained at the wrist, Light never complains about L's schedule, which suggests that his usual sleep habits are within the bounds of normality. It's out-of-character for him to sleep more than he needs to, though, and he probably has bouts of insomnia.
General Demeanor and Physicality:
It depends on the situation. When he's working, his focus is strong; he's serious, subtle, watchful, and often distant. At lighter times, or when he does not want to be seen as "L the Detective," he may seem playful or silly; this is largely, but not wholly, a facade, and his effusiveness is usually an attempt to manipulate someone. When the occasion calls for it, his manner becomes strategic and commanding. He's like a general when he's working with a team.
His physicality is fidgety; he needs to keep his hands busy. They're constantly at his mouth (where he tends to tap them on his teeth, bite at them without breaking the fingernail, play with his lips, etc.), in his hair, or playing with his food or its remnants; he tends to cup them over his knees when they aren't occupied. He also fidgets with his feet, to a lesser extent: rubbing his toes together, or rubbing a foot against the other leg.
(He seems to have a high caffeine and sugar intake, which will make the body more dependent on adrenaline than it otherwise would be: much of this fidgeting suggests it, and it also supports the idea that he might sometimes suffer from insomnia.)
He has a very particular way of holding items, with only the tips of his fingers on only the edge of the item. Obata describes him as a bit of a clean freak; furthermore, this seems like a sensible way of handling evidentiary materials. He sometimes makes a mess while eating, but the mess is always cleared up quickly, and his white shirt is almost always spotless.
This all suggests that he also has good personal hygiene. A dark-haired man in his mid-twenties would need to shave; L is clean-shaven, and his teeth are shown to be neat and even in spite of his sugary diet. His routine would be uncomplicated, but regular.
He doesn't appear to like to be touched. He probably sees it as an intrusion, even though he has no problem invading someone else's personal space when he wants to.
It would be fair to describe L as situationally or psychologically aggressive: he will get into someone's face, and he will engineer situations designed to make someone feel uncomfortable. However, he is never physically aggressive in the violent sense; he only once strikes someone without being struck first.
Light initiates several fistfights with him, and while L doesn't throw the opening punch, he's more than capable of defending himself. The only other occasion on which he behaves with physical aggression is when an excited Matsuda reaches for the microphone to tell an imprisoned Light that Kira is killing again: to stop Matsuda from doing something that could mess up the investigation, L slaps his hand away. It's the most effective thing he would have been able to do at that point.
Speaking:
L's style of speech is usually calm, educated, and slightly formal; while he is articulate, he is also subdued in terms of vocal patterns. He doesn't shout or carry on at high volume. When he raises his voice, it's to speak in a ringing, commanding tone, usually to pull a situation back from the brink of chaos, so people around him will stop acting on their emotions and start thinking things through again.
It seems that he probably hasn't had time or inclination to learn all of the colloquial forms of the languages he speaks, so while he is not always polite, his language often is; he will say very rude things in a very polite way. He seldom uses profanity, and when he does, it's mild, mostly "damn" and "hell."
He is eloquent, tending to speak in paragraphs, and persuasive when he needs to be. He often pauses before answering a question, says "Yes," or "No," then explains the reason for his answer. He says "Please" a lot, but it's perfunctory rather than a courtesy: it's the way he precedes an order.
L's primary frame of reference is British, so I try to use British terms where I know they exist and where I can do it without breaking his canonical style of speech. For example, he'd ask for paracetamol before he'd ask for Tylenol, but he'd know to try saying Tylenol if the person doesn't understand what he means.
Emotional Expression:
L feels the whole gamut of emotions, but he is not usually performative of them. If he does express an emotion like surprise or fear or embarrassment, he will almost always cover it quickly; it will flash across his face and be gone, except in the case of irritation, which he rarely bothers to hide.
To an observer, he seems aloof, sometimes dry and sarcastic, with a flat affect, veiling the majority of his true feelings. When he gets involved in the Kira case, he hasn't had frequent close interactions with people for a long time, so it stands to reason that this could be a relic of his childhood.
The one moment in Death Note canon when L's agitation is severe and obvious is just after Ukita's death in front of Sakura TV, when Aizawa grabs him by his shirt and seems about to hit him. L is plainly terrified: not of Aizawa, but of what has been happening and the implications of those events in relation to his own theories. He's trembling, with a clawing grip on his calves. At other points in the same scene, he bites his nails instead of just mouthing at them.
Personal Relationships and Interpersonal Interactions:
L's lack of friends and romantic partners is a choice, fueled by his paranoia, skepticism, and want of empathy. The people to whom he is most important, those in whom he inspires an obsessive degree of admiration, are people with whom he has had little or no interaction.
It isn't that he's incapable of forming lasting relationships: his sixteen-year association with Quillish Wammy appears to be a close one, a parent/child connection based on mutual respect, mutual benefit, and absolute trust. Apart from acting as his professional liaison and taking care of mundane domestic issues, Watari does not hesitate to expose L's attempt to manipulate the NPA task force when Yotsuba's Kira insists that they stop investigating, and L tolerates it, even though it causes Aizawa to leave the team for a while. However, relationships this solid are few and far between, and in his everyday life, L can't afford to make the mistake of letting the wrong person get too close.
Therefore, he functions mostly as a detached observer. Until the Kira case, his work-related interactions with others were all conducted at a remove, via electronic means; his presence is psychological rather than physical; he dislikes distraction. In his rented rooms, he looks out over the city, the lights, above everything; he is not quite a part of it; this is as good a metaphor as any for his connection to the rest of the human race.
It could be said that his association with Light Yagami qualifies as "letting the wrong person get too close," but it's an intentional, targeted effort to put Light under a microscope; physical proximity is not the same thing as emotional closeness. He's lying when he describes Light as a friend.
Even though his lifestyle has precluded forming relationships, there are types of people who L likes more than others. As something of a meritocrat, he seems to prefer intelligent people, but he also has respect for hard work and calculated daring; he has little time for stupid people, gullible people, or average people, particularly if they seem to be law-abiding, and he may become exasperated and curt with them. He probably categorizes people he encouters by whether or not they engage his attention and how useful he thinks they are likely to be.
L doesn't have much personal charm, or many social skills. He is absolutely aware of social rules: he's a detective; he's spent most of his life observing people and analyzing their behaviors. However, because of his usual methods of interaction, adhering to a particular culture's social mores would not seem relevant to him.
