 Tsugumi Ohba , Death Note 's writer , introduced Near and Mello together because he felt L individually could not defeat Kira and that introducing only one new character would produce a " repeat " of the struggle between Light and L. Ohba asked Takeshi Obata , artist of the series , to make both characters look " a little ' L @-@ ish . ' " Ohba " wavered " in their ages and considered making the characters the sons of L. As Ohba wanted to " include a little L " in Near and Mello , Obata tried to keep " the weirdness and the panda eyes " . Since L is an important character , Obata felt that he had made Near and Mello look too much like L. When he first heard about Near and Mello , Obata assumed that they would join as a team and work together , so he envisioned the two as twins , describing the creation of the character designs as " a major struggle " . At first , he tried to depict Mello as having " more energy than Near " . However , the designs for the characters became switched at a later phase ; the final Mello had Near 's design and vice versa . When Obata created the designs , his editor wrote the wrong names to accompany them ; when Obata received approval for the designs , it was too late to point out that the labels were incorrect . Initially , for him , Mello was " more calm and feminine " , but later he felt that " it 's better " that the switch occurred . 
