Anime Review 001 : Death Note, manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
*ahem*
Welcome. To Sane Restriction (Colloquial Entity)'s anime reviews.
To start with, I'm going to both worship and scurrilize Death Note. Because I feel that Death Note consists of plenty of either aspects, depending on your perception of a 'good' anime.
If you have never watched Death Note before, I encourage you to. Death Note is very well-written and has an interesting plot that I feel is necessary to acknowledge.
The story begins that Light Yagami, the main character and a high school student (because every anime's main character or characters is a high school student. o.o), finds a black notebook on the grounds of his school campus.
The notebook was dropped by a Death God from the Death... God... World... into the human world. The one who dropped it was a Death God that called himself Ryuk, and looked kind of like the demented squirrel my neighbor ran over yesterday mixed with the Heath Ledger Joker and a Lego Bionicle, if you're having trouble picturing him. Not that my description would logically assist you in any way...
The notebook contains a set of specific rules describing how to correctly utilize it, and states that it can kill whomever the owner may wish if the owner writes the name of the designated victim into the book and pictures the person's face.
Though skeptical at first, Light begins to passionately use the notebook, titled Death Note if that isn't obvious yet, to kill off every single criminal in the world as his own pursuit of Yagami-ized justice.
The sudden increase of uncanny criminal deaths has gained the attention of the Japanese Police Force, who contacts Interpol.
Interpol sets up the most esteemed and most intelligent detective alive and available, L, to take the case.
And that's how the story begins to curve.
If you've been paying attention, which is slightly doubtful due to my ranting techniques, you would've noticed I addressed the detective under the alias 'L'. And that is how I will continue to address him. Without regard for any of his other ten billion trillion aliases. And that, by no means, is an exaggeration. *cough* *cough*
Since this is an anime review and not just a summary or preview of the show, I will now begin to criticize. And yes, it did take considerably longer than I would've liked to get to this point.
In my history of being a fantasy-genre writer, I have always considered characters one of the most important elements of the story.
And in Death Note, I will admit, some of the characters failed to leave lasting impressions. Except L, of course.
Furthermore, as I deem characters so necessary for a good story, I will begin by scrutinizing those of the Death Note characters I have currently come across (I apologize, I did not finish Death Note and can say little about Matt, Near, Mello, and whoever else I do not mention in the next few paragraphs or whatever).
The first Death Note character I examine will be, respectively, Light, being the main character.
Light was made out in the story to be, supposedly, a genius with a mind for devising over-the-top plans for everything, by which I am specifically referring to a mechanism he constructed to block and/or trigger a string of flame and electric current to either safely reveal the notebook with a key disguised as a pen or will instantaneously explode and wreath the entire Yagami residence in flame for the sake of protecting the secret of the Death Note's existence. Way overdone, am I right?
But that wasn't what bothered me about Light. In fact, that was what I liked about him. That he over-thought everything to what he expected to be the last detail and then missed something crucial and paid for it in the end. I like that. But what I couldn't stand about Light was his lack of compassion and heart. I understand he's going on about a roundabout way of taking over the world by means of cleaning the planet of its crime, but seriously. It's like he's not even human. And he's kind of a prick, too, now that I think about it. His personality just started going down the drain as the story progressed, since he was losing every humane hair of his body, every last fiber of humanity was just dribbling off of his frame and puddling up on the ground like neglected puss.
I felt like Light was just a character made to help the plot work out the way they wanted it to. They didn't really pay attention to how he developed, for which he 'developed' by turning into an annoying fool, and his depth neither flattened nor deepened, though there wasn't much there to begin with.
Those that wrote up his character need to really work on that, because he just gives me the impression of a guy they slapped together without any intention of making him very interesting or intriguing in any way possible.
Now I shall grace L with my majestic... majesty.
Death Note fans, L is pretty wicked. In a good way. Like... meaning he's awesome... and... stuff...
O.o
So before I get into my complex L speal, let me sum it up at this:
L is weird.
BAM. There you have it. L is weird. Weirdweirdweirdweirdweirdweirdweirdweird. Like, weirdest guy ever. But awesome. And I mean it.
To start, not only is L incredibly intelligent (moreso, I'd wager, than Light), but he has a vast array of peculiar 'quirks'.
For instance, he bites his nails, walks everywhere barefoot (and I mean everywhere), has a profound sweet tooth (only really eats Jell-O, cakes, cakes, chips, cakes, candy, cakes, fruits, cakes, cakes, and cakes), tends to intently stack whatever is accessible (he stacks Jell-O, sugar cubes, dominoes, and whatnot), has black bags under his eyes, has some sort of mutual refusal to sit down properly, holds his cellphone like it's an intoxicated chipmunk, and has a few... 'social issues'... and... the works...
