Death Note

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

Alright, first let me say that, the manga is infinitely better than the anime. INFINITELY. But, with that being said, I believe the manga should have ended at chapter 58/59. After that, it's just a crapload of "yeah-right" and "ooookay" and "bullshit". Seriously, I hated the second half of the story. However, the first half was so ridiculously good, that I just couldn't give the manga a bad score.

With that being said, on to the details.

Story
Brilliant. I can't think of anything else that has even come close to something like this. Entertaining, smart, and keeps you on the edge of your seat. You'll want to ... read the chapter after chapter to find out what happens next.

Art
Looks good to me. Figures are drawn well and the females were good looking.

Character
By far, the best part of this show. The characters were...alive. You felt like you really "knew" the people. Almost like reading a book there was so much detail. There aren't any that follow a typical "stupid" or "cliche" trademark either. Thank god.

Enjoyment
Well, as I said, I didn't enjoy the second half of the story. After the first half, my enjoyment level plummeted. Read the second half, if only just to say you have.

Overall
Do yourself a favor and stop after chapter 57-59. You'll enjoy the manga a lot more and probably be happy with a well thought out ending (as opposed to the chapter 108 thrown together ending).

Each era of anime is marked by its own trends, its own conventions, its own shows that dominate the conversation and shape public perception of the medium among fans and non-fans alike. For the 2000's, Death Note was one of the biggest, and a good argument could be made that it WAS the biggest. It achieved a seemingly omnipresent level of saturation, you could not go to a forum on any given nerd hobby without people filled with avatars and signatures from the series, and its famous lines are parroted even now. Its anime adaptation was immensely popular and reached a level of pop cultural ... osmosis that was thorough enough that even people who don't care about anime obtained a passing familiarity with at least the eponymous concept. As of this writing, it is even getting a westernized adaptation on Netflix with Willem Dafoe of all people as Ryuuk.


Unfortunately, I can't really hold the series in an especially high regard for a number of reasons despite all the critical acclaim and praise that has been lavished upon it.

To get the good out of the way, it certainly has a pretty fascinating hook. The ability to easily kill anyone without leaving any proof, thoroughly avoiding any consequences, merely by writing their names in a notebook, is a pretty interesting and memorable concept. It has immense potential for all kinds of storytelling possibilities, such as the development and psychological effects that this would have on the person using the Death Note, the wider sociological repercussions of a mass series of killings that seem to be divine punishment, whether it's morally justifiable to kill criminals given that any justice system is heavily skewed in certain ways, etc.

Secondly, it has very good artwork. While Obata is not among my favorite manga artists, it would be disingenuous to not recognize his draftsmanship as arguably the strongest point of Death Note. It is not by any means easy to create polished and detailed art on a weekly basis for manga even with assistants, and yet Obata pulls it off with aplomb and a very strong aesthetic. My favorite part are probably his fantastical shinigami designs, which have a very "demon punk monster" vibe to them.

Finally, the actual focus of the plot, the cat and mouse games between Light and the investigators (whether they be L or someone else) are pretty entertaining to watch. I don't think I was ever BORED reading the series since there was almost always something going on, some zany scheme or gambit at play that kept things moving. This was by Ohba's own admission what he was writing the manga around, and I can understand that decision since Death Note must have pulled in a strong readership when it was running in Jump due to its suspense on a week to week basis.

But unfortunately, even with all those things going for it, it can't make up for what I consider Ohba's crippling flaw, which is generally that I think his characters are very lackluster for the most part.

Light CAN be a fun character to watch, but I ultimately feel that he is a detriment to the series because he isn't especially nuanced or interesting. Everything related to his "development" is handled in an extremely underwhelming manner. Any scruples that he has are quite quickly tossed aside in a manner that makes later developments to paint him as a good person prior to the Death Note as completely unconvincing. He is little more than a petulant, arrogant sociopath with a god complex who only becomes more and more unlikable and pathetic as the series goes on. He has very little in the way of humanizing traits or moments, which just renders him completely impossible to like or get behind. This may have been the point, but I don't feel that it made for a good character because you can still have a complex and nuanced villain who is still someone to hate, but who also has layers and where you understand why he became the person they did and perhaps connect with them on some level against your wishes. Light does not achieve any of that, so as it stands I just don't find him to be that great.

