A Review of Death Note (Anime)

After encountering the trailer for the Death Note for Netflix, I looked up the general premise. Then I looked up a video on YouTube.

Then I ended up binging the whole bloody show.

A Shinigami (A Japanese god of Death) named Ryuk is bored. His world is a mess, a disaster. On a lark, for something to do, he takes his death note--a black notebook that will kill anyone whose name is written down in it--and throws it down to Earth, just to see what happens.

Enter Light.

Light Yagami is about to graduate high school. The son of a police officer, he finds the world grim, unchanging, and ... boring.

And then he finds this little black notebook. The Death Note comes with instructions, written in by Ryuk.

Light reads the rules of the death note, and first tests it out on a hostage taker, and then a rapist in progress... and five days later, he has filled the Death Note with hundreds of names. When Ryuk comes to him to elaborate on the death note, Light declares that "I will happily sacrifice my soul to make a better world." But Ryuk explains that, no, the Death Note will not come with selling his soul, but "merely" forfeiting his place in Heaven or Hell. With that bit of new information, Light's mission becomes all about him becoming a god, out to start the creation a new world, free of criminals.

There's little buildup to Light's declaration. It's just that sudden.

But we have a show to start, and all of this is episode 1.

After the first thousand dead criminals, it becomes obvious to all that it is the work of a mass murderer, and he is labeled "Kira" -- killer.

Over time, we see that Light is possibly one of the most evil SOBs I think I've ever seen outside of Sauron. Seriously, there's not one person near him he doesn't manipulate. He drives at least one person to suicide without using the death note. At least one person he spent 30 minutes of screen time with (IE: who knows how much in-story time with) and gets to know them, connect with them, realize what a good and loving person they are ... and then kills them, because there's a possibility that they know something that might expose him. Friends? What's a friend? Allies? An ally is just a tool, a pawn, for his own convenience. Light needs no one. Light cares for no one but himself. Even his family seem to be of value to him only as an extension of Light's own ego, and there are points in the plot where even they seem to be expendable.

At the end of the day, Light is charming and suave, and I have read blood-sucking vampires written by Ringo and Correia that have more humanity than this guy.

But good God, it is hard to tell which of these people are scarier.  Light wants to be a god, and reshape the world where only "hardworking good people" exist. Light jumps onto this bandwagon fairly quickly. He goes from killing criminals, to killing cops investigating him, to ultimately deciding with one person "You have defied me, the new god! For that alone, you will die."

Then there's Light's girlfriend, Misa.

Yes, his girlfriend.

On the surface, Misa is every anime blonde cliche made manifest. She is bright, she is perky. She is outgoing ... and she might be more evil than Light is. She possesses her own death note, and is a fan of "Kira." Because that's what every mass murdering serial killer needs -- a groupie.

Bute when Misa gets going, the bodies start dropping all over the place.

While Light, at the very least, makes certain the ascertain guilt or innocence of criminals who drop dead--or cops coming after him directly-- Misa's quite happy to off anyone who even expresses disapproval of "Kira."

While Misa comes off as a ditzy blonde, I don't think there's a single person in this entire series who classifies as stupid. We won't even go into some of the various and sundry oddballs, nut jobs, and seemingly "normal" people who join Light's team. Though it is amusing to have Light deal with girl trouble at some particularly perilous points in the story. It almost gives you hope that he's human. Don't worry, those moments don't last long.

Then we meet L, the detective in charge of hunting Kira.

L is the Holmes brothers, Nero Wolfe, and a stack of eccentricities rolled into one. There is an awful lot of thought put into this character, as well as the various and sundry back and forth between L and Light that would make for a great Columbo episode. Heck, there's even a tennis match here that Alfred Hitchcock would love. The tennis matches here are interesting-- but only one of them is literal. Watching the various and sundry thought processes of L and Light ping ponging back and forth between each other is particularly entertaining.

One of the things that makes Death Note particularly tragic is that, at one point, Light has to give up the death note. Without the notebook, he loses every and all memory of being Kira. During this time, we see that Light is actually not a bad guy. He's particularly bright, and possibly on par with or smarter than L. Like Aquinas put it, the corruption of the best leads to the creation of the worst -- and Light is one of the worst.

And that's before Light starts to truly spiral out of control

The animation is largely smooth and fluid. The artwork is creative and beautiful. The faces are unusually well defined for anime. The music is great and atmospheric, and borrows from Gregorian chant.

Overall, I was surprised at how easily I was sucked into this series. There is little of the hysterics that usually mark anime, and the characters are largely rich, well-developed people, with a host of strengths and foibles. Light is possibly the best murdering psychopath since Hannibal Lecter. And yes, I have read Dexter. Light makes Dexter look almost shallow in comparison, and I enjoyed those books.

All in all, I recommend it. It's currently on Netflix.

Top ten blog posts for "A Pius Man."

I must admit, working at Examiner.com has gotten me used to posting lists of things. One mass email told me that top ten lists were really rather popular.

So, since blog reads tend to be down for national holidays, I've decided to do my own top ten list for the blog.

