[ Tsugumi Ōba - LII ]

Tsugumi Ohba is a japanese manga writer, known for his mangas Bakuman, Platinum End and his most famous work, Death Note.

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Let's try to type him, if I said Kane Pixels is a very private person, well, Tsugumi Ōba is as triple as private, a well-known curiosity of this person is that his identity is unknown, so this analysis will be shorter (I expect) because of the little information we have about him. Also, as I only have read Death Note at the moment, I'll limit myself to reference it to make this typing. I warn you that there will be spoilers about the series, so if you haven’t read or seen Death Note, please stop reading, you’re missing a great series.
Here's the explanation of why I think he's LII:

Leading :

The individual views reality through the lens of logic, immediately recognizing the correctness and appropriateness of things and their proper place in reality and in his system of views and behavior.
As Tsugumi based many of the characteristics of the Death Note character L on himself, I'm going to assume that his stance was more in tune with L's perspective, despite he said he didn't want to put much thought on concepts of justice and evil (which is an example of -devaluing). The how Tsugumi does this is shown with one of the main points of his manga Death Note: the opposition of Light's utilitarian ethics against the L's deontological ethics, given that L uses the same logic of Light to antagonize him. L thinks then if Kira thinks that there shouldn't exist a world with criminals, but he is killing them and killing is a crime, then Kira shouldn't exist, then the fact that he catches him is a true justice because in his logic of justice criminals shouldn't exist. The fact that Kira is being punished at the end of the series is another way to show that he opposes to his utilitarian view of acting (-devaluing), he wants to show Kira in the most degrading and shameful way, reduced to a hypocritical criminal, dragged from his self-claimed position of God to the position of a dying criminal who begs desperately for his life.

He holds highest those rules to which exceptions do not exist, and is a habitual critic of people or things that don't follow a set of rules, whether they are those accepted by the community, or his own, or even the other person's.
Also, all the Death Note manga revolves around a notebook, with a certain set of rules which determines all the limitations the characters have to take in consideration before following certain course of action. Also the way the investigations are developed along the story are built upon certain mysterious events of which certain connections have to made in order to have some clarity about how Kira is and how Kira operates, because the purpose of logic, at least the Aristotelian one, which is closer to the description of structural logic in Socionics, it is to produce new information inferred from existing premises, without relying on external information to prove it (if I understood well...). Maybe that's the reason why L refused to believe Light wasn't Kira and took his conviction to the grave, because despite all the proof that was being thrown to him, his hypothesis was the one who made more sense in his head.

The show is full of -driven dialogues: for example, when L is showing Kira letters in order to make him speak about his deduction, at the same time it makes him tell information that hasn't been shown in the news, in order to find if he's Kira, considering that only Kira would know that information; L concluding that Kira is an student, because the timing of the killings occurred when he was outside school; or Near not being afraid of Ryuk killing the SPK and police members because if he obeyed Light, they would have been killed a very long time ago.
Also, one of the main complaints people make about the story is that it treats people as stupid, because everything is over explained and doesn’t leave room for the own viewer’s conclusion, as opposed to shows like Serial Experiments Lain or movies like Memento, who leave many scattered clues about what is happening and don’t bother in explaining them, not even at the end of the stories, which a more Gamma philosophy of telling stories, because reasoning and explanation is a concept tied to .

Creative :

This is the clearest IE for me. Here's the answer he gives in an interview when he is asked what his stance in justice is and if people have the right to another life in the name of justice: "I did not put much deep thought into subjects like “life and death” or “justice and evil”. I wrote the story hoping that it would be good entertainment.". Clear -devaluing.

The individual likes to apply his insight to specific situations, relating them to the bigger picture.
The initial premise of the story is very specific: What if someday a notebook capable of killing people from the distance, knowing the face and name of the person fell into the human world? Tsugumi drives us through the answer, taking it to a global scale. In the first episode already, there is involved an international organization (Interpol) trying to find out why so many people die from a heart attack; there is a progressive culture change in which people begin to acknowledge that if they commit a crime, they’ll probably be killed by Kira; there is a global decrease of crime rates; there is an emergence of multiple worship groups of Kira; there is an coverage of the situation in the media in many countries (briefly, but are there) and other things that let us show how an specific and maybe absurd situation could escalate to the point of changing society.