A detached observer who didn't work with subordinates in person until the Kira case would have had no need to attempt to integrate with whatever culture he was working in, particularly when he works in many cultures in a given year. He isn't Japanese (or German, Colombian, Kenyan, whatever); he wouldn't bother to pretend that he is, unless doing so would solve his case. It would be tedious and completely pointless to go through the motions of hemming and hawing around unpleasant but vital facts just so that others won't feel uncomfortable, especially when it could impede his progress in a serious way. In a similar vein, what does an appropriately respectful bow have to do with catching Kira?
(That said, it seems that the Kira case might go more smoothly if he at least made an attempt to pretend to care about other people's feelings. His behavior reads as incalculably rude to the Japanese officers he works with.)
This kind of social awkwardness is consistent with the behavior of people who are exceptionally or profoundly gifted.
The lack of respect shown for local behavioral customs seems to extend to local laws: L doesn't seem to care whether or not certain types of surveillance are legal in a given country, as long as they'll help him solve his case.
Sexuality:
L's sexuality doesn't seem to be important or interesting to him, due to his deep involvement with his work and his concern about security.
HtR13 states that while he's probably lying when he tells Misa he could fall for her, he isn't immune to the charms of a pretty girl: he blushes and is briefly flustered when she kisses him on the cheek. Ohba says that L doesn't like Light very much, and thinks negative things about him; most readings of L as gay are based on interpreting their interactions with the idea that L is secretly in love with Light. Those elements, and Ohba's discarded idea to make Mello and Near L's sons (in a manga written for teenage boys) suggest to me that he was intended to be read as heterosexual.
One caveat, though: he would have little compunction about feigning interest in another man if he found it necessary.
Even so, I think that feigning interest in anyone, male or female, is a task he'd prefer to delegate to someone else if he could. The circumstances would have to be extraordinary for him to do it himself -- not because of his sexual preferences, but because he rarely invites touch from others.
Lying:
While L is a liar, his lies are strategic rather than habitual. He isn't a pathological fabulist; as with everything else, he doesn't lie without a reason. The reason might be a lack of trust, misdirection, an attempt to keep someone from coming too close, an attempt to make someone do something he wants them to do, self-protection, or one of any number of other justifications. Most of his canonical lies involve things said to or about Light.
Many of his lies are omissions, in the sense of giving someone incomplete information to test their reaction to it. He does it to Light several times in the course of the investigation: by not informing him that the killings have begun again while he has been imprisoned, for example. When he does it to Aizawa, "neglecting" to tell him that he's already made financial provisions for all the investigating officers in the event that the NPA is forced to abandon the Kira case, it causes an angry Aizawa to make the decision to leave the team. In each instance, L omits information because he's hoping to learn something about the person he's manipulating.
One other important incidence of lying is L's use of percentages. Ohba states that L won't bother to mention a percentage of likelihood at all unless he has a strong suspicion of something. When he does, it's mostly to admit that he has a suspicion while vastly understating its degree: "five percent" means "ninety to one-hundred percent." His use of them in his internal monologue is rare. (They're used more frequently in Another Note, but that appears to be because NISIOISIN wasn't given this information by Ohba while he was writing it.)
L is also likely to be lying on two occasions when he's confronted about his habits. In the coffee shop after the tennis match, Light asks L why he sits the way he does, perched on the seat of the chair with his knees drawn up to his chest. L claims that his reasoning ability will drop if he sits any other way. Later, when Misa refuses a slice of cake and makes a snide remark about L's sugar intake, he claims that he eats sugar because it's good for the brain. Both of his statements seem to be excuses for what are simple personal preferences; apart from that, his remark to Misa is intended to tease her by insinuating that she would be smarter if she ate more sugar.
L has few "tells" when lying; the only common one is a kind of aggressively beatific insincerity in his demeanor.
Callousness:
The fact that L is a hard man who will do unpleasant things, or allow unpleasantness to happen if he finds the justification strong enough, is demonstrated a number of times in Death Note canon. His demeanor is usually subdued and commanding, not belying his nature in the same way that his eccentric appearance, youth, and behavioral quirks do, yet the NPA team that works with him through most of his time onstage seems constantly surprised when he rejects empathy and/or sentimentality in making decisions about the direction of the investigation.
Someone has to do these things, someone has to make these decisions, and in this setting, it's L. Apart from his intelligence, this callousness may be the major element that allows him to succeed where others have failed.
Make no mistake: in interpersonal terms, his lack of empathy is a serious character flaw; some things would go much more smoothly for him if he made an effort to at least feign a serious interest in the emotions of others, or if he allowed them to save face. Because it's an outstanding characteristic, it can be tempting to overstate it, to find cruelty or even sadism in it.
The trouble with this viewpoint is that L mostly lacks malice, except for a competitive pleasure in outwitting someone. His internal hardness permits him to commit acts which would be cruel if they were done for their own sake, but in fact they are not done for their own sake; they are done out of necessity, for a greater purpose. (This is in contrast to Light, who justifies his killings with a "purpose," but who is gleeful and malicious about them, as when he can't wait to see Naomi Misora die.)
What is L's purpose? There seems to be a hint in the scene in which he selects two possible candidates to succeed him based on their reaction to his statement that "justice" is not what drives him, implying that it's only a consequence of his work. Instead, he says he's compelled by a difficult intellectual puzzle and the thrill of victory, and that he'll do what he has to in order to achieve his goals. He chooses the children who aren't appalled by his statement.
There is an obvious possible reason for this scenario: it enables him to eliminate the candidates who are likely to burn out when the nature of L's work is revealed to them in full, the idealists and the Good Samaritans. He would know better than anyone that no one could last long under the psychological pressures of his position, forced to make the same decisions and deal with the same situations, if they had no competitive streak or willingness to "fight dirty."
That said, L is well aware that justice is an ultimate result of what he does; it simply isn't the only thing that gets him out of bed in the morning, and he has no illusions about that fact. Because there is no element of enjoyment in his crueller acts, no apparent glint in his eye or shift in his seat or anything else to indicate that he's sexually turned-on when Misa or Light are under interrogation, it seems that this is clinical for him: something for everyone to tolerate, another tool to achieve the twin goals of justice and knowledge. "Winning," for L, is about achieving complete understanding, at least as much as it is about outwitting an opponent. He has a different definition of professionalism than many other people would, but by his own definition, he is a consummate professional.
The first instance of L's callousness is his use of Lind L. Tailor as a proxy. Tailor is scheduled to be executed on the day that L runs his test; L uses his death to determine Kira's location, and it's easy, on a scale of black and white morality, to say that his involvement in Tailor's death is wrong. From L's point of view, though, Tailor's death would have happened that day regardless of his own involvement in it, and putting it to the purpose of stopping a mass murderer makes it more meaningful than it would have been in the case of a straightforward execution.
