Dear Self: You Cannot Spend Sixty Pounds On A Manga Boxset.

[rionaleonhart]

SERIOUSLY, GUYS, SOMEONE WRITE/DRAW ME LIGHT/HIMSELF. PLEASE. HE IS SUCH A NARCISSIST AND THIS NEEDS TO EXIST. I have a mental image of Kira!Light pinning down non-Kira!Light's wrists and smirking at him, and it is amazing. I would love to bring it into the physical world. It is such a shame that I have no artistic ability whatsoever.


Ahem. Anyway, I have now finished watching Death Note.



I became quite emotional during the final episode, actually. There's just something a bit horrible about seeing controlled, calculating, intelligent Light reduced to a pathetic mess.

I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FEELING SORRY FOR A DERANGED MASS-MURDERER.

SERIOUSLY, DEATH NOTE, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME? If I end up in prison, I'm blaming you.


Other notes:

- Oh, oh, Matsuda was so betrayed. I want to give the poor man a hug. He always believed in Light!

- Near: you're all right, I suppose, but you cannot replace L in my heart. It did feel a little too 'OH, HEY, L'S BACK, EXCEPT WITH WHITE HAIR AND WITHOUT THE TRAGIC UNREQUITED CRUSH ON KIRA. ALSO, HIS QUIRK IS NOW TOYS INSTEAD OF SWEETS'. If you want to kill L, writers, kill L; if you want L around, don't kill L. You can't just kill L and then bring in L the Second!

- Really, Death Note did rather go downhill after L's death. I still enjoyed it, but not to quite the same extent. Woe. This, I think, was in part because, y'know, no L, and in part because it just became too complicated.

- Also, I was a little sad at the lack of interaction between Light and Ryuuku in later episodes. They had an oddly adorable relationship.

- Was - was that Matt? The man who appeared in one episode, had two lines of interior monologue and two lines of dialogue, and was then shot to death? Don't people massively 'ship him with Mello or something? He barely even appears. Does he have more of a part in the manga? Was I mistaken in my belief that Matt/Mello was an enormously popular pairing? I am so confused!

- Light! So sad! So inexplicably sad! (I cannot believe I am mourning Light. He is just a terrible person in so many, many ways. And yet!)



This is probably my favourite scene in the whole of Death Note. I laughed so hard. It is simply not what one expects of a terrifying god of death.


In conclusion, Death Note is essentially a murder mystery that tells you who the murderer is before he starts murdering. It is a slightly odd concept, but I think it works.

Comments

[timydamonkey.livejournal.com]

- Was - was that Matt? The man who appeared in one episode, had two lines of interior monologue and two lines of dialogue, and was then shot to death? Don't people massively 'ship him with Mello or something? He barely even appears. Does he have more of a part in the manga? Was I mistaken in my belief that Matt/Mello was an enormously popular pairing? I am so confused!

I have the manga and even I read it I spent ages going, "So... who's Matt again?" On rereading, I swear he's in a few frames, or like 2 pages. I'm sure that's pretty much it. Somebody might wanna confirm that though.

Perhaps he's used so much as it's a male character who isn't an OC but isn't really developed?

I really missed L. (When I was spoiled about his death, I guessed when he would die by the images on the manga covers. I got it right too! :P) I did like the ending because it couldn't really have ended any other way.

Alas, I struggle to find good Death Note fic however (although I would totally read narcisstic Light/Light fic, just because it could be amazing!). I just read a rather crackish AU and all the fics of another author whose Final Fantasy 7 fics I really liked (and then they wrote amazing Death Note fics - great!).

Whoops, sorry for the fanfic babble! :P

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

Really, Death Note did rather go downhill after L's death.

Then I feel I made the right choice to stop there! I still don't actually know Light's fate. If you feel like telling me some spoilers, I'd be all for that.

Also, yes, Matt/Mello is enourmously popular, and no, he does not have a bigger part in the manga (to the best of my knowledge).

[futuresoon.livejournal.com]

NOT READING but, uh, I take it you liked the ending? Would it be worth me going back to it, even L-less?

[aestivalis]

re: 'was that Matt?', it's like Organization XIII all over again! Yeah, his part is only marginally bigger in the manga (he's in about fourteen panels, perhaps?). He has a tiny bit of backstory, I believe. Mostly that he's one of the orphanage kids as well, and he. likes video games. Of course that constitutes a backstory, sssh.

