Death Note

Not too long ago, I found myself becoming a Death Note fan literally overnight. …It was kind of an accident. You see, after a year or so of people telling me over and over to read Death Note and me ignoring them, I happened to catch the second episode on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, having turned on the TV to that station thinking it was Sunday. By the end of the episode I said to myself “Wow… I didn’t know the main character was this insane” and decided I needed to see more.

I had just been watching Avatar episodes on Veoh.com so I decided to see if Death Note was on there. Sure enough it was and I watched the entire anime series over the course of 3 days. Now I’ve also collected and read all 12 volumes of the manga. At this point I have come to the conclusion that the goth kiddies who carry around little black notebooks and worship “Kira” have completely misinterpreted the plot.

Without many spoilers, I’d like to give a little review of the anime, the manga, and the overall plot. But mostly I wish to discuss how I believe many fans of the show misconstrue the main character Light Yagami entirely.

For those of you unaware, the story of Death Note goes something like this: One day a bored Shinigami (grim reaper or literally “god of death”) named Ryuk drops a notebook called a “Death Note” into the human world. These books are used by the Shinigami to take human lives, adding years to their own, but the Shinigami realm is just a wasteland full of aimless creatures who only take enough lives to keep living themselves.

A genius-level student named Light Yagami picks up the Death Note, on which Ryuk has written rules on how to use it. It seems if you write a person’s name in the note with their face in mind they will die in 40 seconds. Light doesn’t believe it at first, but as he had been thinking lately how the world would be better off without all the “rotten” people causing crimes and making others miserable the idea becomes more appealing… and so he tests it out.

Validating to himself that the Death Note is real (bolstered by Ryuk’s appearance to Light, whom only he can see) Light quickly decides he will become the bastion of justice, eliminating all the people he thinks are “rotten” and unworthy of life, and almost as quickly decides that this would make him, in essence, the god of a new world.

However, the sudden, mass, unexplained deaths of criminals all over the world quickly attracts attention, and Light doesn’t even try to hide it, admiring the many websites that spring up to praise the one the public names “Kira” (sounds like “killer” pronounced in a Japanese accent.) It also attracts the attention of the world’s law enforcement agencies and in turn a mysterious figure called only L, a famous detective who has solved every case he’s ever been on who can command even the FBI and other agencies to go along with his plans. Light becomes angered that anyone would dare to stand in his way, and so a rivalry begins…

The story, as you might imagine, is very good. Though it follows a familiar anime/manga structure of a seemingly ordinary object giving a person powers and an iconic character only that person can see or only that person knows about coming along with it, Death Note is anything but light-hearted, and anything but typical. At it’s very core it’s a psychological thriller and a detective mystery, except on the latter the audience is in on it the whole time and the supporting characters are the ones in the dark. Both the anime and manga follow the exact same plot with little variation (the anime ending is much more sympathetic to Light but it’s essentially the same ending, and it abridges some things, especially in the N arc, but not by much.) The characters in the work are well-rounded and each with their own distinctive quirks.

The manga’s art is the work of the supremely talented Takeshi Obata who is behind the art for Hikaru No Go among others. The art and animation of the anime is just as spectacular, top notch especially for a television series. The author of Death Note is Tsugumi Ohba, but as this is the author’s only work and it is extraordinarily high quality for a debut comic it’s suspected to be the pen-name of another well-known manga writer who elected to remain anonymous.

Now. On to Light (what people already familiar with this work were waiting for.)

Light, the main character, is also the villain. I really liked that. I don’t find him to be a likable person at all, even before he got the Death Note he comes across as arrogant and thinking he’s better than everyone else. He’s a sociopath who knows how to go through the motions of society as the golden boy without really getting close to anyone, even his own family. He knows exactly what would be expected of him in any given situation and acts accordingly, often covering up his true cold, callous intentions.

Although he clearly has the potential, he probably wouldn’t have become a killer had he not had a way to do it in which he thought he couldn’t get caught. Even when he starts using the Death Note to kill he quickly develops a serial killer’s mentality: he thinks he’s smarter than the police, he likes to taunt them, he likes to take credit for his killings, he thinks he’s too smart to ever get caught. He’s so arrogant he even moves into a position where he’s close to the guy trying to pin him.

He also thinks because he’s smarter than everyone else he has the right to judge which people in the world are worthless and deserve to die. He justifies his rapidly developing god complex with the fact that he only kills criminals, however he doesn’t hesitate to kill innocent investigators who are looking into the deaths he’s caused and getting too close to him either. Even while killing innocent people he still justifies himself, and says he’ll become the god of a new world.

However in this he orchestrates his own fall.

Naturally I thought the final scene was very satisfying, that’s all I’ll say about it. And as unlikable as a person as he is, watching Light’s slow descent into madness is what made him fascinating and the story so engrossing.

What I can’t understand is the fans who idolize Light or think he’s cool. Wouldn’t they be sort of like all the people he manipulated throughout the series, and then cast aside like toys or even killed when they were no longer useful to him? He’s a terrible person, really. Of course I guess the kids who might sympathize with Light’s position are as immature as he is, thinking it would be great to have a book they could write “bad” people’s names in and make them die. The fangirlism surrounding him is also quite puzzling to me in that Light quite obviously hates women: he sees them as irritants that complicate matters when he can’t control them, doesn’t mind using them, doesn’t care about their feelings, sees them as below him and could discard them at any moment. It could be argued he does this with nearly every person around him, really, but with the women he woos and pretends to be in love with he becomes quite frustrated when their emotions or presence put a minor hitch in his plans. Then again, he’s a bishie, so anything he does is forgiven by crazed fangirls I guess, which means they also miss the point Light’s character makes as to how we as a society never think beautiful people look like killers and have trouble suspecting them. It’s amazing, Light is such a well written and poisonous character that he can even manipulate the audience.

Anyway, like I said, I think the goth kiddies who are now carrying around little black notebooks because of Death Note have completely misinterpreted the plot, and I’m sorry I looked at them and underestimated it. Feel free to post spoilers in the comments if you want to discuss the series, just put a little warning first!

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