Matt's style is definitely Rudie-ish, no doubt about it. He was my favorite background-face character in the whole series 'cause of his sense of style XD One thing I like about the Bleach mangas is that there are single-page inserts that have the characters dressed up in Rudie styles as well, so that's always kinda cool.

Most of the Task Force didn't get developed for the early parts of the story; Ukita, Aizawa, Mogi and Ide were all kinda shuffled into the background. Even Matsuda wasn't given a whole lot of limelight. And unfortunately for Ukita, he died before those characters really started to get fleshed out - and he just had a really effin' weirdly-shaped head that made him dislikable. XD

The writer of Death Note described Soichiro as being the only truly heroic figure in the story due to the character's altruism (as you said), so it's kinda sad that he died in the manner he did, right?

Also, unrelated Death Note note: have you gotten the parcel yet? Hopefully it should have gotten there by now. ^^