In chapter 29 of Death Note (manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, 2003-2006; anime 2006-2007), Misa Amane has turned up at Light Yagami’s house and tells him why she came looking for him. A year earlier, a burglar murdered her parents in front of her; the trial kept being postponed and Misa feared he would go free, until Kira killed him. She has found Light with the shinigami eyes, which let her see anyone’s name and for which she paid half the life she had left, and now she offers him the only deal she wants: she will do whatever he says if he agrees to be her boyfriend. Light accepts, thinking only of those eyes. Misa had never dealt with Kira before that meeting; she became a killer by imitating someone she knew only from the news, and that is the mechanism Daniel Glaser described.
// The theoryOffending by identification
In 1956, the sociologist Daniel Glaser reformulated Sutherland’s differential association theory. According to Sutherland, crime is learned through contact with groups that value it. Glaser added that such direct contact is not necessary: it is enough to identify with someone, real or imaginary, from whose perspective crime seems acceptable. A person can imitate a media figure, a distant leader or a figure they admire without ever having met them. What matters is not whom one deals with, but whom one identifies with.
Kira as model
Misa does not learn to kill in a gang or a criminal family: she learns from Kira, whom she has never met. She makes him a hero because he did what justice did not do with her parents’ killer, and from that moment she adopts his perspective: killing the wicked is just. That is Glaser’s differential identification in its purest form. The identification is so strong that, when she meets Light, ideology blends with love: serving Kira and loving Light become one and the same, and that leads her to give up years of life without hesitation.
// The subjectBoundless devotion
Death Note portrays Misa as cheerful, impulsive and apparently shallow, but her story is tragic. She is the victim of a terrible crime whom justice failed, and she finds meaning in Kira. Her devotion makes her manipulable: Light uses her, despises her in private and keeps her at his side only for her eyes. Misa senses it at times, but prefers not to see it. She kills many people, convinced she is doing justice and doing it for love.
Her story with the notebook begins with another act of devotion. A stalker attacked her, and Gelus, a shinigami who had fallen in love with her from his world, wrote the man’s name in his Death Note to save her; by doing so he died, because a shinigami who uses the notebook to prolong a human life perishes. Rem, who witnessed it, picked up the notebook Gelus left behind and gave it to Misa. From then on, the pattern repeats: Misa sends videos to television as the second Kira to attract the first one’s attention, gives up half her life to find him, and, when L’s team detains her as a suspect, she gives up the notebook as Light has planned, losing her memories of it but not her love for him. When she digs it up in a forest in chapter 56 and recovers them, she makes the deal with the eyes again, this time with Ryuk, and gives up half of what she had left. Light, meanwhile, plans to get rid of her once she stops being useful. The manga last shows her alone, in a hotel; Ohba later suggested that, after learning of Light’s death, she took her own life.
Misa Amane
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// The crackIdentification does not explain the decision
Glaser’s theory explains why Misa adopts Kira’s perspective, but not why so many others who also admire him in the series do not become killers. In Death Note, much of society supports Kira, and almost no one kills. What sets Misa apart is access to a notebook and a very specific personal trauma.
The theory has also been hard to test: measuring whom someone identifies with and to what degree is difficult, and identification can be both cause and consequence of crime. Misa admires Kira before she kills, but her devotion grows just as she kills for him.
Admirers of killers
Identification with violent figures is not only fiction. Research on mass shootings has documented how some perpetrators identified with earlier attackers, cited their names and copied their methods. That is why several researchers and victims’ associations argue against publicising perpetrators’ names and images, so as not to turn them into models. Kira had millions of followers in Death Note; Misa was the one who took the step.
Three key ideas
- Glaser’s (1956) differential identification holds that people offend by identifying with someone, real or imaginary, for whom crime is acceptable.
- Misa Amane worships Kira because he punished her parents’ killer; with her own Death Note she becomes the second Kira and gives up half her life, twice, to serve Light.
- The crack: many admire Kira and almost no one kills; identification explains the perspective, not the decision, and it grows as Misa kills.
Sources · further reading
- Glaser, D. (1956). “Criminality Theories and Behavioral Images”. American Journal of Sociology, 61(5), 433-444.
- Sutherland, E. H. (1947). Principles of Criminology (4th ed.). Lippincott.
- Lankford, A. and Madfis, E. (2018). “Don’t Name Them, Don’t Show Them, But Report Everything Else”. American Behavioral Scientist, 62(2), 260-279.
- Ohba, T. and Obata, T. (2003-2006). Death Note. Shūeisha.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Misa Amane?
Misa Amane (“El segundo Kira”) is a villain from Death Note, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. Kira killed the man who had killed her parents.
Why does Misa Amane (The Second Kira) become a villain?
Glaser argued that identifying with a model is enough to learn to kill. Death Note’s Misa Amane kills for a Kira she knows only from the news, then gives herself to the man who uses her.
Which criminological theory explains Misa Amane?
Misa Amane's case is analysed through Differential identification. Daniel Glaser’s differential identification theory (1956) holds that a person offends to the extent that they identify with people, real or imaginary, from whose perspective criminal behavior seems acceptable. Misa Amane, of Death Note (Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, 2003-2006), is a young model whose parents were murdered by a burglar. When Kira kills the murderer, Misa makes him her savior. On receiving a Death Note, she becomes the second Kira, trades half her life for the shinigami eyes to discover Light and places herself at his service, though he only uses her.
