

In Episode 37, Light dies. Soon after that, Misa commits suicide. But I'm a
little confused now, because of this rule:

> the death of the person whose name is written in the book can not lead to
> anyone else's death

Now, everyone knows that Misa will commit suicide if Light dies. But the death
of a person whose name is written in the book can't lead to anyone else's
death. So basically, Ryuk shouldn't have been able to kill Light, because if
Light is dead, that will indirectly lead to Misa's death. So, have I missed
something in Death Note, or am I right?


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death-note
Is Misa's suicide being caused by Light's death a flaw in the story?


_Note: It's been a while since I watched Death Note, and it's not a series
I've followed much afterwards, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I have
also only seen the anime._

There are two points to address here:

  * Is the fact that Misa will commit suicide if Light is dead completely certain?

  * What exactly constitutes "leading to the death of another person"?

In Death Note, we see that Misa is fairly devoted to Light, in almost an
obsessive way, but it's not _completely_ clear if she's obsessed to the point
where life would be completely pointless without him. We do see that she's
fairly dependent on him, and to be honest arguing about whether or not she's
_that_ devoted to Light is slightly difficult, so it's easier to come to some
conclusion by looking at the exact mechanics of the death note.

The "leading to the death of someone else" bit is usually interpreted as

> the death of someone whose name is in the DN cannot _directly_ lead to the
> death of someone else1

An example of something that wouldn't work would be:

> XXX hijacks a passenger jet and crashes it into a mountain [which wouldn't
> work because it would kill the passengers as well]

In Misa's case, her suicide is somewhat indirect, so one could say that this
rule doesn't quite apply here - I get the impression that driving the bereaved
to suicide as a result of someone's death doesn't really count. (We should
note that the influence that the Death Note rules talk about seem to be more
"physical" and direct.) As stated by
[user1306322](https://anime.stackexchange.com/users/191/user1306322), Misa
commits suicide of her own will here, which is also important here.

* * *

  1. Realistically speaking, the idea that something will occur as a result of an earlier event can't really be said to ever be completely certain (in the same way one might say that there's a chance the sun might not rise today). [But _given how we see the death notes work_](https://anime.stackexchange.com/q/7415/2604), I don't think this should be an issue per se as long as the causality is reasonably direct.


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The title of this question is misleading, because "another flaw" assumes there
was a first flaw. Death Note avoids plot holes more rigorously than perhaps
any other series in existence. Whenever someone misunderstands or forgets some
element of the storyline, they tend to think their misunderstanding must be a
flaw in the story.

The rule you're thinking of is Rule XXVI.

[![XXVI](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kPndg.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kPndg.jpg)

> Even though only one name is written in the Death Note, if it influences and
> causes other humans that are not written in it to die, the victim's cause of
> death will be a heart attack.

Things to note:

  1. It doesn't say that the Death Note is incapable of killing people who aren't written in it. It only says that, in these cases, the victim's cause of death must be a heart attack.

  2. This rule only specifically refers to _directly_ causing the immediate death of other people. This is made clear in the story, and it's also clarified in the rules, with Rule XLII.

[![XLII](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lhiHR.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lhiHR.jpg)

> The use of the Death Note in the human world sometimes affects other human's
> lives or shortens their original life-span, even though their names are not
> actually written in the Death Note itself. In these cases, no matter the
> cause, the god of death sees only the original life-span and not the
> shortened life-span.

It spells it out here that killing a human with the Death Note can shorten the
lifespan of other humans, "even though their names are not actually written in
the Death Note".


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Technically, the death of Misa would make sense. Obviously, the writer thought
of some possible loopholes in what he wrote which resulted in the line which
may have either been said by Ryuk or Rem, that not even the shinigamis
themselves know all the true potential/rules of the Death Note. I believe what
the rule actually meant was that someone couldn't write a chain effect of
death, it would be too much for the notebook to possibly handle and would make
it too easy for people to wipe out a mass amount of others and make it seem
like an 'accident'.

Obviously, there would be loopholes in the Death Note due to the fact that if
you watch the series, shinigamis actually aren't aware of how humans act and
are often bored without anything to do and sit around doing absolutely for
years upon years, which is the reason why Ryuk 'drops his Death Note' (which
didn't even belong to him.) If you really think about it, Misa's death makes
perfect sense.

The action was hers and hers alone and she was _not_ controlled. We often see
throughout the series Misa being often mistreated by others and disregarded.
She also went through an immense amount of trauma that was disregarded by
everyone else and was kidnapped and blindfolded for days, so it would make
sense if she has had symptoms of depression way before Light's tragic death.

Also, Light later in the series had fake rules written, so what's to say that
there was once a tragic issue where many people were killed in a chain event
and the rule was made up added to prevent it to happen again. And, technically
from what we saw, Misa's name was never written so the rule would _not_ count
against her death to prevent it.


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