This episode consisted out of two parts: L, meeting up with the police officers, and coming up with a strategy to find Kira and Light, meeting up with Maki, Ray’s ex-girlfriend. I especially loved the last part. You have to have some real guts in order to try and attempt what Light did. He heard her talk, found out that she was the person closest to finding out Kira’s secret, just walked in on her and started talking to her like nothing ever happened. This makes us suspect that Light has followed some kind of acting classes in the past, as any normal person probably wouldn’t have managed to pull of such a reckless stunt.
During this episode, something also happens which the OP has been hinting at for a while: characters changing hair colours. Those against Kira get blue hair, while Kira himself, and his possible future allies get red hair. Symbolic, of course. Not in real life. Now the question for the next episode remains: how will Light kill Maki? Will he just act as careful as possible and make her end up in a car accident, or will he use her in order to confuse L even more?
Speaking of the devil, he’s indeed quite different from any normal person. He’s been living without any human contact for a long time, which may have been good to protect himself from those after him, though this did make him oblivious to any cultural traditions or habits. The fact that he’s always been living in the dark also made his eyes rather strange. In any case, while Light’s currently focusing his energy on Maki, L has come up with a strategy: trace everyone who was investigated by the FBI-officers. This number of people was quite small, which makes Light even more suspicious. It’s interesting that the bus-jacking incident must be kept secret at all costs for L.
It’s also interesting how one of L’s reasonings is wrong. During Light’s experiments with his power, L figures that Kira only used a few criminals in order to test out his new powers, though I actually think that he used all of them, though in most cases, the Death Note didn’t work because Light wrote some obscure cases in order to really test the limits of the Death Note. It’s never shown, but Light seems smart enough to actually conduct a thorough investigation, and not just an investigation based on the six cases we saw in episode four.
Still, I’m going to be anal again. Even Light notices it: what caused the coincidental meeting of Maki with Light? There’d better be a good reason for this, for obvious reasons.
I think you’re underestimating the acting abilities of normal people. It’s probably coz heaps of anime and other media portray people with crap acting skills.
Oh and sorry for the double post, but Light did only use a few of those criminals. Only one in fact, and that was the busjacker. The other criminals were killed who were near other FBI agents so Penber’s death wouldn’t stand out (criminal dies, then penber dies while no criminals around other agents die = suspicious, no?)
Ah, okay. So Penbar investigated more people than just those on suspect of being Kira. That makes a bit more sense. And with “used”, I meant that they’re being used to test out the limits of the Death Note, which made Light learn how to use them to his advantage.