He is my fave! It’s been a long time since I watched or read the series, though, so I don’t think I’ll make a full meta on him (sorry!), but in the manga I liked him even more than the anime because he seemed more emotional. But either way, like Light, he was kind of removed from society and didn’t know how to interact with it–Light was good at pretending to be a member of society while also viewing himself as above it, whereas Near really couldn’t even pretend to fit in (like L) exactly because he was just very socially awkward, but Near was okay with that. In that aspect he was a good foil for Light and for L. But I enjoyed him for the same reasons I enjoyed L, and I liked that he finally outsmarted Light (even though I also liked Light as a character), and the money raining scene was a favorite. He uses some pretty existentialist philosophy, which is probably why I like him so much being an existentialist about many things myself. I also found several aspects of his character highly tragic, namely how he was raised in an orphanage for one purpose.