Death Note - RePost

Death Note, the manga was, one of the most popular titles of all time. In the fall of 2006 it was brought to TV for a 37 episode run along with 2 live action movies and currently a 3rd spin off live action movie in the wings. It has elicited controversy all over the globe, usually spawned by teenagers and was one of the first series to be available online in the American markets.

    Death Note is a shonen series that focuses on one person’s delusional attempt to change the world for the better, according to his standards. Our story follows the oddly names Light Yagami (the kanji is spelled like light in Japanese but is pronounced as the English word). Light is one of the brightest students in all of Japan, with the most successful life ahead of him. His plan is to follow in his fathers footsteps and join the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). His father is a high ranking officer in the special investigation division. Light, in his senior year of high school, is jaded and pessimistic. He feels that everyone around him is garbage and that society is a cesspool of corruption and hedonism. One day while leaving school he passes by a mysterious notebook lying on the school grounds. Written on the cover in English is the phrase Death Note. He passes it by at first, but then curiosity makes him pick it up. On the first page is a list of rules written in English. According to the rules the notebook is used by shinigami (death gods) in their job as the grim reaper. You write a persons name down and shortly afterwards they die of a heart attack. If you so choose you can specify how they die and you have an allotted time frame to write down the specifications.

    Skeptical, but amused, Light takes the notebook home with him. While watching a news story about a man who has been holding a kindergarten class hostage Light decides to test it out, see if it will work. According to the books rules he writes down the name of the hostager and pictures him in his mind while doing so. He counts out the time, waiting to see if anything will happen. When the time passes he takes a sigh of relief, it was just a hoax after all. Just as he is about to continue his homework the news report explodes about how the police have rushed into the kindergarten and the hostages are being released. The hostager has died of unknown causes and the stand off is over with. Light is taken back by the fact that it is very likely he is the cause of the hostagers’ death but he is skeptical. There’s no way such a super natural power could exist. Yet his sense of justice is too strong, if he were able to deter crime through the threat of instant death he could make the world a much better place. He has to test out the notebook where he can prove that he is responsible for the results. He takes it with him and searches for someone who deserves to die.

    He runs into an unruly and dangerous biker from his school at a convenience store. From inside the store Light watches the delinquent attack an innocent young woman and quickly rights his name into the notebook. Shortly after he does so the biker inexplicably gets on his bike and pulls out into an oncoming semi, killing him instantly, just as Light wrote in the notebook. Light is shocked and excited at the same time. He now has the power of god, to choose who lives and who does not. Now he can do what he feels is needed to clean up the cesspool that is the world.

   Light quickly begins a cleansing campaign, ridding the world of all the most dangerous criminals, making sure that governments and the media notice what is happening. It doesn’t take long until the World Police Organization holds a secret press conference in regards to all of the criminals who have been dying mysteriously. They have decided to bring in the world’s greatest investigator to find the source behind all of these deaths. This investigator is known only as L and everything about him is unknown. L gladly accepts the offer and based upon his own investigations pinpoints the culprit as residing somewhere in Japan. The hunt for Kira (killer in Japanese), as the media has dubbed him, is on and L joins forces with MPD to begin investigating.

    L’s investigation is highly publicized all over the world and in an attempt to challenge Kira he holds a press conference to set up a meeting. Light see’s the news conference and immediately kills L. As the man falls dead on live TV the real L, who only shows up as a stylized ‘L’ appears on the screen. L has know successfully pinpointed Kira’s location in the world as the Tokyo area of Japan. In a bid to pin point him they were set to broadcast the ‘conference’ in each television market in Japan first, to try and pinpoint his location. Light fell for it 100% and ended up exposing himself. The person that Kira ended up killing was a death row inmate that was scheduled to die that day, leaving Kira to do the governments all ready scheduled work. Now that the hunt is on, Light and L must fight each other using their wits and intelligence. Who will win this deadly cat and mouse game, Japans top high school student or the worlds greatest investigator? The race is on to find out the others identities and for L and the MPD to stop Kira from killing any more people.

    I originally read the manga after a news report about the series ending and how unbelievably popular it was. I had not heard of it previously and was quite intrigued. So I picked it up and read the entire thing. Just as I finished it the TV series started. The TV series was not as enjoyable for me as the manga for one reason; I knew exactly what was going to happen. I was however able to see other people’s reactions as I watched them find out what I already knew. This series is incredibly intense; it will keep you on the edge of your seat. The entire cat and mouse game between Light and L is incredibly detailed and twisting, with everyone playing the worlds best poker face. The series can easily be split up into 3 parts. The first 2 parts can be considered the L arch, which consists of the first part and then the later Yotsuba group arc. The third part can be considered the Mellow and Near arc. In my opinion the series goes quite a bit downhill in the Near and Mellow arc. The believability of the cat and mouse game really starts to stretch thin and I felt the ending was a bit rushed. Not that it shouldn’t have ended, quite the opposite. It just seems like the writer ran out of ideas and wrapped it up quickly. The series follows the manga almost exactly, for the L arcs it follows almost page by page. The final arc is a bit rushed and they gloss over some things that make for an even less desirable story. In that last arc they skimp a bit on the character development, which is one of the key things for this series.

    Over the 2007 holiday a 3 hour ‘directors cut’ aired on TV in Japan that was a Cliff Notes version of the 2 L arcs. A second special aired a few months later that covered the Mellow/Near arc. All in all, this is a pretty good series, even if it falls under a lot of the shonen trappings, but it doesn’t get that boring or redundant. The mass amount of planning and counter planning for some of the events can be pretty mind blowing, just when you think the jig is up something happens and all the cards fall into place just as planned. The series will leave you guessing for a long time, finding out how much everyone can get away with and do before it all explodes. The cast of side characters can be interesting and entertaining as well, but ultimately the series is all about Light and L and their struggle to identify the other. If you enjoy dramatic, edge of your seat stories, this is a good one to check out, just don’t get wrapped up in the insane fandom that surrounds this series. It’s a good story but you don’t have to be Kira.