i think despite everything, despite all my myriad issues with this series so far, despite the hours and hours of filler and bloat, despite the (at times) kind of cringe and overdone "anime"-y character design and writing (it's fine in the battle of wits scenes, its iffy in the action scenes, and it sucks ass in the SoL scenes (which thankfully don't show up too often)), despite the constant "final act of death note"-ing where at least a couple random people no one gives a shit about keep showing up each episode, despite everything—

—i think this episode has finally convinced me that ryukishi07 knows what he's doing