Misa's interrogation is a more infamous example. Everything done to her is appalling, as were her own acts, but everything has a solid reason supporting it as a choice -- probably the best choice under those particular circumstances. She's arrested and blindfolded because there's enough forensic and circumstantial evidence to pin her as the second Kira, who can kill someone if she can see their face. She's restrained to keep her from killing herself, and because her method of murdering people isn't yet understood. It's likely that the hem is torn out of her shift as another method of suicide prevention (stitched hems like that have been used as nooses). Nothing is left to chance. To put it another way, it isn't that "the gloves are off" in this situation, it's that they were never "on" to begin with. Her youth, beauty, and small physical size don't change what she's done.
Later in the story, L refuses to take pre-emptive action to prevent deaths in a case, continuing his refusal until he feels that the case is at a crisis point. He argues against moving in to arrest Yotsuba board members who are discussing potential victims, pointing out to the task force members that gathering evidence, supporting their case, and stopping the real Kira once and for all requires allowing at least some of the planned murders to happen.
This probably isn't an easy choice for L, who values human life even where he doesn't care much about human emotion. However, they are trying to end Kira, not avert a few deaths which may turn out to be tangential, and which cannot be stopped without potentially great harm to their prospect of achieving their real goal. The idealism of the other task force members in the face of L's dogged practicality and logic makes them look obstructionist, and it's understandable that he chooses to conduct his own investigation without them at that point.
Finally, L seems to have a line he doesn't cross: he'll put people who are scheduled to die anyway in situations where they might be killed, but he won't kill anyone himself. Instead, the value he apparently puts on human life is inestimable. He refers to the FBI agents who died working under him as "twelve precious lives"; he seems to get upset about Ukita's death. While the loss of resources upsets him, the deaths seem to mean much more to him than that. He is aware that catching certain criminals will result in their execution, but he is not, himself, the executioner; he even wants to cut a deal to exonerate Misa, Ukita's killer, if she'll help him capture Kira.
(Why the hatred for Kira? Apart from Light being a criminal who should be stopped, and therefore fair game as an opponent, there's a personal element to the competition. L puts Lind L. Tailor on television, has him claim to be L, and has him insult Kira. Light's furious snap reaction is to scrawl Tailor's name in the Death Note; in that instant, L is aware that he's dealing with someone who will kill him as soon as look at him. In other words, apart from the fact that any murderer on Kira's scale would almost certainly be executed in any country that has the death penalty, Light sets the terms and stakes of the competition with that particular murder. "Hey, L, I'll kill you for opposing me.")
There is one possible exception to this interpretation. When L is about to release Light and Misa from interrogation, he insists on Soichiro Yagami's participation in a test. Light and Misa are taken out of their cells and eventually wind up in a car driven by Soichiro, who claims that he's supposed to take them to their executions, but will instead kill Light and then himself, leaving Misa to be picked up and executed later. The intention of the test is to discern whether or not the power to kill has truly left them, especially Misa: because she has professed her love for Light, it's possible that she will kill Soichiro to save him. She doesn't, and because L is satisfied that she can no longer kill, the two suspects are then allowed to go live in relaxed custody.
How does this tie in with a respect for human life and the idea that L is careful with the lives of the agents assisting him? It's probable that he wouldn't allow such a test unless he was relatively convinced that nothing would happen; apart from that, he has just watched Soichiro voluntarily spend weeks in a cell to support the idea that Light is innocent. It seems clear that if Light is guilty, Soichiro won't much value his own life, and is a dead man one way or another.
Self-image:
L understands himself well, and probably doesn't believe or engage in self-deception. He seems wiser than Light, less self-satisfied, even though he describes himself as childish and a sore loser. "If it means being able to clear a case, I don't play fair; I'm a dishonest, cheating human being who hates losing." He has no illusions about who he is or what he does.
While he's intellectually arrogant, to some extent, he also knows that he is fallible. He second-guesses himself: like other INTPs, he wants his hypothesis to be perfectly supported by every bit of data, and worries about missing a piece that will change the bigger picture. In Death Note canon, this second-guessing costs him his life.
He doesn't think that he has all the answers to save the world... in fact, he would probably find a saved world to be an intolerable bore. Chaos created by others gives his life meaning.
Physical Description:
L is 5'10.5" tall (mistakenly given as 5'8" in the English translation of HtR13; the original Japanese text gave his height as 179cm). His canonical weight is something equivalent to 110 lbs, which seems unrealistic given his musculature. It's my guess that if he were a real person with the build he's shown to have, he'd weigh around 130 lbs or so, still quite thin for that height. He has long limbs, a loping gait, a terrible, hunch-shouldered slouch. His fingers, too, are long: the single element of his appearance that could be described as elegant.
L's complexion is pale, approaching pasty. His hair is black -- or, possibly, one dark brown shade off of it (official art varies), mostly shoulder-length, with a few shorter layers and an unruly texture. He has large, muddy brown-grey eyes with dark circles around them, high, full cheekbones, thin lips, a fine nose, and a pointed chin. The overall effect is often owlish, as his eyes are his most outstanding feature. (While they have an apparent bluish tint in some of L's anime scenes, the reflected light from nearby computer screens seems to be its source.)
His ethnicity is mixed: 3/4 Anglo-European, 1/4 Japanese. Both can be seen in his face, though it often depends on his expression.
He has canonical attire, a loose, long-sleeved white t-shirt and baggy blue jeans. He wears shoes only when he has to, and tends to shun socks at all times.
Skills and Abilities:
L's primary strength is his intelligence; he is clever, manipulative, and, depending on the situation, ruthless. Coupled with his creative leaps of logic and his tenacity, it makes him a formidable opponent. There is no estimation of his IQ*, and while he's depicted in canon as a super-genius, it's my opinion that it's more that he's very bright and has been socialized from a young age to do a particular type of work (after all, he's an investigator, not a theoretical physicist). He's good at making connections, working through things, mentally processing available evidence. He can keep calm in the face of a crisis; in fact, he does some of his best work under pressure.
Most of his secondary strengths follow on his intelligence; he has a wide range of investigative techniques.
He's adept with computers in a variety of ways, particularly those involving security, hacking, and sorting through large amounts of data; he must speak a number of modern languages at least in part; he picks most skills up quickly once he puts his attention to learning them. He doesn't know everything, but if there's something he needs to know, he has the ability to find the information and learn it at great speed.
