YMMV / Death Note Special Chapter

• Adorkable: Minoru. He shyly asks Ryuk some details about the past with a very sweet facial expression.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: See here.
• Broken Base: Minoru's death at the end has proven to be quite controversial. The part that supports it sees it as a fitting and poetic result given the established fact that anyone who wields the Death Note meets an unfortunate end, as with what happened with the previous users. The detractors of this end see this as an Ass Pull given the fact that not only has it not been shown that the Shinigami King, who up until this has been nothing but a background and neutral figure, cared how the Death Note is used in anyway, but there's also the fact that Minoru didn't even use any of the Death Note's abilities, just the book itself to pull of his plans, makes what happens come across as an forced Sudden Downer Ending.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Donald Trump, while an important character in the narrative, is just a stand-in for the president of the United States and not a character in his own right. Any discussion about the Death Note special will mostly talk or joke about him, though.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some did not like how the chapter finished, with the Shinigami King's new rule coming out of nowhere to kill Minoru in the end. They thought that Minoru's exploitation of the loophole in the 'Death Note', combined with his lack of body count compared to Light, made him worthy of survival and enjoyment of the fruits of his reward in the end. Instead, fans wanted to see Minoru actually live on considering he didn't kill anybody or even use the note!
• Magnificent Bastard: Minoru Tanaka is the second human chosen by Ryuk to own the Death Note. After being given the Death Note, Tanaka crafts a scheme to take advantage of the Death Note without actually using it. By having Ryuk send out messages on live broadcasts, Tanaka auctions the Death Note to the highest bidder, opening it up for abuse and spreading panic around the world. After getting the governments of America and China involved, Tanaka pits the two against each other in a bidding war before selling the Death Note to America for a quadrillion yen. To ensure that he can't be traced by law enforcement through the transaction, he has the U.S government split the money across the bank accounts of countless Japanese citizens, causing an economic boom in the country. Hiding his identity all the way through, Tanaka proves himself to be a worthy successor as Kira.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Twitter had a field day when the trending tag for Death Note was in the politics tab, due to the appearance of Donald Trump.
  • Minoru's expression of pure disgust when Ryuk first appears to him has slowly become an image macro.
  • "This has been the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever." Used to describe how useless the Note is for the president of the United States as the Shinigami King altered the rules so the Death Note couldn't be sold.
• Nightmare Fuel: The death of Minoru is incredibly abrupt, unexpected, and bleak.
• Unexpected Character: No fan of the manga/anime would have ever expected Donald Trump of all people to appear in the one-shot.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Near gets hit with this due to having grown his hair out to waist length since we last saw him. Not helping is a panel where his shirt is drawn in a way that it looks like he has breasts.
• The Woobie: At the end of the day, you can't help but feel sorry for Minoru. Yes, his meticulous plan to profit from the Death Note ended successfully and without any casualties in his path. However, it all proved futile for him, as he still ended up dead. His subsequent demise following the decree of a new law in the Death Note imposed by the Shinigami King (even though he never personally used the Death Note, unlike the other Kiras) makes everything more tragic, especially considering he's just an ordinary boy who couldn't even enjoy the fruits of his reward in the end.

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