At the end of the series, Mikami is captured by Near's team at the Yellow Box warehouse. While Mikami dies in prison after going insane in the manga, he commits suicide by stabbing himself with his pen in the anime. Matsuda believes that Near wrote in the Death Note to manipulate and restrict Mikami's actions. Ohba stated that he leaves it up to the readers to decide if his theory is true. In the second Death Note rewrite special, Mikami is the one to kill the SPK (after Light blackmails the US President to leak information about the SPK, which he, in turn, forwards to Takada and Mikami), rather than the mafia, as shown in the manga.