Logic and deduction are what ties it all together: the other elements seem to function as support for this skill set. For example, investigative techniques and technological aptitude net him the evidence that he needs to back up what his logical deductions tell him must be true. In the more mundane sense, he's exceptionally good at pointing out the flaws in an argument or plan.
By the same token, he is observant, and little gets past him. He reads people well; someone who is evil will raise at least a slight sense of suspicion, even if they're otherwise good at hiding it. Someone who is both intelligent and evasive will set off serious warning bells and, likely, capture his attention for a while.
He has an extraordinary work ethic, dedicating himself to almost any work-related task he picks up; he probably picks up few tasks that are not work-related. His commitment to the task is total, until he completes it to his satisfaction, or until completion is no longer relevant. (For example, when investigating the Second Kira, he personally watches all the security tapes that were recorded in Aoyama on a certain date, even though it takes him several days to do so. He sleeps only in his chair, for only a few hours at a time, in the course of completing this task.)
In a physical sense, he's healthy enough, maintaining his flexibility and agility in spite of his habits. A few isolated shots from early in the manga, before he is fully introduced as a character, suggest that he might do yoga. He is shown to play tennis well in April, 2004.
He pilots a helicopter at one point. Although he suggests that he's working from intuition rather than training, I don't think that the cautious man who admonishes the task force members to value their lives would get into an airborne vehicle operated by an untrained pilot, nor is the helicopter itself a surprise to him, since he arranged for it to be available months before the scene in which he flies it. The fact that he's speaking to Light also leads me to believe that his protestations of relative helicopter ignorance are filthy lies.
Given the way he has spent his life, it's probably safe to assume that he also possesses the following skills:
- Comprehension of physical trauma: he's seen more autopsy reports than most coroners will put together in their entire career.
- Some knowledge, possibly untested, of emergency first-aid skills: if nothing else, the danger he lives in would make the ability to assess injuries, treat minor ones, and stabilize serious ones an important resource, especially in terms of self-care. Apart from that, L is a sponge for information; this is also the kind of thing that he might have picked up without meaning to, because it's likely to have come up in his work.
- Basic self-defense: While I don't believe that L is a capoeira master**, he responds to Light's punches without hesitation and manages to hold his own. This, and the element of danger in his life, both lend themselves to the idea that he has self-defense training -- but there's a big caveat. In spite of this physical prowess and agility, his best hope with a larger, better-trained opponent is to kick hard and escape quickly. He might be able to throw, disarm, or temporarily disable them; it's unlikely he could win in sustained physical combat.
- Handgun usage: he keeps an illegal handgun in his helicopter; knowing how to use it would come under the category of "self-defense," too. He certainly understands the forensics of gunshots.
* About IQ: There are two problems with estimating L's IQ. One is that he's not "written as smart as he's supposed to be," in that the audience is told he's at a certain level of intelligence, but in practice, he doesn't seem to be quite as smart as we're told: it's just that he's much smarter than most of the people around him. The other problem is that it's difficult to measure IQ above 160 even in real people. My guess for him is somewhere in the 180s or so, but who knows?
** About the capoeira: Some players choose to depict L as a capoeirista, but canon doesn't really support it. He is shown kicking Light in the face on two occasions, but Obata said that he chose the kicking style based only on L's position after Light punches him. Some people in the fandom commented that it looked like capoeira (probably familiar to shonen manga and anime fans mostly from its use in Fullmetal Alchemist), and then NISIOISIN chose to depict Naomi Misora as a capoeirista in Another Note. It is stated in the novel that L decides to watch capoeira videos because of Naomi's expertise, but he is never shown to develop the expertise himself, and there is no evidence that his training goes beyond his videos and his encounter with Naomi. HtR13 contradicts itself by both providing the Obata quote and listing the day on which Naomi kicks L down a flight of stairs as "L learns capoeira from Naomi Misora."
Overview:
L is, first and foremost, a serious, dedicated young adult male of exceptional intelligence. Following on this, he has much more career experience than most people his age, and his effectiveness at his work is profound.
He is a peculiar mix of self-denial and self-indulgence; he loves his work enough that little attention is paid to the sort of distractions that might derail someone else. Where other people might read or watch a film, he'll study case files and news sources. Where they might listen to music, he would prefer not to be distracted. Relationships? He's too busy, and even if he weren't, other people aren't that interesting in and of themselves. He finds his work intensely fulfilling.
In other words, L is a workaholic: his career is his life, absent most normal human ties, and taking time off isn't enjoyable for long. He fell into his career at an early age, as a child prodigy. He is competitive, and he loves puzzles: he sees complex criminal cases as an interesting hobby. A normal life is the last thing he would want.
When he's working, he doesn't like to be distracted, and he expects to be obeyed by subordinates. He will generally delegate responsibilities to skilled professionals: for example, he would rarely want to be at an autopsy, but he will want to go over the report in detail, and may even want to send out his own pathologist.
Everything he does is done for a reason. He doesn't continue to do things that don't work, or try to learn things that he doesn't need to know; his time is limited, and the greater portion of his entire being is dedicated to a purpose. He doesn't like to waste that time on inessentials. He has an impressive level of self-control in difficult circumstances.
Worst Qualities:
L is manipulative, paranoid, and ruthless, a skilled liar, and in the day-to-day, he doesn't care very much about most other people. The ones who are useful are resources; the ones who are not are boring.
This is a detached, clinical indifference, not cruelty or sadism: he does care if someone is alive or dead, but he isn't someone you'd want to come to with the problems of everyday life. The solution to your dilemma is obvious to him, and you're wasting his time; please concentrate on more important matters.
That said, he may listen, in an unemotional and uninvolved way, and even give good advice, if he thinks he stands to gain something from it. But unless you make it onto the very short list of people he actually cares about, he has no genuine interest in anything as unimportant as your feelings (or, usually, his own). They aren't relevant unless they'll help him achieve his goals.
L is driven almost entirely by a desire to win. The flip side of his work ethic is obsessive tendencies. Self-doubt and sulking go along with his competitiveness; if things aren't going his way, he can be a brat.
He picks and chooses cases. It isn't about defending the weak or balancing the scales of justice, though he finds that reputation convenient (and maybe sometimes it is about those things, but he probably wouldn't admit it to anyone else). Instead, he pursues what interests him, an interest that is strengthened if the case has stumped other investigators. His criteria for taking a case is said to be at least ten deaths, or a sum of at least one million dollars at stake, but it's obvious that the numbers aren't set in stone if his attention is captured for some other reason.
He will take daring action to solve a case, sometimes doing things that others would consider beyond the pale (illegal surveillance, mild torture in interrogation, etc.: the placement of surveillance devices and the actual torture are delegated, but he observes and directs them). However, he will not take pre-emptive action in a case until a crisis point. He will allow a few lives to be sacrificed when it means saving many others.
