Tota's best known for being the investigation team's loudest voice—he's not afraid to speak up when others hold back. He played a pivotal role in taking down the Yotsuba Group, partly by going rogue and sneaking into their building without telling anyone. His cover identity was Taro Matsui.
Following L's playbook, Matsuda managed to gain the board's confidence, faked his own death under the Matsui alias to keep Yotsuba from targeting him, and later served as bait to draw a suspect to the Sakura TV studio during the second incident there. For someone as excitable and naive as he comes across, he's surprisingly good at staying alive when things get dangerous.
He looks up to Soichiro and treats him as a mentor figure.
What sets Matsuda apart from the rest of the team is his moral uncertainty. While everyone else seems dead set on treating Kira as pure evil, Matsuda keeps questioning whether Kira might actually be doing good—especially as more and more people start agreeing with Kira's methods. When he hears Mikami publicly pledge herself to Kira on TV, it freaks him out. Still, Matsuda shows an odd sympathetic side toward Kira's supporters, even when the rest of the team wouldn't dream of it.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