Another point that makes me think that Tsugumi Ōba has in his ego is the neutrality he wants to portray through Matsuda, a character who may be, for the great majority of the audience, the most relatable and “human” one. He is a person who recognizes his own ignorance, that is presented as dumb, that knows that he hasn’t all the information, that knows that he isn’t seeing the full picture, that knows that there isn’t an absolute truth (for the matter of justice). He’s the one who lay the seed of doubt in the other police members and questions if Kira is really doing a negative impact in the world, but also the one who has the determination to take out his weapon and shoot Kira multiple times, once is clear that Kira has no integrity and his utilitarian attitude is revealed to him: if he wants to achieve as much happiness as possible to the whole humanity, he has to assume the cost of the lives of those around him, even when they’re just as fair and their actions are made in good faith. And even after that, at the end of the manga Matsuda has a conversation with Ide, in which Matsuda asks him how he can be so convinced that they did the right thing, after seeing how the crimes rates increased again.

Also, Tsugumi Ōba seems to be very open to multiple possibilities and unexpected changes in the way he builds the story and the chapters themselves. Let’s look at some examples of his style of making stories, extracted from some interviews:

1. When he is asked what were his considerations for the ending:
“I did not want a plot told of Light’s failure because of his own mistake. I had to think extremely hard for a plot that relieved Light of most of the blame for his own failure. Hence, we had Mikami make the fatal error.”

2. When he is asked if he planned to introduce Takade after Mikami:
“I entertained the idea of introducing Takada when the “Near and Mello” arc started. .. But as Near and Mello got into the thick of things, there was a period in time I forgot all about her (laughs). Fortunately, that idea returned and that was how Takada came into the story after Mikami. Letting her enter the scene as a news anchor was one of the many parts that I liked very much.”

3. When he is asked if Mello’s actions were planned from the start:
“No, it was not. I was still pondering about what to do with Mello when the story reached the stage where Shidoh returned to Deathgods’ world. I had intended that Mello would be the one to defeat Light. Being number 2 at Wammy’s house, Mello was the dark horse whom I wanted to see the winner.”

4. When he is asked why L died so abruptly:
“L’s death was initially just an option. It was after the story had reached the point in which Misa was captured that everyone in the editorial team felt that “L’s death” was the way to go. That was how I reluctantly let the character go.”

In contrast, to Kane Pixels, an LIE user I typed, Tsugumi didn’t decide everything from the early stages of development, he considered multiple options of where the story could go on while he developed the story weekly. Also, look at the answer he gives in another interview when he is asked if there were times when the art he got from Takeshi Obata were what he invisioned:

“No, very rarely. Even if the character doesn’t look exactly the way I’d pictured, the minute I see them I feel that “this is exactly the way the character has to look”. That’s how convincing his drawings are.

Little surprises like that are very stimulating for me. Finding an element of the character that doesn’t fit into the scheme I’d dreamed up actually brings new life to them. In truth, that’s really what helps me flesh them out and give them depth, I think.”

I think a user would be more demanding of following a certain vision he had in mind and would expect or ask the other person to correct it. Tsugumi Ōba has a very clear Ne way of doing things.
Lastly, the last thing I want to point out is the fixation for giving the characters (at least the most relevant or most inhuman) certain oddities to stand out them from the rest of the characters, for example, Ryuk and obsession for apples, Mello and Sidoh for chocolates, L for sweet foods, Near for toys, Mikami for being in time or Matt for cigars, and while all their characters doesn’t have these quirks, it is noticeably enough to say that it is an important aspect of Death Note, and indicates a preference for Ne from part of the author, because essence and key attributes are concepts tied to (as the videos from the channel Brain’s Journey show).

Role :

I have not enough information for this IE. Though, I may have a thing that may be related. Here are the things he mentioned about the Netflix’s adaptation of his manga:

”It exceeded my expectations. There was high level of quality, sophistication, and attention to every detail. This is what a Hollywood Death Note movie should be. Personally, I was engrossed with the ending! In a good way, it both followed and diverged from the original work so the film can be enjoyed, of course by not only the fans, but also by a much larger and wider audience.”

I don’t know if he’s just being polite or if he really enjoyed the movie. Whatever the reason is, this also reduces the possibility that he may be his quasi-identical, because an ILI, having the highest standards for the things he creates and finest tastes among people, would have been harsher with the adaptation that is considered, by a great majority of critics and fans, as a very very bad movie, and I’m not saying they are prone into agreeing to what the majority of people think, but I think they aren’t also the kind of people who may throw an unpopular opinion at your face because they want to disagree with the majority, if you have seen the movie you will observe that it is at a distinct range of quality than the manga, a -lead user would have been more critical, as Ursula K. Le Guin was when she saw the movie Tales of Earthsea.