If this doesn't paint an accurate picture of L's personality, I'd have to ask... what does?
L is so eccentric that no amount of stringy words and breathy utterances could describe him, could leave no bone unscathed. I swear you need to watch the anime in order to understand L.
And another thing about L that I forgot to mention; he's difficult to ruffle. He's so detached and separate, and he couldn't really care less what people thought about him (not usually, anyway). It's his self-esteem and confidence in himself as well as humility that makes him honourable, unlike Light.
And L has depth. More than Light, at least. Not only is he even more crucial to the plot than Light will ever be, but L actually appreciates things and grows on them. His hints are miniscule, but present.
Once the remainders of the Japanese Police Force circled 'round him to act and Light joined up with him as well, he muttered that his 'circle of friends had increased'. Though his expression was blank and tone monotone when he said it, he did say it. And that clues that L has a heart, appreciates their loyalty and trust, and develops further from a jaded recluse into a slightly-less-jaded recluse and then into an eccentric young man that, though different, leapt from his former seclusion and into a slightly... larger world.
And Ryuk, I guess I should clear him up a little more, too. As I predicted, my most recent verbal portrayal of Ryuk was unsatisfactory, so I suggest Googling or... 'Bing'ing... or 'Yahoo'ing "DEATH NOTE RYUK" to really get the picture. A picture is worth a thousand words, 'aight?
Ryuk... is a Death God. *blink* He likes apples. And laughs kind of often. Er... yeah, not much I can say about him. But the reason he dropped his Death Note and interfered with Light's life was because he was bored. His life as a Death God was fruitless and he needed entertainment. So he dabbled in the human world where conflict was his feed and surprises were his drugs.
And then there was Rem. Who was a giant white thing.
And Matsuda. Who was L's personal fanboy or whatever.
And Misa Amane. Who was annoying as f***.
And that about sums it up for characters. But to just conclude the character evaluations and such, I figured I should glaze over the overall quality of the Death Note character arrangement. Taking into consideration Light's personality, L's awesomeness, Ryuk's weird... ness... Misa's irritating... ness... and the other insignificant characters that were made to drive the plot... Death Note's general characters sucked. Yes. Yes, they did. The two main rivals, L and Light, were acceptable, but everyone else did little for the audience's personal sense of in-story development and served small purpose in a mainly plot-driven anime. Sorry, Death Note. L was great and all, but the rest just didn't impress.
As a further continuation of my Death Note Anime Review, I recollect that I did say that Death Note was a highly plot-driven anime. The characters were given less thought than I would've liked and the attention to crucial detail might've been cast aside as less important a few times. The plot, as a majority, was genius, but towards the end (after episode 25) it began to fall apart. Things just started cascading into a huge mess. The beginning was sterling, but the ending just didn't work for me.
The story just turned into a desperate tale of authors that were struggling to think of an ending and just threw things together, making decisions that later injured the story and then trying to fix them but making things worse. I can't bring up any actual examples, as of now, but you understand my point, I assume. It's not rocket science. It isn't.
Most people may compare the plot to a modified cat and mouse chase. But... I wouldn't particularly call it 'cat' and 'mouse'. It was more like 'cat', 'smaller cat', and 'cat army'. The cat, namely L, got into a territorial fight (rivalry, if you will) with the smaller cat, being Light. Light eventually outdid L and continued on his rampage for ultimate power. On his way there, however, the cat army, Matt, Near, and Mello, for what I can tell, took down Light. The reason I wouldn't compare Light to a 'mouse' is simple: he and L are more or less equals in most aspects. L has insane intelligence, Interpol, and the Police Force. Light has a murderous notebook, Death God, and reasonable intelligence. Sure, L has a slight advantage in teh situation, since the limitations to the Death Note are sound, but isn't that why Light is the smaller cat? The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Though L fell silently and not without anticipation for the following events. And then all was well. Well enough, at any rate.
And that was how I viewed Death Note. It was an overly plote-driven anime with few impressive characters, a collapsing storyline, an incomparable analogy and metaphorical sense, and an ugly Death God named Ryuk.
But even as I utter those words (type, technically), I cannot help but fear that those that are reading this will take it as a sign that I hated Death Note. But I didn't. It was awesome. Most of it, anyhow.
As a finalized thought, I give it a 7 out of 10.
6.998755928497435082458534580932485720842498587098745874509845976459, actually.
