On 28 January, in an abandoned warehouse, Teru Mikami waits hidden behind a door left ajar, notebook in hand. Inside, Light Yagami and Near have met for the showdown of Death Note (manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, 2003-2006; anime 2006-2007). Mikami, who has the shinigami eyes, looks at each person in the room, reads the name above their head and writes it down, repeating “delete” with each line, except for Light, whom he calls god. Then he waits the forty seconds the notebook takes to work. No one dies. Near had the pages swapped in advance, because he knew where and when Mikami kept the notebook: the prosecutor never strayed from his routine. The man who took Kira’s justice as far as extermination falls for keeping his own rules too well, and that is what sociology calls positive deviance.
// The theoryWhen following the norm also deviates
The sociology of deviance has almost always dealt with those who break norms. From the 1970s, some authors also began to study positive deviance: behavior that departs from what is expected through excessive conformity. Alexander and Druann Heckert proposed a typology in 2002 in which overconformity appears as a form of deviance, and other authors have studied cases such as the athlete who trains until self-destruction or the official who applies the rules without humanity. The central idea is that taking a norm to the extreme, without judgment or proportion, produces harms as serious as breaking it.
Justice without measure
Mikami is not a cynic like Light, who uses justice as a cover for his ambition. He is a believer: he takes the ideal of punishing evil to its ultimate consequences. That is his form of deviance. He starts by applying the norm, punishing criminals, and extends it without limit to everything he considers unacceptable, to the point of killing people for being unproductive. Overconformity explains his trajectory: he does not depart from the ideal of justice, he clings to it so rigidly that he turns it into extermination.
// The subjectA man of routines
Death Note builds Mikami through his habits: he gets up at the same time, goes to the gym on the same day, writes the names at the same hour and in the same careful handwriting. That discipline, a virtue in his career as a prosecutor, becomes his weakness, because it makes him predictable. His relationship with Kira is almost religious: obeying is not enough, he needs to be worthy of him. His final collapse, when he discovers his god has been defeated, shows he had nothing else.
The series shows how he got there. In his childhood, Mikami stood up to the bullies at his school and believed that those who harm others should disappear; a series of misfortunes convinced him that God wanted him to fight evil. When criminals began to die, he read it as divine judgment and became a regular guest on Kira’s Kingdom, the television program that celebrated the killings. That is where Light chose him to inherit Misa’s notebook. Mikami was soon acting on his own: he chose Kiyomi Takada as Kira’s spokesperson and extended the sentence to people who were not criminals, but whom he considered parasites. His discipline did the rest. Stephen Gevanni, of Near’s team, confirmed that he was the new Kira by watching him kill a man, and found the notebook in his gym locker, where Mikami left it every week. In the anime, when the warehouse plan collapses, he takes his own life right there.
Teru Mikami
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// The crackA disputed category
The concept of positive deviance is controversial within sociology. Some authors argue it is a contradiction in terms, because deviance is defined by society’s negative reaction, and overconformity usually receives praise until it is too late. Applying it to Mikami requires accepting a category not everyone admits.
Moreover, Mikami does not merely over-comply with a norm: he commits mass murder, and that is not conformity but the violation of the most basic norm. What he does illustrate is the psychological process: how an ideal of justice without nuance can serve to justify anything.
The fanaticism of a good cause
Research on radicalization has shown that many people who turn to violence do so not out of contempt for norms, but through extreme adherence to a cause they consider just. That is why prevention programs work on black-and-white thinking and the dehumanization of the adversary, rather than on a lack of values. Mikami had values; what he lacked was the capacity to doubt them.
Three key ideas
- Positive deviance or overconformity (Heckert and Heckert, 2002) describes the harm that arises from taking a norm or ideal to the extreme, without judgment or proportion.
- Teru Mikami, a prosecutor obsessed since childhood with punishing evil, becomes Kira’s executioner and kills even those he considers unproductive; his rigidity makes him predictable and causes Light’s downfall.
- The crack: the category is disputed in sociology, and Mikami’s murders are not conformity but the violation of the most basic norm.
Sources · further reading
- Heckert, A. and Heckert, D. M. (2002). “A New Typology of Deviance: Integrating Normative and Reactivist Definitions of Deviance”. Deviant Behavior, 23(5), 449-479.
- Ben-Yehuda, N. (1990). “Positive and Negative Deviance: More Fuel for a Controversy”. Deviant Behavior, 11(3), 221-243.
- Hughes, R. and Coakley, J. (1991). “Positive Deviance among Athletes: The Implications of Overconformity to the Sport Ethic”. Sociology of Sport Journal, 8(4), 307-325.
- Ohba, T. and Obata, T. (2003-2006). Death Note. Shūeisha.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Teru Mikami?
Teru Mikami (“X-Kira”) is a villain from Death Note, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. He wrote each name in impeccable handwriting.
Why does Teru Mikami (X-Kira) become a villain?
Positive deviance studies the harm of over-complying with a norm. In Death Note, prosecutor Teru Mikami follows Kira’s so zealously that he condemns anyone he deems useless, and ends up losing his god.
Which criminological theory explains Teru Mikami?
Teru Mikami's case is analysed through Positive deviance. Positive deviance, or overconformity, describes behavior that departs from what is expected through excessive adherence to a norm or an ideal, and that can be as harmful as transgression. Teru Mikami, of Death Note (Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, 2003-2006), is a brilliant, methodical prosecutor who since childhood stood up to bullies and believed evil should be eliminated. He admires Kira as the embodiment of his ideal of justice. When Light entrusts him with a Death Note, he becomes his executioner and starts killing not only criminals but those he considers useless to society. His devotion and perfectionism end up causing Light’s downfall.
