DEATH NOTE – 20

Summary: Not knowing that they're under surveillance by L, the seven remaining Yotsuba members begin their meeting with Namikawa reasoning that Kira had to kill Hatori in order to show the rest of them what would happen if they wanted out.

FreezeFrame: Bittersweet Akiko Jam

No music. No zoom-in slow-motion replay. Sometimes, the unbiased reality is more painful than any dramatic interpretation. In what could have been a recording from a security camera, we’re exposed to a brutal scene in which the mother we’ve come to love as our own is plowed over by two tons of drunken SUV, with nothing but a smashed strawberry cake as a final punch line. My heart is in pieces, laying somewhere between the shards of windshield and makeshift Smucker’s. Kind of gives a new meaning to “Akiko Jam,” doesn’t it?