Self-abnegation is the dark side of his extraordinary level of self-control. For most of his life, he tries to live invisibly. He pushes aside his own desires and preferences in pursuit of closing a case; for example, he spends months intentionally chained at the wrist to someone he dislikes, feigning friendship, though he is also open about his suspicions. This must be uncomfortable for him, in physical and psychological terms, because of both the dislike and the proximity.
Finally, he is hypocritical: he hates the noise of others' cellphones, making them turn them off, but he keeps his own turned on. He likes his own personal space, but is not respectful of that of others. He can be messy, on occasion, but sloppiness in others irritates him; he is a direct person who prefers to cut to the chase, unless the misdirection in a conversation is his own. Catching someone else in a lie thrills him. It's his continual pattern to hold others to standards to which he doesn't hold himself; this might be ameliorated by the fact that the standards to which he does hold himself are more strict than they initially appear to be.
Lifestyle:
For reasons of personal safety, and possibly also to protect his image, L has lived in some form of hiding or other since late childhood. He is a private person; details he reveals about himself to others may or may not be true, and the revelations are often strategic.
As a canny adult male with no major physical or mental disorders, L is capable of caring for himself. However, he's used to having someone else handle his day-to-day needs, like laundry and shopping, and in physical terms, he's lazy, even spoiled. His whole life is arranged to maximize his safety, anonymity, and time to think and observe.
Although L has been wealthy for many years, and most of what he has is the best available, he's disinterested in conspicuous consumption or status symbols, and he doesn't own a lot in terms of personal goods. He wants what is suitable, necessary, and functional: whatever is best for his needs. His tastes are generally minimalist, on the classic side, with a hint of luxury. He prefers to be comfortable, but closing his case takes precedence.
His diet is comprised mostly of sweet foods; the majority are fruit-based (anmitsu, strawberry gateau, slices of melon, and so on), though he is also shown to be fond of ice cream.
While it seems that he eats whatever he wants, and that this might be a way of rewarding himself for his hard work, there could be other reasons behind what he finds palatable or desirable. L has been internalizing the details of grisly murder scenes for well over a decade, probably much longer; it's easy to imagine that detailed reports from crime scenes and autopsies, where human and animal bodies are often nothing more or less than mutilated decaying flesh, might have made it difficult for young L to stomach any kind of meat. This disgust could have carried over into adulthood.
L's sleep schedule is a thing of mystery. It gets a mention when he watches the videos taken in Aoyama on the day when he suspects the Second Kira met Kira: Aizawa asks when he sleeps, and Matsuda replies that he saw L sleeping in his chair a few days earlier.
This doesn't indicate that he's an habitual insomniac, or that he never sleeps; instead, it suggests that he will try to forgo sleep if an urgent task requires his attention, then work until he drops. Later, when he and Light are living chained at the wrist, Light never complains about L's schedule, which suggests that his usual sleep habits are within the bounds of normality. It's out-of-character for him to sleep more than he needs to, though, and he probably has bouts of insomnia.
General Demeanor and Physicality:
It depends on the situation. When he's working, his focus is strong; he's serious, subtle, watchful, and often distant. At lighter times, or when he does not want to be seen as "L the Detective," he may seem playful or silly; this is largely, but not wholly, a facade, and his effusiveness is usually an attempt to manipulate someone. When the occasion calls for it, his manner becomes strategic and commanding. He's like a general when he's working with a team.
His physicality is fidgety; he needs to keep his hands busy. They're constantly at his mouth (where he tends to tap them on his teeth, bite at them without breaking the fingernail, play with his lips, etc.), in his hair, or playing with his food or its remnants; he tends to cup them over his knees when they aren't occupied. He also fidgets with his feet, to a lesser extent: rubbing his toes together, or rubbing a foot against the other leg.
(He seems to have a high caffeine and sugar intake, which will make the body more dependent on adrenaline than it otherwise would be: much of this fidgeting suggests it, and it also supports the idea that he might sometimes suffer from insomnia.)
He has a very particular way of holding items, with only the tips of his fingers on only the edge of the item. Obata describes him as a bit of a clean freak; furthermore, this seems like a sensible way of handling evidentiary materials. He sometimes makes a mess while eating, but the mess is always cleared up quickly, and his white shirt is almost always spotless.
This all suggests that he also has good personal hygiene. A dark-haired man in his mid-twenties would need to shave; L is clean-shaven, and his teeth are shown to be neat and even in spite of his sugary diet. His routine would be uncomplicated, but regular.
He doesn't appear to like to be touched. He probably sees it as an intrusion, even though he has no problem invading someone else's personal space when he wants to.
It would be fair to describe L as situationally or psychologically aggressive: he will get into someone's face, and he will engineer situations designed to make someone feel uncomfortable. However, he is never physically aggressive in the violent sense; he only once strikes someone without being struck first.
Light initiates several fistfights with him, and while L doesn't throw the opening punch, he's more than capable of defending himself. The only other occasion on which he behaves with physical aggression is when an excited Matsuda reaches for the microphone to tell an imprisoned Light that Kira is killing again: to stop Matsuda from doing something that could mess up the investigation, L slaps his hand away. It's the most effective thing he would have been able to do at that point.
Speaking:
L's style of speech is usually calm, educated, and slightly formal; while he is articulate, he is also subdued in terms of vocal patterns. He doesn't shout or carry on at high volume. When he raises his voice, it's to speak in a ringing, commanding tone, usually to pull a situation back from the brink of chaos, so people around him will stop acting on their emotions and start thinking things through again.
It seems that he probably hasn't had time or inclination to learn all of the colloquial forms of the languages he speaks, so while he is not always polite, his language often is; he will say very rude things in a very polite way. He seldom uses profanity, and when he does, it's mild, mostly "damn" and "hell."
He is eloquent, tending to speak in paragraphs, and persuasive when he needs to be. He often pauses before answering a question, says "Yes," or "No," then explains the reason for his answer. He says "Please" a lot, but it's perfunctory rather than a courtesy: it's the way he precedes an order.
L's primary frame of reference is British, so I try to use British terms where I know they exist and where I can do it without breaking his canonical style of speech. For example, he'd ask for paracetamol before he'd ask for Tylenol, but he'd know to try saying Tylenol if the person doesn't understand what he means.
Emotional Expression:
L feels the whole gamut of emotions, but he is not usually performative of them. If he does express an emotion like surprise or fear or embarrassment, he will almost always cover it quickly; it will flash across his face and be gone, except in the case of irritation, which he rarely bothers to hide.
