Memorable Anime Characters: L Lawliet

Name: L Lawliet (better known as simply L)
Where You've Seen Him: Death Note
His Story: An orphan of mixed heritage, L is considered one of the greatest detectives in the world. He takes on the Kira case as a challenge.
Why He Is So Memorable: Looking at him, he doesn't look like a great detective. He is constantly eating sweets.  He crouches on chairs, never sits in them.  He holds everything as if it were delicate and about to break in his hands.  But L holds a mind that is absolutely brilliant.  But he also has some moral ambiguity to him, just like Kira.
Trivia (Spoiler): In the manga and the anime, L dies when Light (Kira) tricks the shinigami Ren into writing his name down to "protect" Misa. For the Japanese live action film, although Light still manages to convince Ren into writing L's name in his Death Note, but L beats them to the punch by writing his own name into a Death Note, making Ren's null and void. With this conclusion, although L still dies, it avoided the inclusion of Near and Mello that were controversial at the time.

Tomorrow -- the hero from Leaf Village