L is probably the best character in the series, a fun character to watch with enough bizarre quirks to make him feel more human than the other characters, even if it's an exaggerated animu way. I would honestly say that he is one of the series' biggest assets, every scene he is in is one where he has your attention. I don't think that I can hold him up as one of my favorite characters in anime and manga, but among the ones in the series, he stands supreme.

The thing about this though, is that it makes the conflict in place have a pretty clear right and wrong. I have heard a few times about the supposed moral ambiguity of the story and the idea that people debate on who to root for, but with all due respect I just find that to be malarky. Light is such a horrendous, sanctimonious individual that it is impossible to suggest that he is in the right with a straight face. His entire worldview and methodology to using the Death Note is fundamentally and horrendously flawed and likely led to many innocents being killed, he simply cannot be trusted with that kind of power. This is someone who killed a man entirely because he insulted his ego, that is his defining character moment at the very beginning of the series. He isn't even the kind of charismatic villain who you want to see triumph. The idea that anyone should root for him or want him to win is completely laughable.

I don't think most of the other characters really have that much going for them, honestly. Almost all of them are defined by very superficial characteristics that make it hard to really care about them in any meaningful way. IIt feels like Ohba only really cared about them as pawns on a chessboard to move his thriller plot along, without bothering to put some effort into humanizing them and making them compelling characters to be invested in.

There was one moment in the story where one character leaves the investigation due to anger at how he is being treated, and is greeted by his daughter who asks him what's going on, leading him to burst into tears and hug her. This was one of the few instances of warmth and actual humanity in the story where I actually cared somewhat about what was happening on an emotional level, but there was never any other time where that happened. Overall, Death Note is quite an impersonal and cold story as the characters aren't really people you connect with all that deeply.

Now, it is not necessarily true that you need super great and complex characters in order to have a worthwhile story. Some people may say that, but I don't think it's true, per se. If your story is more theme and idea-driven, then it is ok for the characters to be a bit more flat or to be more representative of ideas and philosophies, or be more timeless archetypes in order to make a point. The story need not be super emotional either, as long as it is interesting.

But for that, your ideas need to be actually interesting and you have to deal with them in a meaningful and insightful way.

Death Note never does that because it is entirely focused on its thriller elements. Ohba himself said that he wanted to leave moral judgments and sociological commentary for the audience to think about. I suppose I can understand that decision, but Death Note completely neglecting this area of the story feels like a bunch of squandered potential. All of the questions that I mentioned above regarding the premise's potential that could have been explored due to the premise are left as footnotes or passing mentions at best.

This means that Death Note only really works as a reasonably entertaining thriller; it cannot to be said to be a strong character-driven drama, nor is it a poignant thoughtpiece that presents interesting concepts and gives insightful answers.

What this basically means is that looking back on Death Note, I am just left feeling that the version of the story that I got from the premise was not at all the kind of story I would have preferred to get from it. I would have done a lot of things quite differently, such as significantly changing Light's character, focusing a lot more on societal effects of Kira, putting more character moments to add complexity to the cast and make you care about them, etc.

But I suppose in the end I can't really be that hard on it, since I was entertained reading it. It just isn't anything more than a 6 out of 10 for me as an experience.

Q: What happens when an unstoppable Mary Sue meets an immovable Mary Sue?
A: Death Note.

The protagonist, and his adversary, are both genius pretty boys (with the odd names of Light and L) who have an incredible amount of achievements and skill for their young age. Light somehow predicts things that he could not possibly have the foresight to predict, because, you know, probability is a thing. Don’t worry though, it’s not like you know that he’ll always win, because L possesses this exact same unexplained and ludicrous ability to predict the future; he just does so without a cheesy “Just as planned!” catchphrase ... that makes me want to shoot myself every-time it graces my ears. In this way, rather than being a dark and mysterious thriller, Death Note often manages to be an overblown mental mudslinging contest between two impossibly perfect master practitioners of bullshit who are both describable in a single sentence. This is epitomized in an early scene where the two, who both have tennis skills at a professional level, get into a match and engage in a ridiculously drawn-out internal line of logic about how the desire to not lose might relate to the true identity of the other.


Furthermore, what kind of psychological mystery thriller has a plot entirely driven by coincidences, improbabilities, and impossibilities? Again, Death Note. Plot devices like this were used every-time the manga found itself in a narrative corner, and these cop-outs always completely killed the tension that was built up to that point, while simultaneously disengaging the plot from the audience.