The top five are, right now, always posted on the right hand side.
Disasters to Marvel At: A Comic Discussion. -- Discussing how Marvel Evented itself to death.
Mr Phelps, You Are Disavowed… Beating up on everyone's favorite loser.
Snarky theology 3: Evolution, Creationists, and other irritants. Part of my Snarky theology series. I'm not sure why this went anywhere. Seriously, I don't think the issue is half as interesting as some seem to think.
Snarky Theology 2: FAQs about Lent. -- this one started a nice little firestorm, mainly because someone decided to, well, slightly annoy me.
DragonCon 2010, Day 2, Part 1. I have no honest idea why this is so popular. I did several DragonCon reports from last year, and this one took the cake.

Now, for the rest of the top ten list, the you haven't seen posted anywhere ... because posting a top ten list isn't an option with this blog template. :)

Inspiring Authors: J. Michael Straczynski-- Exactly as the title says. I think this one was popular because I wrote it the week Thor came out in theaters, and he was credited with the story.
Snarky Theology 4: "Things that go boink in the night." I can credit my friend Jason for this title. I mentioned I wanted the Catholic position on sex. The title was the first thing that leapt to his mind. I guess it worked
Guest Blog: Murder in the Vatican Author Ann Margaret Lewis. When I was offered the option of allowing Madam Lewis on the blog, I was asked if I wanted a guest blog, an interview, or the option of reviewing her book, I went for all of the above.
The flame war is postponed .... While the little war of Lent was ongoing (see the comment section in the Lent link above), some idiot went online, and posted the most offensive post about Japan I have ever seen. I tore her a new one. Twice.
Snarky Theology 5: The Passion, Jews, and Good Friday... I posted this because, well, it was Good Friday, and I was tired of people who got their theology from Mel Gibson's The Passion.

Anyway, I don't think I'm going to waste anyone's time with a music blog today. I doubt many would want to read it. However, June had the record for most page views of any month. Almost for any three months.

I think July might be a time to break this record.

The flame war is postponed ....

For those of you who follow such things, we have our first flame war on the page.  It's over in the FAQs of Lent comments section.

However, I ran across this on Facebook.  My friend Matt's Facebook page.  As you know, Matt's an atheist, and likes shredding the dumber side of religion.... okay, he thinks every side is dumb, but he tolerates me, and I'm not the easiest person to get along with.

Now, you don't have to view this video. In fact, I hope it gets taken off of YouTube before any human being gets to see this ... I really don't count.  But, I took a glance at it, and it prompted me to write my first ever blog that I want to post at three in the morning, EST. 

I think I'm about to have a banner moment, here.

A Bruce Banner moment. 

Terrorists are stupid.

Yes, the title is exaggerated, but you're reading, aren't you?

I must say, though, for the most part, terrorists are not the brightest lights in the night sky.

Think about it. I can plan a better terrorist attack than any of these bozos. So could you.

For example....You want terror? Screw blowing up the World Trade Center—over fifty thousand people worked there, and the WTC could have upwards of 100,000 visitors per day (the magic notebook sees all and retains all). Infect all of them with the bio-weapon of your choice. A little smallpox, for example, maybe plague in the HVAC system. Have it running all day, and you infect both employees and tourists. They, in turn, infect people while going to lunch, on the subway, the ferry, their families, and when tourists go home, they bring it back with them. Being a smart terrorist, you tell the states friendly to you that they should really restrict travel to and from New York, and possibly all of America, period.

By the time the penny drops at the CDC, most of New York City now needs to be quarantined. The economy starts drying up, slowly. Tourism is dead. Fifty thousand jobs in the two buildings are lost, assuming that the employees are not all simply dead.

And I'm not even thinking hard.

Ironically, despite the Wyle E. Coyote explosive in Times Square, the attack itself was the right idea from their point of view. If terrorists want to inspire terror, then small, but frequent, attacks are the way to go. People are scared, frightened, uncertain about what may come around the next corner.

However, a word to al-Qaeda, et al, upon looking at the Time Square incident: when you're acquiring explosives, avoid the ones marked ACME....

As I was saying—thus far, when terrorists can't come up with ideas that I can in my spare time, they should probably reconsider their career goals.

And they are not necessarily uneducated. Osama bin Laden, last I checked, had a degree in engineering—and if I'm mistaken, his family is fill with engineers so he should have some idea. Mohammed Atta, one of the 9-11 pilots, had an upper middle class education in Egypt.

Though it does make me wonder why, thus far, a lot of the terrorists coming our way seemed to have come out of the Wyle E. Coyote school of home explosives.

The Underwear Bomber whose bomb caught fire without going off.

The Times Square bomber, with a Rube Goldberg timer.

The best answer I can come up with is that we're getting all the cannon fodder, who seem as bright as cannonballs. Not to mention that they have few experienced fighters—when you encourage martyrdom in your ranks, you have few people around who can share hard won combat experience. It didn't work well for the kamikaze, I can tell you that.

If I were going to do a terrorist attack....