The individual recognizes the existence and importance of personal relationships, so he is usually cautious at first about offending others if he does not know them well. To minimize this risk he adheres somewhat simplistically to the relevant social conventions (e.g. political correctness).
Vulnerable :

I don’t have any argument for this.

Suggestive :

The individual often becomes engrossed in serious work, which leads him to neglect his complementary need for fun and emotional release.
This is what he says in an interview of the Viz website when he is asked how he became interested in being a mangaka:
“When I was a kid, I read a lot of manga and always looked up to the creators. But what made me actually want to create manga was when I became an adult and realized I needed to work to survive, and normal work didn’t appeal to me.”

What’s better than finding a profession where you can fulfill that need for emotional release? I’m not going to say fun because being a mangaka is very demanding job, but at least seems like a very fulfilling one for those who want to express themselves, though…

He also feels vulnerable expressing himself spontaneously in public, which allows bad emotions and stress to build up, leading to depression or sudden hostility.
Which could explain why he has decided to hide his identity from the general public.

Mobilizing :

As I mentioned before, Tsugumi Ōba based many of the characteristics of the character L on himself, which could indicate that Tsugumi could have a mania for sugary things, just like L, which wouldn’t be so weird considering that his unusual posture is a signature of his persona. Also, he likes to collect tea cups, which could be appealing for a person who seeks aesthetically pleasing sensory things. I wonder what’s more Si than the decoration of a piece of dinnerware?

I don’t if Takeshi Obata is an alpha too or even a Delta, but he seems to understand Tsugumi Ōba and exceed his expectations, when it comes to build his ideas on paper. Look at what he says about the Near’s hobby of stacking up things:

“As L stacked up sugar cubes in the previous arc, I decided to reflect this childish act in Near. I also added Near’s liking for toys, such as his play with the/such as his tower/structure made of match sticks. When I first sketched that on the story board, I thought that it would be too touch for Obata-sensei to draw. I was extremely surprised that he managed to pull it off.”

But well, that’s the least you could expect from a professional artist.

Ignoring :

The individual is adept at finding external sources of factual information and confident in his ability to evaluate their value, but regards collecting data as secondary to making them fit into a consistent logical system. To him, listing facts without analyzing their relationships is a trivial and boring exercise. He values efficiency and productivity but is skeptical that they will be achieved if one's actions and process do not follow a clear procedure.
I think this is shown in Death Note, through the characters’ need for having someone behind them asking “What? I don’t get it” while another smarter character replies “Pretty easy” proceeding to explain every little detail of the plan the dumber character didn’t get, in order to avoid making the a certain risky or improbable situation seem too implausible. But, it gets out of control at some point, Tsugumi has the need to justify every convenient thing that happens to Light, like getting the Death Note in his hands after arresting Higuchi as planned, Light finding the perfect follower (Mikami) in a TV survey or finding a way not to suspect too much of Light for having Sakura TV finding the SPK headquarters in the United States! I don’t know how much sense that makes or if I didn’t pay enough attention to the story but almost everything goes in favor to Light. I think, an story made by Gamma types, would try to bring more realism, would try to make it depend more on randomness, would try to give a message closer to “Life is unfair for everyone”, as opposed to a series like The Squid Game.

I could be wrong, though. Behold my second-dimensional !

Demonstrative :

The individual is quite adept at following discussions on the developments of present trends into the future and at contributing to them on occasion if he feels so inclined, but he does not take that as seriously compared to investigating possibilities in the areas he is interested in at present.
This is what he answers when he is asked why he chose to publish Death Note in Jump, considering that high-suspense stories like that have been rare in boy’s comics:

“Well, it’s true that usually you draw the young male audience with battle-centric comics. Unfortunately, I didn’t think I had that kind of story in me. But even though the magazine’s main focus is fighting comics, I started thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to try something a little unusual, like this suspense story...specifically because it WASN’T battle-centric.”

I think the quote is self-explanatory.

To finish this typing, I’ll give you a quote that might reflect vaguely his quadra values. I don’t take quadras seriously, but I have to admit they are very very interesting concepts.

“You can’t be the one who determines what’s good and what isn’t, so I think you just need to create as much as you can. And don’t be shy. Share your creations with as many people as possible.”