The concept was intriguing, and I won’t say it did not entertain me at some parts, but it was ultimately far too flawed in its execution to be called enjoyable or good overall, and it never managed to pull off the promise of its premise. It seemed overdone at times, with eye-roll worthy developments, and lines like “I take a potato chip and eat it!” delivered with the utmost significance and conviction, devoid of any irony or self-awareness. Light’s ability, of writing a name in a notebook as a method of killing, is initially well established and limited, while being relatively creative, although you would think he’d be able to do a bit more with it, but the way the new rules of the note are introduced as the story goes on can get a tad contrived.


Characterization quality is somewhat varied, but I would say that it's generally not all that good. It was bad, really. Light is a bit too perfect, his only flaws being the well-concealed logical results of his perfection, such as his narcissism and overconfidence. It could be argued that this flawlessness was intentionally done in an effort to depict the deconstruction of a seemingly perfect human being, but I think this concept eventually fell flat. It would have been far more interesting to see an average teenager find the note and watch the scope of his ambitions and arrogance develop over time. Light is arrogant, ambitious, and a staunch consequentialist from the very outset; this, logically, kills almost all opportunity for development. As for the rest of the characters, L was far more interesting and entertaining than Light, although he was even more unrealistic, evoking the child prodigy and boy detective clichés among other things; I mostly found myself rooting for him rather than the protagonist. Light's eventual “girlfriend” falls in love with him, to the extent of obsession, right away, as the plot commands it, and this insufficiently-explored obsession with him defines her entire character. There is absolutely nothing to her besides that, despite her eventually becoming one of the most significant characters in the series. In all actuality, the motivations for most characters, besides the protagonist and the Shinigami, are hazy at best and, with the exception of L, none of them are interesting in the slightest.


Death Note has some religious symbolisms and themes, which are underplayed and done well until a forced Christ allegory towards the middle, but this all kind of falls apart in the second half and all of the symbolism quickly vanishes into thin air. To make matters more dire, the already limited development of the protagonist stagnates and his adversary is quickly replaced by two identical, yet duller and less compelling, copies. At the same time, while the developments and additional rules to Light’s ability in the first half were often a bit contrived, they were usually better than nothing; pretty much all evolution stops in the second half, and it only gets worse. The manga essentially loses everything that it ever had going for it, and it then lies fallow in that inadequate stage for the remainder of the plot, all leading up to an anticlimactic conclusion that the audience knew was coming from the very beginning. The manga would have lost nothing to speak of had that conclusion come around 4 volumes earlier than it did. Therefore, as the plot progressed, it increasingly lost its higher significance and simultaneously started to wear thin the initial appeal of its premise.


The art is arguably the strongest, or least flawed, aspect of Death Note, the character design being particularly astounding, with the exception of a couple characters introduced in the second half whose designs were either dumb-looking or recycled. The art is generally pretty atmospheric and it never skimps on detail out of convenience, although not much detail is required in the first place. The design of the main antagonist, while understated, is particularly impressive due to the fact that he manages to be very aesthetically appealing, despite the ridiculous heroin chic vibe that the audience gets from him. It is usually pretty stellar, although side characters aren't all that detailed.


In the end, what Death Note did accomplish was hackneyed and not all that original; it could not be called “deep” nor was it ever cutting-edge in the grand scheme of things. The coincidences and general improbabilities that drove the plot bar it from being called “realistic,” more than the out-there premise ever could. That said, it should be given some credit for featuring a true antihero, who is still often admired by the audience, and ultimately not being afraid to portray him as pathetic. It also never used the character’s high school age as an excuse to throw light school-life hijinks into the plot. But these positive qualities unfortunately failed to have too much influence in the industry, and they are additionally outweighed by negatives in the universe of the manga itself. Code Geass, a blatant Death Note rip-off, wasted no time at all in taking every single good Death Note did and flipping it all on its head. I might recommend Death Note, if only for the first half, but only with a warning that it fell apart and that even the first half is not as great as it's often made out to be. You honestly might be best off watching the first half and simply skimming the plot summary of the second, because it has nothing of value to offer the reader beyond that point.

Note: This is mostly a modified version of my review for the anime. They follow the same storyline and suffer from the same fundamental issues.