To an observer, he seems aloof, sometimes dry and sarcastic, with a flat affect, veiling the majority of his true feelings. When he gets involved in the Kira case, he hasn't had frequent close interactions with people for a long time, so it stands to reason that this could be a relic of his childhood.
The one moment in Death Note canon when L's agitation is severe and obvious is just after Ukita's death in front of Sakura TV, when Aizawa grabs him by his shirt and seems about to hit him. L is plainly terrified: not of Aizawa, but of what has been happening and the implications of those events in relation to his own theories. He's trembling, with a clawing grip on his calves. At other points in the same scene, he bites his nails instead of just mouthing at them.
Personal Relationships and Interpersonal Interactions:
L's lack of friends and romantic partners is a choice, fueled by his paranoia, skepticism, and want of empathy. The people to whom he is most important, those in whom he inspires an obsessive degree of admiration, are people with whom he has had little or no interaction.
It isn't that he's incapable of forming lasting relationships: his sixteen-year association with Quillish Wammy appears to be a close one, a parent/child connection based on mutual respect, mutual benefit, and absolute trust. Apart from acting as his professional liaison and taking care of mundane domestic issues, Watari does not hesitate to expose L's attempt to manipulate the NPA task force when Yotsuba's Kira insists that they stop investigating, and L tolerates it, even though it causes Aizawa to leave the team for a while. However, relationships this solid are few and far between, and in his everyday life, L can't afford to make the mistake of letting the wrong person get too close.
Therefore, he functions mostly as a detached observer. Until the Kira case, his work-related interactions with others were all conducted at a remove, via electronic means; his presence is psychological rather than physical; he dislikes distraction. In his rented rooms, he looks out over the city, the lights, above everything; he is not quite a part of it; this is as good a metaphor as any for his connection to the rest of the human race.
It could be said that his association with Light Yagami qualifies as "letting the wrong person get too close," but it's an intentional, targeted effort to put Light under a microscope; physical proximity is not the same thing as emotional closeness. He's lying when he describes Light as a friend.
Even though his lifestyle has precluded forming relationships, there are types of people who L likes more than others. As something of a meritocrat, he seems to prefer intelligent people, but he also has respect for hard work and calculated daring; he has little time for stupid people, gullible people, or average people, particularly if they seem to be law-abiding, and he may become exasperated and curt with them. He probably categorizes people he encouters by whether or not they engage his attention and how useful he thinks they are likely to be.
L doesn't have much personal charm, or many social skills. He is absolutely aware of social rules: he's a detective; he's spent most of his life observing people and analyzing their behaviors. However, because of his usual methods of interaction, adhering to a particular culture's social mores would not seem relevant to him.
A detached observer who didn't work with subordinates in person until the Kira case would have had no need to attempt to integrate with whatever culture he was working in, particularly when he works in many cultures in a given year. He isn't Japanese (or German, Colombian, Kenyan, whatever); he wouldn't bother to pretend that he is, unless doing so would solve his case. It would be tedious and completely pointless to go through the motions of hemming and hawing around unpleasant but vital facts just so that others won't feel uncomfortable, especially when it could impede his progress in a serious way. In a similar vein, what does an appropriately respectful bow have to do with catching Kira?
(That said, it seems that the Kira case might go more smoothly if he at least made an attempt to pretend to care about other people's feelings. His behavior reads as incalculably rude to the Japanese officers he works with.)
This kind of social awkwardness is consistent with the behavior of people who are exceptionally or profoundly gifted.
The lack of respect shown for local behavioral customs seems to extend to local laws: L doesn't seem to care whether or not certain types of surveillance are legal in a given country, as long as they'll help him solve his case.
Sexuality:
L's sexuality doesn't seem to be important or interesting to him, due to his deep involvement with his work and his concern about security.
HtR13 states that while he's probably lying when he tells Misa he could fall for her, he isn't immune to the charms of a pretty girl: he blushes and is briefly flustered when she kisses him on the cheek. Ohba says that L doesn't like Light very much, and thinks negative things about him; most readings of L as gay are based on interpreting their interactions with the idea that L is secretly in love with Light. Those elements, and Ohba's discarded idea to make Mello and Near L's sons (in a manga written for teenage boys) suggest to me that he was intended to be read as heterosexual.
One caveat, though: he would have little compunction about feigning interest in another man if he found it necessary.
Even so, I think that feigning interest in anyone, male or female, is a task he'd prefer to delegate to someone else if he could. The circumstances would have to be extraordinary for him to do it himself -- not because of his sexual preferences, but because he rarely invites touch from others.
Lying:
While L is a liar, his lies are strategic rather than habitual. He isn't a pathological fabulist; as with everything else, he doesn't lie without a reason. The reason might be a lack of trust, misdirection, an attempt to keep someone from coming too close, an attempt to make someone do something he wants them to do, self-protection, or one of any number of other justifications. Most of his canonical lies involve things said to or about Light.
Many of his lies are omissions, in the sense of giving someone incomplete information to test their reaction to it. He does it to Light several times in the course of the investigation: by not informing him that the killings have begun again while he has been imprisoned, for example. When he does it to Aizawa, "neglecting" to tell him that he's already made financial provisions for all the investigating officers in the event that the NPA is forced to abandon the Kira case, it causes an angry Aizawa to make the decision to leave the team. In each instance, L omits information because he's hoping to learn something about the person he's manipulating.
One other important incidence of lying is L's use of percentages. Ohba states that L won't bother to mention a percentage of likelihood at all unless he has a strong suspicion of something. When he does, it's mostly to admit that he has a suspicion while vastly understating its degree: "five percent" means "ninety to one-hundred percent." His use of them in his internal monologue is rare. (They're used more frequently in Another Note, but that appears to be because NISIOISIN wasn't given this information by Ohba while he was writing it.)
L is also likely to be lying on two occasions when he's confronted about his habits. In the coffee shop after the tennis match, Light asks L why he sits the way he does, perched on the seat of the chair with his knees drawn up to his chest. L claims that his reasoning ability will drop if he sits any other way. Later, when Misa refuses a slice of cake and makes a snide remark about L's sugar intake, he claims that he eats sugar because it's good for the brain. Both of his statements seem to be excuses for what are simple personal preferences; apart from that, his remark to Misa is intended to tease her by insinuating that she would be smarter if she ate more sugar.
L has few "tells" when lying; the only common one is a kind of aggressively beatific insincerity in his demeanor.
