Naomi Misora

"He's dead. Raye's dead. No, he was murdered by Kira."

- Naomi Misora ("Tactics")

Naomi Misora (南空=ナオミ, Misora Naomi) is a former FBI agent and the fiancée of agent Raye Penber. After the death of Raye (who was a member of the FBI team being used by L and charged with following the suspect Light Yagami), Naomi begins her own investigation into his death and comes to conclude that Kira is responsible. When Light Yagami overhears Naomi's plan to give her theory to the Japanese Task Force, he quickly decides to eliminate her.

Appearance
Naomi is a young woman with long black hair and hazel eyes. She is often seen wearing black leather clothes.

Character
Described by Death Note 13: How to Read as formerly a "first rate" FBI agent with a "remarkable investigative ability," Naomi left the Bureau in October 2003 for the sake of starting a family in the United States. Naomi is very intelligent. Unfortunately, she eventually lets her feelings get in the way of her investigative abilities.

Plot
After the bus jacking, Raye Penber returns home and is welcomed by his fiancée, Naomi. Penber informs her that he was caught in a bus jacking and that the busjacker was the same man who had hit a bank two days prior. He tells Naomi not to involve herself in the investigation for her own safety. After the sudden death of her fiancé a few days later, which she blames Kira for, Naomi decides to take part in the Kira case herself. Having been told by Raye that he showed his FBI badge to someone during a bus jacking, Naomi deduces that Kira must have been on the bus. In her attempts to contact the Task Force, she comes across Light Yagami. Light uses his father's status to his advantage, telling Naomi that he is Chief Yagami's son, and he slowly begins to win her trust. Cautious at first, she uses the false name Shoko Maki in order to protect herself until she can reach L. Light finally gets Naomi to reveal her name by saying that he is a member of the Task Force and is actually working with L.

Taking advantage of Naomi's emotional state, Light gives the possibility that she could join the Task Force and help catch her fiancé's murderer.

Light says that he will need to see a form of identification before she can join, and Naomi shows him her driver's license. Using a piece of the Death Note, Light writes down Naomi's name, resulting in her death by suicide. Her body is never found due to the specifications made by Light in the Death Note.

Films
Death Note (live action film) and L: Change the WorLd

In the live-action films, Naomi is portrayed by Asaka Seto. The character is generally the same in the manga, but she plays a larger role in the story.

After witnessing her fiancé Ray Iwamatsu die at the hands of Kira, an enraged Naomi begins investigating the case herself. Tracing the events of the busjacking leads her to Light Yagami, who becomes her prime suspect. Under the alias Shoko Maki, she first approaches Light's girlfriend Shiori Akino to get to him, and she confronts him directly with her accusations. She later kidnaps Shiori and holds her at gunpoint to try to get Light to confess on camera for L, but this is later revealed to be just as Light wrote in the Death Note. Her real name was previously uncovered by Light through the wedding documents held by the church where she and Raye had planned to marry. During the kidnapping, Shiori attempts to get away, and Naomi shoots and kills her, which is actually another death orchestrated by Light. Horrified that she's done this, and controlled by the Death Note, Naomi commits suicide by shooting herself in the head.

For the production and filming of the movie, Seto stated that she "tried to project that awesome spirit" of Naomi, referring to the character's tenacity and drive while trying to defeat Kira.

Her character also makes a brief appearance in L: Change the WorLd. Just before L takes the Kira case, Naomi is on a case with L and Raye in America. It's her second assignment with L after the LABB case. She walks into a building, shots are fired, and she emerges unharmed and winks at a surveillance camera for L. Watari comments that L must trust her to work with her again. At this time, she already plans on quitting the FBI to get married.

Novel
Death Note: Another Note

Naomi is one of the central characters and heroine/female protagonist in the spinoff novel Death Note: Another Note - The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases by author Nisio Isin. The story is set several years prior to the start of Death Note and focuses on a series of murder cases investigated by L with Naomi as his operative. The resulting capture of the murderer helped launch Naomi's reputation within the FBI.

Trivia

 * In the anime's first opening, Naomi is seen holding Penber's corpse in a manner similar to Michelangelo's representation of Pietà near the 45-second mark.
 * In Death Note: Another Note, when Naomi is trying to decipher the possible writing etched into Believe Bridesmaid's back, she describes her difficulty doing so by saying that the English alphabet is unlike Kanji or Hangul. The latter suggests that she also speaks (or at least reads) Korean.
 * The same work, on page 125, mistakenly states her birthday to be February 14.

Quotes

 * "My fiancé… and the convenience store robber… and the busjacker… were all used by Kira in order to murder the FBI agents in Japan. I'm convinced of it."
 * (To Light Yagami) "Why do you keep checking your watch?"

Naomi Misora Naomi Misora