Occasionally,
our humble little shrine is blessed with endowments from other deities.
Sometimes those benefactions are wonderful bundles of joy and sometimes
they are the equivalent of the red and green sweater your Auntie Gin
gave you last Christmas with the giant snowflake across the front.
Here, my dears, I would like to tell
you of the former; a tasty little lagniappe from the clouds above San
Francisco. Into our keeping fell a round disc of mystery and intrigue
featuring the first four episodes of an anime series called Death Note.
We sat down with our bowl of Orville
and were sucked in from the menu page onwards. On a plain black and
white background, beneath the Death Note logo the four episode titles
were written in a sketchy white font: 1: Rebirth, 2: Confrontation, 3:
Dealings, 4: Pursuit. They turned blood red against the stark
monochromes when I made my selection. Creepy. Giving it due
consideration, I decided to start with Episode 1, thereafter was I
engrossed in a world of Shinigami, stationery, high school students,
serial killers, secret police, and extreme delusions of grandeur.
The down low on Death Note goes like
this; boredom is a bad thing, especially if you’re a Shinigami, a God
who claims life and death over us lowly humans. One such fella feels the
doldrums whilst perched for eternity in the vast, ugly wastes of the
underworld. We meet Ryuk, rail thin, black clad, raven-winged with
yellow bug eyes; he’s like a surrealist vision of what Tommy Lee would
look like had he joined Kiss instead of the Crüe, and got his head
squished in a printing press (- for kicks). Ryuk decides to amp
up his fun quotient by tossing his little black book over into the world
of the living. Said black book, simply called the Death Note, gives the
one holding it the power of life and death; if someone’s name is written
on a page, they will cease to be inside of 40 seconds.
The tome of
godlike omnipotence falls into the hands of the fetching Light Yagami,
high school student of the first brass. Light is experiencing a little
ennui of his own what with crime in Japan being reported every day and
his life an unending series of day school and prep school, and he reads
the book with handy how-to instructions with perfectly sensible
disbelief. But curiosity gets the better of him and he scribbles the
name of a couple of ne’er do wells and after some evidence of a
homicidal stripe is convinced that what he’s got is the real thing.
Those first murders brings Ryuk back into the picture who then tags
along with Light and tosses him small tidbits of information on the
Death Note when it occurs to him, almost always too little too late.
Light takes to the ownership of the
book of death like a duck to water and soon sees it as his right to
punish evildoers. Set up with an alter ego called Kira (- Killer,
y’all), as a god to be feared and loved. With the newly protected
Tokyo populace, this goes over like a ton of bricks, with local law
enforcement (- of which Light’s Da is a high-ranking detective)
not so much. In their frustration at someone possibly killing the
criminals before they get a chance to, the police turn to a mysterious
problem solver, completely anonymous and disguised but for a single
letter “L”, this forensics genius has already taken a deep interest in
the case and uses some extreme tactics to smoke out Kira’s location and
discern his next move. Once alerted to the fact that Kira now has a
stalker, Light employs his super smarts of his own to suss out L’s
identity (- you need the name and the likeness of your intended
murderee for the Death Note to work and Light has neither). Death
Note is shoring up to be a battle of wits between these two superior
intellects, each one-upping the other in their cat and mouse game. Light
needs L’s name in his book before L brings Light/Kira in front of a
firing squad.
Colour me sold. I really enjoyed the
first three episodes and thought they were pretty flawless, each one
adding another layer of intrigue to the story. The fourth episode
dragged a little bit and took the focus off the tightening bind between
Light/Kira and L, but it still was engrossing because we see how Light’s
power has started to corrupt him, and the lengths he will go to in order
to protect his secret. We haven't learned much about L yet but I can’t
wait to find out more. Light’s total embrace of godhead is compelling;
his arrogance and sense of entitlement are not the stuff of a
megalomaniac, but of an arrogant, pampered teenager. When told by Ryuk
that he wasn’t chosen specifically to own the Death Note - that it just
fell to whoever wanted to pick it up - Light has an offended hissy at
the thought that he isn’t as special as he imagines, and refuses to
believe Ryuk. Light doesn’t understand the reality of the consequences
behind jotting down names in the Death Note to the victims or himself,
because despite his astronomical IQ, he’s just a kid. His fall down the
rabbit hole as he becomes more and more enmeshed in what he feels is his
duty dispatching the bad guys of the world is going to be an interesting
ride.
Production wise, Death Note is
brought to us by the good folks at Madhouse (- who also brought us
the wonderful
Paprika, CardCaptor Sakura, X, Vampire Hunter D:
Bloodlust, and my beloved Tokyo Godfathers) and the art is
wonderful. Many frames per second, fluid character movement and great
character design. I enjoy the palettes used to represent Light and L,
Light is all mediums browns and beiges - a mutable chameleon, and L is a
shock of black hair and pale, white skin under a white shirt. L’s
symbol, which pops up on computer monitors when he addresses the police
force from his hidden location, is a stark Blackletter-font “L” against
a white background. Both are designed with the requisite pretty that an
anime series need to bring in that elusive Double X demo. Once you clap
eyes on the Shinigami, Ryuk, you won’t be able to forget him (- try
as you might) he weighs the perfect balance between comic and fright
and as a character bring welcome levity to proceedings that can get
quite grim – we are watching a show about a well-meaning mass murderer,
after all.
Our San Fran deities have also sent
word that Cartoon Network will be running Death Note starting October 20th
at midnight on Adult Swim. No clue if they will run a dub version or the
original (- and always preferable) Japanese with English
subtitles. Either way, I’m hooked, so I’ll certainly be watching.
~ Mighty Ganesha
Sept. 30th 2007
Update - Oct 8, 2007 - Hey
Girls and Boys, check our news page,
...and Nonsense, for info about the live action
version of Death Note, starring
Kenichi
Matsuyama from Linda Linda
Linda, and
Tatsuya
Fujiwara from Battle Royale.
Or, click on the Death Note logo! |
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