Callousness:
The fact that L is a hard man who will do unpleasant things, or allow unpleasantness to happen if he finds the justification strong enough, is demonstrated a number of times in Death Note canon. His demeanor is usually subdued and commanding, not belying his nature in the same way that his eccentric appearance, youth, and behavioral quirks do, yet the NPA team that works with him through most of his time onstage seems constantly surprised when he rejects empathy and/or sentimentality in making decisions about the direction of the investigation.
Someone has to do these things, someone has to make these decisions, and in this setting, it's L. Apart from his intelligence, this callousness may be the major element that allows him to succeed where others have failed.
Make no mistake: in interpersonal terms, his lack of empathy is a serious character flaw; some things would go much more smoothly for him if he made an effort to at least feign a serious interest in the emotions of others, or if he allowed them to save face. Because it's an outstanding characteristic, it can be tempting to overstate it, to find cruelty or even sadism in it.
The trouble with this viewpoint is that L mostly lacks malice, except for a competitive pleasure in outwitting someone. His internal hardness permits him to commit acts which would be cruel if they were done for their own sake, but in fact they are not done for their own sake; they are done out of necessity, for a greater purpose. (This is in contrast to Light, who justifies his killings with a "purpose," but who is gleeful and malicious about them, as when he can't wait to see Naomi Misora die.)
What is L's purpose? There seems to be a hint in the scene in which he selects two possible candidates to succeed him based on their reaction to his statement that "justice" is not what drives him, implying that it's only a consequence of his work. Instead, he says he's compelled by a difficult intellectual puzzle and the thrill of victory, and that he'll do what he has to in order to achieve his goals. He chooses the children who aren't appalled by his statement.
There is an obvious possible reason for this scenario: it enables him to eliminate the candidates who are likely to burn out when the nature of L's work is revealed to them in full, the idealists and the Good Samaritans. He would know better than anyone that no one could last long under the psychological pressures of his position, forced to make the same decisions and deal with the same situations, if they had no competitive streak or willingness to "fight dirty."
That said, L is well aware that justice is an ultimate result of what he does; it simply isn't the only thing that gets him out of bed in the morning, and he has no illusions about that fact. Because there is no element of enjoyment in his crueller acts, no apparent glint in his eye or shift in his seat or anything else to indicate that he's sexually turned-on when Misa or Light are under interrogation, it seems that this is clinical for him: something for everyone to tolerate, another tool to achieve the twin goals of justice and knowledge. "Winning," for L, is about achieving complete understanding, at least as much as it is about outwitting an opponent. He has a different definition of professionalism than many other people would, but by his own definition, he is a consummate professional.
The first instance of L's callousness is his use of Lind L. Tailor as a proxy. Tailor is scheduled to be executed on the day that L runs his test; L uses his death to determine Kira's location, and it's easy, on a scale of black and white morality, to say that his involvement in Tailor's death is wrong. From L's point of view, though, Tailor's death would have happened that day regardless of his own involvement in it, and putting it to the purpose of stopping a mass murderer makes it more meaningful than it would have been in the case of a straightforward execution.
Misa's interrogation is a more infamous example. Everything done to her is appalling, as were her own acts, but everything has a solid reason supporting it as a choice -- probably the best choice under those particular circumstances. She's arrested and blindfolded because there's enough forensic and circumstantial evidence to pin her as the second Kira, who can kill someone if she can see their face. She's restrained to keep her from killing herself, and because her method of murdering people isn't yet understood. It's likely that the hem is torn out of her shift as another method of suicide prevention (stitched hems like that have been used as nooses). Nothing is left to chance. To put it another way, it isn't that "the gloves are off" in this situation, it's that they were never "on" to begin with. Her youth, beauty, and small physical size don't change what she's done.
Later in the story, L refuses to take pre-emptive action to prevent deaths in a case, continuing his refusal until he feels that the case is at a crisis point. He argues against moving in to arrest Yotsuba board members who are discussing potential victims, pointing out to the task force members that gathering evidence, supporting their case, and stopping the real Kira once and for all requires allowing at least some of the planned murders to happen.
This probably isn't an easy choice for L, who values human life even where he doesn't care much about human emotion. However, they are trying to end Kira, not avert a few deaths which may turn out to be tangential, and which cannot be stopped without potentially great harm to their prospect of achieving their real goal. The idealism of the other task force members in the face of L's dogged practicality and logic makes them look obstructionist, and it's understandable that he chooses to conduct his own investigation without them at that point.
Finally, L seems to have a line he doesn't cross: he'll put people who are scheduled to die anyway in situations where they might be killed, but he won't kill anyone himself. Instead, the value he apparently puts on human life is inestimable. He refers to the FBI agents who died working under him as "twelve precious lives"; he seems to get upset about Ukita's death. While the loss of resources upsets him, the deaths seem to mean much more to him than that. He is aware that catching certain criminals will result in their execution, but he is not, himself, the executioner; he even wants to cut a deal to exonerate Misa, Ukita's killer, if she'll help him capture Kira.
(Why the hatred for Kira? Apart from Light being a criminal who should be stopped, and therefore fair game as an opponent, there's a personal element to the competition. L puts Lind L. Tailor on television, has him claim to be L, and has him insult Kira. Light's furious snap reaction is to scrawl Tailor's name in the Death Note; in that instant, L is aware that he's dealing with someone who will kill him as soon as look at him. In other words, apart from the fact that any murderer on Kira's scale would almost certainly be executed in any country that has the death penalty, Light sets the terms and stakes of the competition with that particular murder. "Hey, L, I'll kill you for opposing me.")
There is one possible exception to this interpretation. When L is about to release Light and Misa from interrogation, he insists on Soichiro Yagami's participation in a test. Light and Misa are taken out of their cells and eventually wind up in a car driven by Soichiro, who claims that he's supposed to take them to their executions, but will instead kill Light and then himself, leaving Misa to be picked up and executed later. The intention of the test is to discern whether or not the power to kill has truly left them, especially Misa: because she has professed her love for Light, it's possible that she will kill Soichiro to save him. She doesn't, and because L is satisfied that she can no longer kill, the two suspects are then allowed to go live in relaxed custody.
How does this tie in with a respect for human life and the idea that L is careful with the lives of the agents assisting him? It's probable that he wouldn't allow such a test unless he was relatively convinced that nothing would happen; apart from that, he has just watched Soichiro voluntarily spend weeks in a cell to support the idea that Light is innocent. It seems clear that if Light is guilty, Soichiro won't much value his own life, and is a dead man one way or another.