Soichiro, Matsuda, Aizawa and the other cops were my collective favourite characters in Death Note. That said, and in regards to what you mention about Near, I have a bit of a soft spot for Mello for the sorts of reasons you're mentioning. He's just refreshing in this series comprised so intensely around restrained and focused characters.

[kadrin.livejournal.com]

"In truth," said the man who wasn't him, who - yes, Light Yagami could tell quite well, was simply a hallucination devised by his subconscious to exorcise the few last lingering doubts as to such an extreme course of action, a very mild case of disassociative identity disorder brought about by massive stress which was itself caused by the strange new world the notebook opened up, of course he was... "the old English system was best. A criminal was declared outlaw - outside the law. Since he had abandoned the law's strictures, he had abandoned the law's protections, and there would be no punishment for acting against him."

Snap, went the first shackle, and Light turned to look at it with an apathetic curiosity.

"A society without laws is a society without a government, because in the end, someone must always be coerced by threat of force. Without firm law, one particular individual can hijack the will of others - either preventing their achievements in the best case, or profiting without contributing in the worst. You remember your Hobbes, you read it when you were twelve. Without society mankind is in a state of war, and his life 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'. And society is law."

Snap, the second shackle, though these couldn't be real. A hallucination couldn't honestly manipulate steel and chain, which made this another coping mechanism conjured by his brain. An excuse not to move, perhaps?

Why was he cold?

"So to act against law is to act against society. Criminal acts are revolutionary acts. Breaking the law is treason. Because it is only law that keeps society together, and only by society that we avoid Hobbes's state of permanent warfare, of every man for himself, every human against every human. The criminal doesn't realise this, the criminal realises... x in ten are caught, x1 in x arrested, x2 in x1 charged, x3 in x2 convicted, and the odds x3 in ten become infinitessimally short. Every time a criminal realises the unlikeliness of his punishment, society allows a fraction more anarchy, and the nightmare spelled out in Leviathan becomes a fraction more real."

[saaski-moql.livejournal.com]

And this is where we differ, because the only time I liked Light was when he was the innocent version. I never liked him as Kira (though I could appreciate some of his genius skills) and I spent the entire series waiting for him to lose. I actually liked the manga series ending better than the anime. His death is much less peaceful and he deserved every moment of wretched betrayal. In my opinion.

Thing is, I could have liked Kira. Then he started killing innocents along with the guilty and not caring about his family and no, that is not okay.

alhlgkjghs XDXD at wondering about Matt. His part is a little bigger in the manga but no, you're right, that's mostly it. I sort of ignored both Mello and Matt (and Near...) until a friend starting writing M/M fics. Mostly they were centered around speculation of why Matt hung with Mello and was willing to fight and die for him (especially considering this guy was number 3 and didn't really seem to...care). It's a fannon Matt, but a Could Be senario and I liked that.

XD "whee...plonk."

[amy-wolf.livejournal.com]

I never got the Matt thing, either. Especially since I read the comics, then saw people shipping Matt and Mello, and argued about his characterization, and I was left going "Who's Matt again? Oh, him. Wait what characterization?" I mean seriously, it wouldn't actually go against his existing characterization for him to go home on his free evenings, break out his collection of needlessly elaborate evening gowns, and reenact the dance numbers to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in his living room. Or to have crossed the world's silliest shinigami, and have been given the special Death Note that stabs people with rainbows (except Misa would kill him out of jealousy).

Near was okay. I liked Mello more, because he was messier and more complicated. I felt bad for Mello, especially as things go on.

I found Light fascinating, but wasn't really sad for him when he cracked up like that. Mostly because I pretty quickly mentally slotted Light into the 'sociopathic bastard' category (when he jumped so quickly from 'I don't actually think it will work, but I'll test on murderers just in case' to 'Here's my elaborate plan for declaring myself judge, jury and executioner to the world!'), so it was more interesting than sad.

Based on your plot preferences, I strongly suspect you'd like the Japanese movie versions. Which are similar, but not identical in plot to the cartoon.

[wanttobeatree.livejournal.com]

RIONA HEY RIONA. (one day I may actually leave a comment that relates to the contents of your post, but today is not that day.) I was thinking about the potential train station shenanigans we may encounter on Friday AND I HAVE PLAN: if my train is gonna go through Birmingham International, I will text you, and you can do likewise, and then if we both have International-y trains we can go HOORAY and get off at that stop. And if we don't, we can go HOORAY and get off at N St. and get hopelessly lost for a while, instead.

(Or, idk, potentially catch a train from N St. station to International? It could be quicker/cheaper. But we can cross that bridge in a couple of days.)