Self-image:
L understands himself well, and probably doesn't believe or engage in self-deception. He seems wiser than Light, less self-satisfied, even though he describes himself as childish and a sore loser. "If it means being able to clear a case, I don't play fair; I'm a dishonest, cheating human being who hates losing." He has no illusions about who he is or what he does.
While he's intellectually arrogant, to some extent, he also knows that he is fallible. He second-guesses himself: like other INTPs, he wants his hypothesis to be perfectly supported by every bit of data, and worries about missing a piece that will change the bigger picture. In Death Note canon, this second-guessing costs him his life.
He doesn't think that he has all the answers to save the world... in fact, he would probably find a saved world to be an intolerable bore. Chaos created by others gives his life meaning.
Physical Description:
L is 5'10.5" tall (mistakenly given as 5'8" in the English translation of HtR13; the original Japanese text gave his height as 179cm). His canonical weight is something equivalent to 110 lbs, which seems unrealistic given his musculature. It's my guess that if he were a real person with the build he's shown to have, he'd weigh around 130 lbs or so, still quite thin for that height. He has long limbs, a loping gait, a terrible, hunch-shouldered slouch. His fingers, too, are long: the single element of his appearance that could be described as elegant.
L's complexion is pale, approaching pasty. His hair is black -- or, possibly, one dark brown shade off of it (official art varies), mostly shoulder-length, with a few shorter layers and an unruly texture. He has large, muddy brown-grey eyes with dark circles around them, high, full cheekbones, thin lips, a fine nose, and a pointed chin. The overall effect is often owlish, as his eyes are his most outstanding feature. (While they have an apparent bluish tint in some of L's anime scenes, the reflected light from nearby computer screens seems to be its source.)
His ethnicity is mixed: 3/4 Anglo-European, 1/4 Japanese. Both can be seen in his face, though it often depends on his expression.
He has canonical attire, a loose, long-sleeved white t-shirt and baggy blue jeans. He wears shoes only when he has to, and tends to shun socks at all times.
Skills and Abilities:
L's primary strength is his intelligence; he is clever, manipulative, and, depending on the situation, ruthless. Coupled with his creative leaps of logic and his tenacity, it makes him a formidable opponent. There is no estimation of his IQ*, and while he's depicted in canon as a super-genius, it's my opinion that it's more that he's very bright and has been socialized from a young age to do a particular type of work (after all, he's an investigator, not a theoretical physicist). He's good at making connections, working through things, mentally processing available evidence. He can keep calm in the face of a crisis; in fact, he does some of his best work under pressure.
Most of his secondary strengths follow on his intelligence; he has a wide range of investigative techniques.
He's adept with computers in a variety of ways, particularly those involving security, hacking, and sorting through large amounts of data; he must speak a number of modern languages at least in part; he picks most skills up quickly once he puts his attention to learning them. He doesn't know everything, but if there's something he needs to know, he has the ability to find the information and learn it at great speed.
Logic and deduction are what ties it all together: the other elements seem to function as support for this skill set. For example, investigative techniques and technological aptitude net him the evidence that he needs to back up what his logical deductions tell him must be true. In the more mundane sense, he's exceptionally good at pointing out the flaws in an argument or plan.
By the same token, he is observant, and little gets past him. He reads people well; someone who is evil will raise at least a slight sense of suspicion, even if they're otherwise good at hiding it. Someone who is both intelligent and evasive will set off serious warning bells and, likely, capture his attention for a while.
He has an extraordinary work ethic, dedicating himself to almost any work-related task he picks up; he probably picks up few tasks that are not work-related. His commitment to the task is total, until he completes it to his satisfaction, or until completion is no longer relevant. (For example, when investigating the Second Kira, he personally watches all the security tapes that were recorded in Aoyama on a certain date, even though it takes him several days to do so. He sleeps only in his chair, for only a few hours at a time, in the course of completing this task.)
In a physical sense, he's healthy enough, maintaining his flexibility and agility in spite of his habits. A few isolated shots from early in the manga, before he is fully introduced as a character, suggest that he might do yoga. He is shown to play tennis well in April, 2004.
He pilots a helicopter at one point. Although he suggests that he's working from intuition rather than training, I don't think that the cautious man who admonishes the task force members to value their lives would get into an airborne vehicle operated by an untrained pilot, nor is the helicopter itself a surprise to him, since he arranged for it to be available months before the scene in which he flies it. The fact that he's speaking to Light also leads me to believe that his protestations of relative helicopter ignorance are filthy lies.
Given the way he has spent his life, it's probably safe to assume that he also possesses the following skills:
- Comprehension of physical trauma: he's seen more autopsy reports than most coroners will put together in their entire career.
- Some knowledge, possibly untested, of emergency first-aid skills: if nothing else, the danger he lives in would make the ability to assess injuries, treat minor ones, and stabilize serious ones an important resource, especially in terms of self-care. Apart from that, L is a sponge for information; this is also the kind of thing that he might have picked up without meaning to, because it's likely to have come up in his work.
- Basic self-defense: While I don't believe that L is a capoeira master**, he responds to Light's punches without hesitation and manages to hold his own. This, and the element of danger in his life, both lend themselves to the idea that he has self-defense training -- but there's a big caveat. In spite of this physical prowess and agility, his best hope with a larger, better-trained opponent is to kick hard and escape quickly. He might be able to throw, disarm, or temporarily disable them; it's unlikely he could win in sustained physical combat.
- Handgun usage: he keeps an illegal handgun in his helicopter; knowing how to use it would come under the category of "self-defense," too. He certainly understands the forensics of gunshots.
* About IQ: There are two problems with estimating L's IQ. One is that he's not "written as smart as he's supposed to be," in that the audience is told he's at a certain level of intelligence, but in practice, he doesn't seem to be quite as smart as we're told: it's just that he's much smarter than most of the people around him. The other problem is that it's difficult to measure IQ above 160 even in real people. My guess for him is somewhere in the 180s or so, but who knows?
** About the capoeira: Some players choose to depict L as a capoeirista, but canon doesn't really support it. He is shown kicking Light in the face on two occasions, but Obata said that he chose the kicking style based only on L's position after Light punches him. Some people in the fandom commented that it looked like capoeira (probably familiar to shonen manga and anime fans mostly from its use in Fullmetal Alchemist), and then NISIOISIN chose to depict Naomi Misora as a capoeirista in Another Note. It is stated in the novel that L decides to watch capoeira videos because of Naomi's expertise, but he is never shown to develop the expertise himself, and there is no evidence that his training goes beyond his videos and his encounter with Naomi. HtR13 contradicts itself by both providing the Obata quote and listing the day on which Naomi kicks L down a flight of stairs as "L learns capoeira from Naomi Misora."